Hiroshima Castle main gate

As you know, today there are only 12 Japanese castles having their tenshu (main tower) in the original form. Many of them were burned down during the medieval wars, while others were demolished after 1615, when shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu issued a law allowing each domain daimyō (lord) to possess only one castle.

At the end of the 19th century, another law, issued after the Meiji Restoration, led to the dismantling of many castles, which were then considered symbols of the past. Finally, the WWII bombings destroyed several other, and that was the case of the Hiroshima Castle, whose reconstructed main gate is photographed here...