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.
On the two occasions when they may visit these private areas, the public may come into the palace grounds by means of the 1888 Nijubashi bridge. Although it is usually referred to as the Double Bridge, the name originally referred to the Double Layer Bridge, a wooden bridge and 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 name "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 Seimon (Main Gate), into the Kyakuden East Garden in five minutes or so, and 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 which constitutes the Imperial Household Agency offices, the very conservative bureaucracy which safeguards and controls the heritage and activities of the imperial family. The buildings of the Household Agency stand before Momijiyama, the hill named for its maple trees, an area which is more poetically known as the Hill of Autumn Leaves from the lovely color of the foliage of the trees 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 spiritthroughoutJapan and which 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, a tour which is concerned with the original castle and its present site. Here on March 24, 1860, occurred an event which was to weaken the Tokugawa shogunate 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 made their way to the castle grounds. Ii 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 Tokugawa, 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 Sakurada-mon gate and crossing the Gaisen-Hibiya moat today and then Harumi-dori, one is faced by the white-tiled exterior of the 1980 eighteen-story Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to the right and tile 1895 Ministry of Justice building to the left. The present police headquarters stands on the site of a pre-Second World War jail, one in which 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 prevail. The original roof of the building was damaged in the 1945 air raids and was replaced with a flat roof which would have caused the architects even further unhappiness. It is one of the few Meiji era brick buildings still standing, and it and its grounds underwent extensive restoration in the 1990s.
Turning to the left along Harumi-dori, the northwest corner of Hibiya Park is at hand. Halfway down the street there is a path which leads through this forty-one-acre park which held daimyo residences before 1868. Whereas Shogun Ieyasu's most dependable allies had their mansions in front of the castle gate in the Marunouchi area, the Outside Lords who were not among Ieyasu's allies prior to 1603 were permitted to lease lands at a further remove from the castle main gate. Living 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 any treacherous intentions. Here were the residences of the powerful Nabeshima clan of Saga on the island of Kyushu and that of the Mori clan of Choshu in western Japan, mansions located beyond the outer ramparts of the castle. Sixty percent of the land in Edo belonged to the daimyo and their followers, who represented less than half the population of Edo, while twenty percent was occupied by commoners, and another twenty 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 at the beginning 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 more simple style. New sumptuary laws and the alternate attendance requirement, with its costly journeys by full entourages and the expense of maintaining mansions in home provinces as well as 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 a permanent Tokyo headquarters, their parade ground was moved to the edge of the city in the 1890s. Plans were drawn to build 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 Tokyo 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 several amenities: the Hibiya Gallery on its Harumi-dori side, a 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 cafe, two restaurants, a lake, ponds, lawns, flower gardens, tennis courts, and a tiered outdoor area where today jazz, folk, and other popular music attracts young music lovers. In 1961 a large fountain was added to the park, and it is illuminated with seven colors at night. The park also is notorious for having become a trysting place for lovers, and thereby a resort for peeping toms. There is even a small museum devoted to the history of the park. The museum is open from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. except on Mondays.
The park is noted for its cherry 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 which draws many visitors. The park also contains dogwood trees that were a gift from the United States in appreciation of the Japanese cherry trees which 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.
The Imperial Palace Outer Gardens were not the only public spot used for 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 which ensued, the government declared martial law. Again in the 1950s and 1960s, protests against Japanese government relations with the United States were centered here. The 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 Inejiro Asanuma,
