Tokyo: 29 Walks in the World's Most Exciting City. John H. Martin
such areas as Ginza, Shibuya, or Shinjuku, but the listings are not meant to be comprehensive. Museums are noted and some described in the course of a tour, but many of these require a separate visit in order to enjoy their extensive holdings. Each tour is so organized that one can leave it at a specific subway station and return at another time if the tour is found to be longer than desired.
Part of the pleasure of walking in Tokyo comes from viewing the architectural variety Expressed in many of the unusual structures within the city. In the last quarter of the 20th century, Japanese architects (and some foreign architects with Tokyo commissions as well) became more imaginative and more daring in their architectural designs. Experimentation, innovation, creativity, and sometimes even extravagant conceptions have appeared on the face of the city. Witness the façade of one building on Meiji-dori near the Togo Shrine that has a jagged crack built into its construction, as though the building had been damaged by an earthquake. Or view the building near the Ebisu rail station that lacks the lower part of its façade, again as though a cataclysmic event had exposed a portion of the inner building.
Nihombashi, the commercial center of Edo in the early days, with Mt. Fuji in the background
The walking tours that follow begin at that place where many visitors arrive in Tokyo, Tokyo Station. The walks then spiral out from the palace and the castle to encompass the variety that the city has to offer. The subway or other rail station from which each walk begins is indicated at the start of the walk, and specific instructions as to how to get there are provided in sidebars at the end. Thus, with the map of the city and the plan of the Tokyo subway lines provided herein, one can venture forth into a fascinating modern and ancient metropolis. Before striking out into unknown territory, one can always purchase sandwiches from the many convenience stores in order to have a picnic lunch en route at a park or a shrine. These stores, which are open 24 hours a day, can also provide food for breakfast and dinners should one find restaurant or hotel dining prices too high.
No book on Tokyo, nor any individual who is interested in the capital of Japan as a living city with roots in a storied past, can afford to ignore the scholarly yet popular volume by Paul Waley in his Tokyo Now and Then or Edward Seidenstecker’s Low City, High City and Tokyo Rising, or Sumiko Enbutsu’s Old Tokyo. These volumes are essential guidance for anyone wishing further information on a most fascinating city.
Walking Tour 1
MARUNOUCHI, THE IMPERIAL PALACE AND HIBIYA PARK
Within the Moat, the Blue-eyed Shogun, the Imperial Palace, the “Hall of the Cry of the Stag,” and the Imperial Hotel
1 Tokyo Station
2 Imperial Theater/Idemitsu Art Museum
3 The Imperial Palace Outer Garden
4 Hibiya Park
5 The Imperial Hotel
When Tokugawa Ieyasu planned his castle in Edo in 1590, he chose to build it on the high ground above the inlet that spread inland from the great bay—then called Edo, and now Tokyo, Bay—in front of his new capital. Under his direction, Hibiya Inlet and various rivers in the vicinity of the castle were channeled so as to form canals and moats about the innermost portion of the city. Here, behind these watery barriers, the shogun’s headquarters were to rise, protected by fortified walls and water-filled moats.
In front of the eastern side of the castle, the inlet was soon filled in, leaving an inner moat and, beyond the filled inlet, an outer moat. Earth for the project was taken from the higher terrain known as Yamanote, the “High City,” to the west and north. On the newly reclaimed land between the inner and outer moats, an area called Marunouchi (Within the Moats) housed the mansions of the daimyo most favored by the Tokugawa shoguns. Additional fill was used to make the Shitamachi, or “Low City,” to the east, where the common workers who supplied the daily needs of the daimyo and their entourages lived.
Ieyasu’s most trusted, or “inside,” lords resided in the castle enclave between the inner and outer moats. Today, Uchibori-dori, Inner Moat Street, borders the Imperial Palace grounds on the palace’s eastern side, and a portion of this moat is still in existence. Sotobori-dori, Outer Moat Street, has in the 20th century become a ring road about the original central portion of Tokyo and the Imperial Palace grounds. It was only in the decades after World War II that the remaining portions of the outer moat were filled in, and thus Sotobori-dori now varies between being a ground-level roadway and, in part, an elevated and then underground roadway. In the northeast portion of the Marunouchi area, between today’s Tokyo Station and the palace grounds, lay the mansions and dependencies of the Matsudaira lords in former times. To the south, in front of today’s Imperial Palace Plaza, were the mansions of the Honda, the Sakai, and other favored daimyo.
For some 260 years, the most powerful military leaders of Japan occupied these lands. By the 1860s, however, the political and military power of the last two shoguns had gradually dissipated. The rule of sankin kotai (alternate attendance), which, after 1635, required both the inside and outside daimyo to spend two years in Edo alternating with two years on their own lands, was to come to an end. Then in 1868, with the victory of the adherents of Emperor Meiji over the Tokugawa shoguns, the mansions of all the daimyo were abandoned as the former provincial lords returned to their home provinces. By 1871, the deserted buildings were either used for government offices when these offices were moved to Tokyo from Kyoto, or were cleared for military drill grounds for a growing and ever more militaristic government.
By 1890, within 20 years of the imperial takeover of Edo, now Tokyo, the Meiji government and the military authorities required funds for the development of new establishments for their growing needs. Thus the land “within the moats” was put up for sale. The Imperial Household did not have the funds to purchase the land, so the Mitsubishi, a leading mercantile and growing industrial family, were prevailed upon to acquire the vacant Marunouchi area in front of the palace grounds. Known derisively as Mitsubishi Meadow or the Gambler’s Meadow by those who did not have the foresight to buy the land, the Marunouchi was intended by the Mitsubishi for a Western-style complex of buildings in anticipation of the industrial and commercial growth they foresaw for the nation. To this end, they hired Josiah Condor, an English architect who came to live in Japan in 1877 and who worked not only as an architect but as an instructor of architecture at the College of Technology (later to become Tokyo University). There he trained the first generation of Japanese architects in the technicalities of Western practice.
The three-story buildings that Condor designed for the Mitsubishi were redbrick structures with white stone quoins and windows and doors outlined in white stone. The new Western-style district he created was known as London Town. Its streets were lined with trees and the newest of modern appurtenances, poles to support above-ground electric wires. London Town, with its Queen Anne–style architecture extending to the not-too-distant Ginza area, with newly paved streets and brick-built structures, was the pride of the Meiji era. The sponsors of London Town hoped that it would quickly become the new commercial and financial center of Tokyo. The first building was completed in 1894, but unfortunately the Stock Exchange, the Bank of Japan, and other financial and commercial establishments remained in Nihombashi to the east. Success for London Town had to await the arrival of the railroad in central Tokyo.
The extension of the railroad from Shimbashi, south of the Ginza area, into Marunouchi finally became a reality in 1914. Dr. Tatsuno Kingo, a student of Josiah Condor, was named as the architect of the new Tokyo Station (where this walking tour begins), which opened in 1914. The thousand-foot-long redbrick Renaissance-style station was modeled after Amsterdam’s Zentraal Station and faced east, toward London Town and the Imperial Palace. The plan to have an entrance on the eastern side of the station was stymied for years because the Sotobori moat still ran parallel to the railroad right-of-way on that side, and the Nihombashi and Kyobashi officials each wanted a bridge over the moat to go to their district. The dispute was not resolved and an eastern entrance to the station created until 1929. When the high-speed