were gradually given to the public as parkland. These include the Imperial Palace Outer Garden along Hibiya-dori in front of the palace, the Imperial Palace East Garden, which contains the remains of the former Tokugawa castle, and Kita-no-maru Park, which was also 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 (ceremonial suicide), their deaths supposedly serving as atonement for Japan losing its war in the Pacific. In the 1950s and 1960s, it became a place for public demonstrations against unpopular government decisions, many of these gatherings being anti-American in nature.
Hibiya-dori extends along the moat before the Outer Gardens and the palace, with a range of modern office buildings on its eastern side. As you turn to the left from the boulevard leading from Tokyo Station and head south on Hibiya-dori, the buildings you see between the railway and the Outer Garden cover not only the site of the Matsudaira daimyo mansion and ancillary buildings but as well the building in which the shogun’s chief Confucian advisor, Hayashi Razan, once held sway. Prior to the 19th century, the shogun’s 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 that could fight the “flowers of Edo,” the outbreaks of fires that 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 Low City when fires broke out. Unfortunately, not even the daimyo’s firefighters were always successful, and in the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657 even the shogun’s castle was destroyed when flames engulfed it. The shogun’s 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 when he came of age, and Ando Hiroshige made his name through his woodblock prints instead of the quenching of flames.
Office buildings reflected in the Hibiya-bori Moat
2 IMPERIAL THEATER/IDEMITSU ART MUSEUM
One full street along Hibiya-dori beyond the bridge over the Babasaki Moat is the Kokusai Building, the International Building. Within it is the Imperial Theater (Teikoku Gekijo), which opened in 1911. It was the first major Western-style theater in Tokyo, and it was generously ornamented with marble and enhanced with splendid tapestries 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 the home to many popular contemporary American musicals. The theater occupies the first three floors of the Kokusai Building. The main entrance to the building is found on its south side, and here are elevators that may be taken to the ninth floor and the Idemitsu Art Museum, which contains one of the finest collections of Asian art in Japan. (The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. [6:30 p.m. on Fridays]. It is closed Mondays and the New Year holidays. Entry ¥1,000.) Created by the president of the Idemitsu Oil Company, it has four large rooms that provide space for the display of the collection’s riches. The main room presents objects from the museum’s fine collection of Chinese ceramics, which range from prehistoric times through to the 18th century. Japanese ceramics are also well represented, with examples of Imari, Kutani, Seto, Nabeshima, and Kakiemon wares.
Another room in the museum shows selections from 16th- and 17th-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 the varied and very large collection of ceramic shards from Persia to southeast and eastern Asia. Chinese and Japanese lacquerware of the most excellent quality is also on view. Happily, the labels in the exhibition cases are in both English and Japanese. Since 1972 the museum has branched into another area of art, with the acquisition of more than 400 works by the French painter Georges Rouault. Besides its artistic attractions, the location of the museum on the ninth floor of the Kokusai Building provides an excellent view of the Imperial Palace Outer Garden. In addition, a coffee shop offers a place for relaxation among the artistry of the Asian ages
Guard tower on the Imperial Palace’s outer moats
Continuing south on Hibiya-dori, across the street from the Kokusai Building is the Dai Ichi Insurance Building, encompassing the full frontage of the street on which it sits facing the palace grounds. Built in 1938 to the design of Watanabe Matsumoto in what was the modern International Style, one particularly favored by authoritarian governments of the day, it had ten huge columns on its façade supporting two upper floors. One of the modern, fireproof buildings of pre–World War II Tokyo, it managed to survive the bombings and firestorms of the war years. Today the façade of the building has been covered over with a bland end-of-the-20th-century facing, while a new tower of 21 stories, designed by the American architect Kevin Roche, rises behind the original structure. Whatever character the front of the building once had, it has now been effaced. Here in the original building, from September 15, 1945, until April 11, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur, the “Blue-eyed Shogun” as the Japanese then called him (it was a Japanese folk belief that all Occidental gaijin had blue eyes) had his headquarters as the military and civilian representative of the victorious Allied forces at the end of World War II. His sixth-floor, walnut-paneled office was simply furnished with a conference table and a green leather armchair. In many ways, the general’s office virtually became a museum after his departure, and now it is used by the head of the Dai Ichi Mutual Insurance Company.
3 THE IMPERIAL PALACE OUTER GARDEN
Crossing the street from the Dai Ichi Insurance Building and following the moat north on Hibiya-dori about a hundred yards, you reach a bridge leading into the Imperial Palace Outer Garden (Kokyo Gaien). In the Outer Gardens, which lie in front of the walls of the palace grounds, one can enjoy one of the few open spaces within this crowded city. This portion of Tokyo has seen many transformations in the 550 years since Ota Dokan in 1457 first built his fortified mansion and two other fortresses on the heights above today’s garden. Then there was no garden, for Hibiya Inlet stretched this far inland, providing a natural moat before the fortified hill. The tiny town that Ota Dokan began below his hillside fortress received its name of Edo from its location, the word signifying “waterfront” or “mouth of the river.” The town was to grow, but in the unpredictable politics of his day, Ota Dokan was assassinated at his lord’s behest in 1486, and his fortified mansion and stronghold became derelict. One hundred years had to pass before a more massive castle would arise on the site and before Edo would see a renewal of its growth to become a major city.
This present parkland was created when Tokugawa Ieyasu moved his headquarters from Shizuoka to the site of Ota Dokan’s castle in the 1590s. Ieyasu had Hibiya Inlet filled in with land from the hills of Kanda to the north, and the newly created land became the site of the mansions of the inside lords, the fudai daimyo, who were his closest allies. After 1868, with the fall of the Tokugawas, the Meiji government established its offices in the area in which the daimyo had lived. These offices were relocated from Kyoto into former daimyo buildings in Tokyo, a not too satisfactory arrangement. Relocation of the offices into more practical quarters was inevitable, and in the period after 1889 Marunouchi, as described above, was sold to the Mitsubishi family in order to raise funds for the proper housing of governmental functions. In 1889 the government offices were removed from that portion of what is now the Outer Gardens, pine trees were planted, and the land in front of the palace became a public park.
In 1897 a bronze
