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Walking Tour 4

TSUKIJI AND TSUKISHIMA

The Harvest of the Sea, the Shrine of the Fishermen Spies, the Foreigners’ Enclave, and Dutch Learning

1 Tsukiji Market

2 Hama detached Palace Garden

3 Tsukishima Island

4 Dutch learning Area

5 Tsukiji Hongan-ji Temple

If Tokugawa Ieyasu were to return to Tokyo today, there is one area of his one-time capital that would utterly amaze him, and that is Tsukiji, to the east of Ginza. His astonishment would stem from the fact that this was still part of Tokyo Bay while he was alive. The very name of the district, Tsukiji, is a giveaway as to the change that has taken place over the centuries, since tsukiji means “reclaimed land,” and that is exactly what it is.

When Ieyasu had the hills of Kanda to the north of the castle leveled to fill in Hibiya Inlet, the fill also helped to create solid land on the marshes of what became the Nihombashi and Ginza areas of old Edo. The creation of the Tsukiji sector began about 1650, but the area was greatly enlarged after 1657, the result of the Long Sleeves Fire of that year, which destroyed much of the city. The marshy sections to the west of Ginza were filled in order to create additional land where some of the daimyo could build their mansions and portions could be granted to certain temples. (The filling in of Tokyo Bay continues. In the four decades after 1945, one-seventh of the bay was filled in to create an additional 7 square miles [18.2 square kilometers] of dry land.)

A goodly portion of the land was granted to the heirs of Okudaira Nobumasa (1555–1615), with politics and marriage being involved with this grant. Nobumasa had been an ally of Ieyasu, and, in one of the many battles before Ieyasu became supreme, the enemies of Nobumasa killed Nobumasa’s wife in revenge for his defection to Ieyasu’s side. To atone for the loss Nobumasa had sustained, Ieyasu granted Nobumasa his eldest daughter in marriage. In time, Ieyasu even adopted his grandson from this marriage, giving him the new family name of Matsudaira. A descendent, Matsudaira Sadonobu (1759–1829), was one of the great Tokugawa administrators, and it was his family, living in the Tsukiji area, who were unwittingly to help in the founding of modern Japanese studies of the West. Even before the Matsudaira family set foot on their newly created land, others of a less powerful group were living on one of the small islands, at the point where the Sumida River flows into the bay. Here on the island of Tsukuda-jima, now much enlarged, Ieyasu’s son Hidetada had settled a group of fishermen from the Osaka area with a twofold purpose to suit his needs, one culinary and one political. Those purposes will be revealed when the fishermen’s island is explored.

1 TSUKIJI MARKET

The fishing tradition remains strong in modern Tsukiji, in the shape of the Tsukiji Central Wholesale Markets, where this tour begins. Situated directly south of Tsukiji-Shijo subway station, Tsukiji Market is one of Tokyo’s earliest risers. The famed early-morning tuna auctions there are ideal for visitors to Tokyo keen enough or jet-lagged enough to get out of bed before sunrise, for they erupt into a frenzy of action at 5:30 a.m. and are one of the most worthwhile experiences Tokyo has to offer. With the tuna auctions dominating tourist brochure coverage of the market, Tsukiji has become known among foreigners primarily as a fish market, although it is actually a central market that handles all kinds of produce (fish, meat, vegetables, processed and dried fruit) with the exception of rice. This area was once the exquisite garden of the Matsudaira lords, difficult though that may be to imagine. From the beginnings of Edo in the early 1600s to the last century, the city’s fish market lay to the north along the Nihombashi River at the far side of the Nihombashi Bridge. There the many white-plastered kura or storehouses and the fish market reigned supreme. The 1923 earthquake and fire, however, destroyed the area, and the market began to move to its present site, which became official in 1935 as new buildings were erected.

With the change in forms of shipping and packaging of bulk foodstuffs, the 1935 market has proved less than efficient. Plans have been suggested for moving the market to the south, but in 1991 a 12-year renovation program began. The revamped three-story market was to have multistory skyscrapers around it, with the market itself doubling in size and adequate parking provided for the vehicles flooding into the area each morning. Whereas much of the produce, particularly fish, came by boats in the past, today frozen bulk foods arrive by air and are then transported here by truck from Narita Airport, which can boast that it is Japan’s leading fish port. It is estimated that 90 percent of the fish now arrives overland rather than by sea to the market’s docks, with salmon from Canada and Chile, shrimp from Thailand, sea urchin roe from Maine, and tuna from Spain. So many fish have died to satisfy the Japanese palate that a monument has been raised outside the market to memorialize the fish that have given up their lives.

Tuna ready for auction at Tsukiji Market

Although primarily a wholesale market, Tsukiji also serves the needs of the general public.

The largest fish market in Asia, the Tsukiji Market is owned and under the control of the metropolitan government of Tokyo. The figures for the number of market stalls, employees, and wholesalers who work here each day are staggering. It is estimated that there are some 1,677 wholesale shops that employ 15,000 workers. Work begins at 2:00 in the morning, while the auctions themselves start at 5:30 a.m. Some 3,000 barrows take the fish from the auction to the buyers’ quarters. It is said that 60,000 individuals are within the market each day, 30,000 of them comprising wholesalers and retailers. Foreign workers have been on the increase as Japanese find this labor less to their liking. While the most exciting time to visit the market is when the auctions begin (registration for a visit starts at 5:00 a.m.), finding adequate transportation from one’s hotel at that hour can be difficult. The auctions may also be off limits, as the market often places temporary bans or restrictions on tourists (both foreign and Japanese) in certain parts in response to complaints from the merchants that the visitors disrupt their work. Visitors are strongly advised to check the official market Web site (www.tsukiji-market.or.jp) before planning a trip and to make a note of how to behave properly while in the market. Later risers may wish to visit from around 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., before the market begins to wind down for the day. This is usually a safe time to avoid the visitor restrictions. As late as 1:00 p.m. there may still be plenty of activity, though the work day there is coming to an end.

Restaurants in the small streets that make up the Outer Market area (to the north of the main market) serve the freshest of fish at prices far more affordable than in the restaurants of nearby Ginza and so are a great place to stop for breakfast or an early lunch. Some of the restaurants have English menus for tourists, but as most are there to serve the market’s workers, you may need to rely on picture menus or the plastic food mock-ups in the shop windows to place your order.

2 HAMA DETACHED PALACE GARDEN

On leaving the front gate of the Inner Market (to the west), one is opposite the plant and offices of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, where guided tours can be arranged. A ten-minute walk to the southwest along the street in front of the market—a street that gradually curves to the right—brings one to the entrance of the Hama Detached Palace (Hama Rikyu) grounds, now a public park. (Open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. but closed for the New Year holidays; entry ¥300.). The Hama Palace grounds originally belonged to a Matsudaira lord who filled in a portion of the bay to create wharves and warehouses to hold the rice he brought in from his Nagoya estates, the sale of which was to offset the expense of maintaining the clan’s Edo mansion. The Matsudaira daimyo eventually gave the land to the sixth Tokugawa shogun, Ienobu, who in 1709 erected a villa and created gardens filled with pavilions, pine trees, cherry trees, and duck ponds. Unlike his predecessor shogun, who forbade the killing of any animals, Ienobu loved duck hunting, and thus there were three duck ponds in the grounds. The large pond in the garden was a tidal pond whose waters were continually cleansed by the flow of the tides. A floodgate still controls the filling and cleansing of the ponds by the tide.

At the end of the Tokugawa’s rule over Japan, the grounds were taken over by the Meiji Foreign Ministry. The shogun’s villa was burned, but it was restored in 1869 when a brick building with a veranda was built to house guests of state. It was here that former president Grant of the United States and his wife stayed on their visit to Japan in 1879. Emperor Meiji had his first carriage ride to the Detached Palace for his visit to Grant, and the emperor and the president held conversations (through interpreters, of course) in a pavilion, a “floating” teahouse set in the midst of one of the ponds. This official guesthouse did not prove to be a success, however, and guests were soon put up in the new Rokumeikan opposite Hibiya Park. With ownership transferred to the Imperial Household Agency in time, the grounds continued to be used for outdoor parties for Meiji nobles and for receptions for foreign guests. The original brick guesthouse was later removed.

New Tokyo and old: Hama Rikyu’s Nakajima teahouse and Shiodome’s skyscrapers

The Hama Detached Palace passed to the city of Tokyo after 1945, and it was turned into a public park the next year. Stands for snacks and a midday repast are available on the grounds of the garden. The 60-acre (24-hectare) park still holds a lovely tidal pond, which is spanned by staggered bridges shaded by wisteria-covered trellises. Of the three ponds in the garden, two are now fenced-in as nature and duck preserves. The pine-bordered shores of the ponds and cherry trees that flower in the spring add charm to the garden. The pavilion on an island in the middle of the larger pond, reminiscent of the one where the emperor and the president met in 1879, has been rebuilt with its veranda “floating” on the pond. A path along the northern side of the park leads to a pier where a water bus may be taken up the Sumida River to the Azumabashi bridge or to Asakusa. The boats leave from 9:50 a.m. to dusk for a 35-minute trip. The waterway at the Hama Detached Garden where the boats dock is enclosed with flood walls with floodgates, which can be closed in times of exceedingly high tides. Where once the park faced out of the bay, today it confronts one of the large man-made islands that have lengthened the Sumida River, which now flows in front of the park.

3 TSUKISHIMA ISLAND

Returning on foot to Tsukiji-Shijo subway station and taking the Oedo Line a quick two stops to the southeast leads to Tsukishima Station, the starting point of the next stage of this tour. As was mentioned earlier, in 1615 the recently established successor to Ieyasu as Tokugawa shogun had several motives for installing fishermen in this location. To begin with, the fishermen of Tsukuda in the Osaka area had assisted Ieyasu before 1603, and thus they were due a reward. They were therefore brought to these reclaimed mud flats at the entrance to the bay at Edo, an area that would grow as the bay was gradually filled in. Tsukuda-jima (Island of Cultivated Rice Fields) originally consisted of two mud flats at the mouth of the Sumida River. In the early 1600s they were developed into two islands, the northern one being named Ishikawa-jima, since it was granted to Ishikawa Hachizaemon, the controller of the shogun’s ships. The southern island became Tsukudajima, named for the fishermen’s original home near Osaka. It was not until 1872 that the two islands were joined, and then in 1893 reclaimed mud flats to their south created the present large Tsukishima Island. The old fishermen’s quarter has a branch of the Sumida River on its western side, while a narrow canal still exists on its northern and eastern sides. Its southern side has had its waterway filled in and replaced by the elevated highway leading to the bridge to Tsukiji.

The shogun’s appreciation for past favors was not of the essence in this move, however. These fishermen were skilled in their trade, and they supplied the whitebait from the bay that garnished the shogun’s tables. They fished in the dark of the night, burning firewood in metal baskets at the stern of their boats so as to attract the fish. As excellent watermen and navigators, they offered another purpose for the shogun: they could recognize any strange boats in the bay and thus serve as spies for the better protection of Edo and the shogun against any potential hostile forces. (A later shogun in 1715 enhanced his intelligence gathering by bringing skilled gardeners to Edo from Kii Province. Not only could they garden, but they were adept at entering the gardens of dissident daimyo by night and carrying out the shogun’s less than charitable missions.)

One of the attractions of the island for Tokyo residents through the years has been the odor of soy sauce permeating the air here, for the fishermen developed a culinary delight by simmering fish in sea weed and soy sauce. Preserved in this boiled-down sauce along with salt, tsukuda-ni became a much desired delicacy. The island was known as well for a less happy association, for in the 1790s Matsudaira Sadanobu used it for a detention center for ronin (masterless samurai) who had lost their lord and thus their employment—as well as for vagrants. Both of these groups had become a political problem for the shogun, since they were often at the heart of brawls and riots. In a sense, what was being attempted was a halfway house where vagrants could be taught a trade. Later, for the 15 years after 1870, a prison was established here; it was subsequently removed to Sugamo in the Ikebukuro area. Three things remain of interest on the island, the Sumiyoshi Shrine, the old houses of the fishing village, which are all too quickly disappearing, and the River City 21 project that has been created in a former industrial area of the island.

The Sumida River with Tsukishima Island and the River City 21 skyscrapers on the right.

We begin with the third of these attractions, River City 21. It has been indicated that once there were two islands, Ishikawajima and Tsukuda-jima, which are now joined. The former Ishikawa-jima is the northern half of the present island. Here the shogun’s master of ships had his land in the 17th century, and here in 1854 the Mito branch of the Tokugawa built a modern shipyard. It became the first shipyard to launch a Western-style ship in 1876, and this small ship-building factory became the predecessor to the Ishikawajima Harima Heavy Industries, now relocated to the east of this area. Beginning in the 1980s, the factory and warehouse sites were cleared, and the new River City 21 appeared. This fascinating complex of high-rise apartments and office buildings is set in a park-like, landscaped area with a river promenade on three sides. Its architecture is strikingly modern, and thus this part of the tour should begin at exit number four of the Tsukishima subway station. This brings one to Kiyosumi-dori, and one should walk to the north away from the overhead highway. After a few short streets one reaches the new complex on the left, just before the bridge that crosses over the Sumida River into the Fukagawa district of Tokyo. Steps or a ramp can be mounted to the park that encircles the River City 21 buildings on three sides, with a riverside promenade below at the water’s edge. These 40-story buildings are also home to some of the most sought-after rental condominiums in Tokyo. A park, Tsukuda Koen, lies in front of these high-rise structures, and a lighthouse remains on its western side as a memorial to the beacon of the mid-19th century that once guided ships into the port of Edo. The new complex sits on a raised site above the dangers of tidal floods, whereas the older section of the island, closer to the subway line and main east-west street, are protected by high flood walls. A small canal separates River City 21 from the former Tsukuda fisherman’s area, and thus a sluice in the riverfront with a red gate serves to control the waters of the Sumida River from flooding the canal at times of high water.

In their home near Osaka, the fisherman had worshipped the deity of the great Sumiyoshi Shrine. That shrine had been created by the Empress Jingu, who was deeply indebted to Sumiyoshi, the god of the sea. It seems that when the empress, then quite pregnant but determined to conquer Korea, made war against that country, Sumiyoshi had served as the pilot of her ship. When a huge storm threatened the survival of the ship and passengers, the god had a school of large fish support the boat in the high seas. Thus those involved with the sea are always beholden to Sumiyoshi, the deity of safety at sea. As a result, there are some 2,000 branch shrines of the Osaka main shrine throughout Japan. This small shrine is one representative. A large copper-plated torii provides an entrance to the shrine, with its unpainted and aged wooden buildings, and down the residential street beyond this first torii is a second stone torii. Behind it to the right is a traditional fountain for the cleansing of hands and mouth before approaching the Haiden, the Worship Hall, and the Honden, the Spirit Hall, of the shrine. Both these buildings have a copper-plated roof with the traditional chigi beams, a common feature in Shinto structures, to hold the roof in place, and they are joined by a roofed corridor or room. Thus the architecture of the shrine is typical of all Sumiyoshi shrines.

Smaller shrine units lie before the Haiden on the left and right side, while to the left of the Honden is an unusual brick kura (storage building) standing in front of and adjoining a traditional white plastered kura. The large inscribed katsuozuka (literally “bonito mound”) stone on the grounds, behind the purification fountain, is a memorial to the fish that are caught each year for the Tsukidani delicacy, and services are held here in their memory annually. A kagura stage for religious dances is on the right side of the grounds. Aside from the usual stone lanterns, a pair of koma-inu (Korean lion-dogs) stand guard on either side of the path behind the stone torii. Kura to store the portable mikoshi used in shrine festivals are on the grounds. The Sumiyoshi Festival, which occurs on the first weekend in August every third year, is always a fascinating event. Then the octagonal mikoshi holding the god spirit is paraded through the streets behind a huge, golden lion’s head. Traditionally, the mikoshi was brought to the river where it was partially immersed as a part of the procession, but since 1962 the flood walls built to protect the island have precluded this part of the festivities. Instead, the mikoshi is now paraded on a barge and doused with water as part of the festival, the offering of water to the deities being seen as religiously efficacious.

Since the shogun brought the fisherman from Osaka to Edo, they attempted to show their appreciation to him by having their shrine face toward the shogun’s castle, and on festival days huge banners were raised so as to attract the attention of the denizens of the castle. Another festival related to Buddhist beliefs rather than to those of Shinto occurs each July 13, 14, and 15 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., when the residents of the area dance the traditional Bon Odori dance that is a part of the Buddhist festivity to honor the spirits of the deceased who return to this world for a few brief days each summer. Of interest also are the number of traditional wooden homes that still exist near the shrine, buildings that were fortunate enough to be spared in the 1923 earthquake and fire and then the 1945 fire bombings. The narrow streets and alleyways still retain some of the original fishermen’s houses, though many have been modernized or replaced entirely so that the flavor of the old fishermen’s quarter is gradually being lost. In addition, the old lighthouse that once guided ships to port now stands dwarfed by the very tall, high-rise apartments, a monument to times past.

4 DUTCH LEARNING AREA

Returning to the elevated highway under which the Yurakucho subway line runs, one must climb a set of stairs to the Tsukudaohashi Bridge to return to the Tsukiji mainland area. Until 1964 the only access to this island was by means of a ferry, which had existed from 1645 to 1964, for neither a bridge nor the later subway reached the island from Tsukiji, albeit the island had been connected by bridge to Fukagawa to the north since early in the 1900s. At the western end of the more recent bridge is a memorial stone recalling the ferry that traversed the river for so many centuries. In the early 1990s another novel bridge connected Tsukuda with the mainland, its single, inverted Y-shaped tower supporting the roadway over the river by means of cables. The Sumida River, a stream for pleasure boats with restaurants along the banks in centuries past, became less than desirable during the 20th century. Commercial and industrial sites took away the pleasurable aspects of the waterway, and then the high flood waters coursing in from the bay in the later 1940s led to the construction of the tall flood walls that effectively cut out any view of the waterway from riverside restaurants. In the last decades of the 20th century, this despoiling of the river was being reversed as new, modern buildings, many of them high-rise units, appeared along the banks of the Sumida. Attempts are being made as well to create promenades on the river side of the flood walls from the Tsukiji area up through Asakusa so as to return the waterfront to public enjoyment once more.

Once across the bridge, one is in an area that belonged to the Matsudaira lords. The whole sector was part of the retirement estate of Matsudaira Sadanobu in the 1700s, an area ennobled by the huge palace-residence of this important family. While nothing remains of the estate today, a remembrance of the Matsudaira palace with its outbuildings can be seen in a large model at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Today the area has changed tremendously, but historic markers to Dutch Learning are encountered as the walk continues, and it may be well to provide some background to these markers. Here on Sadanobu’s estate began a process that was to transform Japanese medicine, and which is in part remembered by the memorial stones in the neighborhood. Japanese medicine had always relied upon Chinese learning for its basic beliefs, but beginning in the 1770s this was to change drastically. A handful of Japanese physicians realized that much could be learned from Western sources: first, from the few Dutch medical books available to them, and then from the advice in the early 1800s of a Dutch physician, Philipp Franz van Siebold. The culmination came at the end of the 19th century, when St. Luke’s Hospital was established—a hospital that exists still.

In 1770, Maeno Ryotaku, a physician and a retainer of the Matsudaira, journeyed to Nagasaki, where he was able to obtain a copy of a Dutch book on anatomy, Ontleedkundige Tafelen. Ryotaku had studied under Aoki Konyo, one of the early students of Dutch learning in Japan, and thus he already knew of this Dutch anatomy text. The only type of foreign books available in Japan were those in Dutch, often surreptitiously provided through the Dutch station at Dejima Island in Nagasaki due to the shogun’s ban on anything foreign. Ryotaku, who had learned a smattering of Dutch, had developed a curiosity for greater European learning. (His mentor was nicknamed Doctor Potato by his contemporaries, since he had introduced the sweet potato as an edible staple to the diet.) With another physician friend, Sugita Gempaku, Ryutaku had the opportunity to perform an autopsy on a condemned criminal, and they were amazed to find that the anatomical plates in the Dutch book were a true representation of the human internal organs. By 1774 Ryotaku had translated the Dutch work and thereby set Japanese medicine in new directions over the next century. With his appetite for more “esoteric” Western knowledge whetted, he mastered the Dutch language and went on to translate works on geography, military matters, and astronomy. This interest in Dutch learning (rangaku) was to expand among a group of Edo scholars, and thus the 19th century saw a gradual broadening of Japanese views. In 1826 Philipp Franz van Siebold was the first foreigner to teach modern European medical practices in Japan, and the revolution in the knowledge of modern medicine gathered steam.

Time moved on, and in 1858 another retainer of the Matsudaira clan, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901), was asked to open a school of Western learning on the clan property in Tsukiji. His students followed Dutch studies at first, but they then moved on to studies in English. Within a decade his school became the forerunner of Keio University, which today is south of Tsukiji in the Mita area of Tokyo. With the demise of the Tokugawa shogun’s rule in 1868, the daimyo moved back to their estates and abandoned their Edo holdings, which in many cases were seized by the Meiji government. The Tsukiji area was not much in demand, since it was isolated from Ginza by various canals, and its space became known as the Navy Meadow, for the naval installation that existed here between 1858 and 1888. The Meiji government after 1868 was not happy with the unequal treaties forced upon Japan under the Tokugawa, and if Japan had to have foreigners in its midst, what better place to put them than in the comparatively isolated Tsukiji sector that had been abandoned by the daimyo?

To entice the foreigners to this somewhat out-of-the-way area, the government held out certain inducements. To begin with, they built a three-story hotel of 200 rooms. Since the foreigners ungraciously preferred to live in Yokohama, the hotel had to be sold to a Japanese entrepreneur four years after it was built. This grand if unsuccessful hostelry burned to the ground in 1872. Wooden houses of a vaguely Western nature were built for the foreigners who served in the legations and missionary enterprises that developed in Tsukiji. The American legation was here as well, and it remained until the extraterritorial status ended in 1899 and an embassy was set up in the Toranomon area of the city.

For the benefit of the foreigners, the Meiji government even established a new Shimabara in the Shintomicho district, the area that in time would be occupied by the first Kabuki theater. Shimabara was the licensed, red-light district in Kyoto, and the new Shimabara brothel area in Edo had 84 teahouses, where one made an appointment to meet the more respectable geisha. It is said that there were 1,700 courtesans in 130 brothels aside from the 200 geisha (21 of them male) in 200 establishments—if these figures can be believed. Unfortunately the government did not realize that the few foreigners who were settling in the Tsukiji area were mostly Protestant missionaries, and thus the government’s gracious accommodations found few foreign takers. The new Shimabara experiment folded in 1870, within one year of its creation. So much for one of the first major enterprises of the Meiji government.

Missionaries, teachers, and missionary physicians began to appear in Tsukiji. One such Presbyterian missionary from Scotland, from 1874 to 1887, was Henry Faulds, who opened a hospital close to the river. He noted that the illiterate among the Japanese used the print of their thumb for identification on documents. His scholarly paper concerning this discovery, which he submitted to the British journal Nature in 1880, led in time to the use of fingerprints as a source of identification for criminals in the West. Besides Fauld’s hospital, schools and other medical facilities were established in this area by Western missionaries. One of them was to eventuate into Rikkyo University (now in Ikebukuro) and another into Aoyama Gakuin University (now in the Aoyama-Omotesando area).

The abolition of the unequal treaties led to a move by foreigners out of the Tsukiji area after 1900, and the earthquake of 1923 brought a temporary end to this sector as a residential area. One great reminder of the Western presence today is St. Luke’s International Hospital, whose first buildings were replaced in 1933 and which has undergone modernization and expansion since the 1980s. St. Luke’s was started in 1902 by Dr. Rudolf Teusler from Virginia, an Episcopal missionary. Unlike other Western-style hospitals in Tokyo, its records were kept in English rather than German. The Meiji government had previously turned to German medical schools and hospitals as a model for medical Westernization. The 1932 building was designed with colorful tile decorations by an American architect in the Art Nouveau style, and its tower was topped with a cross. An inscription at one entrance notes that the hospital was an endeavor of Christianity in Japan. New buildings were constructed in the 1990s to meet the needs of modern medicine, and they occupy a major portion of Tsukiji just beyond the Tsukada-jima Bridge, creating a luxury area in which two skyscrapers, comprising the St. Luke’s Tower, offer residential apartments for St. Luke’s Hospital as well as a hotel, shops, and offices.

After crossing the bridge from Tsukadajima, the first major cross street should be taken to the left. At the beginning of the second street is a small granite memorial to Henry Faulds, noting that “Dr. Henry Faulds, pioneer in fingerprint identification, lived here from 1874 to 1884.” A small bubbling fountain behind the stone sends water coursing down a tiny channel along the sidewalk. The original American legation sat on the left in this second block from the bridge; the site is now covered by the twin high-rise buildings mentioned above. The area on the west of these twin towers was the location of the foreigner’s settlement. Ahead on this street paralleling the river, in the Akatsuki Koen, is a bust to Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796– 1866) who came to Edo as early as 1826 and gave lessons in medicine and surgery. A plaque dated June 18, 1988, next to the bust of Siebold explains that the memorial was presented to Chuo ward by Leiden University of the Netherlands and by the Isaac Alfred Ailion Foundation in cooperation with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. The park has lovely fountains and a delightful children’s playground.

Going back one street to the end of the block on which the twin towers mentioned above are located and turning to the left (away from the river), one comes upon a tiny triangular plot named the Nihon Kindai Bunka Koto Hajime-no-Chi (Cradle of Modern Japanese Culture). Two memorial stones erected in 1958 commemorate those Japanese who lived or worked here and brought Western knowledge to Japan. The larger stone to the rear, depicting an illustration from an anatomy book, is to Maeno Ryotaku and Sugita Genpaku and their associate Nakagawa Junen, who translated the first Dutch textbook on anatomy between 1771 and 1774. The second stone is to Fukuzawa Yukichi, whose 1858 private classes for the Matsudaira clan led in time to the formation of Keio University. Inscribed in the stone book are Fukuzawa’s words, “Heaven created no man above another nor below.” This egalitarian sentiment no doubt was a part of the reason that in 1901 the Meiji government would not permit Fukuzawa and his wife to be buried in the graveyard of Fukuzawa’s family temple—for it was too near the Imperial Palace. This spiteful action was remedied in 1950 by the moving of their remains to the family temple graveyard. Another stone commemorates the fact that: “Here Dutch Studies Began.”

The buildings of St. Luke’s Hospital, begun by Dr. Rudolf Teusler in 1901, cover much of this area. Teusler not only introduced American medical approaches to health care, but he was concerned that his hospital offer medical care to all classes of society and not just the former samurai or Meiji official class. Curiously, opposite the entrance to St. Luke’s in times past was the residence of Lord Asano, the unfortunate daimyo whose followers gained notoriety after his death as the 47 Ronin. On his disgrace, his lands were transferred to the Matsudaira clan.

5 TSUKIJI HONGAN-JI TEMPLE

Continuing southwest from St. Luke’s Tower and the Faulds Monument, walking almost parallel to the Sumida River, the road comes to Harumi-dori, where a right turn leads in about 300 yards to the Tsukiji Hongan-ji Temple, an unusual-looking structure reminiscent of the architecture of India. The temple is a branch of the Jodo Shinshu sect of Amida Buddhism, at one time a militarily powerful religious group. In their Osaka headquarters in the mid-1500s, they were able to stand off Oda Nobunaga and his troops when he was the leading general as well as the civil ruler of Japan. In the 1590s Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nobunaga’s successor and Tokugawa Ieyasu’s predecessor, disarmed the sect and offered it a location in Kyoto for their new headquarters. There they settled in what was, and is, a most luxurious site. When Ieyasu came to power in 1603, he still feared the arrogance of the sect, and thus he split the Kyoto Hongan-ji Temple and the Jodo Shinshu sect into two groups, the Nishi (West) Hongan-ji and the Higashi (East) Hongan-ji. As the head of the newly established Higashi group, he placed a disaffected relative of the leader of the main branch of the faith as the abbot in charge. Divide and conquer, Ieyasu found, was better than a head-on approach when faced with potential opponents, religious or secular.

A subsidiary temple of the original sect (the Nishi Hongan-ji) moved to Edo in 1617 and was settled in Hamacho, the original Yoshiwara district. After its destruction in the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657, the temple was offered a site in the newly created Tsukiji area, and thus the Tsukiji Hongan-ji Temple came into being. The 1923 earthquake marked the ninth time the temple was destroyed by fire, and the decision was made to rebuild in stone. In the period of its greatest strength, the Tsukiji Hongan-ji had more than 50 sub-temples around it, a few of which survive here and there in the Tsukiji district today. In the 1935 rebuilding of the temple, Chuto Ito, the temple architect, wished to show the tie of Japanese Buddhism to its Indian heritage by creating a edifice reflecting that country’s architectural traditions. The temple can seat 1,000 worshippers, and, as the central temple of the sect in the Tokyo area, it supervises more than 600 other temples in the Kanto region around Tokyo. Standing 114 feet (34.2 meters) tall and covering 70,600 square feet (6,354 square meters), it is one of the largest Buddhist temples in Japan. It offers daily services, supports a Sunday school, and on the third Saturday of each month offers an evening service in English and in Japanese for those interested in the Shinshu faith, which reverences the Amida Buddha. Within the Hondo, the front of the worship hall offers a golden façade, its ramma (transoms) above the golden altar intricately carved, while the altar area is embellished with golden furnishings, a Japanese Momoyama style within an Indian façade. A temple of the modern day, it offers soft seats for worshippers while a large organ is available for music during religious services.

Hongan-ji is where this tour comes to an end. Leaving the temple by the main entrance and turning right, a short walk east along Shin-ohashi-dori brings you to Tsukiji Station on the Hibiya subway line, which can be taken in one direction to Ginza or Hibiya and in the other to Akihabara or Ueno.

GETTING THERE

This tour starts at Tsukiji-Shijo Station on the Oedo subway line.

Walking Tour 5

NIHOMBASHI TO GINZA AND SHIMBASHI

The Quarter Where Pleasure Can Be Had, a Shopper’s Paradise, Kabuki, and a New City “Where the Tide Ends”

1 Nihombashi: The bridge of Japan

2 Chuo-dori: Tokyo's High Street

3 Yaesu and Tokyo Station

4 Ginza Shopping district

5 A Walk Through the Ginza

6 Kabuki-za Theater

7 Shiodome new city

8 Yurakucho

9 Tokyo International forum

The names of the original commercial center of old Edo and modern Tokyo—Ginza, Yurakucho, and Nihombashi—are somewhat flexible descriptions for the areas they encompass. Chuo-dori (Central Avenue) is the traditional heart of the Ginza district, and often foreigners have used the term Ginza as though that were the name of Chuodori. Although Chuo-dori extends to the north beyond the limits of this tour, we shall be concerned with that portion of the avenue that lies between the Nihombashi Bridge to the north and the Shimbashi rail station and the Shiodome area to the south. Each segment will be defined and described.

Ginza means “Silver Mint,” for it was in this area in the early 1600s that the Tokugawa shoguns had their mint for the production of silver (gin) coins. (A stone monument in a flower planter of low evergreens at the edge of the sidewalk in Ginza 2-chome commemorates the birthplace of Ginza, the place of silver casting.) Yurakucho is just beyond the western quarter of Ginza; the elevated Yamanote and the Japan Rail tracks serve as a delineating boundary for the district on its western side. Nihombashi was the heart of the Low City in Edo times, and even into Meiji days it was the commercial and financial center of the city. Nihombashi #1, for the purposes of this tour, is that portion of the district that lies to the south of the Nihombashi River. In Walk 6, the other part of Nihombashi, #2, will be combined with the adjacent Ningyocho district into which it merges geographically. This tour thus begins at Nihombashi Bridge, the “bridge of Japan,” and proceeds down the eight portions of Ginza from 1-chome through 8-chome, deviating to the side occasionally for places of interest, then continuing into Shimbashi and terminating in Yurakucho. Chome is a city block. We start at Nihombashi subway station, and the walk itself can begin at the bridge. The Ginza subway line runs down the central axis of the walk, with stations at Kyobashi, Ginza Crossing (Ginza Station on Harumi-dori), and Shimbashi. Thus one can interrupt the tour at any of these points and pick up the route at a later time if desired.

1 NIHOMBASHI: THE BRIDGE OF JAPAN

In one sense, this is where any visit to Tokyo should begin. In the wonderful woodblock Print #1 of his Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido, Hiroshige shows the arched, wooden bridge that first spanned the Nihombashi River in 1603. Across the bridge in the print comes a daimyo’s procession, the lance bearers holding their covered weapons aloft, the retinue following behind. In the foreground appear fishmongers, those workers who enlivened the riverfront for the next 300 years, here hastily making way for a procession they dare not block for fear of their lives. In the background are the roofs of the kura, the warehouses along the river, while fire towers fitted with alarm bells raise their ladder-like structures above distant buildings.

Nihombashi was the center of this exciting and boisterous community. The Tokaido, the great “Eastern Road” of Japan in the period from 1600 to the late 1800s, began at the Nihombashi Bridge in Edo (old Tokyo). This road was the most important connection between the imperial capital of Kyoto and the shogun’s seat in Edo, the shogun being a military leader who ruled over civil life in the name of the emperor, giving the emperor the obeisance that tradition required while at the same time ignoring him politically as a powerless figurehead. From 1604, a milepost on the Nihombashi Bridge marked the beginning of the posts that counted off the 292 miles (467.2 kilometers) between the two seats of governance in the nation. The black pole on the bridge, which was the zero marker, began the count of the distance not only to Kyoto but to all the towns on the other highways from Edo. Four great roads departed from this point, two leading to Ueno and Nikko, and two to Kyoto: the Nakasendo Road through the mountains as well as the more heavily used Tokaido. Kyobashi (“Capital Bridge”) to the south of Nihombashi Bridge was the first to be crossed on the way to Kyoto, but most of the rivers en route had to be forded, often with difficulty.

Nihombashi Bridge served a number of purposes apart from providing access between the northern and southern portions of Edo. At the south end of the bridge, felons were exposed in fetters. Adulterers and priests guilty of sexual offenses were among those so treated before they were led off to their deaths. Those guilty of murder were placed in a hole with only their neck and head protruding. Two saws were available for anyone who wished to cut off their heads—which in the long run the authorities would accomplish more quickly. Their severed heads were then mounted on a pike at the end of the bridge as a warning to any potential wrongdoers. An official notice board stood at the bridge, so the will of the shogun could be made plain. The announcement in 1702 of the fate of the 47 Ronin (see Walks 7 and 15) was so distasteful to citizens that the notice was ripped down almost as soon as it was posted. There was a “Lost Child Stone,” where announcements regarding a missing child were placed on one side, while notices of children who had been found were put on the opposite side. In 1711 an improvement to the bridge brought the placement of the Toki-no-kane, a bell that sounded the hours of the day, based on the lunar calendar with its twelve horary signs. Hours varied in length by summer or winter daylight in old Edo.

A detail from the Nihombashi Bridge suggests its former grandeur.

However, the Nihombashi Bridge where we begin is certainly not Ieyasu’s 1603 arched, wooden structure whose raised middle section permitted boats to pass beneath it. In 1806, the bridge collapsed as hundreds fled to the south from a fire in the Echigaya warehouse, one of a number of times in which the bridge was destroyed. At the beginning of the 20th century, any replacement structure for this or any other bridge would have to support the traffic that trams and then automobiles engendered. Thus, in 1911 a modern stone and metal bridge of some charm, 161 feet (48.3 meters) long by 89 feet (26.7 meters) wide, was erected.

Four bronze Chinese lions stand on either side of the bridge at the northern and southern ends, while four seated dragons rest on either side of two bronze, obelisk-like light standards on the central balustrades. A copper plaque in the pavement at the center of the bridge, rather than the original black pole, today marks the point from which all dis- tances are measured from Tokyo. Time heals all wounds, and in 1911 Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the 15th and last of the Tokugawa shoguns, was invited back to Tokyo from his exile in Shizuoka for the first time since 1868 to inscribe the word Nihombashi on the new structure. His calligraphic inscription of the bridge’s traditional name appears in stone. A plaque on the western side of the southern portion of the bridge shows how the original wooden bridge appeared.

At the northeast side of the bridge is a commemorative statue of Princess Otohime-sama, the daughter of the Dragon King. (The Dragon King resided in the river and its waters, which flowed under the bridge.) The tale of Otohime-sama is the Japanese equivalent of the American story of Rip van Winkle. Urashima Taro, smitten by the princess’s beauty, is said to have followed this daughter of the Dragon King to her home beneath the sea. They married, but when he later left her to return to his village, he found that years undersea were equal to centuries on land, and thus he was a stranger in the world to which he returned. The story is an entrancing one, but, alas, in 1964, in preparation for the Olympics of that year, an elevated highway was erected over the Nihombashi River, and the highway crosses above the bridge to the detriment of its attractiveness and, no doubt, to the dismay of the Dragon King. In 1991, on the 80th birthday of the present Nihombashi Bridge, a small terrace with benches was created at its south side, and steps were built down to a terrace from which one can obtain a better view of the 1911 structure. The terrace on the east side has a wall of ornamental water enhancing the small landing, although even from here the beauty of the bridge itself is still largely destroyed by the highway above.

2 CHUO-DORI: TOKYO'S HIGH STREET

Stretching south from the Nihombashi Bridge along Chuo-dori, the first major crossroad is Eitai-dori. The Tokyu Department Store, founded in 1662 and once on the left in Nihombashi 1-chome, was an early shop in the area and developed into a major merchandising enterprise with numerous branches. Under the original name of Shiragiya, it was the scene of a tragic fire in which many of its female employees died. In the second-level basement of the modern building was the “magic well,” which, it is claimed, emitted an image of the deity Kannon in the early 1700s. Nearby is the Tokyo Daido Life Insurance Building, a thin building created by Kisho Kurokawa in 1978. The arcade running through the building has its shop windows arranged in staggered fashion along the walk-way that traverses this long, narrow, interior thoroughfare, whose ceiling rises nine floors above the promenade. Adjacent is Haibara, which has been selling fine papers since the 18th century in a shop that resembles an old-time kura storage building.

Two blocks farther along Chuo-dori, in Nihombashi 2-chome, is Maruzen on the right, one of Tokyo’s premier bookstores (open from 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. daily). Maruzen has an unusual history, in that it first opened in 1869, right after the Meiji period began, and its intent was to bring Western writings to Japan so as to assist in the modernization of the nation. Besides several floors of Japanese books, it still stocks a wide variety of books in languages other than Japanese. It also sells Japanese crafts, and there is even a café on the premises. Across the way is Takashimaya (open from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. daily), one of the major department stores in Tokyo, with branches elsewhere in Japan. It has an exhibition gallery and restaurants on the upper floors, a fine kimono department, and food sales in the basement; and, as with all such stores, its roof garden offers bonsai and goldfish in season, along with a small Shinto shrine in honor of the deity of the land on which the store is located. It is worth being there at 10:00 a.m. sharp to watch the daily opening ceremony, when the big doors are slowly pulled open to reveal a line of uniformed staff bowing to the first customers of the day.

3 YAESU AND TOKYO STATION

Four minor streets beyond Takashimaya is the wide Yaesu-dori. Across the street on the left side of Chuo-dori is the Bridgestone Museum of Art, with the collection of Shojiro Ishibashi on the second floor of the Bridgestone Building. Shojiro Ishibashi’s last name means “stone bridge,” and thus the name of the company and gallery. While the art of the French Impressionists as well as modern Japanese paintings intrigued Ishibashi, he did not neglect to collect some ancient Greek and modern sculpture as well. (The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays and until 6:00 p.m. on Sundays and national holidays. It is closed on Mondays. Entry is ¥1,000.) The collection includes paintings by Rembrandt, Picasso, Rouault, Utrillo, and Modigliani among others, together with sculptures by Rodin, Moore, and Giacometti. Ishibashi also collected the work of post-Meiji Japanese painters in the Western style, such as Foujita.