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,
