Читать книгу Tokyo: 29 Walks in the World's Most Exciting City - John H. Martin - Страница 8

Walking Tour 1

MARUNOUCHI, THE IMPERIAL PALACE AND HIBIYA PARK

Within the Moat, the Blue-eyed Shogun, the Imperial Palace, the “Hall of the Cry of the Stag,” and the Imperial Hotel

1 Tokyo Station

2 Imperial Theater/Idemitsu Art Museum

3 The Imperial Palace Outer Garden

4 Hibiya Park

5 The Imperial Hotel

When Tokugawa Ieyasu planned his castle in Edo in 1590, he chose to build it on the high ground above the inlet that spread inland from the great bay—then called Edo, and now Tokyo, Bay—in front of his new capital. Under his direction, Hibiya Inlet and various rivers in the vicinity of the castle were channeled so as to form canals and moats about the innermost portion of the city. Here, behind these watery barriers, the shogun’s headquarters were to rise, protected by fortified walls and water-filled moats.

In front of the eastern side of the castle, the inlet was soon filled in, leaving an inner moat and, beyond the filled inlet, an outer moat. Earth for the project was taken from the higher terrain known as Yamanote, the “High City,” to the west and north. On the newly reclaimed land between the inner and outer moats, an area called Marunouchi (Within the Moats) housed the mansions of the daimyo most favored by the Tokugawa shoguns. Additional fill was used to make the Shitamachi, or “Low City,” to the east, where the common workers who supplied the daily needs of the daimyo and their entourages lived.

Ieyasu’s most trusted, or “inside,” lords resided in the castle enclave between the inner and outer moats. Today, Uchibori-dori, Inner Moat Street, borders the Imperial Palace grounds on the palace’s eastern side, and a portion of this moat is still in existence. Sotobori-dori, Outer Moat Street, has in the 20th century become a ring road about the original central portion of Tokyo and the Imperial Palace grounds. It was only in the decades after World War II that the remaining portions of the outer moat were filled in, and thus Sotobori-dori now varies between being a ground-level roadway and, in part, an elevated and then underground roadway. In the northeast portion of the Marunouchi area, between today’s Tokyo Station and the palace grounds, lay the mansions and dependencies of the Matsudaira lords in former times. To the south, in front of today’s Imperial Palace Plaza, were the mansions of the Honda, the Sakai, and other favored daimyo.

For some 260 years, the most powerful military leaders of Japan occupied these lands. By the 1860s, however, the political and military power of the last two shoguns had gradually dissipated. The rule of sankin kotai (alternate attendance), which, after 1635, required both the inside and outside daimyo to spend two years in Edo alternating with two years on their own lands, was to come to an end. Then in 1868, with the victory of the adherents of Emperor Meiji over the Tokugawa shoguns, the mansions of all the daimyo were abandoned as the former provincial lords returned to their home provinces. By 1871, the deserted buildings were either used for government offices when these offices were moved to Tokyo from Kyoto, or were cleared for military drill grounds for a growing and ever more militaristic government.

By 1890, within 20 years of the imperial takeover of Edo, now Tokyo, the Meiji government and the military authorities required funds for the development of new establishments for their growing needs. Thus the land “within the moats” was put up for sale. The Imperial Household did not have the funds to purchase the land, so the Mitsubishi, a leading mercantile and growing industrial family, were prevailed upon to acquire the vacant Marunouchi area in front of the palace grounds. Known derisively as Mitsubishi Meadow or the Gambler’s Meadow by those who did not have the foresight to buy the land, the Marunouchi was intended by the Mitsubishi for a Western-style complex of buildings in anticipation of the industrial and commercial growth they foresaw for the nation. To this end, they hired Josiah Condor, an English architect who came to live in Japan in 1877 and who worked not only as an architect but as an instructor of architecture at the College of Technology (later to become Tokyo University). There he trained the first generation of Japanese architects in the technicalities of Western practice.

The three-story buildings that Condor designed for the Mitsubishi were redbrick structures with white stone quoins and windows and doors outlined in white stone. The new Western-style district he created was known as London Town. Its streets were lined with trees and the newest of modern appurtenances, poles to support above-ground electric wires. London Town, with its Queen Anne–style architecture extending to the not-too-distant Ginza area, with newly paved streets and brick-built structures, was the pride of the Meiji era. The sponsors of London Town hoped that it would quickly become the new commercial and financial center of Tokyo. The first building was completed in 1894, but unfortunately the Stock Exchange, the Bank of Japan, and other financial and commercial establishments remained in Nihombashi to the east. Success for London Town had to await the arrival of the railroad in central Tokyo.

The extension of the railroad from Shimbashi, south of the Ginza area, into Marunouchi finally became a reality in 1914. Dr. Tatsuno Kingo, a student of Josiah Condor, was named as the architect of the new Tokyo Station (where this walking tour begins), which opened in 1914. The thousand-foot-long redbrick Renaissance-style station was modeled after Amsterdam’s Zentraal Station and faced east, toward London Town and the Imperial Palace. The plan to have an entrance on the eastern side of the station was stymied for years because the Sotobori moat still ran parallel to the railroad right-of-way on that side, and the Nihombashi and Kyobashi officials each wanted a bridge over the moat to go to their district. The dispute was not resolved and an eastern entrance to the station created until 1929. When the high-speed Shinkansen Line with its bullet trains came into being in the 1960s, this entrance was greatly enhanced, and a whole new, modern terminal structure was built behind the existing station, along with the Daimaru Department Store as a tenant facing the Yaesu Plaza, which covers the area of a portion of the former Sotobori moat.

The old entrance to Tokyo Station in Marunouchi

Tokyo Station was meant as a memorial for Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, and its main entrance was reserved for use solely by royalty. The station remained central in name only, for it was the terminus for trains from the south while the station at Ueno (to the north) was the terminus for trains from the north and east. Not until after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 could the two stations be linked, a possibility brought about by the earthquake’s destruction of buildings between the two termini. The completion in 1925 of the elevated Yamanote Line, which circles a major portion of central Tokyo, finally achieved this linkage.

The early future of Marunouchi looked brighter when the Tokyo city and Tokyo prefectural governments agreed to share a new building in the former daimyo quarter. The redbrick, Western-style structure was to arise in Marunouchi with the prefectural offices to the right while the city offices were to the left. Each had the image of its patron before its portion of the structure: Ota Dokan, the founder of an earlier Edo Castle in the mid-1400s, was placed before the city sector of the building. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the second founder of Edo in the 1590s stood before the prefectural offices. (A new, modern city hall was erected on the site in 1957 under the direction of the noted Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. As with its predecessor, it was to be razed after 1991 when the city hall moved further west to Shinjuku.)

The new station became the front door to the city, and gradually office buildings in Marunouchi, as London Town came to be known again, filled the Mitsubishi Meadows between the railroad and the Imperial Palace over the next 25 years. The life of modern buildings is frequently all too short, and Condor’s buildings were gradually replaced from 1930 on by newer and larger buildings. The last remnant of London Town, Mitsubishi Building #1, disappeared in 1967 in the post– World War II construction boom. The height limit of seven-to-eight floors (100 feet, or 45 meters) for the buildings in Marunouchi—out of respect to the adjacent Imperial Palace, which it would not be proper to overshadow—was to go the way of many such traditions after the 1950s, and today the financial and commercial headquarters of Japanese and international firms tower over the Imperial Palace grounds. Other traditions, such as the placing of an image of the Buddha under the roof of a building as protection against lightning, are no longer recognized.

1 TOKYO STATION

This tour of Marunouchi and Yurakucho begins at the western side of Tokyo Station, a bustling center whose daily train traffic could not have been envisioned by its original planners. Some 20 platforms above and below ground receive 3,000 train arrivals a day. A small park graces the area before the station, with the Tokyo Central Post Office on the left and a bus terminal to the right. A broad street leading from the plaza in front of the station to Hibiya-dori and the park before the Imperial Palace was created in 1926. The skyscraper that dominates the beginning of this boulevard is the Shin-marunouchi Building, completed in 2007 to replace the previous 1953 building of that name that occupied the same site. At 650 feet (198 meters) in height, this 38-story building, designed by British architect Sir Michael Hopkins, is currently the tallest structure in Chiyoda ward. It stands across the street from another skyscraper, the 2002, 37-story Marunouchi Building (often called Maru Biru), which was built to replace the grand old 1923 building of the same name, an eight-story building that survived both the 1923 earthquake and the bombing of 1945 but was unable to survive Tokyo’s 21st-century modernization. The two new Marunouchi buildings are packed with chic restaurants, fashionable shops, and high-end offices, and both represent the most modern face of Tokyo, as may seem fitting for one of the city’s financial districts.

Two streets along the boulevard bring one to Hibiya-dori as well as to the Babasakibori (Moat in Front of the Horse Grounds) and the beginning of the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens. (The moat’s strange name derives from a 1635 display of horsemanship presented before the shogun by a delegation from the then dependent kingdom of Korea.) When the capital was moved to Tokyo in 1868, three areas that were a portion of the castle grounds were gradually given to the public as parkland. These include the Imperial Palace Outer Garden along Hibiya-dori in front of the palace, the Imperial Palace East Garden, which contains the remains of the former Tokugawa castle, and Kita-no-maru Park, which was also part of the castle grounds. The Outer Garden has seen momentous events since it was separated from the Imperial Palace grounds. Here refugees from the destruction of the 1923 earthquake gathered, and here in August of 1945 a number of Japan’s officer corps committed seppuku (ceremonial suicide), their deaths supposedly serving as atonement for Japan losing its war in the Pacific. In the 1950s and 1960s, it became a place for public demonstrations against unpopular government decisions, many of these gatherings being anti-American in nature.

Hibiya-dori extends along the moat before the Outer Gardens and the palace, with a range of modern office buildings on its eastern side. As you turn to the left from the boulevard leading from Tokyo Station and head south on Hibiya-dori, the buildings you see between the railway and the Outer Garden cover not only the site of the Matsudaira daimyo mansion and ancillary buildings but as well the building in which the shogun’s chief Confucian advisor, Hayashi Razan, once held sway. Prior to the 19th century, the shogun’s fire department was located where the Meiji Life Insurance Building now stands, across from the bridge over the Babasaki Moat. Edo never boasted an organization that could fight the “flowers of Edo,” the outbreaks of fires that occurred all too frequently. Each daimyo and the shogun had men who could serve to protect their lord’s property, but the common citizen was on his own in his warren of wooden houses in the Low City when fires broke out. Unfortunately, not even the daimyo’s firefighters were always successful, and in the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657 even the shogun’s castle was destroyed when flames engulfed it. The shogun’s fire detachment can lay claim to fame even today on one score, however, for here at the location of the Meiji Life Insurance Building a son was born to one of the shogun’s firefighters. He forsook his father’s profession when he came of age, and Ando Hiroshige made his name through his woodblock prints instead of the quenching of flames.

Office buildings reflected in the Hibiya-bori Moat

2 IMPERIAL THEATER/IDEMITSU ART MUSEUM

One full street along Hibiya-dori beyond the bridge over the Babasaki Moat is the Kokusai Building, the International Building. Within it is the Imperial Theater (Teikoku Gekijo), which opened in 1911. It was the first major Western-style theater in Tokyo, and it was generously ornamented with marble and enhanced with splendid tapestries reminiscent of the richness of the Paris Opera House. This 1,900-seat theater was initially intended for concerts and recitals as well as for Kabuki, but it proved unsuitable for this latter art form. In more recent years, after a 1966 renovation when the stage and its equipment were updated and a restrained decor pervaded the hall of the playhouse, it has been the home to many popular contemporary American musicals. The theater occupies the first three floors of the Kokusai Building. The main entrance to the building is found on its south side, and here are elevators that may be taken to the ninth floor and the Idemitsu Art Museum, which contains one of the finest collections of Asian art in Japan. (The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. [6:30 p.m. on Fridays]. It is closed Mondays and the New Year holidays. Entry ¥1,000.) Created by the president of the Idemitsu Oil Company, it has four large rooms that provide space for the display of the collection’s riches. The main room presents objects from the museum’s fine collection of Chinese ceramics, which range from prehistoric times through to the 18th century. Japanese ceramics are also well represented, with examples of Imari, Kutani, Seto, Nabeshima, and Kakiemon wares.

Another room in the museum shows selections from 16th- and 17th-century screens depicting episodes in The Tale of Genji, as well as prints with scenes of Kyoto and Edo before 1868. The ukiyo-e woodblock prints in the collection illustrate an art form that was popular from the 1600s through the 1800s, and these prints are complemented by Zen paintings and fine examples of calligraphy. An additional room holds the varied and very large collection of ceramic shards from Persia to southeast and eastern Asia. Chinese and Japanese lacquerware of the most excellent quality is also on view. Happily, the labels in the exhibition cases are in both English and Japanese. Since 1972 the museum has branched into another area of art, with the acquisition of more than 400 works by the French painter Georges Rouault. Besides its artistic attractions, the location of the museum on the ninth floor of the Kokusai Building provides an excellent view of the Imperial Palace Outer Garden. In addition, a coffee shop offers a place for relaxation among the artistry of the Asian ages

Guard tower on the Imperial Palace’s outer moats

Continuing south on Hibiya-dori, across the street from the Kokusai Building is the Dai Ichi Insurance Building, encompassing the full frontage of the street on which it sits facing the palace grounds. Built in 1938 to the design of Watanabe Matsumoto in what was the modern International Style, one particularly favored by authoritarian governments of the day, it had ten huge columns on its façade supporting two upper floors. One of the modern, fireproof buildings of pre–World War II Tokyo, it managed to survive the bombings and firestorms of the war years. Today the façade of the building has been covered over with a bland end-of-the-20th-century facing, while a new tower of 21 stories, designed by the American architect Kevin Roche, rises behind the original structure. Whatever character the front of the building once had, it has now been effaced. Here in the original building, from September 15, 1945, until April 11, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur, the “Blue-eyed Shogun” as the Japanese then called him (it was a Japanese folk belief that all Occidental gaijin had blue eyes) had his headquarters as the military and civilian representative of the victorious Allied forces at the end of World War II. His sixth-floor, walnut-paneled office was simply furnished with a conference table and a green leather armchair. In many ways, the general’s office virtually became a museum after his departure, and now it is used by the head of the Dai Ichi Mutual Insurance Company.

3 THE IMPERIAL PALACE OUTER GARDEN

Crossing the street from the Dai Ichi Insurance Building and following the moat north on Hibiya-dori about a hundred yards, you reach a bridge leading into the Imperial Palace Outer Garden (Kokyo Gaien). In the Outer Gardens, which lie in front of the walls of the palace grounds, one can enjoy one of the few open spaces within this crowded city. This portion of Tokyo has seen many transformations in the 550 years since Ota Dokan in 1457 first built his fortified mansion and two other fortresses on the heights above today’s garden. Then there was no garden, for Hibiya Inlet stretched this far inland, providing a natural moat before the fortified hill. The tiny town that Ota Dokan began below his hillside fortress received its name of Edo from its location, the word signifying “waterfront” or “mouth of the river.” The town was to grow, but in the unpredictable politics of his day, Ota Dokan was assassinated at his lord’s behest in 1486, and his fortified mansion and stronghold became derelict. One hundred years had to pass before a more massive castle would arise on the site and before Edo would see a renewal of its growth to become a major city.

This present parkland was created when Tokugawa Ieyasu moved his headquarters from Shizuoka to the site of Ota Dokan’s castle in the 1590s. Ieyasu had Hibiya Inlet filled in with land from the hills of Kanda to the north, and the newly created land became the site of the mansions of the inside lords, the fudai daimyo, who were his closest allies. After 1868, with the fall of the Tokugawas, the Meiji government established its offices in the area in which the daimyo had lived. These offices were relocated from Kyoto into former daimyo buildings in Tokyo, a not too satisfactory arrangement. Relocation of the offices into more practical quarters was inevitable, and in the period after 1889 Marunouchi, as described above, was sold to the Mitsubishi family in order to raise funds for the proper housing of governmental functions. In 1889 the government offices were removed from that portion of what is now the Outer Gardens, pine trees were planted, and the land in front of the palace became a public park.

In 1897 a bronze equestrian statue of Kusunoki Masashige, given to the nation by the wealthy Sumitomo family of Osaka, was cast by Takamura Koun and placed within the Outer Garden. The creation of this statue by order of the Meiji government was part of its attempt to establish new heroes whose actions in the past showed devotion to the Imperial House and to the emperor. Such public images were meant to enhance the government’s new creed of loyalty to the emperor and the need to be ready to sacrifice oneself for emperor and nation. These two virtues were evident in Kusunoki’s life, first when he had defended Emperor Go-Daigo and his imperial prerogatives in the 1300s and then when he committed seppuku, or ceremonial suicide, after his defense of the emperor against Ashikaga Takauji’s usurpation of power failed in 1336. Reverence to the god-emperor reached such ideological heights in the late 19th and early 20h centuries that at one time passengers in the trams that went by the palace were expected to rise from their seats and bow to the palace and the emperor within its walls. The fact that the Meiji defenders of imperial rule were themselves governing in the name of a powerless emperor, whose image they were using, was completely overlooked.

Kusunoki Masashige, samurai from the 14th century

A much lighter element was added to the northeast portion of the Outer Gardens in the 1960s, when a large fountain within a pool (Wadakura Fountain) was created to celebrate the wedding of the then crown prince (now Emperor Heisei). At the far end of the Outer Garden from Hibiya-dori, another moat separates the palace walls from the public park; these various moats encircle the 250 acres (100 hectares) of the palace grounds. The Imperial Palace today is located in the Nishi-no-maru, the Western Fortified Area, which was one portion of the shoguns’ castle confines. The raised ground of the palace is faced with walls of huge stones brought by boat in the early 1600s from the Izu Peninsula some 60 miles (96 kilometers) to the southwest of Tokyo. These massive stones were dragged by teams of laborers supplied by the daimyo along paths covered with seaweed to ease the movement of the heavily loaded sledges from the bay to the castle grounds. Such fortified walls, before the development of modern gunpowder and explosives, could be breached only by treachery from within, by natural forces such as earthquakes, or through a siege that might starve a defending force into surrendering. In the more than 260 years of the enforced Tokugawa peace that followed 1603, these walls were neither breached nor attacked.

Most of the shogun’s buildings in the Tokugawa castle were destroyed by fire in the years prior to the arrival of the Emperor Meiji to his new capital. His sojourn in the castle grounds was briefer than anticipated, since in 1873 the last of the Tokugawa buildings were destroyed by fire, and the emperor and empress were forced to move to the Akasaka Palace grounds, where they lived in a former mansion of a branch of the Tokugawa family until 1889, when a new palace was completed. This 1889 palace was destroyed in the air raids of early 1945.

When facing the palace grounds from the Outer Garden, to the right is the Fujimi Yagura (Mt. Fuji Viewing Tower) while to the left stands the Fushimi Yagura; these comprise two of the three remaining fortified towers of the Tokugawa castle. Toward the south end of the Outer Garden (to the left) the Nijubashi (Double Bridge) of 1888 comes into view along with the Fushimi Yagura, both of them rising out of the imperial moat. In the militaristic era of the 1930s and 1940s, the bridge, the Fushimi Tower, and the walls of the palace grounds became a symbol of mystical patriotism for the Japanese. So mystical or mythical became the palace site where the god-emperor resided that when Emperor Hirohito at the end of World War II announced the capitulation of Japan, the more fanatical of imperial army officers performed the previously mentioned ceremonial suicide before the palace enclave as atonement for the loss of Japanese military honor.

The Imperial Palace (Kokyo) grounds are generally not open to the public except on two occasions: on the emperor’s birthday on December 23 (from 9:30 a.m. to 11:20 a.m.) and at the start of the New Year on January 2nd (from 9:00 a.m. to 2:10 p.m.). On December 23 the emperor greets the public from the balcony of the Kyuden (Hall of State), while at the New Year holiday the imperial family receives the public from the same balcony. The Hall of State is a 1968 ferrocon-crete, earthquake-proof and fireproof structure that serves as a reception and banqueting hall for official imperial events. The Kyuden consists of three buildings: the Seiden, where, in the Pine Tree Hall (Matsuno-ma), the Imperial family receives greetings from the prime minister and his cabinet in the annual New Year reception; the Homeiden, where formal dinners are held for foreign dignitaries; and the Chowaden, which has the balcony for imperial public greetings. The imperial private residence is in the Fukiage Palace in the western portion of the grounds, a structure that was constructed (1991–1993) to replace the unit built after World War II. (In Tokugawa times this 28-acre [11.2-hectare] sector provided land for the mansions of the three main branches of the Tokugawa family.) The private residence area has a gateway to the city through the Hanzomon Gate on the western side of the palace grounds. It is possible through advanced planning to have a tour of the palace grounds. This necessitates either telephoning the Imperial Household Agency (Kunaicho) at 03-3213-1111 (open 8:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday) or applying online (via http://sankan.kunaicho.go.jp/english). Applications need to be made more than a day ahead of the proposed visit. Then a trip to the Kunaicho, at least a day before the visit, through the Sakashitamon entry, with one’s passport, enables one to obtain the permit for the tour. Tours start at the Kikyo-mon gateway at 10:00 a.m. and at 1:30 p.m., again with one’s passport handy, and last one hour and fifteen minutes. The tours, of course, are given in Japanese.

One of Tokyo’s most photographed scenes: a glimpse of Fushimi Yagura tower behind Nijubashi Bridge

The entry through which the public may go into the palace grounds on the two occasions when they may visit these private areas is by the 1888 Nijubashi Bridge. Although it is usually called the Double Bridge, the name originally referred to a Double Layer Bridge, a wooden bridge and then later a steel bridge with an upper and a lower level. A modern, single-layer steel bridge replaced the double bridge in 1964. Today, two bridges, one behind the other, give the Double Bridge a new meaning. In the foreground is a stone bridge of two arches, the Shakkyo-bashi, which is also called the Megane-bashi, since its two arches when reflected in the water form a whole circle and resemble a pair of spectacles (megane). During the public visitation to the palace, one moves through the massive gateway with its guard stations to the palace grounds, over the Nijubashi Bridge, through the Sei-mon (Main Gate), and into the Kyuden’s East Garden in five or so minutes to the Hall of State, from whose balcony the imperial greetings are given.

Two other gates at the north end of the Outer Garden lead into the palace grounds: the Sakashita-mon (Gate at the Bottom of the Slope) provides an entrance to the brick structure that constitutes the Imperial Household Agency offices, the very conservative bureaucracy that safeguards and controls the heritage and activities of the imperial family. The buildings of the Household Agency stand before the Momiji-yama, the hill named for its maple (momiji) trees, an area more poetically known as the Hill of Autumn Leaves because of the lovely color of the trees’ foliage at the end of the summer season. On this hill stood the Toshogu Shrine to the spirit of Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the many shrines raised to his spirit throughout Japan that culminated in the highly ornate shrine in his honor at Nikko. The other gate, the Kikyo-mon (Bellflower Gate), is the entry for visitors and officials to the palace and for the delivery of supplies by tradesmen. Its name is said to derive from the family crest of Ota Dokan, which contained a bellflower.

Leaving the Outer Garden grounds from the southwestern corner, one exits through the Sakurada-mon Gate of the palace. It was one of the masugata gates that are described in the next tour, which is concerned with the original castle and its present site. Here on March 24, 1860, occurred an event that was to weaken the Tokugawa shogunate’s rule and help to lead to its ultimate demise eight years later. At the Sakurada-mon (Gate of the Field of Cherry Trees) on a snowy morning, Ii Naosuke, lord of Hikone, and his guards with their swords sheathed against the snow, made their way to the castle grounds. Ii Naosuke was one of the more important advisors to the shogun, and he had signed the unequal treaties with the West, treaties opposed by the emperor in Kyoto, his courtiers, and even some branches of the Tokugawa clan. Assassins from the Mito branch of the Tokugawas, opposed to the agreements with the Western barbarians, fell upon Ii and his guards, leaving their bodies in the bloodied snow.

Ironically, walking through the Sakuradamon Gate and crossing the Gaien Hibiya moat today and then Harumi-dori, one is faced by the white-tiled exterior of the 1980 18-story Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to the right, and the 1895 Ministry of Justice building to the left. The present police headquarters stands on the site of a pre–World War II jail, where the captured fliers of General Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo were held in 1942 before being taken to Sugamo Prison to be executed. The Ministry of Justice building was designed by two architects from Germany. They wished to combine the best of traditional Japanese and Western architecture in this new structure, but in the press for modernization in the 1890s, government officials insisted on a more Western style to the architecture. The original roof of the building was damaged in the 1945 air raids and was replaced with a flat roof that would have caused the architects even further unhappiness. It is one of the few Meiji period brick buildings still standing, and it and its grounds underwent extensive restoration in the 1990s.

Hibiya Park in bloom. The park makes for a lovely place to stop with a packed lunch during the walk.

4 HIBIYA PARK

Turning to the left along Harumi-dori, the northwest corner of Hibiya Park (Hibiya Koen) is at hand. Halfway down the street there is a path that leads through this 41-acre (16.4-hectare) park, which before 1868 held daimyo residences. Whereas Ieyasu’s most dependable allies had their mansions in front of the castle gate in the Marunouchi area, the outside lords (tozama daimyo), who were not among Ieyasu’s allies prior to 1603, were permitted to lease lands at a further remove from the castle main gate. In what is today’s Hibiya Park area, they were close enough for the shogun’s spies to keep an eye on them, but they were not so close to the shogun and his retinue that they could act upon treacherous intentions. Here, beyond the outer ramparts of the castle, were the residences of the powerful Nabeshima clan of Saga on the island of Kyushu and of the Mori clan of Choshu in western Japan. (Sixty percent of the land in Edo belonged to the daimyo and their followers, who represented less than half the population of Edo, while 20 percent was occupied by commoners and another 20 percent was given over to temples and shrines.) The daimyo had to Express their status by their show of splendor, and thus they built their residences in the extravagant, highly decorated Momoyama architectural style popular just before the turn of the 1600s. The original Momoyama mansions were destroyed in the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657, and the replacement structures were, of necessity, in a simpler style. New sumptuary laws together with the alternate attendance requirement—which entailed the expenses of a full entou-rage traveling to and from the home provinces and as well as the maintenance of mansions there as well as in Edo—were a crippling burden for the daimyo.

By 1871 the land once occupied by both the inside and the outside lords had been confiscated by the new Meiji government, and the land was cleared, leaving but a vestige of the past in the northeast corner of Hibiya Park, where a portion of the original wall of the Hibiya Gate of the former moat remains. What in 1903 was to become Hibiya Park was in the 1870s a dusty, military parade ground, and here in 1872 Emperor Meiji reviewed his troops. With the military wishing to create permanent Tokyo headquarters, their parade ground was moved to the then edge of the city in the 1890s. Plans were drawn for the building of Western-style government offices on the former military parade grounds. The subsoil was found to be too soft to support modern brick and stone structures, however, and, given the engineering of the day and the fact that this had once been an arm of Edo Bay before it was filled in, construction of modern buildings was out of the question.

Plans were therefore made to establish a park on the site, and it was opened to the public in June 1903. It was one of the first Western-style parks in Japan. Through the years, the park has accrued a number of amenities: the Felice Garden Hibiya on its Harumi-dori side; the Hibiya Public Hall of 1929 with its Art Nouveau touches on its southern side for concerts, lectures, meetings, and other cultural activities; a public library adjacent to the Hall; a café; two restaurants; a lake, ponds, lawns, flower gardens, and tennis courts; and a tier-seated, outdoor music area where today jazz, folk, and other popular music attracts young music lovers. In 1961 a large fountain was added to the park; it can be illuminated with seven colors at night. There is even a small museum devoted to the history of the park (open daily from 11:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. except on Mondays). The park is noted for its cherry tree blossoms in April, for its wisteria and azalea blooms in May, and for its magnificent display of chrysanthemums in November, this latter a festive event that draws many visitors. The park also contains a number of dogwood trees that were a gift from the United States in appreciation of the Japanese cherry trees that were given by Tokyo to Washington, D.C. In the unhappy days of the 1930s and 1940s, the park became an artillery battery, the lawns were replaced by vegetable plots, and, after the first American air raid by General Doolittle in 1942, anti-aircraft guns were put into place.

Mention has been made of the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens as a center for public dissent in the past. In 1905 some 30,000 protesters gathered at Hibiya Park to object to the terms of the peace treaty at the end of the Russo-Japanese War, and, as a result of the violence that ensued, martial law was declared by the government. In the 1950s and 1960s, protests were centered here against the Japanese government’s relations with the United States. Hibiya Public Hall, which has served as the site of political party meetings, has had its unhappy incidents as well, the most notable occurring in 1960 when Asanuma Inejiro, the chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, was killed at the podium by a sword-wielding student.

5 THE IMPERIAL HOTEL

If Hibiya Park represented an early Western-style influence, there was an even earlier attempt at Westernization across Hibiya-dori on lands once held by the outside lords of Satsuma. After the nation opened its doors to the world in the 1860s, Japan was forced by the Western nations to grant certain extraterritorial rights to Western governments. These restrictions obviously bothered the members of the Japanese government, and numerous attempts were made to remove these limitations on Japanese sovereignty so as to permit Japan to assume its status as an equal with the European nations and the United States. One of the more futile of these attempts occurred in 1881 when Inoue Kaoru, the then foreign minister of Japan, had the Rokumeikan erected to the south of where the Imperial Hotel now stands. This Western-style, two-story, brick and stucco structure, designed by Josiah Condor, the British architect whose influence was so strong in Meiji Japan, was a potpourri of Western architectural styles. As Paul Waley describes it, it had Mediterranean arcades on both floors, being of a Tuscan nature on the ground floor and of a vaguely Moorish nature on the second floor. Verandas ran the length of the building, and the mix of styles was then topped with a roof that had overtones of France’s Belle Epoque. A model of the Rokumeikan can be seen in the Edo-Tokyo Museum under one of the glassed floor panels.

The Rokumeikan was meant to be a social gathering place where foreigners and the cream of Japanese society (in Western attire) could meet and dance the popular Viennese waltzes that were the ultimate in modern social life of polite society, a place where each could enjoy the others’ company. All the appurtenances of modern civilization were present: a ballroom, a reading room, a billiards lounge, and a music room. Other innovations of a Western nature occurred in these modern halls: invitations to gatherings were addressed to both husbands and wives in the European manner; there were garden parties and evening receptions. There was even a charity bazaar in 1884 that ran for three days. Surely this must have indicated to the Europeans and Americans (whom some Japanese still referred to as “red-haired barbarians”) that Japan was now an equal to the West and should be treated as an equal.

The building was also intended to serve as a state guesthouse, since the former guest-house in the Hama Detached Palace in Shimbashi, which had received American president Grant and his wife, had now fallen into disrepair. The suites for distinguished guests in the Rokumeikan could even boast an alabaster bathtub six feet (1.8 meters) long by three feet (90 centimeters) wide. Unhappily, the significance of the name of the building was lost on the Westerners it was intended to impress. Rokumeikan means “The House of the Cry of the Stag,” a literary reference to a Chinese classic that, as any learned Japanese would have known, referred to a place of convivial gatherings. Alas, the Rokumeikan did not bring about the abolition of extraterritoriality. The building soon lost popularity among the new Japanese elite of Meiji days, and a clamor from political right-ists called for its demise as “an affront to Japanese honor.” Abandoned as a cultural center, it became the Peer’s Club in 1889, a mere five years after it opened, and it eventually came into use as a bank and an insurance office. In 1940 it was finally torn down. A remembrance of the Rokumeikan lingers in a most unusual location today. A Buddhist prayer hall in the Tomyo-ji Temple at Hirai in Edogawa-ku, Tokyo, houses one of the Italian bronze chandeliers from the ballroom of the Rokumeikan: so this 19th-century attempt at Western civilization has added a lamp of culture to the light of Buddhist faith.

The site of the Rokumeikan has been covered with modern edifices. One of the more striking examples is the Mizuho Bank Building, formerly known as the Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank Building across from the Hibiya Public Hall. This 32-floor building was erected in 1981, and its eastern and western walls are covered with gray granite, while the front has a stepped, glass-curtain wall. A sunken mall is entered from a plaza with a large clock, and the lobby holds the sculpture Doppo la Danza by Giacomo Manzo. Despite the failure of the Rokumeikan, a new Western-style hotel was being planned, and it came into being as the Imperial Hotel in 1890, sited adjacent to the Rokumeikan just to the north on Hibiya-dori. The new hotel soon became a center for both foreigners and the Japanese. A three-story wooden structure with verandas and arches and a mansard roof, it resembled its ill-fated next-door neighbor. It was not a large hotel, since it could only accommodate some two hundred to three hundred guests. Never-theless, it became the center for the smart set of its day. Within a year of its opening, it came into unexpected use when the nearby Diet chambers burned to the ground, and members of the Diet had to meet in the hotel until their new legislative meeting place was available.

The Imperial Hotel (center) looms over Hibiya Park.

The 100 rooms of the Imperial Hotel proved to be inadequate as Tokyo moved into the 20th century. In 1915 Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to create a new and more modern hotel on a portion of the site of the existing Imperial Hotel. Westernization achieved a new meaning in Wright’s edifice, for in it he reworked an earlier design in a somewhat Mayan style that he had created for a client in Mexico and that the client had rejected as too unusual. The design produced a building that was Western and modern in ambience but pre-Western in its architectural conception. The building was seven years under construction, engendering the usual recriminations because it ran several times over budget as well as over its timetable for completion. Its opening occurred in 1922 just as the original Imperial Hotel in front of it burned down, and but one year before the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

Wright made great claims for the fact that his building had proved to be earthquake-proof during that 1923 disaster. He credited its underlying “dish” foundation construction, whereby the building could float on the underground basin that he had designed specifically to circumvent the building’s collapse. A similar design, in which a structure would “float” on piles sunk in the mud, had been used elsewhere in Tokyo. A number of these other buildings successfully survived the earthquake, some without the unfortunate settling that affected parts of Wright’s building.

The vicissitudes of use, the uneven corridors and floors and other evidence of the 1923 damage, wartime neglect in the 1940s, the hotel’s use by the U.S. military authorities after 1945 before its return to civilian service, and the rise in land prices that called for better use of the land on which the Imperial Hotel sat—all this brought this self-proclaimed monument to Wright’s genius to an untimely end in 1967. Then it was razed for the new skyscraper Imperial Hotel and its later tower addition, both in the international style of the late 20th century. A Society to Protect the Imperial Hotel had been organized in 1967, but the Wright hotel closed its doors forever on November 15 of that year. A portion of the original Wright Building, including the forecourt, pond, and main lounge rooms, have been saved and scrupulously restored in Meiji Mura, the outdoor museum of Meiji period architecture near Inuyama outside of Nagoya. Again, here is one of those small ironies of history—for Wright’s Mayan-inspired building was actually built not in the Meiji period (1868–1912) but in the succeeding Taisho era.

The post-1968 Imperial Hotel, though now beginning to show its age and look somewhat lackluster against the flood of modern luxury hotels that have swept through Tokyo since 2000, is still regarded by many as one of the city’s best hotels. It is a far cry from the original Imperial Hotel of a mere one hundred rooms. In 1983 an additional unit, the Imperial Tower, was added to the 1970s building, and its first four floors are given over to luxury shops. It also boasts a collection of fine Japanese and international restaurants. The later Imperial Hotel is overpowering in its attempt at grandeur and has the ambience of an international airport terminal striving for recognition.

Just to the north of the Imperial Hotel on Hibiya-dori is the 1963 Nissei-Hibiya Building, which contains the Nissei Theater (Nissei Gekijo) seating 1,334 theater-goers. The theater offers ballet and opera in season and concerts and movies at other times. It provides a showy theater interior with its ceiling flecked with mother-of-pearl, its walls of glass mosaics and lights flashing within the walls and ceiling. Its lobby boasts an Art Deco ceiling and a marble floor, and it is thus as theatrical as some of the entertainment that appears on its stage or screen. Behind the Nissei-Hibiya Building is the Takarazuka Theater on the side street to the left of the Imperial Hotel. The street is now known as Theater Street; its sidewalks have been widened and its roadway narrowed in order to handle the festive crowds attending the theaters along its length. In the period of the United States military occupation of Japan after 1945, this theater served as the Ernie Pyle Theater for American troops, named for the famed World War II correspondent who was killed on Iwo Jima. Restored to civilian control as the Occupation ended, for almost a decade the Ernie Pyle had served as a movie and stage theater, its operation giving an exceedingly large Japanese staff employment that might not otherwise have been available to them in these postwar days.

The theater was eventually returned to Japanese control, and its spectacular music and dance extravaganzas, in which all the parts, male and female, are taken by young women, were resumed after a wartime and postwar hiatus. Aside from its multipurpose stage, there is a hanamichi (flower path) as in Kabuki theaters, which joins the stage at the Gin-bashi, the Silver Bridge. This obviously can bring the performers in closer contact with the audience. The Takarazuka revues are offered in the most lavish of settings and ornate of costumes, and these revues by the theater’s Osaka/Kobe-based company have an immense appeal for adolescent Japanese girls and middle-aged matrons. Their attraction can be attested to by an incident from the war years: when the theater was closed for wartime reasons on March 4, 1944, the crowd was so large and in danger of becoming unruly that the police unsheathed the swords they carried so as to maintain order.

Continuing to the east on the street that runs alongside the Imperial Hotel, one arrives at the International Arcade, which is situated under the overhead railroad right-ofway. The International Arcade extends for one street in either direction as an enclosed market with a variety of goods meant to appeal to tourists: from electronic gear to new and used kimonos to souvenir items of great diversity. (Since the shops are open from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., until 6:00 p.m. on Sundays, and some of the purchases are tax free, there is an added incentive offered to visitors.) To the north and still under the elevated structure are the yakitori stalls that are favored for snacks by both visitors and Tokyo residents.

Following the elevated tracks northwest for a hundred yards leads to Harumi-dori, where on each side of the street are stairs down to the several subway lines that intersect here, the Chiyoda Line, the Toei Mita Line, and the Hibiya Line, while an underground passageway connects the Yurakucho Line.

GETTING THERE

This tour starts at Tokyo Station, which is served by numerous JR train lines, Shinkansen lines, and subway lines. These include the Marunouchi subway line, the JR Yamanote Line, and the JR Chuo and Sobu Lines.

Walking Tour 2

OTEMACHI, IMPERIAL PALACE GARDENS, AND YASUKUNI SHRINE

A Flying Head, the Shogun’s Castle, a Cultural Oasis, and the Japanese Valhalla

1 The Hill of Masakado’s Head

2 Statue of kiyomaro

3 The Imperial Palace east Garden

4 Kita-no-maru Park

5 Yasukuni Shrine

6 Chidorigafuchi Water Park

7 JCII camera Museum (diversion)

The Marunouchi financial district of Tokyo, which was explored in Walk1, has been described as the one-time site of the mansions of the inner lords of the Tokugawa sho-guns from 1603 to 1868. Just to the north of Marunouchi is the Otemachi district, which also held the mansions of the Tokugawa’s most trusted daimyo. This section is circumscribed by the main railway tracks on the east (to the north of Tokyo Station), by Uchiboridori (Inner Moat Street) before the former castle walls on the west, by Eitai-dori on the south, and by the modern Shuto (Metropolitan) Expressway on the north. The mansions of the feudal daimyo have long since disappeared from Otemachi, and today Otemachi is the home of the barons of big business, for here may be found the offices of many banks, insurance agencies, and major commercial corporations.

1 THE HILL OF MASAKADO’S HEAD

The district is well served by subway and rail lines, since Tokyo Station is just to the south of the district, while Otemachi Station itself is served by the Toei Mita, Hibiya, Tozai, Marunouchi, and Hanzomon Lines. Exiting from the Marunouchi subway line brings one to the first point of interest on this tour: the 1964 eight-story Teshin Building, which houses the Communications Museum (aka Tei-Park) on its first four floors. Anyone interested in the various forms of modern communications will enjoy this museum, for the exhibits include matters pertaining to postal, telegraph, telephone, and other forms of telecommunication. Here one will find an extensive display of postage stamps (more than 200,000), and so it comes as no surprise to learn that there is a relationship with the Ministry of Postal Services. (The museum is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily except Mondays; admission is ¥110.) The exhibits are labeled only in Japanese, but an English-language brochure is available upon request.

A rather unusual location can be found in the midst of this modern area of Tokyo. On leaving the Communications Museum, the east-west street should be taken to the west toward the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Just before Uchibori-dori and the Otebori Moat at the former castle grounds, surrounded by the Mitsui Bussan Building, the Long Term Credit Bank of Japan, and the Sanwa Bank, is a small open space upon which no modern financial organization has dared to build. Here is the Hill of Masakado’s Head (Masakado-no-Kubizuka), a shrine at what was once the top of the bay when Marunouchi and adjoining areas were still under water. The object of veneration worshipped at this shrine by the early fishermen of Edo was Taira-no-Masakado, a headstrong warrior of the 900s. He not only took over eight counties in the Kanto (Greater Tokyo) region, but he set himself up in his domains as the new emperor—in defiance of Kyoto’s emperor, whose claim to the throne, tradition held, was rooted in the divine origin of one of his ancestors. As the adage would have it, pride comes before a fall, and in 940 Masakado fell in battle. As was the custom of that and later times, the rebel’s head was severed and sent to Kyoto as proof of the death of this usurper of royal power. True to his headstrong ways, it is said that Masakado’s head flew back to Edo in one night to rejoin its body in its grave. The validity of the story was attested at the time by the brilliant lightning and pealing thunder that accompanied the head on its flight. As was only proper under the circumstances, a shrine to Masakado’s spirit was raised over the site of his grave in order to keep his spirit from stirring up new troubles.

Centuries later, Tokugawa Ieyasu was not one to take chances. So troublesome a spirit might threaten his domains despite the passage of 700 years since Masakado was put in his place, but no thought could be given to moving the body from its grave since this might rouse the vengeful spirit of the former warrior. Thus Ieyasu let the grave remain undisturbed—as have all the corporate chairmen of the present day, since no structure has ever been raised over this very valuable piece of property. The shrine that honored Masakado’s spirit, however, was another question. Ieyasu had the shrine removed to the Kanda Myojin Shrine not too far to the north, where Masakado can be honored today. There at Kanda Myojin, Masakado’s spirit remains, albeit the story does not end there, for the Meiji government also foresaw a threat from this wayward spirit—but that tale has to wait until Walk 10 to be told. The small area of the Hill of Masakado’s Head is enclosed by traditional Japanese walls as well as modern office buildings on three sides, but the slightly raised unit with memorial stones to the right at the rear of the plot remains a place of reverence. Offerings of flowers and the burning of incense occur a millennium after this intrepid warrior’s death. Greenery throughout the small plot make the site a park, with ceramic frogs on either side of the memorial providing a lighter touch to so solemn a spot.

2 STATUE OF KIYOMARO

While warriors of the distant past still need to be placated, there is another side to the coin where noble statesmen are concerned. In the year 769, Wake-no-Kiyomaro, a member of Empress Shotoku’s court, was sent on a mission. Her senior advisor (and lover), the Buddhist monk Dokyo, had designs on the throne for himself and hoped to succeed his royal mistress as the next emperor. The empress sent Kiyomaro, a trusted member of the imperial court, to the Hachiman Shrine in Kyushu to see if the gods favored Dokyo’s accession to the throne. Despite dire threats from the monk, Kiyomaro brought back the deity’s pronouncement that only those descended from the imperial gods could sit on the throne. Kiyomaro suffered disfigurement at Dokyo’s orders for bringing so untoward an answer from the gods. Sent into exile while monk Dokyo lived, he was returned to imperial favor by the legitimate successor to the empress upon her death.

This diversion into ancient history is relevant, for the large bronze Statue of Kiyomaro, which stands to the north in a small plot of greenery at the edge of the Otebori Moat, celebrates this eighth-century defender of the Imperial House. In 1854 Emperor Komei raised Kiyomaro quite post-humously to the first rank of the nobility and named him Go-o-myojin, a spirit to be honored. This was a powerless emperor’s slap at the Tokugawa shogun of his day, his only way of showing his displeasure in those who ruled without consulting him. After Komei’s death, his son became Emperor Meiji, who would see his advisors and supporters bring an end to the two and a half centuries of Tokugawa rule. The new emperor’s advisors saw a similar value in the figure of Kiyomaro. Thus, on March 18, 1898, the noble and the divine status of Kiyomaro were once more confirmed by imperial edict. In 1940, almost 90 years after Kiyomaro’s elevation, his bronze image was raised at the edge of the Imperial Palace grounds by a later set of concerned advisors to Emperor Hirohito. In the 700s, this scholar had saved the throne. In 1940, the militaristic government sought to forestall any new threat to the throne. As a result, the statue of Kiyomaro still stands guard over imperial affairs at the edge of the Otebori Moat to the castle grounds.

The statue of Kiyomaro near the Otebori Moat

3 THE IMPERIAL PALACE EAST GARDEN

The placement of buildings in Japan traditionally has to honor esoteric rules for the auspicious location of structures, lest they be built or oriented in a direction not favorable for their successful existence. In the case of Edo and the shogun’s castle, this was a problem, since the castle site did not have the proper geographical orientation according to the rules of Chinese geomancy that were observed in Japan. Ieyasu, if nothing else, was decisive in matters like this. He decreed that Mt. Fuji to the west of his intended castle was truly to the north, and thus the castle site was properly oriented. Nonetheless, temples were built in Ueno to the true northeast (from which evil could flow, according to Chinese geomancy) as well as to the true southeast in the Shiba area as additional protection for the castle.

Walking back along the Otebori Moat to Eitai-dori, you come to a bridge that crosses the moat to the Ote-mon gateway and the shogun’s former castle grounds, the site where Tokyo had its beginnings. The story of Edo Castle begins with Ota Dokan (1432– 1486), who is credited with founding Edo. The top of the natural hill that overlooked the great bay of Edo and its inlets rose 65 feet (19.5 meters) above the water and thus provided a natural site for the largely earthen fortifications that Dokan created. Similar fortifications had been erected some two centuries before Ota Dokan made his stronghold here, but they had been of little consequence. Dokan’s fortification did not have too long a life either, for his brutal murder in 1486, instigated by his feudal overlord of the Hojo clan of Odawara, led in time to the disintegration of his fort. By 1590, when Tokugawa Ieyasu chose the site for his headquarters, three small fishing villages and a few scattered farms at the foot of the future castle hill were all that comprised the village of Edo. The naturally defensive nature of the hillside was obvious to Ieyasu when he entered Edo on August 1, 1590, and here he determined to build the strongest castle with the most intricate defensive system that Japan had ever seen.

The defensive stronghold that Ieyasu began in 1590 was not completed for another 50 years. By 1603 he had conquered all the contestants for civil power in Japan, and the work on the castle and its defenses could now be pursued with vigor, since the daimyo, the feudal lords of Japan who were subservient to him, were forced to supply labor, materials, and funds to create the castle that would keep them in fiscal serfdom. The dimensions of the stronghold beggar description, for they encompassed a 10-mile (16-kilometer) circle that stretched from the waterfront of the present Shimbashi area in the south to the hills of Kanda to the north. The outer fortifications that protected the area comprised some 110 entry gates, 30 bridges, an inner and an outer moat, and canals to serve as further barricades. The innermost moat was faced with stone walls 16 feet (4.8 meters) thick to protect the citadel where the shogun and his inner court resided. As was the case in European cities, the 19h century was to see the dismantling of the fortified walls of the city as it expanded and traffic increased. Thus, the outer walls and gates of the palace began to be dismantled in 1873.

The castle grounds themselves were always a protected and private area to which the public had no entry. However, in 1968, to celebrate the construction of the new Imperial Palace, which replaced the imperial buildings bombed in wartime, the inner grounds of the former castle complex were opened to the public as the Imperial Palace East Garden (Kokyo Higashi Gyoen). The inner walls of the complex divided the fortified hill into four areas called maru or citadels. The East Garden includes the Hon-maru (Central Keep), the Nino-maru (Second Keep), and the San–no-maru (Third Keep). The fourth fortified area consisted of the Nishi-no-maru (West Keep), which today forms the Imperial Palace grounds and is not open to the public.

The Imperial Palace East Garden, the former castle site, is primarily a garden complex today, since the various buildings and fortifications of the shogun’s castle have long since been destroyed by fire. The Long Sleeves Fire of 1657 was particularly disastrous for the castle, while the last major fire, of 1872, wiped out the remaining Tokugawa structures. The East Garden can be entered through several gates (mon), the Ote-mon, the Hirakawa-mon, and the Kita Hanebashi-mon, and these various gates can be reached from the Otemachi or Takebashi subway stations. (The garden is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in March through October and from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. from November through February. The gardens are not open on Mondays and Fridays and are closed from December 28 to January 3 for the New Year holiday. Admission is free.) This tour of the garden begins at the Ote-mon Gate, since that was the main entrance to the castle in the days of its glory, and it provides an example of the type of defensive architecture employed in the 1600s. It is difficult today to envision the magnitude of the castle structures, for there were 99 gates—of which 36 were in the outer defensive wall that enclosed the 450-acre (180-hectare) heart of the shogun’s castle. There were within this complex 21 large watch towers (yagura), and 28 munitions storehouses (tamon), aside from the residential buildings and ancillary castle structures.

The Imperial Palace East Garden offers relief from the busy streets of central Tokyo.

The Ote-mon gateway to the Imperial Palace East Garden

To enter the castle grounds, one crosses the moat before the Ote-mon gateway, one of three such moats about the castle. These moats varied in size but were generally 230 feet (69 meters) wide and between 4 and 10 feet (1.2 to 3 meters) deep. On entering the Ote-mon Gate, the visitor is given a small token, which must be returned when leaving the compound by any of its gates. The construction of the original Ote-mon Gate was the responsibility of Date Masumune, the daimyo of Sendai, and it was in two parts: the first or smaller gate was known as the Koraimon (Korean Gate), while the larger of the two gates lay beyond a narrow courtyard. The inner Ote-mon gate was destroyed during the air raids of spring 1945, but it was rebuilt in 1967. The Ote-mon was a masugata gateway. That is, the outer and inner gateways formed a box. If an enemy were able to storm the outer Ote-mon, he then found himself in a walled, box-like courtyard with a second, larger gate-house before him. Here he was under attack from more than one side, since slits in the gatehouse permitted the raining of arrows on the attackers. The chances of survival for attackers were slim. The roof tiles of these gates as well as other buildings often were topped with images of the mythical dolphin, intended to protect the structure against fire.

Beyond the Ote-mon were the four maru strongholds (or fortresses or keeps). At the foot of the hill beyond the Ote-mon was the Nino-maru, the Second Keep, while above it was the Hon-maru, the Central Keep. The Sanno-maru, the Third Keep, and the Kita-nomaru, the North Keep, lay below the Ninomaru. In Tokugawa days, the Kanjosho, the main office of the shogun’s officers of administration and finance, was on the right just beyond the gate; the adjacent Otemachi and Marunouchi financial district of modern Tokyo echo this relationship from the castle past. Today the Sanno-maru Shozokan, the Museum of Imperial Collections, is on the right as one proceeds from the entry gateway. This modern, climate-controlled building of two large rooms is used as an exhibition hall for some of the 6,000 treasures of the Imperial Household, which were donated by the emperor in 1989. Thus a portion of the private artistic holdings of the imperial family, which are seldom otherwise available for public viewing, may be seen in this modern hall without charge. (Open the same days and times as the Imperial Palace East Garden. Admission is free.) The National Police Agency’s Martial Arts Hall is on the left, while farther along on the right is the Ote Rest House, where beverages, maps, and souvenirs are available for sale to visitors.

The Hon-maru, the innermost sector of the castle, sat on the higher ground within the walls, and thus progress within the castle grounds calls for an uphill stroll. Walking up the slope, one arrives at the site of the Ote Gejo, the Dismount Gate, the point at which daimyo would dismount from their steeds or from their kago, those awkward “cages” in which a nobleman was carried on the shoulders of his retainers. Two walls remain, but the gate and the moat before it no longer exist. Here were two guardhouses to protect the inner castle beyond the Ote Gejo Gate. To the right is the 1863 Doshin-bansho guardhouse, while on the left is the Hyakuninbansho. The latter is the One Hundred Man Guardhouse, so named for the four platoons of one hundred men each who were drawn from the four major families or branches of the Tokugawa family to stand guard for the protection of the shogun.

To the left, a path leads to the Hon-maru (Central Keep), while to the right the path leads to the Nino-maru (Second Keep), which lies at the foot of the Hon-maru. The Ninomaru before 1868 served as the residence for the retired shogun, and its gardens were originally planned in 1630 by Kobori Enshu, the famed landscape artist of the 17th century. Today’s garden, of course, is a reconstruction, but it contains all those elements essential to a traditional Japanese garden: a pond, a waterfall, stone lanterns, and a bridge. At the far side of the garden is the early 19th-century Suwa-no-chaya tea ceremony pavilion, a structure that once stood within the Fukiage Garden of the Imperial Palace.

The Nino-maru stands beneath the wall that supports the Hon-maru, a wall composed of the massive granite stones brought from the Izu Peninsula, 60 miles (96 kilometers) away, in the early 1600s. At its base is the Hakuchobori, the Moat of Swans; the original 24 swans were a gift from Germany in 1953 after the East Gardens were opened to the public. A path from the Nino-maru Garden goes back to the Moat of Swans, and to the right of the moat is the Shiomi-zaka, the Tide Viewing Slope, which leads up to the Hon-maru. The slope today offers no view of Tokyo Bay or its inlets (now filled in), for the multistory buildings of the 20th century have obscured any possible view of tidal waters. In the 1600s, however, the slope was true to its name.

The Suwa-no-chaya tea ceremony pavilion in the Nino-maru Gardens

The Fujimi Yagura (Mount Fuji Viewing Tower)

At the top of the slope once stood the Ote Naka, the Central Gate, leading into the Central Keep (Hon-maru) together with its guardhouse (o-bansho). The 1657 fire and the later 1872 fire destroyed the grandeur that once topped this hill, and the foundations of the main donjon and the Fujimi Yagura (Mt. Fuji Viewing Tower) are all that remain today. A Rest House on the left of the path at the top of the slope site offers a contrast in the photographs that are on display: one group shows the castle as it was in 1868; the other offers more recent photographs of the same sites.

The Hon-maru contained the Audience Hall, the residence, and other official buildings of the reigning shogun. At the southwest corner of the Hon-maru is the previously mentioned Fujimi Yagura, one of three such towers that still exist out of the original 21 that surmounted the castle walls. It was seriously damaged in the 1657 Long Sleeves Fire, but it was reconstructed two years later. At that time the decision was made not to rebuild the rest of the fortifications of the Honmaru, the Nino-maru, and the Sanno-maru. The nation was at peace, and such castles were neither needed nor supportable when faced with the destructive force of modern artillery. Farther along the way is the Fujimi Tamon, the Mt. Fuji Viewing Armory, one of two remaining armories out of the 28 that once existed. Behind this arsenal was a well to supply water to the shogun’s quarters. The well went down almost 100 feet (30 meters).

There were three main groups of buildings in this innermost complex of the Hon-maru site. Closest to the Fujimi Tower in an area now covered by a lawn was a group that contained the Halls for Affairs of State, the shogun’s Audience Hall, and the Ohiroma, the Hall of One Thousand Mats (referring to tatami mats). It was in this grand hall that on the first and fifteenth of each month the shogun received his feudal lords. It was here also that the Dutch from the trading station of Dejima in Nagasaki were required to make the journey every four years to do obeisance to the shogun, to bring gifts, and to demonstrate the foolish ways of the Southern Barbarians—the uncouth Europeans who were best kept at a distance. A second group of buildings contained the shogun’s private residence. A third group of structures consisted of the innermost quarters, which were adjacent to the Central Keep itself. Here were the shogun’s sequestered halls for the women of his court, perhaps some five hundred to one thousand women consisting of his wives, his concubines, the ladies in waiting, attendants, servants, and cooks.

The pride of the castle was its five-story, 170-foot (51-meter) Donjon (Tenshukaku) or tower, which, given its location on the hill, soared 250 feet (75 meters) over Edo. It surveyed not only the bay but the five great highways that converged on Edo from throughout Japan. It had been erected under Tokugawa Hidetada, the second shogun, in 1607 and then rebuilt in 1640. All the buildings of the castle were white, save the Donjon, which was a stark black. Its lead roof tiles were covered with gold leaf, and golden dolphins surmounted the roof as protection against fires. Despite the protection these dolphins offered, the horrendous Long Sleeves Fire of 1657 destroyed this magnificent tower. The fire started with the burning of an accursed kimono in an exorcism ceremony at a Buddhist temple in the Low City. It then spread in the teeth of a gale and turned the city into a roaring inferno. Today nothing but the base of the Donjon remains, along with the tradition that all of the shogun’s gold in the vaults beneath the tower melted. The whereabouts of this horde is still a puzzle and a challenge for those who imagine that it remains within the Hon-maru grounds. The base to the tower can be mounted by means of a slope for a view of the Hon-maru area.

A small granary building, the Kokumotsugura, is adjacent to the Donjon base, and this ceremonial structure was re-erected in the 1990s for a portion of the services concerned with the enthronement of Emperor Heisei. Other modern buildings are now located down a slope from the Hon-maru. These include the octagonal Imperial Toka Music Hall, created in 1966 for the then empress’s sixtieth birthday. It is in the shape of an Imperial chrysanthemum petal, and the building by Kenji Imai shows the influence of Antonio Gaudi in its octagonal roof, which is shaped in the form of a peach flower. As a result, the hall has been nicknamed the Peach Auditorium. Imai used traditional Japanese motifs in the mosaic decorations of the external walls of the structure, a somewhat garish-looking building. Adjacent is the Imperial Music Academy and the unattractive, fireproof Imperial Archives and Mausolea Department Building.

One can leave the castle grounds at this point, if one so desires, through the Hirakawamon Gate, on the only wooden bridge over the moat, by taking the path from the Donjon base that runs behind the Archives and Mausolea Building and ultimately to Takebashi Station on the Tozai subway line. Alternatively, as this tour does, one can continue on through the Kita Hanebashi-mon Gate into the Kita-no-maru Park. The Hirakawa-mon was the main gate to the Sanno-maru (Third Keep), which disappeared at the time of the 1657 fire. This wooden gate was a masugata box gate, similar to the Otemon, where this tour began. It was the gate used by the women of the shogun’s residence on the few occasions when they left the castle grounds. Adjacent to it is the smaller Fujomon, the Unclean Gate, through which those convicted of crimes within the castle or the bodies of the deceased were removed.

4 KITA-NO-MARU PARK

Continuing from the Hon-maru area, the Kita Hanebashi-mon (North Drawbridge Gate), leads into the Kita-no-maru, the North Keep, along the Bairin-zaka (Plum Tree Slope), a slope that, it is said, was planted with plum trees back in 1478 by Ota Dokan when he planned the fortress on this eminence. Ota Dokan used this area for the training of his troops, and later under the Tokugawa shoguns it became a walled area for the residences of collateral families of the shogun and for some of his highest officials. After the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657 the area was kept cleared as a fire break in front of the castle buildings. After the demise of the rule by the shoguns in 1868, the area was taken over by the military for barracks for the soldiers of the Imperial Guard who were charged with protecting the Imperial Palace. Kita-no-maru Park became a public park in 1969 in celebration of the birthday of the Showa emperor, Hirohito.

Down the Kinokuni-zaka slope, the National Archives and the National Museum of Modern Art (Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan) by architect Yoshiro Taniguchi are on the right. (The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; it is closed on Mondays, the New Year period of December 28 through January 1, and for up to a week when the exhibitions are being changed. Entry is normally 420 but is free the first Sunday of each month.) The museum, which was founded in 1952 and was relocated here in 1969, exhibits paintings of Western and Japanese artists in changing exhibitions on the first two floors (a fee is sometimes charged for these showings). The third and fourth floors exhibit paintings by Japanese artists since 1868, with the paintings changing four times a year since the collection exceeds 3,000 pieces.

Cherry blossoms line the approach to the Tayasu-mon Gate

The Crafts Gallery (Kogei-kan), with the same hours as the National Museum of Modern Art, is just a five-minute walk away. Continuing along the path that came from the Kinokuni-zaka and crossing the highway, after a few minutes’ walk the Science Museum lies to the right while the Crafts Gallery is to the left. The Crafts Gallery is housed in a government-listed building that once served as the administrative headquarters of the Imperial Guard. It was at this site that the unusual revolt by 215 of the emperor’s soldiers occurred, when they mutinied on August 23, 1878. They killed their officers, and, marching from their barracks to the Akasaka Palace where Emperor Meiji was then living, they protested the unfair division of rewards to those who had suppressed the Saigo Takamori revolt in Ueno Park and demanded a raise in pay. Severe punishment was meted out after the mutiny was put down, and, because of this insurrection, the military barracks were razed and the divisional headquarters was eventually located here. This 1910 formerly military, Gothic brick structure, in what has been kindly termed “19th-century Renaissance” architecture, is one of five remaining Meiji-period brick buildings in Tokyo. Exhibits are shown on the second floor of this Crafts Gallery building, and they encompass all of the various areas in which Japanese craftsmen have excelled: ceramics, bamboo, lacquer, metal, textiles, and others.

The Science Museum is the other museum in the Kita-no–maru Park. (It is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:50 p.m. but closed on Wednesdays, entry ¥700. It is closed from December 28 through January 3.) The five-story, pentagonal-shaped museum is under the jurisdiction of the Japan Science Foundation, and it has fourteen sections of displays (primarily with Japanese labels) that appeal greatly to children, including workable models and space-age exhibits. It covers many aspects of science, from agriculture to nuclear science and from earthquakes to electricity—the latter topic being described by a robot that lectures to the children. The museum also has a laboratory, a workroom, and a library.

Beyond the museum complex lies the massive Nippon Budo-kan, the Japan Martial Arts Hall, constructed in 1964 for the Olympics of that year. The structure is reminiscent of the Horyu-ji Dream Hall south of Nara but on a more massive scale. Its octagonal roof is topped with a gold-leafed giboshi, an onion-shaped finial such as is often seen on the top of posts of rail fences at traditional Japanese temples. The building, which can seat 14,000 spectators, today is used for sports events, concerts, and other large gatherings—its first use as a concert hall occurred in 1968, when the Beatles came to Japan.

5 YASUKUNI SHRINE

The Kita-no-maru Koen is left through the Tayasu-mon Gate, a former masugata gate, on to Yasukuni-dori slightly to the west of Kudanshita Station on the Toei Shinjuku and the Tozai subway lines. Yasukuni-dori here descends Kudan-zaka (Kudan Hill) to the Jimbocho area to the right, but this tour continues to the left on Yasukuni-dori. At one time this hill was higher and steeper than it now is, but it lost its top half for part of the fill needed to cover the marshy land at its foot as Ieyasu expanded the Shitamachi, the Low City, below his castle. The hill received its name of Kudan, nine steps, because it was so steep that it had to be cut in 1709 into nine stepped-sections for ease of mounting. The slope was further reduced in 1923 with the advent of the motor car. Strange as it may seem, there is a lighthouse (no longer used) at this point. Built in 1871, before as much of the land of Tokyo Bay was filled in and before tall buildings were erected, this beacon could be observed by boats in Tokyo Bay. Originally the lighthouse was in the Yasukuni grounds, but it was later moved to the south side of Yasukuni-dori.

Toward the end of the Tokugawa period there were barracks for the military at the top of Kudan Hill, but in 1869 it became the site for a “Shrine to Which the Spirits of the Dead Are Invited,” originally called the Tokyo Shokonsha and now called Yasukuni Shrine. The shrine was intended to honor those who had died in the battles for the Meiji Imperial Restoration and the extinguishing of Tokugawa rule. In traditional Japanese custom, the spirits of the dead are enshrined here and can be feasted and entertained, not unlike the O Bon ceremonies of the Buddhist faith—a faith, ironically, that the Meiji leaders did not favor. The shrine was run by the army until 1945 and thus became the center of the most rabid nationalism. It still attracts right-wing militarists and extreme nationalists today.

In 1879 the Tokyo Shokonsha became the Yasukuni Jinja, the “Shrine of Peace for the Nation,” on a more organized basis. Here horse racing took place until 1898, and there were sumo matches and the performance of Noh plays; in fact, a Noh stage was constructed on the grounds in 1902. In 1882, the Treasury (Yushu-kan), a military exhibition hall was built, and it today houses exhibits that honor the various wars Japan became involved in after 1868, down to and including World War II. (Open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., entry ¥800.) While commemorating the dead of the war, as is the purpose of the shrine, the displays, which range from the human torpedoes and even a Zero fighter and a steam engine from the Bridge of the River Kwai episode, often seem to glorify the warlike in the Japanese past rather than the succoring of the spirits of the war dead. The labels of the exhibits, in Japanese, still offer the warped militaristic view of Japan’s aggressive actions in Asia between 1895 and 1945.

With the war against China in the 1890s and then the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, the shrine became a memorial site to the dead of all Japanese wars since 1853, when the Imperial Restoration began. Soldiers heading into battle traditionally parted with the words “Let us meet at Yasukuni,” where their spirits would be worshipped. As a result of the Japanese wars of the 1930s and 1940s, now 2,500,000 spirits are honored at the shrine. The more militant of Japanese nationalists who still see Japan’s wars of the 1930s and 1940s as crusades to free Asia of Western imperialism have made the shrine a gathering place, as mentioned above. As a result, the visits to Yasukuni by members of the government have been the occasion for deep unrest among many of Japan’s victims in past Japanese wars, particularly since even those who were convicted of war crimes, such as General Tojo, are also enshrined here, an action taken surreptitiously by the Japanese government, much to the outrage of other nations. In 2005 the Japanese courts indicated that such visits violate the Japanese Constitution, but those of a nationalistic bent often act beyond the law. Though prior to 1945 the shrine was under military administration, the American occupation after 1945 had the shrine revert to non-governmental control. The shrine remains an unfortunate bone of contention for the Chinese, Korean, and other nations that suffered from Japanese imperialism.

Shinto priests at Yasukuni Shrine

The grounds are entered under the huge, steel First Torii (Daiichi Torii), a modern torii whose predecessor was melted in 1943 for use in armament production. Beyond it at an intersection of paths is the statue to Masujiro Omura (1824–1869), the first minister of War after the Meiji Restoration. He was in charge of the Meiji forces that defeated the shogun’s supporters who held out in Ueno in 1868; just one year later he was assassinated. This statue in his honor was the first modern bronze statue in Japan when it was unveiled in 1888. Further along the path there is a stone torii and then the bronze Second Torii of 1887, and to its left is the Hands-Washing Place for ablutions before entering the inner shrine quarters. The path is lined with flowering cherry and with gingko trees and monuments to military men of the past.

The Divine Gate (Shinmon) of twelve pillars, with the imperial chrysanthemum of 16 petals embossed on its doors, follows, the Shrine Offices being to the left and the Noh Theater to the right. At the end of the path is the Haiden, the Hall for Worship of the spirits of the dead, and beyond that the sacred Honden, the Main Hall, where the spirits are enshrined. Between the Noh theater and the Hall of Worship is the Festivals Section, while the Hall of Arrival is to the right of the Honden. Behind the Haiden is the Treasury, with the mementoes of Japan’s wars mentioned above. Farther to the right-hand, rear of the shrine are the attractive Divine Pond, teahouses, and sumo ring.

The two major festivals of the Yasukuni shrine occur in the spring on April 21–23 while the autumn festival is held on October 17–20. At these times, in the tradition of the past, Noh dances, Bugako, Kyogen farces, biwa music, folk music, kendo, and other activities to please the spirits of the dead are offered. These are festive occasions as are all Japanese commemorative functions for the dead. At these times, an Imperial Messenger presents imperial offerings at the shrine and reads the Imperial Message to the deities here enshrined. Commemorative services are also held each August 15, the day World War II ended for Japan. One other period of the year is particularly noted at this shrine, and that is the springtime blossoming of the many ornamental cherry trees on the shrine grounds.

6 CHIDORIGAFUCHI WATER PARK

Returning to the large statue of Masujiro Omura and crossing Yasukuni-dori, one can walk down Yasukuni-dori to the street that runs south along the Kita-no-maru Garden to Chidorigafuchi (Plover Depths), the pond that existed before the castle was built and that was included within the moat structure of the castle grounds. It takes its name from the perceived resemblance of this waterway to the wings of a plover in flight. Chidorigafuchi Water Park is lined with some 90 cherry trees that in 1953 replaced the ones first planted here by Sir Ernest Satow (1843– 1929), a British diplomat in the early Meiji period in the 19th century. The original trees were uprooted in the course of the construction of the Shuto Expressway.

The name “Water Park” refers not only to the moat but to the fact that one can rent rowboats for a pleasurable time on the waters of the park. Beyond this area, just before the Shuto Expressway and in a small park on the right is a hexagonal pavilion with a light green roof that has served since 1959 as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a sacred spot commemorating the 90,000 unknown dead of Japan’s wars. Under the roof is a symbolic, large stone sarcophagus. Each August 15, the anniversary of the end of World War II, the emperor makes his obeisance at this shrine, which remembers all those who died, regardless of their religion (unlike the Yasukuni Shrine, which is Shinto) or whether they were civilian or military. This visit occurs without the opprobrium connected with the Yasukuni Shrine for many non-nationalists and people of other nations.

Continuing along the western side of the Imperial Palace grounds, the handsome British Embassy is passed in the Bancho district of the city. In this sector the Hatamoto, the 7,000 guardsmen, drawn from the retainers of the shogun’s domains, were stationed in an area that stretched to Ichigaya. Six regiments of these warrior guards lived here, each in his own district (bancho), and the district is still divided into six bancho blocks. After 1868, many of the Meiji nobility had their mansions here, and the area is still an upper-class residential district. Opposite the British Embassy, for example, is the modern Bancho House by the American architect Robert Stern, a combination office and apartment building.

Farther south along Uchibori-dori, the Hanzo-mon Gate to the Fukiage Imperial Palace is monitored by a police guard. At this place once lived Hattori Hanzo, the leader of the shogun’s spies, those black-clad Ninja of tradition who were adept at infiltration, assassination, and acts of derring-do that still fill Japanese cinema and television with their version of traditional medieval Japanese soap operas. The Hanzo-mon Gate has a more pacific reputation in modern times, since this is one of the entrances to the Fukiage area of the Imperial Palace private grounds. It was in this area that the Showa emperor, Hirohito, had his botanical laboratory and rice paddy fields. The emperor was unwittingly carrying on a tradition from the 18th century, for here the eighth shogun, Yoshimune (1716–1745) had an herb garden and a plantation for plant research. Just before the gate, on the left, is a small park that runs along the palace moat, and in it is a statue grouping of three nude, young male figures (such as the Tokugawa and Meiji governments would not have permitted). The park is a favorite place for lunchtime use by workers from adjacent office buildings.

The Hanzomon subway station lies two short streets along Shinjuku-dori to the west of the Hanzo-mon entrance to the palace, and it can be taken to other connecting lines as one leaves this area. However, the JCII Camera Museum offers a possible diversion before reaching the end point of this walk. It can be reached by taking the first right on Shinjuku-dori and continuing past two quick intersections and almost to the third.

7 JCII CAMERA MUSEUM (DIVERSION)

The JCII Camera Museum (open Tuesday—Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) was established by the Japan (Nippon) Camera and optical instruments Inspection and testing Institute (JCII) in the late 1980s. Although likely of limited interest to non–camera buffs, it is a must-see for photographers for its collection of several thousand cameras from Japan and overseas, which range from historic models and so-called “curio” cameras to modern gear. Of broader interest are the photographic exhibitions that the museum puts on regularly. To proceed to the Hanzomon subway station after your visit, return along the street by which you came and, at the first intersection, turn right. The station will lie before you when you reach the next cross street.

GETTING THERE

This tour starts at Otemachi Station, which is served by the Toei Mita Line, the Hibiya Line, the Tozai Line, the Marunouchi Line, and the Hanzomon Line. One can also walk to Otemachi Station in five minutes from Tokyo Station.

Walking Tour 3

NAGATACHO AND AKASAKA

High Culture, the Law, Politics, an Ancient Shrine, Commercial Palaces, and the Shadow of Geisha Times

1 Hanzo-mon to Nagatacho

2 National Diet Building

3 Kasumigaseki and Toronomon

4 Ark Hills and the Okura Museum (diversion)

5 Hie Shrine

6 Akasaka Mitsuke Area

7 New Otani Art Museum

8 Toyokawa Inari Shrine

9 Akasaka detached Palace

10 Sogetsu kaikan

11 The Meiji Outer Garden (diversion)

Tokyo is, of course, the capital of Japan, and as such it has the nation’s legislative chambers and its massive bureaucratic offices as major aspects of contemporary life. Few countries are as controlled by their bureaucracy as is Japan, and most of these offices of government are clustered about the National Diet Building so as to be certain, perhaps, that elected officials do not stray from what is considered best for the nation by the bureaucracy. The area geographically falls into two districts, Nagatacho, whose center is the Diet Building and the offices of the political parties, and then Kasumigaseki, where the governmental offices and ministries and the first skyscraper of modern Tokyo, the 36-story Kasumigaseki Building, are located. Kasumigaseki derives its name from the seki or 14th-century guarded barrier that once existed in this quarter. It was poetically named the Kasumi Barrier, the “Barrier of the Mists,” a name that is perhaps appropriate even today for a government quarter.

Behind the political center of Tokyo and of Japan, situated on one of those fingers of hills of the original Edo’s High City that stretch into the Low City where the commoners dwelled, is the Hie Jinja, a Shinto shrine of great antiquity that served to protect the shogun’s capital and perhaps still protects governmental affairs today. It was the locus of one of the three great festivities that enlivened old Edo, days that are still enjoyed by modern Tokyo residents every other year, when the festival brings a colorful procession and excitement to the city. Below the Hie Shrine, in the flat land spreading from the Diet to Akasaka Mitsuke, is an area where the politicians and reporters, and today the minions of the television studios, continue to find places for relaxation, gossip, and the making of deals. Much of this activity has always been done in expensive restaurants on side streets off Sotobori-dori, the main street running through Akasaka and once the outer moat of the castle grounds. Here too are the luxurious New Otani and Akasaka Prince Hotels with their striking architecture and many amenities.

1 HANZO-MON TO NAGATACHO

Hanzomon Station on the subway line of that name is where this tour begins, and it starts where the previous tour ended. Walking from the subway station to the main street, Shinjuku-dori, the tour turns east toward the Hanzo-mon Gate and the Fukiage area of the Imperial Palace grounds. The most striking element in this part of Tokyo is the nine-story 1984 Wacoal Kojimachi Building by architect Kisho Kurokawa. As buildings go, it is not as tall and overpowering as some of the recent skyscrapers in the city, but its architectural design is rather striking. It has been described by some as an oversized sewing machine (not inappropriate considering that the sponsor of the building is a garment manufacturer of lingerie whose main office this is). From a distance the design on its east side gives the appearance of having a baleful eye near the top of the building—or, so it is claimed, that is the manner in which Emperor Hirohito regarded it, for the building peers over the palace grounds. Synthetic marble and aluminum bands cover the façade of the structure, and the canopy over its entrance has been described as a giant flying saucer. The lobby of the building is interestingly decorated with mosaics from China, Korea, and Japan, and the reception area on the ninth floor is striking, with its high-domed ceiling. Exhibits are frequently on display, and the building has an Art Deco theater and a café-lounge.

Turning to the right on Uchibori-dori (Inner Moat Street), which runs along the palace moat, one comes to the National Theater (Kokuritsu Gekijo). This 1983 edifice provided the nation with its first state-owned theater, a center that offers productions of traditional Japanese performing arts. The theater sits on a rise, and its reinforced concrete structure is built in the azekura (log cabin) style of the Shoso-in Treasury of Nara, a 1,300-year-old wooden storehouse that the exterior of this building imitates. The theater has two auditoriums. The larger one to the left, seating 1,610, is primarily for Kabuki productions and ancient court music. The smaller auditorium, to the right, has 590 seats and is meant for Bunraku (puppet plays), Kyogen (farce), and other traditional forms of Japanese dance, music, and theater. The L-shaped lobby has displays pertaining to Japanese theater, ranging from costumes to scrolls about ancient performing arts. (These may be viewed between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.) Adjacent is Engei Hall, a smaller, more intimate theater seating 300, which offers Rakugo and other forms of traditional storytelling or comedy. Ironically, the roof of the National Theater was used at one time by the writer Yukio Mishima as a parade ground for his private army. Mishima’s concern that traditional Japanese values were being undermined by Westernization after World War II led to his ultimate attempt to persuade soldiers in the nearby Ichigaya military barracks to revolt. Laughed at by modern soldiers, who abjured the fiery militarism of the not-too-distant past, Mishima committed seppuku, his death actually coming about through his decapitation by one of his followers on November 25, 1970.

The Supreme Court of Japan

Just beyond the National Theater is the 1974 Supreme Court of Japan (Saiko Saibansho), a rather austere building in white granite that was designed by Shinichi Okada, who had studied architecture at Yale University. Many people find the interior of the building to be equally overwhelming. The building has the appearance of a bunker where justice has hunkered down, a not-too-inviting structure. (Tours are offered on weekdays in Japanese at 3:00 p.m.; closed from July 20 to August 31.) Perhaps in contrast to this less than graceful and almost windowless building, at the corner in front of the edifice is a piece of sculpture of three naked women in bronze—an art form that would hardly have been accepted in the decades and centuries before 1950. They complement the statue of three naked men in the park alongside the moat just to the left of the point where Shinjuku-dori meets Uchibori-dori, across from the Wacoal Building.

Continuing along Uchibori-dori, at the crossroads on the right side is the Miyake-zaka slope, which the overhead Shuto Expressway mounts. At this crossroads, the moat and Uchibori-dori, which diverges to the left, should be abandoned, as one heads under the Shuto Expressway into the street leading to the National Diet Building, passing the headquarters of the Socialist Party of Japan on the right. This area bore a more military outlook prior to 1945, for here after 1870 was located the War Ministry, while the headquarters of the General Staff Officers sat where the Parliamentary Museum is now located. Behind these structures was the official residence of the Minister of War. For a period after 1945 this area held the office of the U.S. Occupation Chief of Staff. In the years since World War II, these various military units have been replaced by more peaceful and democratic structures.

The National Diet Building

2 NATIONAL DIET BUILDING

On the left along this street headed toward the Diet is the Parliamentary Museum (Kensei Kinenkan). (It is open without charge from 9:30 to 5:00 p.m. [last entry at 4:30] but is closed on Saturdays, Sundays, national holidays, the last day of each month, and from December 28 through January 4. Entry is free.) The museum was established in 1972 to commemorate the establishment of the Diet a century earlier. The first floor, as the building is approached from Uchibori-dori, contains the 1960 Ozaki Memorial Hall (Ozaki Yukio Kinenkan), which commemorates Yukio Ozaki (1859–1954), who was a member of Parliament starting with the session of the first Diet in 1890 and who served in the Diet for sixty-three years. A fearless opponent of the military in the 1920s and 1930s, he stood for parliamentary government at a time when it was being undermined by the Japanese military. He was also responsible for the gift in 1912 of the cherry blossom trees that grace the parks of Washington, D.C. The adjacent main portion of the Parliamentary Museum offers a model of the Diet on the second floor. The model is accompanied by an audiovisual slide presentation in Japanese and in English detailing the development of parliamentary democracy in Japan and the vicissitudes that the building and democracy have faced through the years. Special exhibitions are also presented from time to time.

Across the street from the Parliamentary Museum is the 1961 eight-story National Diet Library, with more than two million books in its six above-ground floors and its two below-ground levels. (It is open daily without charge from 9:30 to 7:00 p.m. [to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays] except Sundays, national holidays, and the third Wednesday of each month.) The National Diet library has 30 branch libraries.

Ahead on the street we have been following lies the massive three-story National Diet Building on the right. But first attention should be drawn to a small “temple” on the left in the park. On the hill below the Diet is a small classical Roman temple, which covers the Water Level Bench Repository. It is from this marker that the height of the Japanese plains and mountains are measured. The marker is set at 80.3 feet (24.1 meters) above the level of the Sumida River. Between the mini-temple and the Parliamentary Museum is a plaza with a long pool with fountains, and beside it are three metal shafts 100 feet (30 meters) tall supporting a clock. This area is on a height above and overlooking the Sakurada-mon Gate of the palace and the government offices below.

The National Diet Building (Kokkaigijido) stands on the site of the mansion of Lord Ii, the leading minister of the Tokugawa shogun in the 1850s, who, with his guards, was cut down not far from here at the Sakuradamon Gate entrance to the castle grounds in 1860. A park or plaza, as mentioned above, stands before the Diet, with a 164-foot (49.2-meter)-wide boulevard below it leading from the Sakurada-mon Gate and the Sakurada-bori moat of the Imperial Palace where Lord Ii was slain. There is a garden on either side of this boulevard, a Western-style and a Japanese-style garden, both created in 1964. Designed by the architects Yoshikuni Okuma and Kenkichi Yabashi, the granite and marble Diet Building, with a central clock tower rising 200 feet (60 meters) above the entry portals, was begun in 1920, but it was not completed until 1937. When facing the building, the House of Councilors, with 250 seats, is on the right, while the House of Representatives, with 467 seats, is on the left. Before World War II, the House of Councilors was the House of Peers, the Peers being the newly created nobility of the post-1868 Meiji years. The building is not open to the public, but it may be visited on the presentation of one’s passport and a letter of introduction from a member of the Diet—which is to say that entry is seldom possible. Entry to the Visitor’s Gallery when the Diet is in session may be obtained from one’s embassy in advance of the date of the visit. It is possible to enter the grounds alone by requesting permission from the office at the rear of the Diet Building. (Such visiting hours are generally from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. [last entry at 4:30] except for Saturdays, Sundays, and national holidays, depending on whether sessions of the Diet are in process.)

3 KASUMIGASEKI AND TORONOMON

To the south and east of the Diet Building are the many offices of the national government. Some 30 such offices lie to either side of Sakurada-dori, which runs southwest from the Sakurada-mon Gate of the Imperial Palace. Farther south is the 1968 Kasumigaseki Building, the first of Tokyo’s post-World War II skyscrapers and its first skyscraper of 36 floors. One reaches this structure by continuing along the street in front of the Diet Building and following that street as it bends slightly to the left. On the left one passes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Building and on the right the Ministry of Finance Building. Turning to the right on Sakurada-dori and following this street as it bends to the right, one comes to Sotobori-dori at Toranomon. The Kasumigaseki Building lies to the right. With some 25 cafés and restaurants in its basement and lower floors, most open between 11:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m., the building is a good place to stop for a break on the tour.

The Toranomon (Tiger Gate) area supposedly received its name when, in the distant past, a Korean diplomatic mission exhibited a large tiger in a cage at this former gateway at the Sotobori Moat. This area of Sotobori-dori is in the low land below two hills and was originally a marshland when Tokyo Bay extended close to the castle grounds. Here was a lake, Tame-ike, which today is the name of the intersection along Sotobori-dori to the west. Once a weir and a dam stood here, the dam serving to back up waters to keep the Sotobori moat about the castle filled. With time the lake shrank, and in 1910 it was finally drained to create the street Sotobori-dori, which from here leads to Akasaka Mitsuke.

4 ARK HILLS AND THE OKURA MUSEUM

If one continues along Sotobori-dori, the Shuto Expressway crosses overhead at Roppongidori. An optional and somewhat lengthy diversion to the left on this walk can take one along Roppongi-dori to the Ark Hills development with the ANA Hotel Tokyo, a luxury hotel that boasts a waterfall and a model Venetian gondola in its lobby. Here, too, is the Suntory Concert Hall, seating 2,000 people, a part of the Ark Hills development along with the hotel, restaurants, office space, and luxury apartments. The more ambitious who take this side jaunt may wish to follow the street behind the ANA Hotel up to the Hotel Okura where the Okura Museum (Okura Shukokan) is located at its front entrance. (Open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. but closed on Mondays, national holidays, and from December 29 through January 4; entry ¥800.) This museum, whose art objects were collected by Baron Okura, became the first private museum to open in Tokyo when it made its debut in 1917. Okura was a Meiji-era industrialist (armaments) who founded the Imperial Hotel and whose son founded the luxurious Okura Hotel. The museum was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake, but it was rebuilt in a Chinese style in 1928. The two floors of the museum display Baron Okura’s collection of ancient art from India, China, Tibet, and Japan as well as exquisite ceramics, sculptures, bronzes, costumes, and lacquer ware from its many diverse holdings. Exhibits run for three to four months before being changed.

On leaving the hotel, the street before the Okura can be taken to the right, passing the large United States Embassy complex. In 1884 this property, assessed at $25,000, was given by the Japanese government as a perpetual gift of friendship with the United States. (Nonetheless, six years later the United States gave the Meiji government $16,000 for the land.) This 1976 structure was designed by Cesar Pelli, and the arrangement of windows on one side gives the appearance of the American flag in stone and glass. Continuing down hill to the Toranomon intersection with Sotobori-dori, a turn to the left brings one back to the point before the Shuto Expressway where this diversion began.

5 HIE SHRINE

From here, continuing west on Sotobori-dori and taking the first street on the right, one soon crosses Roppongi-dori and then comes to the Prime Minister’s Residence on the left. Crossing the street and continuing straight, one passes the House of Representatives’ Office Building Number One. The street between it and Building Number Two should be taken downhill to the left, and this brings one to the upper level of the Hie Shrine. (The two office buildings are of an uninspired modern architectural style.)

The Hie Shrine was created in the year 830 and was located in the outer reaches of the future city of Edo, but in 1478 Ota Dokan removed it to the castle grounds as a spiritual protector for his stronghold. In 1607 Tokugawa Ieyasu moved it to the hill to the west of the castle, land on which the Supreme Court now stands, so as to protect the castle from the southeast in the same manner that the Kan’eiji Temple in Ueno protected the castle from the northeast. After the shrine burned to the ground in the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657, it was eventually rebuilt at its present site in the highly decorated gongen style favored by the Tokugawas. Its main façade faced the castle. Here it not only acted as a protector of the castle but served as the site for worship of the deity who protected the Tokugawa family. Each Tokugawa infant was brought to the shrine shortly after its birth to be blessed by the shrine deity. The Hie Shrine was the largest Shinto shrine in Edo in Tokugawa days, and it was given its name from the fact that it is a branch of the Hiyoshi (Hie) Shrine in Kyoto. (Open October to March from 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and from April to September from 5:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. No entry charge.)

The main building at Hie Shrine, starting point of the Sanno Matsuri, one of Tokyo’s great festivals

The shrine was destroyed in the fire bombings of 1945, and it was recreated in ferro-concrete in 1967. The deity of the shrine is Oyamakuni-no-kami, the god of the Kyoto shrine on Mt. Hiei who protected the city of Kyoto from the northeast, the point from which evil flows. As for the earlier castle, it serves now as the protector of the present palace and perhaps, since Meiji times, of the Diet and government offices as well. This is but one of 3,000 Hie Shrines throughout Japan. The messenger of the shrine deity is the monkey, and thus monkey images can be found about the complex. One image of a female monkey holding its child (to the left of the main shrine building) is regarded as a symbol of maternal harmony, and thus the shrine has earned a reputation as being one which can grant fertility and then ensure safe childbirth to those who worship here. A shrine to the Shinto deity Inari is also on the grounds.

The main entrance to the shrine is on its eastern side, the side facing toward the hill on which the National Diet stands. A stone torii stands at the foot of the 51 steps that lead up to the roofed corridor that encloses the square before the Haiden (Prayer Hall) and Honden (Spirit Hall). The entry gate is guarded on either side of the passageway into the shrine by the seated Shinto guardians Yadaijin and Sadaijin, with their bow and arrows and sword. Before the Haiden a female monkey holding her infant is on the left while a male monkey is on the right. Both are clothed or draped with protective colorful cloth. To the right of the Haiden and the corridors are a series of smaller shrine buildings, including kura in which are stored shrine festive objects and the mikoshi in which the spirits of the deities are taken in procession every other year. Roosters strut freely about the grounds. The shrine museum is at the top of the steps from Sotobori-dori (open every day but Tuesday and Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.), and it holds many important swords once owned by the Tokugawa clan. Entry is free. The Sanno Festival (the Festival Without Equal) has always been one of the great festivals of Tokyo, and it takes place every other year from June 10 through 16 with a great procession on June 15. Some 50 mikoshi (sacred palanquins holding the god spirit), two imperial carriages, and 400 participants in Heian-period (800–1200) costumes participate in the procession, with the shrine officials on horseback behind the most sacred, oxen-drawn mikoshi.

On February 26, 1936, the shrine was the center of some political excitement. In that period, when the Japanese military was getting more out of civilian control, some 1,400 soldiers set out to “restore power” to the emperor and to bring wealth to the people. They executed two former premiers of government and the inspector general of military training, seized government buildings, and set up their headquarters below the Hie Shrine. Four days later, with little support from the military, the government, or the emperor, they surrendered. Nineteen of the ringleaders were executed—but they are remembered by those with a nationalistic and militarist bent on a memorial stone at their place of execution, which today faces the Shibuya Ward Office and the NHK Broadcasting Building in Shibuya.

6 AKASAKA MITSUKE AREA

On leaving the shrine, descend the hill that is lined with vermilion torii. The torii of this shrine are unique in that they have a triangular-shaped top rather than the normal slightly curved top bar these sacred gateways usually employ. (One can also descend the street that runs from the rear of the Diet Building to Sotobori-dori.) Descending the hill to Sotoboridori, there are a series of streets running parallel to Sotobori-dori to the west that are noted for their restaurants. These streets in the Akasaka district took a new lease on life when the Kasumigaseki area became the seat of government after 1868, and they developed restaurants to serve the new government quarters. Some of the restaurants provided geisha entertainment. As the traditional and not-too-distant Shimbashi geisha area grew ever more expensive and exclusive, a new entertainment and geisha sector became established in this area between the hills not far from the Diet. It also at one time had its seamier side, with “bath girls”—or prostitutes—who served visitors to Akasaka.

The view from Benkei Bridge in Akasaka Mitsuke

By the early 1900s the area was in its heyday, supported by politicians, businessmen, and the new breed of journalists. In more recent times these types have been augmented by staff from the nearby TBS television studios. Tourists frequent the restaurants as well, but the ryotei (geisha restaurants) have declined greatly with the passage of time. They can still be recognized by the huge limousines parked before the high walls behind which they sit. These are establishments that only the wealthiest can afford. The three streets to the west of Sotobori-dori—Hitotsugi-dori, Misujidori, and Tamachi-dori—are at the heart of this entertainment area. Misuji-dori, between Hitotsugi-dori and Tamachi-dori, has some of the major geisha restaurants.

Back on Sotobori-dori and continuing toward the overhead Expressway is Akasaka Mitsuke, that crossroads of streets, subway stations, and the overhead Shuto Expressway (once again encountered in another of its branches). The Ginza, Marunouchi, and Hanzomon subway lines all have entrances here. As has been indicated, Sotobori-dori, which we have been following, was once the outer moat for the Tokugawa castle and was completed in 1636 by the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu. The moats about the castle each had a mitsuke, a fortified gate, at the bridges that crossed the moat. As with the masaguta gates at the Ote-mon and the Sakurada-mon entrance to the castle, each mitsuke had behind the gate a fortified wall that formed a “box” within which any trespasser or enemy could be ambushed. It is claimed that there were 36 of these mitsuke about the moats. The gate at Akasaka Mitsuke is said to have been one of the finest of these defensive units, and it guarded the road (the present Aoyama-dori) that led from the castle to Shibuya. The last remnants of this gate and the one at Sotobori-dori at Toranomon were removed by the Meiji government in 1873.

Today, of course, the gate is missing but survives in the name of the area, Akasaka Mitsuke, which means “Red Hill Fortress Gate.” Akasaka received its name of “Red Slope” from plants for red dye that once grew here. A portion of the moat does continue to exist, separating the lands of the Akasaka Detached Palace from the New Otani Hotel and running in part in front of the Akasaka Prince Hotel, where it is spanned by the Benkei Bridge. On the left of the Akasaka Mitsuke intersection is the Suntory Building (see Walk 13 for the Suntory Museum), which houses the Tokyo offices of beer, spirit, and soft-drink maker Suntory. Crossing under the Expressway, ahead is the Benkei Bridge, while looming large to the right beyond the bridge is the 40-story Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka. This starkly white building shaped in the form of a folding fan in mirrored white glass and aluminum was designed by Kenzo Tange in 1983. It closed shortly after the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 and was for a while then used to house evacuees from the Tohoku region who had been displaced by the earthquake and tsunami. Now empty, it is slated for demolition but was still standing as of publication.

7 NEW OTANI ART MUSEUM

Crossing the Benkei Bridge brings one to the impressive New Otani Hotel and its traditional garden. The 40-story main structure was built in 1974, and then in 1991 a 30-story New Otani Tower was added. Between the two units of the hotel, some 2,100 rooms are available for guests. The New Otani Art Museum can be found off the sixth-floor lobby of the original building. The gallery to the right offers paintings by noted Japanese artists, while the gallery on the left shows the work of Western artists and particularly the Ecole de Paris school. (The museum is open 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. except Mondays. It also closes during the New Year holidays. Admission is ¥500 but is free for those staying at the hotel.) The lower floors of the hotel offer a variety of gift shops and some 36 coffee shops and restaurants, which can provide a break in the tour if one wishes. The gorgeous traditional outdoor gardens of the hotel are well worth a visit; they were once a portion of the estate of Kato Kiyomasa (1562– 1611), the lord of Kumamoto, and they are a fine example of a traditional Japanese garden. The garden can be entered from the corridor between the two buildings of the hotel, the door to the garden being next to the lounge.

Temple or shrine? Toyokawa Inari Shrine is unusually also known as Myogon-ji Temple.

8 TOYOKAWA INARI SHRINE

Returning to the Suntory Building, a turn to the right on its far side brings one onto Aoyama-dori. Walking along this avenue, at the second street on the right is the Myogonji Temple or Toyokawa Inari Shrine. This is one of those delightful anomalies of Japanese culture, for here is a Zen temple that has red lanterns such as are found only at Shinto shrines. There was a tradition for such a joint situation before 1868, when temples and shrines cohabited, but from that time on temples and shrines were forcibly separated by the new Meiji government. Shinto had always been an unorganized folk faith (unorganized, not disorganized). The advent of Buddhism in the 600s provided a faith that was highly organized and structured, and in time Ryobu Shinto (Dual Shinto) developed, whereby Shinto shrines were often run by Buddhist temples. There has always been a relationship between the two faiths (the Japanese are not as prone to sharp divisions between faiths as in the West), since in Japan each temple has a small shrine to the Shinto deity of the land it occupies.

What is the occasion for the seeming open confusion at this temple/shrine? According to tradition, in the early 1200s Emperor Juntoko’s third son, Kanganzenji (who happened to be a Zen priest), was on a ship returning from China. In the midst of a terrible storm, when all seemed lost, the son saw the image of the Buddhist deity Dakini (who is also known as the Shinto deity Inari) riding on a white fox and carrying a rice bale on his back. The ship did not founder, and the son carved an image of Dakini on his return to Japan. This carved figure of a deity who has both a Buddhist and a Shinto aspect is said to be the hibutsu, the hidden image, at the altar of the temple. (It is pictured within the temple, even though the original may not be viewed.)

In the period from 1717 to 1736 there lived across the street from this temple a daimyo who served as a city magistrate. He had come from Toyokawa in the provinces, and he brought with him the image carved by the noble Zen monk, which he established in the branch shrine that he had built across from his residence. This daimyo, Oka Tadasuke, was noted for his beneficent rule as a magistrate, and he is credited, among other charitable acts, with having created the first fire brigades for the city—brigades other than those that served solely to protect daimyo mansions in times of danger. Within the temple grounds, the main hall of the temple is guarded in a rather unusual manner by red-bibbed foxes, which normally grace Shinto shrines but seldom appear in Buddhist temples. There is a hexagonally roofed shrine to the noble magistrate on the left side of the hall, while to the right is a modern building, the Akasaka Tokyo Toyokawa Inari Kaikan, where one can have priests pray for whatever type of success one is imploring Dakini/Inari to grant. Even in these modern days there is a bit of the supernatural in such requests, for the priest uses “the wind of wisdom” in reading the Buddhist sutras that may help in the granting of one’s wishes. This “wind” insures that while the priest may chant only from the first and last page of an extensive sutra, when the intervening pages are being quickly flipped the “wind of wisdom” sees to it that the entire reading is automatically efficacious. The hall also provides space where shrine events can be held.

Before the Kaikan is a statue of the Kodakara Kanzein Bosatsu, a Kannon image holding a child in its arms. This bodhisattva is prayed to for the birth of healthy children and for prosperity for the future family line. In addition to the shrine to the magistrate and the main Buddhist hall, Inari shrines can be found on the grounds, guarded by their fox images—to which some worshippers bring offerings from nearby restaurants. The approach to the main Inari shrine is lined with banners, given by worshippers as prayers for the granting of their wishes or for thanks for the successful fulfillment of their prayers. Along the path to the Inari shrine is the Migawari Jizo on the right, again an unusual situation where a Buddhist deity is worshipped in the approaches to this Shinto shrine. He is a favored deity, since he takes upon himself the problems or troubles afflicting those who pray to him. To the left of the Inari shrine are images of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune. At the far end of this busy and self-contained temple/shrine is the aforementioned Akasaka Tokyo Toyokawa Bunka Kaikan, a hall for wedding receptions, conventions, and other affairs both religious and secular.

9 AKASAKA DETACHED PALACE

Farther along Aoyama-dori on the right are the parklands of the Akasaka Detached Palace. Not too far within the grounds were the separate palace units of members of the imperial family, the mansions of the former Emperor Hirohito’s brothers, Prince Chichibu and Prince Mikasa and their families. While the palace, which was designated a National Treasure of Japan in 2009, cannot be seen on this walking tour, it shall be here described so that those interested in it can view it at another time. The Akasaka Detached Palace can best be seen by a seven-minute walk from Yotsuya Station on the JR Sobu Line. The palace itself cannot be entered, since it serves today as a State Guest House (Geihinkan), but the gardens and fountains may be visited.

The Akasaka Detached Palace today serves as a state guesthouse for visiting dignitaries.

Before the end of the Tokugawa regime in 1868, the land that the Akasaka Palace occupies had belonged to the Kii branch of the Tokugawa family. Taken over by the Imperial Household Agency in 1868, the Kii mansion had to serve as the Emperor Meiji’s residence from 1873 to 1888, after the buildings of the Imperial Palace were destroyed by fire. The new Akasaka Palace was built for the emperor by public subscription, and it was completed in 1909 as the Togu Palace. The structure was created after the fashion of English, French, and German palaces in a vain attempt to be “as Western as the West” in imperial architecture. In part, the architect Katayama Tokuma, who was a student of Josiah Condor, modeled it after the Palace of Versailles in France, but, reflecting the era prior to the French Revolution, the original model for the Akasaka Palace hardly served as the best example for the turn-of-the-20th-century official dwellings.

To further complicate matters, an American architect’s advice was also invited. The new palace had all the grandeur and many of the discomforts of European palaces of the past. There was, for example, but one bathroom, and it was in the basement. The emperor’s bedroom was in one wing of the building, while that of the empress was in another wing. This may not have made for the closest of marital bliss, but on the other hand, it was the custom of the emperor to drop his handkerchief each evening in front of one of the ladies-in-waiting (a euphemism if ever there was one), who was thereby invited to his wing for that evening. The palace has seen changes through the years. Emperor Meiji, on his move to the Imperial Palace after 1888, gave the Togu Palace to the crown prince for a residence. After World War II, it temporarily housed the National Diet Library until 1962. Next it was the headquarters for the 1964 Olympics in Japan. Then in 1974 the palace was redone so it could serve as the State Guest House for heads of state when they visit Japan. President Ford of the United States in 1974, Queen Elizabeth of Britain in 1975, world leaders at the 1980 summit, and other heads of state have used the guest house. The various rooms are quite impressive: the Egyptian Room was the former Smoking Room of the original palace, while the Hall of the Feathered Robe (the former ballroom) has a painted ceiling inspired by the Noh play The Feathered Robe. The former dining room is now the Hall of Flowers and Birds. As indicated above, the grounds also contain the Omiya Palace Park, with mansions of the branches of the imperial family, which included a residence for the Crown Prince.

10 SOGETSU KAIKAN

Returning to Aoyama-dori, some three streets further along the avenue is the Sogetsu Art Center, a 1977 Kenzo Tange building of mirrored glass. The Sogetsu School of Flower Arranging was begun by Sofu Teshigahara, and he was succeeded as head of the school by his son Hiroshi Teshigahara, who is also well-known as the director of the film Woman in the Dunes. Today, Hiroshi’s daughter, Akane Teshigahara, is carrying on the family tradition as the head (iemoto) of the Sogetsu School. The lobby, a cascade of stone, has sculptures by Isamu Noguchi, and flower arrangements here are often on a very large scale. A small theater is on the lower level and a café on an upper level overlooks the lobby and the street. There flower arrangements by members of the school as well as other Japanese artists may be seen, and traveling exhibits of contemporary art are frequently on view. Lessons in the Sogetsu style of flower arrangements are possible for a fee.

One can continue further along Aoyamadori to the Meiji Shrine Outer Gardens, but this is recommended only for those who wish to see the 1964 Olympic sports complex or the Meiji Picture Gallery, a rather heavy-handed glorification of the life of Emperor Meiji in 80 pictures (described below). If one does not continue to the picture gallery, a return to Akasaka Mistsuke brings one back to the various subway lines that lie below that intersection. (One can also reach the picture gallery and sports complex by taking the subway from Akasaka Mitsuke to Gaienmae Station, which is close to the Gallery.)

11 THE MEIJI OUTER GARDEN (DIVERSION)

The 20 acres (8 hectares) of the Meiji Outer Garden are an extension in part of the former daimyo lands that became the Akasaka Detached Palace. This portion of the land was developed into the 120-acre (36-hectare) Aoyama Parade Ground for the military after 1868. Here in 1912 was held the funeral service for Emperor Meiji, and in recent years a major portion of the area has become sports grounds. On the left side of the Outer Garden can be found the units that were the center of athletic events during the 1964 Olympics: the National Stadium, which can seat 75,000; the two Jingu Baseball Stadiums, which can accommodate 66,000 and 12,000 respectively; the Prince Chichibu Memorial Rugby Stadium, seating 20,000; the Tokyo Gymnasium, for 5,300 spectators; and the Metropolitan Indoor Swimming Pool for 3,000.

A long walk into the grounds along the gingko tree-lined roadway leads to the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery (Seitoku Kino Kaigakan—The Sacred Virtue Memorial Gallery), a building that in part resembles the National Diet, except that its center portion is domed rather than having a tower. (The gallery is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily all year and admission is ¥500.) Construction of the gallery was begun within three years of the emperor’s death in 1912, but it was not completed until 1920. It was one of the centers where Japanese nationalism was fostered by the government’s militant Shinto agencies before the end of World War II. The hall contains 80 pictures, half in traditional Japanese style, half in a modern Western style, all glorifying the emperor and his life in a manner that raises him to the level of divinity—which nationalist forces found helpful in creating a post-Tokugawa Japan. The gallery is no longer supported by the government but is now operated by the Meiji Shrine Foundation. Thus it has to create income by selling charms, through the rental of the nearby Meiji Memorial Hall (Meiji Kinenkan) for weddings and meetings, and with the restaurant and a beer terrace in the same building. This hall was once part of the Aoyama Palace, and it was here that the Imperial Constitution of the 1890s was discussed in front of the emperor. (The Kinkei Lounge is the restored room where the Meiji Constitution was promulgated in 1890.) In general, today’s public has shown little interest in this memorial gallery to the Meiji emperor, and it can be bypassed by the average tourist not interested in the glorification of an unimportant emperor who was a façade for his militaristic advisors.

When one has completed this diversion, the Sobu Line trains may be reached at the Shinanomachi Station to the right rear of the gallery or one may take the Ginza Line at Gaienmae Station on Aoyama-dori for return to other parts of the city.

GETTING THERE

This tour starts at Hanzomon Station on the Hanzomon subway line, which connects directly to major stations such as Shibuya, Omotesando, and Otemachi.