From the observatory on the 107m-tallGoryokaku Tower, you can have a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding areas, including its namesake, the star-shaped fort, which used to be the last stronghold of the pro-shogunatetroops. This is where the Boshin War ended, allowing Emperor Meiji to take full control of Japan and bring the formerly isolated country on a path toward modernisation. Other than the civil war, so many things had happened at this 19th-century fort, which you can learn about from the many displays in the tower’s history gallery. The one shown here relates that after the war, the moat of Fort Goryokaku became a commercial source of natural ice.In 1871, the ‘Goryokaku ice’ was known to be sold in Honshu, Japan’s largest island.