Abandoned Kansai

Onomichi is famous for the being the starting point of the Shimanami Kaido, a popular car expressway and bike trail stretching from Honshu to Shikoku across several islands… but abandoned places?!

I loved Japanese castles ever since I watched the mini-series “Shogun” with my dad as a little boy – and of course I’ve been to the most famous ones (Hikone, Himeji, Inuyama, Matsue, and Matsumoto) and then some dozens. What I dislike with a passion are fake castles built in the 20th century as tourist attractions – the most famous one probably being the one in Osaka. Great castle park with amazing moats, but the castle itself is one step away from being some Disney crap – at least they went all in and even included elevators, so it’s one of the few wheelchair accessible castles in Japan. The latest of those abominations was erected in 2018/19 – and all it needed was a rich idiot on an ego trip and some local politicians who thought that they can turn an industrial bedroom community into a tourist attraction. “Let’s check out the underrated city of Amagasaki, I’ve heard they have an amazing castle there!” is something nobody ever said. Heck, I live near Amagasucky and I’ve never been to the castle, not even to take some photos and rant about it.
50 years earlier, a couple hundred kilometers southwest. Onomichi, Hiroshima prefecture. An important trade harbor from the mid-12th to the mid-17th century, the town lost quite a bit of its former glory during the Tokugawa period as international trade was mostly limited to Nagasaki’s Dejima. After WW2 the movies Tokyo Story and The Naked Island reignited interest in Onomichi, so in 1964 the local chamber of commerce and industry had the glorious idea to attract the fun hungry post-war workers with a three-story watchtower, modeled after the castle tower of Hirosaki Castle, but without any historical background. It was in business for a few decades (as “National Museum of Castles, Onomichi Castle”), but closed in 1990 or 1992 – it probably fell victim to the asset price bubble of the late 80s, when investors decided to make the Seto Inland Sea THE new tourist destination in Japan and pumped insane amounts of money into the area, resulting in plenty of abandoned places still visible today (like the famous *La Rainbow Hotel & Tower*, where the Japanese police caught 30 urbexers and airsoft players since the start of the pandemic alone)! Located on a hill just behind Onomichi Station and surrounded by hotels, the castle saw quite a bit of foot traffic and therefore hardly any vandalism. At the time of my visit in 2012 most of the premises were overgrown, entrance impossible. I took a few photos and deemed the location not interesting enough to publish… until I found out recently that Onomichi castle (which really wasn’t a castle, just a glorified watchtower) had been donated to the city in 2018 and was demolished between December 2019 and January 2021. On March 11th 2022 the site was reopened to the public as Senkoji Park Viewpoint Hall, after the city spent 200 million Yen on the project.

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