Press: Edo, is the predecessor of Tokyo, Japan. In ancient times, it was once just wilderness. It was not until 1192, when the Kamakura shogunate was on the Kanto Plain, that the name "Edo" began to appear. Later, Ota Michikuni and Tokugawa Ieyasu built the castle town of Edo in the wilderness, and Edo gradually developed into Japan's first city.
The book "Edo-cho – The Birth of a Large Metropolis" traces the construction process of Edo-cho in graphic form. There have been successes and failures in this process, and today's Tokyo was built in the process of trying and making mistakes. With the permission of the publishing house, we have selected the story of the construction of Edo Castle during the Tokugawa Ieyasu period and shared it with you.
<h4>Edo Kaifu</h4>
In August 1598 ( Keicho III ) , Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in Fushimi Castle. Soon, people and horses from all walks of life launched an open and secret struggle over who would dominate the world and who would control the Japanese state.
In 1600, between the Tokugawa clan of the Eastern Army and the Toyotomi clan of the Western Army, the Battle of Sekigahara finally broke out. At that time, construction in Edo was in full swing, the castle keep had not yet been built, and Osaka Castle, the largest city in the Three Kingdoms (second to none in Japan, China, and India), already had a five-story castle keep, so everyone thought that the Western Army had won.
However, the Tokugawa clan's Eastern Army united and defeated the lax Western Army and won the victory. In February 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu became the ruler of the world and became a daimyō of the Seiyi Shogunate, commanding the country.
At this time, Tokugawa Ieyasu began to think about how to govern the country of Japan. As a shogun, where to set up the shogunate became his first question.
Since ancient times, the political, economic, and cultural center of Japan has been located in the region, and Tokugawa Ieyasu took a great risk by setting up the shogunate in Edo, where the town had just begun to be established.
Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually decided to establish a shogunate in Edo, a move known as "Edo Kaifu". Presumably, Tokugawa Ieyasu had the confidence to establish a lofty urban plan based on the model of Heian Kyo and implement it gradually, which led him to make the decision to set up a shogunate in Edo.
From then on, Tokugawa Ieyasu thought about Japan not in Kyoto but in Edo. The Nihonbashi was built at the intersection of Honmachi and Tsuchimachi, the central subdistrict of Edo, and the "Five Streets" (Tokaido, Nakasendo, Koshu Dochu, Oshu Dochu, and Nikko Dochu) were built from this point, and the transportation network centered on Kyoto since ancient times was incorporated as a "secondary street" to connect the nationally scaled town of Joshita.
In this way, Tokugawa Ieyasu established a new territorial plan to control the whole of Japan.
<h4>Expansion plan of the "の" glyph</h4>
After the opening of Edo, both Edo and Edo Castle had to develop into the world's largest metropolis suitable for the seat of the shogunate. To this end, the urban planning previously established in accordance with the principle of "four gods corresponding" based on the heian Kyo as a template needs to be revised and further expanded.
Thus, the "の" glyph of the great expansion plan came into being. The expansion plan was to dig a right-swirling moat in the shape of a "の" shape with Edo Castle as the core.
It is important to note that this plan did not abolish the previously built Edo-cho, but used it and skillfully used the natural terrain such as hills, valleys, and rivers on the outside to extend the river in the shape of a "の". With the use of civil engineering technology, Edo's city streets can expand outward without restriction.
Then, let the river in the shape of "の" combine with the five radial streets. In this way, no matter how old Edo grew, it could support the consumption of samurai land by relying on the free economic activities of the machi people' land.
This urban plan is unique, not only unprecedented in Japan, but also unprecedented abroad. As a result, the shogunate allowed the wives and children of the daimyōs to live in Edo and safely implement the system of attendance held in the coming year. Even if no more daimyo from all over the country gather in Edo, there are enough places for them to live.
Without this expansion plan, it is not known what Edo would have become. At most, it can only be developed into a castle town like Nagoya!
<h4>Remediation of Edo Port</h4>
Due to his scruples about Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu had previously promoted the construction of Edo Castle only in part of Nishimaru. However, after deciding to make it the main castle of the shogunate, he no longer needed to care about anyone, so he ordered all the daimyōs of the country to work together to build the world's largest city, which was called "The Universal Invitation of the World".
In preparation, in March 160, the shogunate began to clean up the coastline of Edo Port and build ship stops to unload building materials (stones and timber) shipped from all over the country. People bulldozed Mt. Kanda and filled the soil on the hill to the shallower Hibiya Bay according to the "の" glyph expansion plan. At the same time, a ditch connecting the east to EdomaeJimae Island and the Wadō Sanhorori to the Hirakawa River was excavated, called the Horikawa (Nihon Hashikawa). A large Nippon Bridge was built on the Horikawa River, which became the starting point of the "Five Streets".
Since it was a "universal request", the project was entrusted to the major names of the shogunate. Ishigō (the amount of rice that can be harvested in the daimyo of the Daimyo domain of Daimyo) Ichigoku provides 10 workers, who are called "Sengokufu", and the area from Nihonbashi to Shinbashi is crowded with "Sengoku". Each town named Honmachi after the daimyō who was responsible for its projects, and names such as Owari, Kaga, and Izumo appeared.
<h4>Izu's quarry</h4>
In 1604, the shogunate finally announced the grand plan for the construction of Edo Castle. At that time, the stone walls were commissioned to build by daimyo daimyo who had followed the Toyotomi family, such as Ikeda Keimasa (Himeji), Masanori Fukushima (Hiroshima), Kuroda Nagamasa (Fukuoka), and Kiyomasa Kato (Kumamoto).1
Each of the daimyōs spent two years preparing 300-400 "stone ships" transporting stones, and finally in 1606 they gathered in Edo and put them into command of civil engineering. There are very few stone mountains in the Kanto region, but people find stone mountains in the Izu Peninsula. Therefore, the daimyōs sent their vassals zhuangding and hired stonemasons to quarry on the spot.
In the quarry, masons first used hammers and stone chisels to drill holes, knocked down several tons of stones from the cliff, and then Zhuangding loaded the stones on a sled called "Shura" and transported them to the coast, where they could be loaded on stone boats after being inspected by shogunate officials.
When transporting stones, they are shipped on a boat with a sled attached. Usually, a ship is loaded with two large stones that can be lifted by 100 people, and travels to and from Edo twice a month. In total, nearly 3,000 stone ships were prepared by the major names to gather in Izu, and the stones were transported to Edo one after another.
Sometimes, ships encounter strong winds and sink. It is said that 120 of Nabeshima Katsushige's stone ships sank, 46 of Kato's, and 30 of Kuroda Nagamasa's ships.
<h4>The "Kotani Hunting" of the Kiso Mountain Forest</h4>
The timber used in the construction project comes from the kanto-tohoku mountainous region in the upper reaches of the Toegawa River, the upper reaches of the Fuji River (Shizuoka Prefecture), and the upper reaches of the Kiso River (Nagano Prefecture). Among them, the large mountain forest of Kiso Valley has been a source of high-quality juniper since ancient times.
After receiving an order from the construction master carpenter, the head (the director of the logger) would look for trees that met the dimensions requirements, cut them down, slightly trim them, concentrate them in the valley, and then throw the wood into the stream for transportation, a series of jobs known as "small valley hunting".
<h4>Transport of timber</h4>
The timber sent to the upper reaches of the Kiso River is concentrated in places where the water flows slowly. There, people pull up a large net to prevent the wood from scattering, and this net is called a "net.". Here, the wood is sorted according to different sizes and placed on bamboo rafts, which flow down the river to Ise Bay.
Since this is the timber used in Edo Castle, the number one in the world, it is said that some of the wood is about seventeen rooms (about 33.5 meters) long and has a diameter of four feet and five inches (about 1.4 meters) at the front end. These giant trees are long, and transporting them is more difficult than transporting the boulders. Only a few thousand zhuang dings could be used to transport it in the same way as the modern Panama Canal, that is, to block the Weir Kiso River, and use the buoyancy of the water to transport the timber to Ise Bay. It takes almost a year to travel thousands of miles to Edo Port by boat.
<h4>Moved to Edo-cho</h4>
Stones and timber transported to Edo Port were transported to the construction site in Edo Castle via a dusty road that had not been completed for a long time.
The large stones are mounted on a sled cart called "Shura". The lead singer, dressed like a foreigner, stood on the car, waving the flag, beating the gong and drum, so that countless strong men could cooperate with the beat at the same time. Thousands of boulders require more than a thousand people, sometimes even three or five thousand people to pull together to transport them one by one to Edo. To make the skid slide more smoothly, people lay konbu under the rollers. The general stones are carried by ox carts or rickshaws, and the small stones (inner stones) used on the back of the stone wall are carried in net baskets or placed in the back basket.
These are extremely heavy jobs. In order to complete the stone wall for which they were responsible earlier and more beautifully than other domains, the Ōto-cho rushed to work day and night, and the Edo-cho town was unprecedentedly grand and full of people, almost as if a fire had broken out on the occasion of a temple fair.
In this case, all kinds of friction and disputes are inevitable.
At the direction of the shogunate, the various clans issued a ban:
1. Do not disobey the orders of officials of the shogunate.
2. If there is a quarrel between partners, both parties shall be punished.
Third, no comments on the affairs of the world, good or bad.
(4) It is forbidden to gather with others.
Even companions and friends are not allowed to drink together at work.
6. It is forbidden to compete in sumo wrestling or go out at night.
……
However, workers are often unable to comply with these regulations because they are engaged in rough work.
<h4>The stone walls of Edo Castle were built</h4>
In April 1605, when Edo Castle officially began the "Universal Invitation of the World", Tokugawa Ieyasu had his son Hidetada succeed him as the Shogun of Seiyi and began to live a life of seclusion himself.
The second-generation general Tokugawa Hidetada appointed Naito Tadao, Kanda Masatoshi, Tokushin Masamune, and Ishikawa Shigetsu as Puso, and ordered Fujido Takaho, who was the first person in the art of castle building, to reformulate the basic plan of Edo Castle. This work is called "circle rope demarcation" (Japanese 縄張り), that is, the circle rope delineation of the floor area. When he was loyal to the Toyotomi family, Fujido Takaho planned Gunzan Castle, Wakayama Castle, and Ogura Castle, and was a master of the boundary of the rope. After the Battle of Sekigahara, he won the trust of Tokugawa Ieyasu and designed Nijo Castle and Fushimi Castle to fight against Osaka Castle, built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Now, he is working to build Edo Castle into the world's first city.
Takaho Fujido has excellent civil architects from all over the country. When Oda Nobunaga built Azuchi Castle, he used the masonry of Theomoto Village in Shiga County, Shiga Prefecture, Omi Kuni (Shiga Prefecture) to build an imposing stone wall. Later, the masonry of the cave became a nationally renowned expert on stone walls, and the two words "cave too" became synonymous with the civil architects who built the stone walls. He and Fujido Takahashi once built castles for the Toyotomi family, plus Suruga and Mikawa of the Toba clan, led many apprentices and played a pivotal role in the construction of Edo Castle.
Under the guidance of the civil architects of the shogunate, the daimyōs of each domain hired Akō to build stone walls in the areas they had assigned. It's not difficult to pile stones on hard rock, but the moats in Edo Castle are mud fields filled with hibiya Bay, and heavy stone walls can sink into the mud at once.
So, the civil architect placed the pine wood in the mud, formed a wooden row, fixed it with long wooden stakes, and then built a stone wall. After taking this method, called "raft terrain", there will still be cases of stone walls sinking. Sometimes, halfway through the project, the hard-won stone walls collapsed again. At asano's construction site, there were accidents in which hundreds of people were crushed to death under stones.
Hearing this news, Kato Kiyomasa adopted a solution that was later passed down to future generations. He ordered Zhuangding to go to Musashino to cut a lot of miscanthus grass, spread it on the mud floor, and then find many children aged 10-15 and let them play on it, spend enough time, and then build a stone wall after stepping on the ground. Although the progress of the project is lagging behind that of Asano,000, even in the event of an earthquake, the stone walls still stand.
<h4>Design of the ring vertical sky guard</h4>
After completing the civil works for the stone wall (Pu please), the construction work was finally started. The Tokugawa family's construction projects have always been commanded by Kihara Yoshiji, but this time, Masaaki Nakai, who served as a master carpenter at Nara Horyu-ji Temple, led many outstanding carpenters from the region to assist.
Nakai Masayoshi's father, Masayoshi Nakai, was a master carpenter who built Osaka Castle by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Masaaki inherited his father's technique, and like Takaho Fujido, won the trust of Tokugawa Ieyasu after the Battle of Sekigahara and participated in the construction of Nijo Castle and Fushimi Castle. Although Tokugawa Ieyasu and Hidetada became shoguns and seized the throne, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, still lived in Osaka Castle, a famous city built by Hideyoshi and unparalleled in the Three Kingdoms, and did not know when he would launch a counterattack against the Tokugawa family. Therefore, they specially sought out Nakai Masaaki, who knew osaka castle well, to build Edo Castle more impeccable than Osaka Castle.
Edo Castle, designed by Takato Fujido, adopted a "vortex castle style" structure based on the "の" glyph scheme of the Edo Metropolitan Plan. Around the high platform of Honmaru (the center of the castle), the outer castles of Nimaru (the second wall), Sanmaru (the outermost wall), Nishimaru (Nishijo), and Kita-maru (Kitajo) are arranged in a vortex pattern, which is the most complex castle tower design, and the enemy is difficult to attack. Masaaki Nakai's design undoubtedly made the Edo Castle Castle Keep a larger and more advanced building than the Osaka Castle Castle Castle Keep.
The design creates a small castle keep on the east, north, and west sides of the large castle keep that rises in the center of the honmaru to form a circular connection, the so-called "ring-standing castle keep". Due to the construction of four castle keeps of different sizes within the honmaru, the special structure of the "honmori maru" was formed, and even if the enemy attacked the honmaru, the honmori maru could still play the role of a castle.
Oda Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle and Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Osaka Castle were built with a small watchtower next to the Great Castle Keep, and the appearance of the small castle keep did not look like a ladder, so it was called a "ladder-type" structure. The "ring-standing" Edo Castle Keep adopts a new structure of "easy to defend and difficult to attack" that is absolutely impossible to be conquered by the enemy.
<h4>Build the Great Keep</h4>
The Ring Tower Castle Gate, designed by Masaaki Nakai, is an unprecedented high-rise building in Japanese history.
Honmaru's goten was completed in September 1606, and shogun Tokugawa Hidetada had moved into residence. To the northwest of the Goten, Daimyo of the Kanto and Tohoku regions, including Date Masamune (Sendai), Uesugi Keisatsu (Yonezawa), and Kasuo Hideyuki (Aizu), were ordered to build eight (about 15.8 meters) high castle keep maru stone walls. The following year, two large castle towers (about 3.9 meters) were added.
As a result, the Ōtenmamori was ten times taller than Honmaru (about 19.7 meters). A large five-story castle tower was then built on the main tenor, which was twenty-two and a half rooms (about 44.3 meters) high. Inside, there is a basement floor called the Cave Vault and six floors above ground, for a total of seven floors. The plan of the first floor: sixteen rooms long from east to west (one here is seven feet, about 33.9 meters), and eighteen rooms (about 38.2 meters) long from north to south. The plan of the top floor: five rooms and five feet (about 12.1 meters) long from east to west, and seven rooms and five feet (about 16.4 meters) long from north to south. This is much larger than the Great Castle Keep of Himeji Castle.
The Honmaru is about 20 meters taller than Edo Castle, and with the addition of the 19.7 meters of the castle keep and the five-story building of 44.3 meters, the large castle keep stands 84 meters above the ground, making it a majestic high-rise building.
In order to make the building resistant to storms, people applied lead powder to ordinary earth tiles. This metal tile was first tried in Edo Castle.
From a distance, the Edo Castle Keep looks like it is covered in snow and shines with white light even in summer, so it is often compared to the beauty of Mt. Fuji.
<h4>Osaka Battle</h4>
Once Edo Castle was completed, Tokugawa Ieyasu began to build his own hermitage castle in Suruga Prefecture (Shizuoka Prefecture). At the end of 1607, the hermitage was once completed, but it was burned in a fire and rebuilt the following year. In 1610, the Tokugawa family built Nagoya Castle.
Like Edo Castle, these projects were built by Fujido Takaho Circle Rope delimitation and Nakai Masakiyoshi. Nagoya Castle was completed in 1614. Including the long-completed Nijo Castle and Fushimi Castle, the Edo shogunate already had five castles in Ogi castle in Tokaido, preparing for an attack on Osaka Castle, where Toyotomi Hiderai was located.
Tokugawa Ieyasu and Hidetada launched the Osaka Winter Front campaign in order to cut the grass and remove the roots, during which there was a truce. In 1615, taking advantage of the victory to pursue, he launched the Battle of The Summer Front of Osaka, and finally captured Osaka Castle, which was known as the first castle in the world, in May.
<h4>Death of Tokugawa Ieyasu</h4>
After the elimination of the Toyotomi family, there was no longer any power to compete with the Tokugawa family, and Japan entered a period of peace. The Azuchi Momoyama period ended and the Edo period began.
After Tokugawa Ieyasu witnessed the demise of the Toyotomi family, in April of the following year (Motowa 2nd year), Tokugawa Ieyasu's long life of 75 years came to an end in Seifu Castle. According to his last words, his body was temporarily relocated to Mount Kuno, and then moved to Nikko Toshogu Shrine.
Edo Castle also built Toshogu Shrine dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu on Mt. Momiji. From then on, Tokugawa Ieyasu was able to quietly guard the town of Edo on Mt. Momiji.
<h4>Chisel open Kanda Mountain</h4>
After the peaceful Edo period, the functions of the castle built for war had to be adjusted. Edo Castle will not only be the residence of the shogun, but will also become the political center of Japan, so it is naturally more perfect than ever.
Therefore, the shogun Tokugawa Hidetada decided to build a right vortex moat on the basis of the previous "の" glyph expansion plan. This is the "general structure" project of Edo Castle, so it is called "perfect circle rope demarcation".
First, the shogunate began work on the outer moat to the northeast of Edo Castle. To complete this huge project, Kanda Mountain had to be chiseled open, so that the water of the Hirakawa River was diverted from the KoishiKawa River to the Asakusa River, and then to the Sumida River. It was not until the autumn of 1620 that the project was finally completed.
This project made the channels of hirakawa Ōkumatsu, Iidabashi, Kudanshitashi, KandaBashi, and Nihonbashi, which were previously outer moats, and the channels of Koishikawa, Ochanomizu, Sujibashi, and Asakusa Bridge formed the Kanda River and became an outer moat. As a result, the general structure of Edo Castle was formed in the northeast, and the townsmen around Honmachi were also freed from the flooding of the Hirakawa River, and the soil dug out of Mount Kanda was filled into Hibiya Bay, allowing Edo-cho to extend further to the southwest.
The clan of courtiers of Suruga moved to the southern side of the Kanda River, and the area was renamed "SurugaDai". This project to excavate Kanda Mountain to build Edo-cho played the role of "two birds with one stone" but "four birds with one stone".
<h4>The main structure and gate of Edo Castle</h4>
At the same time as the general construction work was carried out in Edo Castle, the transformation of Honmaru also began. Due to the lack of space in the Honmaru Goden, the moat between Honmaru and Kita-demaru was first to be filled in so that Honmaru extended north.
At the same time, the castle keep maru, which was composed of the ring vertical keep, was demolished, allowing the castle keep to further expand to the north side, and a five-story independent large castle keep was rebuilt, one underground and five floors above ground. Although its appearance is similar to that of the castle keep built by Tokugawa Ieyasu before, it is a design that is not beneficial to the war, which shows that the structure of the building has fully reflected the peaceful atmosphere of the times. The work was completed in 1622 (Yuan and 8 years).
In July of the following year, Tokugawa Hidetada passed the post of Grand Shogun to his eldest son, Iemitsu, and moved himself to Nishimaru to live in seclusion. The third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, moved into the newly built Honmaru and built a gondola with a tea room and a huge courtyard in Nimaru as an annex. The annex was completed in 1630 (the seventh year of Kanei) and was designed by Otori Motoshu. This villa is more luxurious than the famous Gui Li Palace.
In 1632, Hidetada died of illness, but the general construction of Edo Castle continued. In 1635, when the project finally entered its final phase, an outer moat was excavated northwest of Edo Castle, merging the small river flowing into Akasaka Yukiike with the Hirakawa tributary north of the Komachi Terrace on the other side, connecting it to the previously completed Kanda River. This project turned the outer moat flowing through Yukiike-Akasaka-Yotsuya-Ichigu-Ichigo-Hiroya into a "Y" shaped moat centered on Edo Castle and swirling to the right, allowing the Sumita River to access Edo Port. As a result, the general construction of Edo Castle was finally completed.
The gate named "SeeFu" became a checkpoint for the moat extending in the shape of "の". There are many gates, commonly known as "Thirty-Six See-Fu", the main ones being the "Edo Five Gates", namely tohomon in Tokaido, Shiyamon in Koshu Province, Uzumaki Gate in Joshu Province, Sajiku Bridge Gate in Nakayama Province, and Asakusa Bridge Gate in Oshu Province. These places were guarded by samurai from the shogunate, who inspected the people entering Edo and maintained law and order in The town of Joshita.
<h4>Edo Castle was completed</h4>
At the time of the completion of the Edo Castle structure, Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu rebuilt the Honmaru as a finishing touch. From the time of Ieyasu and Hidetada, this was the third major project in Edo, with Sakai Tadaokatsu as the general manager, and the construction was officially started in the first month of 1637 (the fourteenth year of Kanei).
Edo's great carpenter Yoshihisa Kihara and Kyoto's great carpenter Masazumi Nakai led Edo, Kyoto's best carpenters, masons (cave masters), clay smiths, blacksmiths, lacquer artists, and painters to build the Great Castle Keep, the Goten, and toshogu Shrine dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu to a more magnificent and magnificent one. As a result, they built it too brilliantly, which frightened the family light and demanded to rebuild it more rustically.
During this period, the Shimabara Rebellion caused by Christian problems and the fire in Edo Castle delayed the project for a while, but it was completed in April 1640. From 1590 (the eighteenth year of Tenshō), the Tokugawa family's construction of Edo Castle, which took three generations and fifty years, was finally completed.
<h4>Ejo Honmaru Palace</h4>
After its completion, Edo Castle was of course unprecedented in Japanese history. The inner castle of Kuku, the core of the "の" urban planning, covers an area of 1.8 square kilometers; the main maru, the second pill, the third pill, the west pill and the north pill are cleverly arranged in the right vortex shape according to the vortex design.
At that time, the average size of the castle towns in various parts of Japan was similar, and the inner castle of Edo Castle was as large as the size of the general castle town. It can be seen how vast and spectacular Edo Castle, which is known as the number one city in the world, is.
The number of buildings in Edo Castle is also staggering, with 1 large castle keep, 21 obiki (watchtowers), 28 "Tatsumi" (castle longhouses), 99 gates, and countless imperial halls and warehouses. The structure of the Honmaru Goten is particularly complex, almost like a large labyrinth. Enter from the big hand on the front of Edo Castle on the east side, and then walk to the Nakakumon Gate. Passing through the NakaguchiMon, it is the location of the Honmaru Goten, which can be roughly divided into three parts: the table (front palace), the middle olympic (middle harem) and the O (harem).
The "table" is the place where shogunate politics is promoted, and there are huge buildings such as the opposite office (White Academy) and Black Academy centered on the Ōhiroma, commonly known as "Senjoshiki". The interior of the building is decorated with elaborate works carved by the famous craftsman Koryo Toyogo hirai osumi, as well as paintings painted by Kano Tanyu and others, which are as colorful as Nikko Toshogu Shrine.
The "Sino-Austrian" is the residence of the shogun, mainly the throne room and the imperial rest room, and there is also an "earthquake room" for evacuation in the event of an earthquake. There are also many rooms for the attendants of the general, and the large counter (large kitchen) is the most famous large building.
"Ao" is the residence of the general's wife and concubines. There is a stone wall separating the middle harem and the harem, and the management is strict, and only women can enter and exit the harem. In addition to the imperial shrine where the general's wife lived, there were also the rooms of countless harem maids, which were veritable deep mansion compounds, also known as the Great Harem (Great Harem).
<h4>Edo Castle Castle Keep</h4>
Built behind the Honmaru Goden (northwestern end), the Great Castle Keep is a tall building unprecedented in Japanese history. During the Tokugawa Ieyasu period, Edo already had a large castle keep with a ring vertical design, which was later converted from Tokugawa Hidetada to a single vertical type. Tokugawa Iemitsu rebuilt the castle keep for the third time, and the design was the same as that of the Hidetada period, but also adopted a single-standing style, and the scale was slightly expanded, and the castle keep became the largest building in the world.
The history of the castle keep began with Oda Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle. When Nobunaga built the Azuchi Castle Keep, he decided to build a high-rise building that surpassed the Large Buddha Hall of Todaiji Temple, the tallest temple in Japan, but in fact the height of the two was the same. Later, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu also aspired to build a building that surpassed the Great Buddha Hall of Todaiji Temple, but it was not until the Iemitsu period that they completed the veritable tallest building in Japan. The style of this celestial keep is also the largest in history.
Built in 1579 (the seventh year of Tenshō), Oda Nobunaga's Azuchi Castle Castle Keep adopts the "watchtower" style, and there is a two-story watchtower on the three-story castle tower. The three-story castle tower and the watchtower above cannot be integrated, and earthquakes and typhoons are not very safe. According to historical records, Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Fushimi Castle Castle Keep was also of the watchtower type, which collapsed in an earthquake, and Hideyoshi was rescued with difficulty.
As a result, the style of the castle keep was gradually improved, and it began to integrate like a tower from top to bottom. This style is called "tower type".
In 1609 (the fourteenth year of Keicho), the Himeji Castle Castle Keep was still the old lookout shape, but the Nagoya Castle Castle Castle Keep in 1612 has adopted a new tower style. The Edo Castle Castle, built by Tokugawa Iemitsu in 1638 (the fifteenth year of Kanei), is more advanced. No matter which direction you look at, it looks like a front, so this design is called an "eight-sided front" design.
This style of keeping is unmoved by earthquakes and typhoons. Although it is a wooden building, the earthen walls are thick and the roof is made of copper tiles, so it is a fire-resistant building that can resist fire. Tokugawa Iemitsu made extensive use of state-of-the-art construction techniques to build high-rise buildings that would never collapse. At the same time, the glittering golden bristles were decorated on the top of the castle keep, announcing to the world that the Edo shogunate would flourish for thousands of years.
(This article is excerpted from the book Edocho (Part 1), the first series of "The Beauty of Japanese Construction", and the text and pictures are published with the permission of the publisher)