Hiroshima

Hiroshima was made, not inherited. In 1589 the warlord Mori Terumoto chose a set of sandy islands in the delta of the Ota River and began building a castle there, naming the place "broad island". The Mori lost their western domains after the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and from 1619 the Asano family held Hiroshima for 250 years, draining and reclaiming the delta and turning the castle town into the commercial centre of the Inland Sea coast.

The Meiji state made it a military city. Ujina harbour was built in the 1880s, the town was chartered as a city in 1889, the railway reached Hiroshima in 1894, and during the war with China in 1894–95 the imperial headquarters moved to Hiroshima Castle and the national assembly met in the city. Through the first half of the 20th century it was a garrison and embarkation town, with army depots, barracks and shipping lines that also carried tens of thousands of emigrants to Hawaii and the Americas.

At 8.15 on the morning of 6 August 1945 an American aircraft dropped an atomic bomb that exploded above the centre of the city. Tens of thousands were killed immediately and the toll reached an estimated 90,000 to 140,000 by the end of the year, from burns, injuries and radiation; most of the built-up area was flattened or burned. The Peace Memorial City Construction Law of 1949 funded the rebuilding, Kenzo Tange's plan set a memorial park across the hypocentre and drove a new boulevard through the ruins, and the surviving skeleton of the industrial promotion hall was kept as the Atomic Bomb Dome. The city regained its pre-war population by 1955 and now counts about 1.2 million residents, and in 2023 it hosted a summit of the Group of Seven.

Hiroshima's public identity is built around the bombing and its consequences. Peace education is part of schooling, the mayor issues a declaration each 6 August, and the city leads Mayors for Peace, an international network of local authorities set up on the initiative of a Hiroshima mayor in 1982. The testimony of hibakusha, the survivors, has been carried for decades by volunteers and increasingly by their children, and visiting heads of state are expected to lay a wreath at the cenotaph. Alongside this runs a strong sense of ordinary civic normality: residents point out that the city is a working regional capital, not only a memorial.

Sport carries much of that civic feeling. The Hiroshima Toyo Carp, founded in 1949 when the city was still rebuilding, were saved from being wound up in their early years by donations raised among residents; their red shirts fill the streets on match days. The football club Sanfrecce Hiroshima takes its name from the three arrows of a Mori family parable about strength in unity.

Older traditions survive around the city. Kagura, masked sacred dance performed to fast drumming, is strong in the northern hills of the prefecture, and the brushes of Kumano, a town to the east, are exported worldwide for calligraphy and cosmetics. The Flower Festival in early May and the Tokasan yukata festival in June fill the central streets, and the western dialect, with its blunt, clipped endings, is familiar to Japanese audiences from film and television.

About 1.2 million people live in Hiroshima, in eight wards spread over the delta and the hills behind it, with well over another million in the surrounding prefecture. The centre sits on the islands between the river channels; most residents live further out, in the valleys to the north and the reclaimed land and suburbs along the coast, and commute in by tram, local train or the Astram line.

Manufacturing anchors the economy. Mazda's main plant and headquarters lie just east of the city at Fuchu, shipbuilding and heavy industry continue around Kure, and parts suppliers, steel and chemical works line the bay, alongside the prefectural government, universities, hospitals and a large tourism sector. Retail concentrates in the Hondori and Kamiyacho blocks and around the station, which has been rebuilt in stages in recent years.

The city's daily rhythm is unhurried by the standards of Osaka or Tokyo: short commutes, trams that rattle through the centre at street level, lunch counters busy at noon and okonomiyaki griddles busy at night. Its recurring worries are those of much of regional Japan — an ageing population, young people leaving for larger cities, and the maintenance of the rebuilt post-war housing stock — together with disaster risk, after landslides on the hillsides around the city killed 74 people in 2014 and the rains of 2018 set off more than a thousand mudslides across the prefecture, leading to new hazard mapping and defences.

Okonomiyaki is the city's dish and differs sharply from the Osaka version. Instead of mixing the ingredients into the batter, the cook spreads a thin crepe on the griddle, piles on a mound of shredded cabbage, bean sprouts and pork belly, adds a layer of fried yakisoba or udon noodles and a fried egg, flips the whole stack and finishes it with a sweet brown sauce. It is eaten straight off the hotplate with a metal spatula, and counters selling it range from single-cook shops to whole buildings of stalls.

The Inland Sea supplies the rest. Oysters have been farmed in Hiroshima Bay since the 16th century, are at their best from late autumn through winter, and are served grilled in the shell, breaded and deep-fried as kaki-furai, or simmered in a miso hotpot called kaki no dotenabe. Anago-meshi, grilled saltwater conger eel over rice, is a speciality of the coast towards Miyajima, and small fish, octopus and Setouchi lemons appear across local menus. Hiroshima-style tsukemen — cold noodles dipped in a chilli-hot sauce — is another counter staple.

For sweets, momiji manju, maple-leaf-shaped cakes filled with red bean paste, come from Miyajima but are sold everywhere, sometimes battered and fried. Hiroshima na, a leafy green, is pickled and served with rice or folded into onigiri. Sake comes from Saijo, a brewing town about 25 kilometres east whose brewery chimneys and white walls line a single street.