VIGNESH
Home/Goshuins/Goshuincho 4/#12
Goshuincho 4 · #12

広島城

Hiroshima Castle
Type
Castle stamp (gojōin)
Date received
~24 Mar 2025 (date blank)
Confidence
name 99%date 0%

Confidence

Field Confidence Notes
Castle name 99% Center calligraphy clearly reads 広島城 (Hiroshima-jō); top-right brush reads 登城記念 ("commemoration of climbing the castle"); the bottom-left round red seal is the official Hiroshima Castle Museum emblem; the red 違い鷹羽 (chigai-takanoha / crossed-hawk-feathers) crest at top is the Asano clan crest, used by all rulers of Hiroshima Castle from 1619 to the Meiji Restoration.
Stamp type 99% Standard 御城印 layout for Hiroshima Castle — sold at the museum gift shop, not a religious goshuin
Date 0% Date column reads 「令和 年 月 日」 with year/month/day blank. This is sold pre-printed and not custom-dated. Trip context places this around 24 March 2025 (collected with Hiroshima Gokoku Jinja, entry 14).

Identification

  • Name (Japanese): 広島城 (also 鯉城 / Rijō, "Carp Castle")
  • Name (Romanized): Hiroshima-jō (Hiroshima Castle)
  • Stamp type: 御城印 (gojōin / castle stamp) — issued by the Hiroshima Castle Museum gift shop
  • Issuance point: 1F Museum Shop of Hiroshima Castle Keep
  • Location: Motomachi 21-1, Naka Ward, Hiroshima City
  • Date received: Date column intentionally blank; trip context places this on or around 24 March 2025

Reading the gojōin

Element Reading Position
登城記念 Tojō-kinen — "Commemoration of climbing the castle" Top right column, brush
広島城 Hiroshima-jō — castle name Center, large bold brush
違い鷹羽 (red, top) Chigai-takanoha — crossed hawk-feathers (Asano clan crest) Top, large red emblem
Hiroshima Castle round seal Official castle museum emblem (with castle keep silhouette in lavender) Bottom left, round red seal with central image
令和 年 月 日 Reiwa __ year __ month __ day (blank date) Left column

About Hiroshima Castle

Hiroshima Castle was built between 1589 and 1599 by Mōri Terumoto (毛利輝元), the Mōri-clan daimyo who controlled most of western Honshu. He chose the delta of the Ōta River (太田川) as the site for a new castle to replace his ancestral fortress at Yoshida-Kōriyama, building on a strategic island within the river system. The city of Hiroshima — meaning "Wide Island" — grew up around the castle and takes its name from this geography.

After the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), Terumoto, having fought on the losing Toyotomi side, was stripped of most of his lands. The castle and surrounding domain passed to Fukushima Masanori (whose 抱き沢瀉 / daki-omoda crest is sometimes also referenced on Hiroshima gojōin variants). Masanori was later transferred out in 1619, and the castle came to the Asano clan under Asano Nagaakira, who held it for 12 generations until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The Asano clan's 違い鷹羽 (chigai-takanoha) crest, visible on this gojōin, became the de facto Hiroshima Castle crest for 250 years.

The atomic bombing

On 6 August 1945 at 8:15 a.m., the atomic bomb "Little Boy" detonated approximately 600 m above ground level at a hypocenter just 900 m southeast of Hiroshima Castle. The blast pressure and fire completely destroyed the original wooden castle keep, which had been a designated National Treasure since 1931 — one of only twelve original Edo-period keeps in Japan still standing at the time. All castle buildings, the surrounding moats' wooden bridges, and the keep's National Treasure interior were lost.

The current keep is a 1958 ferro-concrete reconstruction built as part of post-war Hiroshima civic recovery, modeled on the original outer profile but with a museum interior. Like Osaka Castle's 1931 reconstruction, the keep is now a museum focused on samurai-era history rather than a faithful structural recreation.

Why "Carp Castle" (鯉城 / Rijō)

The nickname 鯉城 (Rijō, "Carp Castle") comes from the dark green-black color of the keep's exterior plaster, which was thought to resemble a carp's scales. This nickname has given the Hiroshima Tōyō Carp baseball team their name and is referenced in the central red seal of Hiroshima Gokoku Jinja's goshuin (which sits adjacent to the castle).

About this gojōin variant

Hiroshima Castle has issued multiple gojōin variants:

  • Standard 違い鷹羽 (Asano) version (this scan)
  • A 抱き沢瀉 (daki-omoda) Fukushima version for the earlier daimyo lineage
  • A 黒い (black-paper) variant (limited)

Sold at the Castle Keep Museum 1F gift shop, the standard gojōin is 300 yen. The handwritten brush and pre-printed crest combination is consistent across all visitors who collect during the standard distribution period.

Goshuin vs. gojōin

This is a 御城印 (gojōin) issued commercially by the castle museum, not a 御朱印. Gojōin are a recent collecting tradition popularized in the 2010s.

Sources

← PreviousJinpen-jiNext →Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
← Back to Goshuincho 4