Tenshudai and the Ōoku

Look up at the great granite platform in front of you. This is the Tenshudai, the base of the castle keep. It is all that remains of the tallest keep ever built in Japan. Edo Castle had three keeps in about thirty years. The last one was finished in the 1630s. Then, in 1657, the Great Fire of Meireki swept through the city. Embers blew in through a window that had been left open, and the keep burned to the ground. A new stone base was built straight away by the lord of Kaga. That's the one you see now. But the tower was never put back. The shogun's uncle argued that keeps went back only to the warlord Oda Nobunaga, that they did little for defence, and that the money was needed to rebuild Edo. Japan was at peace, and peace won. Look at the corners, built from huge blocks of pale stone. South of here, on the open lawn, stood the Ōoku, the shogun's inner quarters, home to a large household of women. The shogun was the only man allowed in. When he came, bells rang along a corridor so the locked door would be opened for him.