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 the buildings between the two terminals. With the completion of the elevated Yamanote Line in 1925, which circles a major portion of Tokyo, it was finally possible to link Ueno Station and Tokyo Central Station.
The early future of Marunouchi looked brighter when the Tokyo city and prefectural governments agreed to share a new building in the former daimyo quarter. A red-brick, 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 the 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 as the city hall moved farther west to Shinjuku. The new city hall was also designed by Tange.)
The new station became the "front door" to the city, and gradually office buildings in Marunouchi, as London Town came to be known, filled the "Mitsubishi Meadows" between the railroad and the Palace over the next twenty-five years. The life of modern buildings is frequently all too short, and Conder's buildings gradually were replaced from 1930 on by newer and larger structures. The last remnant of London Town, Mitsubishi Building Number One, disappeared in 1967 in the post-Second World War construction boom. The limit of seven to eight floors (100 feet in height) 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. According to Edward Seidensticker, one of these original Buddhas resides in the basement of the Marunouchi Building, hardly a protection against the deity of lightning.
This tour of Marunouchi and Yurakucho begins at the eastern side of Tokyo Central Station, a bustling center whose daily train traffic its original planners could not have envisioned. Twelve train platforms above and below ground receive three thousand 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 leads from the plaza in front of the station to Hibiya-dori and the park before the Imperial Palace that was created in 1926. The building on the left of the beginning of this boulevard was the Marunouchi Building (Maru Number One), completed just before the 1923 earthquake. It marked the beginning of a new era for Marunouchi, for this eight-story building was the largest one in Japan at the time, and it helped to attract financial and commercial firms to this area of geometrically planned streets. The district was fortunate in that it remained undamaged in the 1923 earthquake and from the major air raids of 1945, although it too is now gone.
A companion building on the right of the beginning of the boulevard is the New Marunouchi Building (Maru Number Two), which appears to be a twin to the original structure across the way. Its foundations were in place before the Second World War, but it remained a stagnant pool until 1951, when work finally commenced on its completion. The success of the onetime London Town is obvious from the number of high-rise buildings in the district. The 1958 Otemachi Building, which can hold forty-thousand employees, is a prime example of the change which has come over the "Mitsubishi Meadows."
Two streets along the boulevard bring one to Hibiya-dori, the Babasaki-bori (Moat in Front of the Horse Grounds), and the beginning of the Imperial Palace Outer Gardens. (The moat has this strange name since it derives from a 1635 display of horse-manship 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 which were a portion of the castle grounds were gradually given to the public as parkland. These include the Imperial Palace Outer Garden along Hibiyadori in front of the Palace, the Imperial Palace East Garden, which contains the remains of the former Tokugawa castle, and the Kita-no-Maru Park, which was once also a 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 (ritual suicide), their deaths supposedly atoning for Japan's loss in the Pacific War. In the 1950s and 1960s it became a place for public demonstrations against unpopular government decisions. Many of these gatherings were anti-American in nature.
Hibiya-dori extends along the Outer Gardens and the palace with a range of modern office buildings on its eastern side. Turning to the left from the boulevard leading from the Tokyo Station and heading south (to the left) on Hibiya-dori, the present buildings between the railway and the Outer Garden cover not only the site of the Matsudaira daimyo mansion and ancillary buildings but also the building in which the shogun's chief Confucian advisor, Hayashi Razan, once held sway.
Prior to the nineteenth century the shogunal 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 which could fight the "Flowers of Edo," outbreaks of fires which 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 shitamachi when fires broke out. Unfortunately, not even the firefighters of the daimyo were always successful, and in the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657 the shogun's castle was engulfed in flames and destroyed. The shogunal 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, and Ando Hiroshige chose to make his name through his woodblock prints instead.
One full street along Hibiya-dori beyond the bridge over the Babasaki Moat is the Kokusai Building. Within it is the Imperial Theater, which opened in 1911. It was the first major Western-style theater in Tokyo, and it was highly decorated with a generous use of marble. Splendid tapestries hung in it as well, 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 home to many popular contemporary American musicals. The theater occupies the first three floors of the Kokusai Building.
The main entrance to the Kokusai Building is found on its south side. Here are elevators which may be taken to the ninth floor to the Idemitsu Art Museum, a museum containing one of the finest collections of Asian art in Japan. (The museum is open from 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. NO admission after 4:30. It is closed Mondays, but open on Monday if a national holiday and then closed the next day. Also closed over the New Year holidays. Entry fee.) Created by the president of the Idemitsu Oil Company, it has four large rooms which provide space for the display of the riches of the collection. The main room presents objects from the museum's fine collection of Chinese ceramics, which range from prehistoric times through to the eighteenth century. Japanese ceramics are also well represented with examples of Imari, Kutani, Seto, Nabeshima, and Kakiemon wares.
Another room shows selections from sixteenth and seventeenth 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 a varied and very large collection of ceramic shards representing a range of countries from Iran (Persia) to southeast and eastern Asia. Chinese and Japanese
