Sakurada-mon

You're at Sakurada-mon, and on a snowy morning in 1860 this gate saw a killing that shook the shogunate. Ii Naosuke was the shogun's chief minister. Two years earlier he had signed a trade treaty with the United States without the Emperor's approval, and then crushed his critics in a purge that hit more than a hundred people. Many samurai were furious. On the morning of 24 March 1860, Ii set out from his residence, only a few hundred metres away, with a procession of about sixty men. Snow was falling. Just outside this gate, eighteen attackers, most of them masterless samurai from Mito, rushed the procession. A shot was fired into his palanquin, and Ii was killed before he reached the castle. The shogunate kept his death secret for about a month. But the damage was done, and eight years later the shoguns were gone. Look at the square between the outer and inner gates, built to trap attackers. Then look across the road. The building opposite is the headquarters of the Tokyo police, which is why Sakuradamon has become a nickname for the police themselves.