Strolling along the street in Akasaka

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Summary

Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.

Kaidou wo yuku Vol. 33 Akasaka.

In the previous article, I described the roads of Shirakawa and Aizu. This time, I will describe the Akasaka walk.

Strolling along the street in Akasaka

This trip will be around Akasaka, Tokyo. Starting from a hotel in Akasaka, the author describes the scene of Akasaka in the Edo period in his mind while walking around Unnanzaka, Tameike, and Hie Shrine, and mentions Yoshimune Tokugawa and Koshiaki Ooka at Hikawa Shrine and Toyokawa Inari.

Ryotaro Shiba said that he was fond of the Yamanote area of Tokyo, such as Ichigaya, where many middle-class Hatamoto residences were located. However, Yamanote in general had two major fault lines, one before and after the Meiji Restoration, the other before and after the Great Kanto Earthquake, and the other before and after World War II, making it a place with a long history of transition that was difficult to deal with.

Akasaka, however, was an easy place for Ryotaro Shiba, a Kansai resident, to get to know because human smoke was rare until after the early Edo period, and it was not until the middle of the Edo period, when the water supply was extended to Akasaka, that residences of feudal lords and large banners were finally built on the plateau, and there were no town houses on the plateau, so the Edo culture was not so prevalent.

In Akasaka, it is written that he stayed at a hotel on the hilltop, but it was apparently the Hotel Okura Tokyo.

He liked to walk down Reinanzaka Slope between the Hotel New Okura and the American Embassy, imagining that the American Embassy on the left used to house the Daimyo’s fire extinguishers in the Edo period (in the photo below, the Okura is on the left and the American Embassy on the right).

In the Edo period (1603-1867), firefighters were called “gaen” (literally, “lying in smoke”), and their job was to see how the fire was progressing, smash the houses that had not yet burned down, and prevent the fire from spreading to others, a job that required them to risk their lives.

They would walk around naked in a loincloth, never mentioning how hot or cold it was, and never wearing any clothing. They have blue or red carvings on their bare skin, and they are chosen to be as fair-skinned and handsome as possible.

Of course, they are not good citizens, and when they have trouble finding money to play with, they usually go around shaking down wealthy-looking merchants for their gold.

There were three types of firefighting organizations in Edo. First, each town would pay for its own fire extinguishers, who were supervised by the magistrate. In addition to the machi-tobi, the shogunate divided the city of Edo into several districts, and eleven feudal lords were put in charge of firefighting, called “daimyo-higashigai,” and ten groups of “teibikeshi” were put under the direct control of the shogunate, with wealthy Hatamoto in charge.

Akasaka Tameike is now Akasaka, but in the early Edo period it was part of the Sakurada Village area and was called Sakurada no Ike (Sakurada Pond). In essence, it was a natural pool of water that was formed when water flowing down from the highlands such as Akasaka-dai and Sanno-dai gathered in this low-lying area and became a reservoir during heavy rains.

The photo above shows Akasaka in the early Meiji period (1868-1912), with the pond in the foreground. There was a time in the early Edo period when only this reservoir was available for city drinking, and the water was apparently so bad that when Hosokawa Tadaoki of Higo Kumamoto, who was restoring Edo Castle at the time, was asked if he could stay in Nishinomaru instead of returning to his home country for a while, he refused, saying, “This is no joke. There is an anecdote that he refused the offer, saying, “I am not joking.

There is an art museum inside the Hotel Okura called the Okura Shukokan.

The building looks like it could be in Korea or China, but it was apparently designed by Kingo Tatsuno, who also designed Tokyo Station. Inside the building are art works from Japan and the Orient.

From Akasakadai, we headed for Hikawa Shrine via Hikawa-zaka.

As you can see in the photo above, this slope is surrounded by woods on both sides and has a calm atmosphere with many trees.

In the Kanto region, there has long been a shrine called Hikawa Shrine. Hikawa Shrine was originally built by the Kizuki Grand Shrine in Hinokawa County, Izumo Province, and was designated as the first shrine in Musashi Province by Emperor Shomu (700s A.D.), making it the first of the gods of Musashi Province.

For this reason, when Minamoto no Yoritomo established the shogunate in the Kanto region, when the Odawara Hojo clan took control of the Kanto region, or when Tokugawa Ieyasu entered Edo, he paid his respects by making a donation. Also, when Emperor Meiji moved the capital to Tokyo in the Meiji era, he paid homage to Hikawa Shrine.

Yoshimune was originally the third child of the Kishu (Wakayama) Tokugawa family. He was about to die as a minor feudal lord when his two elder brothers died one after the other, and he became the head of the Kishu domain residence in Akasaka (present-day Akasaka Detached Palace).

Therefore, Yoshimune built Hikawa Shrine in Akasaka, which he was attached to. However, by Yoshimune’s time, the water supply had been installed and the number of residences of feudal lords and Hatamoto increased, and the number of town houses increased accordingly.

As I walked along the stone pavement toward the shrine, I was pleasantly surprised to see the old trees growing vigorously. The worship and shrine pavilions are located behind the pavilions. The shrine was built in the Edo period (1603-1867),

This simplicity is said to be an expression of Yoshimune’s policy of frugality (Kyoho reforms).

It is also famous for the Akasaka Hikawa Shrine Festival held here in the fall.

This festival began to be carried by a portable shrine (originally a dashi float, which became a portable shrine because it was attached to an electric wire) with Kabuki actors and other dolls on a stand, as shown in the photo above.

As mentioned above, Edo had a water shortage, and it was necessary to develop a water supply system. Edo developed at the same time as London and Paris, and the water supply system was developed at the same time. In London and Paris, water was pumped from the Thames and the Seine, respectively, and distributed to the pillars, whereas water was taken from the Tamagawa, Kanda, and Koishikawa rivers and distributed throughout Edo using buried wooden pipes.

The Tokugawa Shogunate maintained and managed this water supply system in a meticulous manner, which ensured high quality water until the dissolution of the Shogunate, but it was neglected after the Meiji Restoration, and Tokyo‘s water supply was apparently terrible until 1867, when modern water supply construction was completed.

There are many Inari shrines in Tokyo. The reason for the large number of Inari shrines in Tokyo is that Inari was the deity of the first Myogado-yashiki, and that many of these shrines were believed in by the private sector, which eventually established their own shrines. Inari shrines are Shinto shrines, as is the Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, which is the head shrine of Inari Shinto, and Shinto priests are appointed to the shrines.

The three deities, including Uka-no-Mikoto (Kurainatama), were considered agricultural deities in ancient times. Later, he became a deity who promised prosperity in everything from commerce to fishing. More impressive is the popular belief in the fox, the messenger of the god Inari.

Akasaka is home to the famed Toyokawa Inari.

Although the temple is eccentrically a temple, and in its most unusual form it is a combination of Shinto and Inari worship, the principal deity is the Indian Dakini-ten, a female deity of the nightshade.

Originally, it was an earthly demon spirit of India, believed by yoga practitioners to have magical powers, but once appeased by the law, it became a deity that could bring about the immediate rebirth of the practitioner.

Toyokawa Inari is a common name for a Buddhist temple in Akasaka, which was founded by Dogen at Myogonji Temple of the Soto sect of Buddhism, which teaches “Shikantaza (sit zazen).” In fact, the sect is tolerant of folk beliefs, and Dakini Koten was enshrined at Myogonji Temple to protect the temple, which is why it is more famous.

From Toyokawa Inari in Akasaka, head west on Route 246 to Aoyama Dori, which eventually leads to the fashionable Omotesando street.

A short walk there leads to the memorial park for Korekiyo Takahashi.

Korekiyo Takahashi was a financial professional who tried to settle the financial depression that occurred in the early Showa period. He was a man of culture who was well-liked by the city people because of his round-faced appearance reminiscent of a dharma doll.

He was a sound financier, who constantly opposed the military’s unlimited expansion of the “empire,” saying, “We don’t have that kind of money.” For this reason, he was resented by the military and assassinated by a young officer who rose up in protest during the February 26, 1936 Nijuoroku Incident.

The name “Nogizaka” is found in the direction of Roppongi from the Takahashi Korekiyo Memorial Park. In many foreign countries, with the exception of Chue, the names of cities, streets, stations, and airports are named after historical figures, such as Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Leningrad City (now St. Petersburg) in Russia, and Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. In Japan, however, the name “Nogizaka” was taken from Maresuke Nogi, a Meiji-era soldier and the god of the Nogi Shrine in Akasaka, a place where few personal names are used.

In Ryotaro Shiba’s time, this was the end of the story, but today it would be the idol of the “Saka” series, Nogizaka46.

The trip ends at Hie Shrine in Sannoshita.

Tokyo will be a city filled with various histories and cultures.

In the next article, we will discuss the road to Okinawa and Sakishima.