Hokoku Shrine

Hokoku Shrine, on the south side of the honmaru in Osaka Castle Park, enshrines Hideyoshi, Hideyori and Hidenaga, and people pray here for success and advancement. It was first built in Meiji 12 (1879) by decree of Emperor Meiji at Yamazaki-no-hana in Nakanoshima, the site of the present Central Public Hall, as a branch of Toyokuni Shrine in Kyoto. It was later moved near the Nakanoshima Library, and in Showa 36 (1961) to its present site. The precincts contain the Shusekitei garden, made in 1972. The garden takes the sea as its theme, after Osaka's growth as a city facing the sea; its ground pattern is laid out in the shape of the sennari-byotan, the gourd standard of Hideyoshi, and massed boulders represent Ishiyama, the stone mountain. Hideyoshi rose within a single lifetime from an unknown foot soldier to rule the country, and many people buy the shrine's sennari-byotan charms one at a time, adding to them as they pray for advancement of their own.

Translated from the Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City tourist listings (観光施設一覧, CC BY 4.0).