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Edo Castle
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 Castles in Japan: Edo Castle is one of the tens of thousand of castles that were in existance throughout Japan by the end of the Muromachi era. Before that, the first known castle dates back to the first century AD. Later, Koreans who followed the Japanese back home when they were expulsed by the Chinese from the peninsula imported their knowledge in castle building. But the "castle fever" only really began during the Heian period, although at that time they served mostly as refuge, and were built by lower class samurai, resulting in rather smaller and more simple structures than the castles built before and after that era. That all changed by the moment the Bakufu, the shogun's government established during the Kamakura era, fell: there was no central government, just the Emperor at the top of the hierarchy and the daimyos were left to build their own local sphere of influence, which resulted in many battles between them. As a result, castles were built at an increased pace, and their purpose changed: from simple refuge, it became the residence of garnisons and, by the end of that era, was to withstand fire arms that had just been introduced in Japan. Because of the state of peace that lasted for 260 years under the Tokugawa, the need for fortified castles disminished, and many were disassembled during that time, and those that were destroyed by natural disasters were not rebuilt. Today, only twelve castles' main buildings survive The History of Edo Castle: The Edo clan was the first to establish its base in the area, where would later be established the honmaru and ninomaru parts of Edo Castle a few centuries later, but soon disappeared. It's a man called Ota Dokan, carrying the order of the Uesugi clan, who built the original Edo Castle in 1457. It is thought that it was the same man who also started to redirect the course of rivers, most notably the Hirakawa river, to prevent floodings in the Edo Bay area. Soon though, the castle fell into the hands of the Hojo clan - their base would, however, remain Odawara. It's at the end of its siege in 1590 that they would be defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his allies, one of whom, Tokugawa Ieyasu, received the six provinces of the Kantô plain and elected Edo Castle as its base and living quarters However, when he arrived at Edo, the view that welcomed him was less than comforting: Edo Castle, as built by Ota Dokan, was in shambles. One of his first tasks when he became shogun in 1603 was to launch the reconstruction of the castle and make it the appropriate base for the shogun and for the administration of an unified Japan. It took more than 40 years and the work was only finished under the third shogun, Iemitsu. At the time, it was simply the biggest castle in the world, with an outer defensive perimeter of 10 miles Unfortunately, the castle wasn't to remain intact for long: in 1657 broke the great Meireki fire, which left an enormous scare not only on the city itself, but also on the castle by destroying the tenshukaku (central keep) which dominated the main enceinte (see below, Edo Castle's plan). Meireki fire was only the greatest of a series of fires that plagued the structure, starting as early as the first decades of the 17th century, during its construction, until the 1860s, when several fires left little of the splendor of the Tokugawa's Edo Castle standing when the Emperor Meiji came to Edo, to be renamed Tokyo. On its grounds was established the imperial residence now named Kokyo. Some remains of the Edo Castle still stand in various areas, but are few and far between  Edo Castle's structure: As mentioned previously, Edo Castle was the biggest castle when completed with a superficy of 957,000 square meters and a outer defensive perimeter of 16 kilometers. The naikaku (inner defensive perimeter) was of 6.4 kilometers and encompases 4 areas "subdivided by lesser moats and walls". The very heart of the castle was the main enceinte (honmaru). In that part were located, from top to bottom (see map above) the Ooku (Great Interior), the women's compounds, a succession of rooms and corridors where the shogun's womenfolk lived, the Nakaoku (Middle Interior), where the shogun himself had his quarters, and the Omote (Exterior), which was every bit as much of a maze than the Ooku, but which served as offices for the shogun's officials. Southwest of the main enceinte was the West Enceinte, where were located the heir apparent's quarters, themselves a half-scale replica of the the shogun's. The nearby Momijiyama (Maple Mountain) hosted shrines dedicated to former shoguns and ceremonies to their memory were regularly held. Those two enceintes were bordered east by a series of officials' residences and west a "green area" of gardens and woods called Fukiage; its purpose was also to protect the castle from conflagrations that regularly occured in the city. The innermost is where is now located the East Imperial Garden (Higashi Gyoen), and the whole area once occupied by Edo Castle is now refered to as Imperial Palace since the 1960s. The current imperial quarters have all been built very recently |
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