The Dai-Heiwa Kinento (PL Peace Tower) looms over houses in Tondabayashi, Osaka Prefecture, showing off its presence. What appear to be box-shaped dots are windows on the observation floor. (Mihoko Takizawa)

TONDABAYASHI, Osaka Prefecture--Those who catch sight for the first time of the oddly shaped white tower here that looks like a finger pointing to the sky will do a double take.

Local residents, however, have developed an attachment to the Dai-Heiwa Kinento (PL Peace Tower), saying that it helps them get a bearing on their location and feel like they have returned home when they see it from the air on their flights.

However, the Peace Tower hardly ever enters the spotlight perhaps because it is a religious facility, standing 180 meters tall, on sacred ground of the Church of Perfect Liberty (PL).

There is no entry about the cenotaph on the website of the city’s tourist association, while an official said that the city has never mentioned the tower in its public relations magazine.

The tower was completed after about two years of construction in 1970 when the Osaka Expo '70 was being held.

It has a really long official name: "Cho-shuha Bankoku Senso Giseisha Irei Dai-Heiwa Kinento" (International war victim memorial great peace prayer tower for all religions).

The basic philosophy of the religious group is to yearn for peace because its predecessor, Hito-no-michi Kyodan, was ordered to be disbanded by the government due to religious oppression during wartime.

There is a belief that the PL initially asked Pablo Picasso to design the tower, but the famed Spanish painter abandoned the project because it was architecturally difficult to achieve.

The previous leader, Tokuchika Miki, kneaded clay on his own to design a statue pointing to heaven under the theme of “Truth is One.”

The tower was founded to commemorate all war victims in history regardless of religion. With societies and communities across the world increasingly becoming divided, the cenotaph seems to be asking whether we can build a society in which we won’t kill, be killed or let others be killed.

Because the tower was designed to have an uneven surface with large and small holes irregularly arranged over it, it took six months to see if the structure was at risk of collapse before construction work began. A 1/33 scale model was brought into the University of Tokyo to determine whether the design could withstand the gravity while the model was rotated at various angles. It was also exposed to winds equivalent to the speed experienced during a typhoon.

Under the Aviation Law, the tower was required to be painted red and white, like Tokyo Tower. But the PL’s PR magazine at the time said it was “exempted from the rule thanks to compassionate handling by the transport ministry.”

A total of 40,000 workers were brought in for the construction project.

Norio Minamide, 79, who lives in Yawata, Kyoto Prefecture, served as head of a construction office at the site when he was a chief member of the Osaka branch of Miyaji Kensetsu Kogyo (present-day Miyaji Engineering Co.).

Minamide was still in his 20s at the time, but he was entrusted with such a major project because older generations had been drafted to war and many of them were killed. He brought 30 skilled scaffolding builders from Tokyo.

“We worked on the project with conviction and responsibility that what we were building was not just a steel tower but a sculpture to pray for peace,” Minamide recalled.

In later years, Miki said in his serialized column published in The Nihon Keizai Shimbun financial newspaper: “I wanted to build it in the ‘expo’ year when the world’s attention was fixated on it.”

He may have wanted to draw attention by building a tower that was higher than the "Tower of the Sun" (70 meters) or the Expo Tower (127 meters), which were built for Expo '70.

With two elevators installed inside the tower, the observation deck had been open to the public until about 20 years ago. But currently, visitors except for PL followers are only allowed to go up to a shrine on the lower level of the tower. It is said that the observation deck offers a sweeping view of Osaka Castle, Mount Rokkosan and Awajishima island.

“We have to clean the windows and replace the red lamp, but it’s scary because of the height,” said Mamichi Chiba, 63, a PL staffer in charge of the tower.

Although the exterior walls were repainted 30 years ago, “an inspection may be necessary to see if the electrical system and other components have deteriorated over time,” he added.

PL is famous for organizing a large-scale fireworks festival and a high school baseball club bearing its name.

The tower will mark its 50th anniversary in 2020, but PL said there are no plans for commemorative events.