Tokyo: A Biography. Stephen Mansfield
forces. In 1624, the second shogun, Hidetaka, asked the influential priest Tenkai to construct a temple in the northeast quarter of Ueno. Both the quarter and the cardinal point were believed to be the source from which evil flowed. To block this portal, known as the Kimon (Devil’s Gate), Tenkai constructed Kan’ei-ji temple. Successive shoguns continued developing the barrier; by 1700, there were no fewer than thirty-six sub-temples in the area.
The diagonal flow of malign forces required a temple counterpart to Kan’ei-ji in the southeast. In accordance with these beliefs, the great Zojo-ji, a temple of the Jodo sect, was established in Shiba in 1598. At its height it must have been a magnificent complex, with forty-eight sub-temples and over a hundred structures in all. On completion, the mausoleums of the Tokugawa shoguns lined each side of the temple. Their compounds were replete with the lacquered gates and carved and painted transoms, eaves, and beams attesting to the Tokugawa love of elaboration. These features are evident not only in their private residences and art collections, but also in the great shrine and mausoleum that would be built for the shogun Ieyasu at Nikko in Tochigi Prefecture.
Both sets of daimyo—the favored and the disgraced—were expected to supply labor, funds, and materials for the construction of ambitious projects, particularly the building of Edo Castle, a project that would take several more decades to complete. Compliance was considered a test of allegiance. In a city built by fiat, policy was made by diktat; advice, when it was solicited, was taken exclusively from the inside lords and those close to them, deemed infallible loyalists. The Hibiya inlet, at the eastern edge of the castle site, was filled in with earth taken from the Surugadai hill in Kanda to the north. Impressive feats of engineering, which involved diverting water channels and rivers to form a spiderweb of canals and an inner and outer moat, were required to complete the system. The Kanda River was co-opted as a source of water for the moats surrounding the castle, a function it still serves today. Landfills were created by removing earth from the high terrain of the Yamanote hills to the north and west. A waterway known as the Dosanbori Canal was dug to enable the transportation of construction materials. Ieyasu used the construction as a way to test the loyalty of his supporters and as a further attempt to deplete the coffers of suspected rivals by demanding massive outlays from them in material resources as well as assignments of corvée labor. This was all part of a colossal civil engineering project called tenka-fushin (construction of the realm).
With the circulation of waterways for transport and security determined, the practical business of providing a flow of potable water for Edo became an immediate priority. Early attempts to bore wells in the coastal city had only succeeded in drawing up salt water. The Kanda Josui, a 17-kilometer water system, consisted of more than 3,600 sub-aqueducts. The subterranean sections used pipes made from hollowed-out timber to transport water to communal wells. The system was operational by the Kan’ei era (1624–44). It was an admirable system, far superior to many of the appalling water management arrangements in contemporaneous European cities, but with the rapid expansion of Edo the Kanda Josui soon reached capacity.
In 1652 in the western district of Tama, where villagers were already engaged in manufacturing lime for construction projects, work began on a second water system, the Tamagawa Josui. On its completion two years later, the 80-kilometer-long system was able to carry fresh water to every part of the city. Further measures were taken to improve the quality of water supplied to Edo, including the removal of crudely made latrines and huts along riverbanks and prohibitions against the disposal of waste in rivers.
Once matters like the benign flow of spiritual forces and the redirection of water had been settled, city planners turned their attention to the flow of human traffic. The sankin kotai system of alternative residence meant that the approach roads to Edo were always busy, requiring greater numbers of post-stations near the city. Shinjuku had its Koshu-kaido trunk road to the west, Senju the Nikko-kaido running north. Some of the country’s major highways spread out radially from within the moat: the Tokaido in the south, the Daisendo to the southwest, the Koshu-kaido to the west, and the Nakasendo to the northeast. The superimposition of moats and highways at the center was one of the most distinct features of the city. The improved transportation systems not only freed up space for daimyo entourages, but also facilitated the movement of officials, merchants, goods, and the increasing volume of people making pilgrimages to holy sites.
The residences of daimyo and samurai families took up a disproportionate 70 percent of Edo’s land disposition. Land occupied by temples and shrines accounted for roughly 14 percent of the city, leaving only a 16 percent residential allocation for commoners, a demographically far larger group, to build their homes and shops. Many increasingly prosperous merchant families were able to do this, but the fate of Edo’s service class was to rent row houses in the back streets and alleys of the city.
Typically, these ura nagaya, or “rear long-houses,” were partitioned into units with living areas seldom larger than 3 meters square. A narrow cooking space and entrance added an extra strip of flooring at a slightly lower elevation than the main floor. An entire family might live in this single room. A large number of single men, supporting families in the countryside, occupied these homes. Most of these bachelor tenants were of the lower orders, scraping out a living as mendicant entertainers, laborers, and tinkers—though there were among them ronin (masterless samurai) fallen on hard times. Communal facilities included garbage dumps, the toilet, and the well where the washing and laundry were done. Rats were drawn to the garbage piles and the runnels that served as open sewers running along the middle of the alleys, where in some cases the width between the clapboard residences was less than a meter. Sleeping conditions inside the row houses must have been suffocating. Within the confined space, the superheated air—particularly in the humid summer evenings, when lamps powered by rapeseed oil and vegetable wax were used—would have been stifling. There was no special night-wear; people slept in their daytime clothes.
An abundance of water, an asset in normal times, could exacerbate sanitation problems. In a normal year the Sumida River could be expected to flood twice, its inundations turning districts along its banks into quagmires of foul-smelling mud. Canals, pools, and puddles were the perfect breeding ground for the swarms of mosquitoes that infested the city in the summer months. Insects and rodents swarmed at the unwholesome fish markets. In such conditions, it is little wonder that epidemics of diseases like measles, smallpox, and beriberi were so common. The latter, caused largely by the nutritional deficiencies inherent to an unvaried diet of polished white rice, was so persistent it was dubbed the “Edo disease.”
The two-story homes of the wealthy merchants, shopkeepers, and occasional winners of temple lotteries, whose frontages onto wider streets provided better access and light, were far superior. Their tiled roofs were somewhat fire-resistant; their earthen surfaces were covered in a burnt ash from crushed oyster shells, India ink, and lime. With time and wear, the dark stucco and plaster walls became so lustrous that the sight of women stopping to adjust their hair in front of the semi-reflective surfaces was not uncommon. Though they were despised as money-grubbers by the aristocracy and warrior class, merchants were a vital element, as they provisioned the city.
In 1606, one of Ieyasu’s first acts as shogun had been to order the creation of a camellia garden within the castle grounds (site of the current Ninomaru Garden). The moist air, plentiful rainfall, and generous parcels of land allotted to daimyo were perfect for the creation of aristocratic “stroll gardens.” Ponds were excavated for these artificial landscapes. At high tide they would fill with salt water; at low tide their levels were controlled by sluice gates. Some of these—like the Hama-Rikyu and Kyu Shiba-Rikyu Onshi gardens—remain, though in diminished scale.
Less pleasing to the eye were Edo’s execution grounds. Executions were generally conducted at the city prison in Kodenmacho, while burning at the stake and crucifixions were confined to the Suzugamori execution ground near Shinagawa, where some 150,000 criminals were dispatched. Criminals were placed backward on a horse, paraded around the city, then tied to a wooden cross, a practice that continued into the mid-nineteenth century. They would then be speared through the side in crucifixion scenes not unlike the one on the hill at Golgotha in the Christian bible. A pyre where bodies were burnt alive and a stone platform for impalings remain as testament to the public staging of punishments. The execution grounds were located beside the Tokaido trunk road to remind travelers of the fate of those