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Fukuyama is the second largest city of Hiroshima Prefecture, a castle town on the Sanyō Shinkansen line whose symbol is the rose, with Fukuyama Castle standing right beside its station and the old port of Tomonoura on the Seto Inland Sea at the southern end of the city.
The city grew around the castle that Mizuno Katsunari completed in 1622 on what had been tidal flats. An air raid in August 1945 burned most of the centre, and in 1956 local residents planted about a thousand rose bushes in the city, the beginning of the roses that became the symbol of the city.
Visitors climb the rebuilt castle keep, see the medieval town of Kusado Sengen at the history museum and the National Treasure pagoda of Myōō-in. In Tomonoura they walk the Edo-period harbour, take in the view from Taichōrō, ferry to Sensuijima and visit the cliff-top hall of Abuto Kannon.
Fukuyama Castle was completed in 1622 by Mizuno Katsunari, partly with buildings from Fushimi Castle, and stands beside Fukuyama Station. Its keep burned in the air raid of 1945 and was rebuilt in 1966, but the Fushimi Yagura turret and an iron-clad gate survive as Important Cultural Properties.
The Hiroshima Prefectural Museum of History opened in 1989 in the grounds of Fukuyama Castle and tells the history of the Setouchi region. Its focus is Kusado Sengen, a medieval port town on the Ashida River unearthed by archaeologists, with its finds and a reconstruction of the town on show.
The Fukuyama Museum of Art is the city's art museum, opened in November 1988 to promote art and culture in the region. It stands on the filled-in outer moat of Fukuyama Castle, so its grounds run on from the castle park, and the castle keep rises behind its garden as a borrowed view.
Fukuyama Rose Park is a 1.5-hectare park in the centre of Fukuyama, begun in 1956 when local people planted about 1,000 rose bushes, eleven years after an air raid burned most of the city. Renewed in 2024, it now has about 7,000 roses of 650 kinds and is a main venue of the Rose Festival each May.
Tomonoura is an old port town at the tip of the Numakuma Peninsula in Fukuyama, 14 km south of the station, whose round harbour has thrived since ancient times. It is the only port in Japan that keeps all its Edo-period harbour works, from the stone lantern lighthouse to its stepped quays.
Taichōrō is the guest hall of Fukuzen-ji temple in Tomonoura, built around 1690 and used to lodge Korean envoys during the Edo period. In 1711 an envoy praised its view of Sensuijima and Benten island as the finest east of Korea, and the temple grounds are now a National Historic Site.
The Ōta Residence in Tomonoura is the former house of the Nakamura family, brewers of the local Homeishu medicinal liqueur, which passed to the Ōta family in the Meiji era. It is a fine example of a merchant house of the Seto Inland Sea and was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1991.
The Iroha Maru Museum in Tomonoura, opened in 1989, tells the story of the steamship Iroha Maru, sailed by Sakamoto Ryōma's Kaientai, which sank in 1867 while being towed to Tomo after colliding with a ship of the Kii Domain. Ryōma came ashore at Tomo and spent four days negotiating compensation.
Myōō-in is a Shingon Buddhist temple at the foot of Mount Atago beside the Ashida River in Fukuyama, said to have been founded by Kūkai. Both its main hall, rebuilt in 1321, and its five-storey pagoda, raised in 1348, are National Treasures, their dates known from ink inscriptions found inside them.
Kusado Inari Shrine is an Inari shrine in Fukuyama beside Myōō-in, once the temple's guardian shrine and sometimes named among the five great Inari shrines of Japan. About 400,000 people visit at New Year, and its main hall, raised on a stilted base, looks out over the whole of the city.
Sensuijima is an uninhabited island of about 6 km around, a short ferry ride from Tomonoura in the Setonaikai National Park, Japan's first national park. Its name means an island so beautiful that even hermits grow drunk on it, and its shore has unusual rocks streaked in five colours.
Abuto Kannon is the Kannon hall of Bandai-ji temple, perched on the sheer cliff of Cape Abuto above the Seto Inland Sea in Fukuyama. First built in 1570, it was revered by lords, merchants and sailors, who threw offerings from passing ships, and the hall is an Important Cultural Property.
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