to their domains they had to leave their women and children as hostage in their Edo palaces of Momoyama grandeur as warrant of their good behavior. The expense of maintaining their territorial seat of power and an elaborate establishment in Edo, with the incumbent costly procession between the two locations, financially precluded any attempts on their part to mount a threat by force against the Tokugawas.
As an additional precaution, the Tokugawa shoguns had barriers erected at points along the main highways into Edo, and here the rule of "no women out, no guns in" maintained the hostage system and kept the daimyo weaponless within the new civil capital.
For 265 years the Tokugawas ruled from their mighty Edo Castle, a fortress which only nature and time (but no military attack) would subdue. Its nemesis appeared in the form of earthquakes and fire, and these untoward events occurred on more than one occasion. When in time the rule of the Tokugawas came to an end (1868), Edo was renamed Tokyo (Eastern Capital). Then a sixteen-year-old emperor was moved from Kyoto to reign from the former castle grounds. Ostensibly power had returned from the shogun to the emperor, but time would disclose the powerless nature of imperial rule since the nation's new military leaders were the real power behind the throne and would both enhance and endanger the nation's place in the world. It is one of the ironies of history that in time a blue-eyed "shogun" in the guise of an American general would reign over Japan for a number of years before a new and more democratic form of governance would issue from the political and economic centers about Edo Castle, now become the Imperial Palace of Tokyo.
The walking tours which follow begin at that place from which many visitors arrive at Tokyo: Tokyo Central Station. The walks then spiral out from the palace to encompass the variety that the city has to offer. The subway or rail station from which each walk begins is indicated at the beginning of that walk. Thus with a map of Tokyo (which can be obtained from one's hotel or from the Japan National Tourist Office on Harumi-dori just down from the junction of the Palace and Hibiya Park) and a plan of the Tokyo subway lines, one can venture forth into a fascinating city.
WHEN Tokugawa Ieyasu planned his castle in Edo in 1590, he chose to build it on the high ground above the Hibiya Inlet which spread inland from the great bay (Tokyo Bay) in front of his new capital. Under his direction, that 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 shogunal headquarters were to rise protected by fortified walls and water-filled moats.
The Hibiya Inlet in front of the eastern side of the castle 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. Upon 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 which formed the shitamachi (literally, the "low city") to the east in which lived the common workers who supplied the daimyo and their entourages with their daily needs.
Around the moated castle enclave, between the inner and outer moats, were placed the residences of Ieyasu's most trusted Inside Lords. 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 twentieth century become a ring road about the original central portion of Tokyo and the Imperial Palace grounds. It is only in the decades after the Second World War that the remaining portions of this latter moat were filled in, thus Sotobori-dori now varies between being a ground-level roadway and, in part, an elevated and then an underground roadway. In the northeast portion of the Marunouchi area, between today's Tokyo Central Station and the palace grounds, lay the mansions and dependencies of the Matsudaira lords. 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, these lands housed the most powerful military leaders of Japan. By the 1860s, however, the political and military power of the last two shoguns gradually dissipated. The rule of sankin kotai (alternate attendance) which, after 1635, required both the Inside and Outside Lords to spend two years in Edo and two years in their own lands on an alternate basis, came to an end. Then in 1868, with the victory of the adherents of the Emperor Meiji over the Tokugawa shogunate, the mansions of all the daimyo were abandoned as the provincial lords returned to their home provinces. The deserted buildings were by 1871 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 twenty 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, and thus the Iwasaki family, a leading mercantile and growing industrial clan, were prevailed upon to purchase the vacant Marunouchi area in front of the palace grounds. Known derisively as the Mitsubishi Meadow or even the "Gambler's Meadow" by those who did not have the foresight to buy the land, the Marunouchi district was planned by the Iwasakis to become a Western-style complex of buildings for the industrial and commercial growth they foresaw for the nation. To this end they hired Josiah Conder, an English architect who came to live in Japan in 1877 and who worked not only as an architect but as an instructor at the College of Technology (later to become Tokyo University) to teach architecture. Here he trained the first generation of Japanese architects in the technicalities of Western architecture.
Conder's three-story buildings, which he designed for the Mitsubishi group, were red-brick structures with white stone quoins. Windows and doors were outlined in white stone. Th 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 in Marunouchi, and the not-too-distant Ginza area with its newly paved streets and brick-built structures, were 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 into 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 Conder, was named as the architect of the new Tokyo Central Station (where this walking tour begins), which opened in 1914. The 1,000-foot-long red-brick Renaissance-style station was modeled after the Amsterdam Zentraal station in the Netherlands. The new station faced toward the 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 since the Sotobori (Outer Moat) still ran parallel to the railroad right-of-way to the east, and the interests of the Nihombashi and Kyobashi officials could not be satisfied since each wanted a bridge over the moat to their district. The dispute was not resolved until 1929 when an eastern entrance to the station was created. This latter entrance was greatly enhanced in the 1960s when the high-speed Shinkansen Line with its "Bullet Trains" came into being, for then a whole new, modern terminal structure was built behind the existing station. Also the Daimaru Department Store was built, facing Yaesu Plaza, which covers a portion of the former Sotobori.
Tokyo Central Station, after its opening in 1914, was meant as a memorial for Japan's victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and its main entrance was reserved solely for royal use. The station remained central in name only, for it was the terminus for trains from
