A quiet corner of Edo Castle

Article posted on Wednesday, June, 1st, 2011 at 9:37 pm

The Rokumeikan Hizō Shashinjō (鹿鳴館秘蔵写真帖) is providing us with another fantastic vintage vista. I won’t bother saying which part of Edo castle it is, suffice to say it is a quiet corner of a castle that had more corners, quiet or otherwise, than any other.

I love this picture, it has a real ghost-town quality to it. There’s not a soul to be seen amongst the cracked plaster walls and overgrown steps & stonework. The fact that there was even a photographer there to capture it seems lucky indeed.

The image has a lot to offer, so I recommend you get your nose up to the screen and have a good look around. The stand out for me in that well.

The end of Edo

Article posted on Wednesday, April, 20th, 2011 at 9:38 am

I was recently flipping through a book I’d picked up a while ago called Rokumeikan Hizō Shashinjō (鹿鳴館秘蔵写真帖). It’s a book I find of great interest even given my poor, poor Japanese language skills because it is filled with photographs from one of the most fascinating periods in Japan’s history.

Filled with images from the early 1870′s, (precisely the time when the feudal domains were abolished & replaced with the current system of governance) it shows a decrepit Edo castle, neglected temples as gorgeous as those of Nikkō as well as not-really-random photos from a tour of Western Japan.

The photographs are the work of Yokoyama Matsusaburō (横山松三郎), Uchida Kuichi (内田 九一) and others. The image below is taken from the front cover.

Posing at the Naka-no-Mon

The above picture truly does say 1,000 words. I shouldn’t muddy the waters by adding my own, but I will. Below is my Top 10: Surprising things about this photo:

• That it actually dates from a time when wearing swords was allowed.
• There are weeds growing out of the roofs.
• Plaster is falling from the walls.
• There are kids in the photo.
• The kids are wearing swords.
• The man sitting has an umbrella.
• The umbrella is modern, not a traditional Japanese umbrella.
• One of the Samurai is wearing a digital watch.
• I should’ve gone with Top 5 or something.

The Wadakura Gate

Article posted on Friday, January, 7th, 2011 at 1:13 pm

Well, here’s another postcard, and it looks to have a bit of age to it. Most unusual is that it isn’t made of card, but of wood. A wooden postcard! Who’s ever heard of such a thing?

By no stretch of the imagination am I mad about postcards. If anything, I’m happy to steer well clear of them. In this case though, what interests me is that we are able to catch a glimpse of what once was, as it was.

Depicted is the Wadakura Gate (和田倉門) of Edo Castle, which was one of two gates that connected Daimyo alley (大名小路) to Nishi-no-Maru Shita (西の丸下). Put in simple terms, probably where I should’ve started, the bridge & gate connected two enclosures in the South-East corner of Edo castle.

Today, the area isn’t completely unrecognisable. The moat, a bridge & stonework remain. Clearly missing is the small Korai-style gate, its flanking, white walls & the large turret-topped gate. Also, the Wadakura Gate of today is sporting a lot more trees. Trees are good.

Fuji san from Edo castle

Article posted on Monday, November, 30th, 2009 at 6:52 pm

CGI Mt. Fuji. Image: Yomiuri Online

Within the grounds of Edo castle in Tokyo there exists an old watchtower named the Fujimi Turret (富士見櫓). The Chinese characters of its name literally read the Mt Fuji viewing turret and no doubt it got it’s name as being a suitable place to um… view Mt Fuji.

It isn’t such a stretch to imagine that there was an even better place to um… view Mt. Fuji & that would have been atop Edo castle’s main tower. Unfortunately, that particular building came crashing down in flames in 1657. So, for the last 450 years or so we have had to settle with simply imagining the view. Well, at long last it has been imagined for us.

A group from Tokyo University have recreated the view using historical maps & computational grunt. Naturally, the view they have come up with differs from the vivid and heavily stylized Ukiyoe images.

Source: Daily Yomiuri online – http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20091126TDY03101.htm