The Hall of State is a 1968 ferrocon-crete, earthquake-proof and fireproof structure that serves as a reception and banqueting hall for official imperial events. The Kyuden consists of three buildings: the Seiden, where, in the Pine Tree Hall (Matsuno-ma), the Imperial family receives greetings from the prime minister and his cabinet in the annual New Year reception; the Homeiden, where formal dinners are held for foreign dignitaries; and the Chowaden, which has the balcony for imperial public greetings. The imperial private residence is in the Fukiage Palace in the western portion of the grounds, a structure that was constructed (1991–1993) to replace the unit built after World War II. (In Tokugawa times this 28-acre [11.2-hectare] sector 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. It is possible through advanced planning to have a tour of the palace grounds. This necessitates either telephoning the Imperial Household Agency (Kunaicho) at 03-3213-1111 (open 8:45 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday) or applying online (via http://sankan.kunaicho.go.jp/english). Applications need to be made more than a day ahead of the proposed visit. Then a trip to the Kunaicho, at least a day before the visit, through the Sakashitamon entry, with one’s passport, enables one to obtain the permit for the tour. Tours start at the Kikyo-mon gateway at 10:00 a.m. and at 1:30 p.m., again with one’s passport handy, and last one hour and fifteen minutes. The tours, of course, are given in Japanese.
One of Tokyo’s most photographed scenes: a glimpse of Fushimi Yagura tower behind Nijubashi Bridge
The entry through which the public may go into the palace grounds on the two occasions when they may visit these private areas is by the 1888 Nijubashi Bridge. Although it is usually called the Double Bridge, the name originally referred to a Double Layer Bridge, a wooden bridge and then 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 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 Sei-mon (Main Gate), and into the Kyuden’s East Garden in five or so minutes 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 that constitutes the Imperial Household Agency offices, the very conservative bureaucracy that safeguards and controls the heritage and activities of the imperial family. The buildings of the Household Agency stand before the Momiji-yama, the hill named for its maple (momiji) trees, an area more poetically known as the Hill of Autumn Leaves because of the lovely color of the trees’ foliage 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 spirit throughout Japan that 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, which is concerned with the original castle and its present site. Here on March 24, 1860, occurred an event that was to weaken the Tokugawa shogunate’s rule 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 with their swords sheathed against the snow, made their way to the castle grounds. Ii Naosuke 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 Tokugawas, 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 Sakuradamon Gate and crossing the Gaien Hibiya moat today and then Harumi-dori, one is faced by the white-tiled exterior of the 1980 18-story Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to the right, and the 1895 Ministry of Justice building to the left. The present police headquarters stands on the site of a pre–World War II jail, where 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 the architecture. The original roof of the building was damaged in the 1945 air raids and was replaced with a flat roof that would have caused the architects even further unhappiness. It is one of the few Meiji period brick buildings still standing, and it and its grounds underwent extensive restoration in the 1990s.
Hibiya Park in bloom. The park makes for a lovely place to stop with a packed lunch during the walk.
4 HIBIYA PARK
Turning to the left along Harumi-dori, the northwest corner of Hibiya Park (Hibiya Koen) is at hand. Halfway down the street there is a path that leads through this 41-acre (16.4-hectare) park, which before 1868 held daimyo residences. Whereas Ieyasu’s most dependable allies had their mansions in front of the castle gate in the Marunouchi area, the outside lords (tozama daimyo), who were not among Ieyasu’s allies prior to 1603, were permitted to lease lands at a further remove from the castle main gate. 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 treacherous intentions. Here, beyond the outer ramparts of the castle, were the residences of the powerful Nabeshima clan of Saga on the island of Kyushu and of the Mori clan of Choshu in western Japan. (Sixty percent of the land in Edo belonged to the daimyo and their followers, who represented less than half the population of Edo, while 20 percent was occupied by commoners and another 20 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 just before the turn 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 simpler style. New sumptuary laws together with the alternate attendance requirement—which entailed the expenses of a full entou-rage traveling to and from the home provinces and as well as the maintenance of mansions there as well as in 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 permanent Tokyo headquarters, their parade ground was moved to the then edge of the city in the 1890s. Plans were drawn for the building of 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 Edo 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 a number of amenities: the Felice Garden Hibiya on its Harumi-dori side;