Tokyo: A Biography. Stephen Mansfield
during the fall of Hojo castle. At the suggestion of Ieyasu, the promise was sealed by the two of them urinating in unison in the direction of Odawara—perhaps the only example in history of the fate of a location destined to become a world-class city being sealed with the simultaneous relieving of bladders.
It took a visionary to see abundant promise in the mosquito-infested salt inlets and reedy swamps at the head of the long bay where Ieyasu would build his bastion. Geography may be destiny, but shared perceptions cannot be assumed. The two men’s visions of Edo could not have been more different: Hideyoshi judged the under populated wetlands to be a godforsaken place with a deficit of natural spring water; Ieyasu envisaged a dazzling new city, a civil and military citadel encircled by a great bay fed by a system of navigable rivers.
Ieyasu, in common with other authoritarian city-builders the world over, possessed the mind of an engineer. Casting an eye over the worm-eaten fishing huts, salt-eroded port structures, termite-infested storehouses, and decaying steps to the main gate of Ota’s soot-blackened fortress, Ieyasu saw immense promise, visualizing the infrastructure of a great city where others saw only a morass. Even the moderately astute could see some advantages to a site at the entrance to the Kanto plain that had sea access and was near the estuaries of Japan’s greatest waterway in the east, the Tone River. Located at the top of the bay, the site would be easy to defend, and was less vulnerable to storms than other sea-facing settlements like nearby Kamakura.
After winning the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Ieyasu emerged as shogun from the power struggle that had ensued after Hideyoshi’s death in 1598. Ieyasu was unchallenged in his control of the entire country, leaving a powerless emperor and effete court to their own distractions in Kyoto. His first official entry into the city may have occurred as early as the summer of 1590; he would have passed his first night in a Buddhist temple, at that time a common form of lodging for high-ranking visitors. The endorsement of the new city and its military regime by Shinto and Buddhist priests was considered crucial to the legitimacy of the city. Like those of the pagan priests of Rome, their services—which included dedicatory rites, funereal proceedings, and important consecrations—accorded the priests a status only a little below that of the warrior class.
It was important for Ieyasu that the physical structure of Edo replicate the hierarchical social order of what would arguably become the most well-managed feudal society the world has ever known. The master plan required strict social and occupational classes: peasants, artisans, and merchants. The members of one class could not legally intermarry with members of another class; nor, at least in theory, could they change their occupations.
Below the house-owning merchant families and the service class who rented property were outcast groups known as eta and hinin. Discrimination extended to the districts in which they were permitted to live; these were well removed from the daimyo and samurai. Clothing and hairstyles were required to be functional, understated. Outcasts lived in hamlets on the periphery of the city, engaging in the most onerous tasks: working in slaughter houses, curing animal hides, digging ditches, disposing of the dead, assisting in torture chambers and at the execution grounds. Others eked out a living as street performers, fortunetellers, blind musicians, and wandering mendicants.
The 176 fudai daimyo (inside lords) who had risked their estates and livelihoods by supporting Ieyasu even in the days before his victory at Sekigahara were allocated choice parcels of land to build estates on within the shadow of Edo Castle; the tozama daimyo (outer lords), the eighty-six noblemen not prescient enough to ally themselves with Ieyasu, were to reside in more peripheral zones, where allegiance and its concomitant compliance became a form of survival. An inability to trust one’s own subjects—a characteristic of all dictatorships—was reflected in a complicated system called sankin kotai (alternative residence). This required all daimyo to maintain two residencies: one in Edo, the other in their home province. One year was to be spent at the Edo residence, the next at their domain. The divide-and-rule approach was reinforced by the stipulation that half of the outer lords had to make their return to Edo in March every year, while the other half returned to their ancestral homes at the same time. The inside lords did the same in August. The processions marking their departure and return required costly displays of pomp and ostentation. A further proviso required daimyo to leave their consorts, children and heirs apparent permanently in their Edo residencies as a warranty against insurrection. For good measure, the shogunate erected barriers along the main routes into Edo, enforcing a “no women out, no weapons in” rule.
Obliging the daimyo to live in grand style while in Edo, to build residencies in a style reflecting the more sumptuous tastes of the earlier Momoyama era, and to maintain large retinues and staff ensured they did not have sufficient funds to purchase arms and mount an insurgency. In the most effective tradition of menace, the real purpose of alternative residence was never spelled out, but implicitly understood. The system firmly established Edo—as opposed to the imperial capital of Kyoto—as the country’s de facto seat of governance, and therefore an unassailable military citadel.
The obsession with security and the determination to build a fortress impregnable to any potential assailant dictated that steep walls be used to face the raised ground above the moats surrounding the citadel. The granite and volcanic rock used in the construction of the elevated embankments came from the Izu peninsula, some 85 kilometers south of Edo. Carried by ships, some three thousand all told, the rocks were offloaded at the dock and then dragged by rotating teams of laborers and ox carts. Seaweed was placed under the larger stones to facilitate their movement, and itinerant musicians blowing conches, banging drums, and dancing in a comedic parody of “southern barbarians” (as Europeans were called) were employed to spur on the work.
The castle’s inner ramparts consisted of massive walls of stone curving outward in graceful convex lines from moats. Pine trees, planted at the top of the fortifications, were carefully trained to lean downward over the curving masonry and the water’s surface. The medina of water channels, tidewater moats, estates, and alleys formed both an auspicious and physically protective cosmos with the castle at the gravitational center. The impregnability of the castle was never tested, but the plans show a structure that was as impervious as any Saracen fortress or Cathar stronghold.
Being the central topographical feature of the early city, the castle was also its nerve center, a structure whose centrality to the life of the city was highlighted by its strategic positioning. The primacy of Edo Castle—which was finally completed in 1640— was emphasized in maps of the city: it was always shown at the center, occupying Edo’s most elevated ground. The prestige of place and site names, usually written vertically, were reflected in the location and direction of the ideograms used on the maps to represent them. Thus the higher status of Buddhist temples and shrines means that, cartographically speaking, they were shown facing toward the castle. Likewise, private residences and shops were depicted facing away from the castle in accordance with their status.
The form of the castle and its protective moats resembled a logarithmic spiral. This shape is associated with a mystical form in Shinto originating from the Taoist yin-yang, the harmony of opposites that underpins the functioning of the universe. The design of Edo Castle and its environs may have favored the circular to fortify an unassailable political system, but the directions—the energy flows of the city—were far from centrifugal. Chinese geomancy dictated how principles, symbols, and directions should influence the auspicious placement of buildings. The troublesome east, direction of the Cyan Dragon, required a waterway; this was provided by the Sumida River. The west, domain of the White Tiger, demanded a major highway—one already in place in the form of the Tokaido trunk road. The south, provenance of the Vermillion Bird, required a pond. This called for a little more creative thinking, but a surrogate was found in the waters of Edo Bay. A mountain was mandatory for the northerly direction, habitat of the Dark Warrior, but the only option was Mount Fuji in the west. This problem was solved by reorienting the castle’s main gate, the Ote-mon, from the south to the east. If the fortress were read as a compass, the sacred peak could be understood to occupy the northern coordinate. Geomancy dictated that on maps, Edo had to be oriented (rotated more than 90 degrees counter-clockwise) so that Mount Fuji’s actual west-southwest orientation would correspond with Gembu, the god of the north.
Geomantic concerns continued to occupy the thoughts of subsequent shoguns in their