A magnificent shidarezakura weeping cherry tree in full bloom adds vivid pinks to the deep vermilion lacquer of the Hozomon Gate at Senso-ji, Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple.
The Imperial Palace
A stone bench makes a great spot to stop and admire the inner moat and waterfowl near the Imperial Palace’s Sakuradamon Gate.
In the middle of the vast city of Tokyo lies the Imperial Palace, the castle grounds surrounded by its walls, moats, gates. It is the official residence of the Japanese Imperial family and even has a mailing address (1, 1-1, Chiyoda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo), yet its grounds also contain presumably primeval forests.
It has been compared to New York’s Central Park and has been called the most expensive property in the world, its worth having been estimated as equivalent to the value of all the real estate in California.
It also constitutes one of the major obstacles to Tokyo traffic, trains, subways, trucks and cars, all these having to make long, crowded detours around it. But no one complains and no one is allowed in, though the pedestrian public can venture onto the inner palace grounds twice a year (January 2 and December 23) to give, respectively, New Year’s greetings and best wishes on His Imperial Highness’s birthday.
Otherwise, the visitor must be content with the single “view”— Nijubashi, a bridge backed by the Fushimi Tower, one of the few original buildings (first half of the 17th century), a view captured on the first Tokyo picture postcard ever printed, and seen on most ever since.
Because Tokyo was from the first a planned military capital, the palace and its grounds have always constituted something of a Forbidden City. The last and largest of Japanese castles, Edo’s towered over the Musashino plain, but did not last long. The main castle keep was destroyed by fire in 1657 and other parts of the castle have been burned a number of times—from the insurrections of 1868 to the U.S. fire bombings of Tokyo in 1945.
Otherwise, all that is left are a number of place names derived from where the enormous castle stood. Takebashi (Bamboo Bridge) where the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art presently resides, Toranomon (Tiger Gate) now a part of Mid City Tokyo, and the Marunouchi district, facing Tokyo Station. It is from this center then that the city spread.
Dawn’s first light warmly illuminates the Palace’s Nijubashi Bridge, overlooked by the Fushimi Yagura Watchtower, a surviving remnant of Edo Castle.
A stone lion, or shishi, stands guard outside the outer defensive walls of the Imperial Palace. Tra – dition dictates that a pair of shishi, one male and the other female, guard the entrances of buildings of importance, such as many temples and shrines.
The massive wooden gate at Yasukuni Shrine dwarfs a young boy in formal kimono.
An imperial watchtower contrasts with a modern office building.
A petite kimono-clad visitor feeds the white pigeons at Yasukuni Shrine.
A white swan glides through the famous “double bridge” refection of Nijubashi Bridge.
The statue of Ota Dokan, the samurai architect who designed and built Edo Castle in 1457, faces the Imperial Palace from inside the modern laminated-glass and steel structure of the Tokyo International Forum.
Rowboats await punters visiting the Chidorigafuchi Moat at the Imperial Palace.
People take boats out in Chidorigafuchi, the northeastern moat of the Imperial Palace, to enjoy a bit of respite in the otherwise bustling heart of the city. April, when the stately cherry trees (sakura) are in full bloom, is a particularly popular time for such outings.
Sakurada-mon is an outer gate of the Imperial Palace. Access to the Imperial Palace’s inner grounds occurs on only two days each year.
THE LOW CITY
The Low City, built on the delta of the Sumida River, is what is left of old Edo.
A handcrafted bamboo ladle rests on the simple bamboo-and-rope cover of a water basin at Toshogu Shrine, located inside Ueno Park.
A Buddhist monk patiently awaits alms from passersby while chanting on Chuo-dori Avenue near Ueno Station.
JUST AS EDO WAS TRADITIONALLY divided into the High City on one hand and the Low City on the other, so the inhabitants are thought of as classified into the samurai class (aristocratic) and the plebian (commoner) class—with perhaps the merchant class forming a kind of mid-class in between.
Class differences, based on Confucian concepts imported from China, were strongly reinforced during the reign of the bakufu, the Tokugawa shogunate’s government. Whatever its other virtues, such doctrine creates a malleable populace, easy to intimidate and to control. Early Edo was like a military camp.
Status, rank, was everything and the resulting classes were to be defined and separated. Everyone was to have his or her place, and there was no leaving it. Samurai must live apart from merchants, craftsmen were to be assigned housing by trade, farmers stayed on the farm, and travel permits were needed to visit even neighboring provinces.
Officially, the most powerful and privileged were the samurai and their daimyo leaders. Beneath them was ranked the peasant class, though in actuality the farmers had little power. Nonetheless, as in most militaristic societies, “the people” were offered official respect. Beneath them were the artisans and at the very bottom (though above the various proscribed classes) were the merchants. Though this lowly merchant class eventually controlled much of the country’s cash and many a samurai was in debt to many a wealthy merchant, as a social category this class was officially denied the power and privilege that it actually held.
Given such top-down cultural control, it is not surprising that Edo’s class structure should have emerged in the strata-like formation still culturally visible. The pyramid looked like this: On top, the samurai (shi), just under this, the farmers (no), below them the artisans (ko) and near the bottom, the merchants (sho).
The upper layer (samurai culture) contains many of those traditional things that foreigners now associate with Japaneseness: the formal kimono, official architecture, fine calligraphy, the Noh drama, ikebana flower arranging, almost all of the martial arts, and much more. This could be called the official culture of the High City folk.