ceremonial structure was re-erected in the 1990s for a portion of the services concerned with the enthronement of Emperor Heisei. Other modern buildings are now located down a slope from the Hon-maru. These include the octagonal Imperial Toka Music Hall, created in 1966 for the then empress’s sixtieth birthday. It is in the shape of an Imperial chrysanthemum petal, and the building by Kenji Imai shows the influence of Antonio Gaudi in its octagonal roof, which is shaped in the form of a peach flower. As a result, the hall has been nicknamed the Peach Auditorium. Imai used traditional Japanese motifs in the mosaic decorations of the external walls of the structure, a somewhat garish-looking building. Adjacent is the Imperial Music Academy and the unattractive, fireproof Imperial Archives and Mausolea Department Building.
One can leave the castle grounds at this point, if one so desires, through the Hirakawamon Gate, on the only wooden bridge over the moat, by taking the path from the Donjon base that runs behind the Archives and Mausolea Building and ultimately to Takebashi Station on the Tozai subway line. Alternatively, as this tour does, one can continue on through the Kita Hanebashi-mon Gate into the Kita-no-maru Park. The Hirakawa-mon was the main gate to the Sanno-maru (Third Keep), which disappeared at the time of the 1657 fire. This wooden gate was a masugata box gate, similar to the Otemon, where this tour began. It was the gate used by the women of the shogun’s residence on the few occasions when they left the castle grounds. Adjacent to it is the smaller Fujomon, the Unclean Gate, through which those convicted of crimes within the castle or the bodies of the deceased were removed.
4 KITA-NO-MARU PARK
Continuing from the Hon-maru area, the Kita Hanebashi-mon (North Drawbridge Gate), leads into the Kita-no-maru, the North Keep, along the Bairin-zaka (Plum Tree Slope), a slope that, it is said, was planted with plum trees back in 1478 by Ota Dokan when he planned the fortress on this eminence. Ota Dokan used this area for the training of his troops, and later under the Tokugawa shoguns it became a walled area for the residences of collateral families of the shogun and for some of his highest officials. After the Long Sleeves Fire of 1657 the area was kept cleared as a fire break in front of the castle buildings. After the demise of the rule by the shoguns in 1868, the area was taken over by the military for barracks for the soldiers of the Imperial Guard who were charged with protecting the Imperial Palace. Kita-no-maru Park became a public park in 1969 in celebration of the birthday of the Showa emperor, Hirohito.
Down the Kinokuni-zaka slope, the National Archives and the National Museum of Modern Art (Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan) by architect Yoshiro Taniguchi are on the right. (The museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; it is closed on Mondays, the New Year period of December 28 through January 1, and for up to a week when the exhibitions are being changed. Entry is normally 420 but is free the first Sunday of each month.) The museum, which was founded in 1952 and was relocated here in 1969, exhibits paintings of Western and Japanese artists in changing exhibitions on the first two floors (a fee is sometimes charged for these showings). The third and fourth floors exhibit paintings by Japanese artists since 1868, with the paintings changing four times a year since the collection exceeds 3,000 pieces.
Cherry blossoms line the approach to the Tayasu-mon Gate
The Crafts Gallery (Kogei-kan), with the same hours as the National Museum of Modern Art, is just a five-minute walk away. Continuing along the path that came from the Kinokuni-zaka and crossing the highway, after a few minutes’ walk the Science Museum lies to the right while the Crafts Gallery is to the left. The Crafts Gallery is housed in a government-listed building that once served as the administrative headquarters of the Imperial Guard. It was at this site that the unusual revolt by 215 of the emperor’s soldiers occurred, when they mutinied on August 23, 1878. They killed their officers, and, marching from their barracks to the Akasaka Palace where Emperor Meiji was then living, they protested the unfair division of rewards to those who had suppressed the Saigo Takamori revolt in Ueno Park and demanded a raise in pay. Severe punishment was meted out after the mutiny was put down, and, because of this insurrection, the military barracks were razed and the divisional headquarters was eventually located here. This 1910 formerly military, Gothic brick structure, in what has been kindly termed “19th-century Renaissance” architecture, is one of five remaining Meiji-period brick buildings in Tokyo. Exhibits are shown on the second floor of this Crafts Gallery building, and they encompass all of the various areas in which Japanese craftsmen have excelled: ceramics, bamboo, lacquer, metal, textiles, and others.
The Science Museum is the other museum in the Kita-no–maru Park. (It is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:50 p.m. but closed on Wednesdays, entry ¥700. It is closed from December 28 through January 3.) The five-story, pentagonal-shaped museum is under the jurisdiction of the Japan Science Foundation, and it has fourteen sections of displays (primarily with Japanese labels) that appeal greatly to children, including workable models and space-age exhibits. It covers many aspects of science, from agriculture to nuclear science and from earthquakes to electricity—the latter topic being described by a robot that lectures to the children. The museum also has a laboratory, a workroom, and a library.
Beyond the museum complex lies the massive Nippon Budo-kan, the Japan Martial Arts Hall, constructed in 1964 for the Olympics of that year. The structure is reminiscent of the Horyu-ji Dream Hall south of Nara but on a more massive scale. Its octagonal roof is topped with a gold-leafed giboshi, an onion-shaped finial such as is often seen on the top of posts of rail fences at traditional Japanese temples. The building, which can seat 14,000 spectators, today is used for sports events, concerts, and other large gatherings—its first use as a concert hall occurred in 1968, when the Beatles came to Japan.
5 YASUKUNI SHRINE
The Kita-no-maru Koen is left through the Tayasu-mon Gate, a former masugata gate, on to Yasukuni-dori slightly to the west of Kudanshita Station on the Toei Shinjuku and the Tozai subway lines. Yasukuni-dori here descends Kudan-zaka (Kudan Hill) to the Jimbocho area to the right, but this tour continues to the left on Yasukuni-dori. At one time this hill was higher and steeper than it now is, but it lost its top half for part of the fill needed to cover the marshy land at its foot as Ieyasu expanded the Shitamachi, the Low City, below his castle. The hill received its name of Kudan, nine steps, because it was so steep that it had to be cut in 1709 into nine stepped-sections for ease of mounting. The slope was further reduced in 1923 with the advent of the motor car. Strange as it may seem, there is a lighthouse (no longer used) at this point. Built in 1871, before as much of the land of Tokyo Bay was filled in and before tall buildings were erected, this beacon could be observed by boats in Tokyo Bay. Originally the lighthouse was in the Yasukuni grounds, but it was later moved to the south side of Yasukuni-dori.
Toward the end of the Tokugawa period there were barracks for the military at the top of Kudan Hill, but in 1869 it became the site for a “Shrine to Which the Spirits of the Dead Are Invited,” originally called the Tokyo Shokonsha and now called Yasukuni Shrine. The shrine was intended to honor those who had died in the battles for the Meiji Imperial Restoration and the extinguishing of Tokugawa rule. In traditional Japanese custom, the spirits of the dead are enshrined here and can be feasted and entertained, not unlike the O Bon ceremonies of the Buddhist faith—a faith, ironically, that the Meiji leaders did not favor. The shrine was run by the army until 1945 and thus became the center of the most rabid nationalism. It still attracts right-wing militarists and extreme nationalists today.
In 1879 the Tokyo Shokonsha became the Yasukuni Jinja, the “Shrine of Peace for the Nation,” on a more organized basis. Here horse racing took place until 1898, and there were sumo matches and the performance of Noh plays; in fact, a Noh stage was constructed on the grounds in 1902. In 1882, the Treasury (Yushu-kan), a military exhibition hall was built, and it today houses exhibits that honor the various wars Japan became involved in after 1868, down to and including World War II. (Open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., entry ¥800.) While commemorating the dead of the war, as is the purpose of the shrine, the displays, which range from the human torpedoes and even a Zero fighter and a steam engine from the Bridge of the River Kwai episode, often seem to glorify the warlike in the Japanese past rather than the succoring of the spirits of the war dead. The labels of the exhibits, in Japanese, still offer the warped militaristic view of Japan’s aggressive actions in Asia between 1895 and 1945.