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Abstract
Castles were an important symbol of the Tokugawa state order, signifying the realm of daimyo as well as the privileges conferred by the Tokugawa shoguns. Edo Castle was the largest, representing the supremacy of the Tokugawa house as the head of the warrior elite of Japan. After 1868, the progress of the Meiji Emperor into the castle amounted to a ‘metaphor of action’ that introduced a new political era. The remnants of the old castle walls, however, retained an ambivalent meaning by circumscribing the imperial residence as well as being an emblem of the former stronghold of the shoguns. This article explores photographs of the ruins of Edo Castle and the shifting interpretations pertaining to these pictures as reminders of Japan’s ‘feudal’ era between the time of their making in the early 1870s and their republication in the late 1920s.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Nanina Egli for inviting her to participate in the panel ‘Burgen, Burgenforschung und Burgmuseen in der Schweiz und in Japan von 1800 bis heute: global konstruiert, lokal verankert’ (Swiss History Days, February 2013), and Carrie Cushman for her useful comments. She would like to express her gratitude to Oleg Benesch for providing the opportunity to participate in the panel ‘From Edo Castle to Imperial Palace: 150 Years of Power, Conflict, and Heritage’ (BAJS Conference, September 2018) and for his valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article. She would also like to thank the article’s anonymous reviewers for their help.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (online version 2003), ‘ruin’.
2 ‘Map of Edo Castle’ (Edo o-shiro no ezu), with the caption ‘sketch by the carpenter Kōra Wakasa’ (daitōryō Kōra Wakasa hikae) (d. 1735), early eighteenth century, Tokyo Metropolitan Library, call nr. 6151-2; accessed 18 September 2018 https://www.library.metro.tokyo.jp/collection/features/digital_showcase/011/07/.
3 The Imperial Castle was renamed into ‘Imperial Palace’ (kyūjō) from 1889 to 1948, when the still current designation became ‘Imperial Residence’ (kōkyo); cf. Kazoku kaikan shiryō tenji i’inkai Citation1997, 6.
4 Kyū Edo jō shashinjō, property of the Tokyo National Museum; accessed 5 May 2019, http://www.emuseum.jp/detail/100813/000/000.
5 A ‘new edition’ (shintei) of Ninagawa’s publication, including research articles and reproductions of plates of the Kyū Edo jō shashinjō, is Ninagawa (Citation1990).
6 On early-Meiji-period temple surveys, cf. Tanaka (Citation1994, 24–44).
7 Ichisaka (Citation2014, 218–220); Iwashita (Citation2010, 35–42, 35); Kanai (Citation1989, 101–111); Kinoshita (Citation2005, 13–44, 36); Yonezaki (Citation2005, 56). English publications dedicating a few pages or footnotes to Ninagawa’s castle photographs are Bennett (Citation2006, 82–83); Hockley (Citation2006, 114–132, 128n2); Kinoshita (Citation2003, 14–99, 28); Suzuki (Citation2013, 404–422, 421–422n23).
8 Hirai and Asano (Citation2003); Kim (Citation2010), Chapter 2; Okabe (Citation1979, 26–34); Kazoku kaikan shiryō tenji i’inkai, Rokumeikan Citation1997, 13–72; Ken (Citation2012, 5–101).
9 The handwritten application is pasted into the Kyū Edo jō shashinjō, cit. in Okabe Citation1992, 43.
10 Kyū Edo jō shashinjō, plate 43, in Ninagawa, Kankozusetsu, 44.
11 The database of ‘Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period’ of the Nagasaki University Library includes sixty photographs of different castles and a further twenty-eight of Edo Castle. On late-Edo- and early-Meiji-period castle photography, cf. Nakai, Katō, and Kido (Citation2015); Nakai and Ozawa (Citation2000); Ozawa, Miura, and Marumoto (Citation2013).
12 For biographies of these photographers, cf. Bennett (Citation2006, 76–97, 150–152, 203–210); Kinoshita (Citation2003, 19–20, 27, 29–30). On Beato, cf. Hockley (Citation2006, 117–118, 121–122); Ritchin (Citation2010, 119–132).
13 Kyū Edo jō shashinjō, ‘Naka no watarimon’, plate 31, in Ninagawa Citation1990, 40; cf. Okabe Citation1992, 45–46.
14 Collection of the Ninagawa family, pub. in Kanai Citation1989, 111; Okabe and Haga Citation1992, frontispiece.
15 Iwatake Citation2003, 239. On the publishing activities of the Edo kai’in, founded in 1896, cf. Hirner (Citation1979), 125.
16 Ulak, James T, ‘Tokyo Modern – 1: Koizumi Kishio’s Hundred views’ of the Imperial Capital (1928–1940), Modernity’s undercurrents,’ MIT Visualizing Cultures; accessed 22 November 2015, http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/tokyo_modern_01/index.html.
17 Masuo, ‘Nijūbashi,’ [online via JapanKnowledge]; ‘Pont Nijūbashi, entré principale du palais impérial de Tōkyō; accessed 26 August 2018, http://www.guimet-photo-japon.fr/notices/notice.php?id=259
18 ‘La Guerre sino-japonaise. Départ du Mikado pour Hiroshima […]’, lithograph, L’Illustration 53e année, No. 2706, 5 January 1895 (tome cv: jan.-jun., 9); prints carrying the title ‘His Imperial Majesty’s Funeral Outside Nijūbashi’ (Nijūbashi gai gotaisō no zu) are in Seidensticker (Citation1983) colour illustrations following page 208, 252–253.
19 Schenking (Citation2009, 111–129; Citation2013, 111–114); cf. Bates (Citation2006). On the revival of the memory of the earthquake in war-time propaganda, cf. Shepherdson-Scott (Citation2016, 582–603).
20 Dai Nihon yūbenkai kōdansha (Citation1923), map; reproduced in Weisenfeld, Imaging Disaster, 42, 2.3.
21 Dai Nihon yūbenkai kōdansha (Citation1923), ‘O-hori de kōsui wo suru hinansha;’ unpag., cf. Weisenfeld Citation2012, 55; 192–196.
22 ‘Kyūjō mae hiroba no risaisha koya to tenmaku,’ in Tōkyōshi, ed. 1926–1927. Tōkyō shinsai roku: chizu oyobi shashinjō. Tokyo: Tōkyō-shi, 69.
23 For the regional ‘rediscovery’ of castles, cf. Takagi, ed. (Citation2013, part II).
24 For an aerial photograph of the destroyed palace, cf. ‘Hirohito’s Palace “renovated” by Bombs,’ Japan Tokyo, 1945, photograph, Library of Congress. Accessed 1 September 2018, https://www.loc.gov/item/94510293/. On the different quality of aerial and ground-level photographs, their authors, and audiences after the war, cf. Fedman and Karacas (Citation2014, 959–984).
25 Asahi shinbun, 15 August 1945, Tōkyō and Ōsaka morning editions, 2.
26 Irie Sukemasa, ‘Ikiteiru kojō,’ Taiyō: The Sun, monthly de luxe 84 (Citation1970), special edition: ‘Edo jō to Tōkyō,’ with photographs by Fujimoto Shihachi, 21–22.
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Judith Vitale
Judith Vitale is a lecturer in the Department of History of the University of Zurich. Her research interests include the history of historical writing, the visual history of modern wars, and the history of drugs. Publications include ‘Pictures of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895,’ War in History 21(2) (2014), pp. 214–250, and ‘The Age of Revolution and the Historical Writing of Japan,’ Storia della Storiografia 70(2) (2016), pp. 21–42. She is beginning a project about the introduction of foreign flora in European gardens in the early modern and modern periods.