Imperial Palace East Gardens & Shogun History Walking Tour Tokyo

Wadakura Fountain Park and the outer moats

Your Imperial Palace walking tour begins at Wadakura Fountain Park, a calm square of lawns and fountains set beside the inner moat, a few minutes on foot from the Marunouchi exits of Tokyo Station. The park was laid out in 1961 to mark an imperial wedding and renovated in the 1990s, and its fountains are lit after dark. From here you already see the scale of the old castle: wide moats, sloping stone ramparts and the guarded bridges that once separated the shogun's world from the merchant city.

Your guide uses this first stop to set the scene, explaining how Edo grew from a fishing village into one of the largest cities on earth around its castle. It is also the easiest answer to how to get to the Imperial Palace: walk from Tokyo Station or Otemachi Station, and you are at the meeting point in under ten minutes.

Ote-mon Gate and the Hyakunin Bansho Guardhouse

Ote-mon was the principal entrance to Edo Castle, used by feudal lords arriving for their compulsory audiences with the shogun. It is a masugata gate: a small outer gate leads into a square courtyard, and attackers who broke through had to turn sharply right toward a heavier inner gate while defenders fired from above. The wooden gatehouse was destroyed in 1945 and carefully rebuilt in 1967, while the massive stones of the courtyard are original.

Beyond the gate stands the Hyakunin Bansho, a long wooden guardhouse whose name means the post of one hundred men. Sentries from trusted retainer families worked here in shifts, day and night, checking anyone who wished to pass deeper into the castle. This is where most visitors begin an Imperial Palace East Gardens tour, and your guide explains how rank, dress and paperwork controlled every movement inside the walls.

Fujimi-yagura and the stone walls of Edo Castle

Fujimi-yagura, the Mount Fuji viewing keep, is a three-storey white tower on the southern edge of the main enclosure. After the great fire of 1657 destroyed the castle's central tower, this keep was rebuilt in 1659 and served as a stand-in tower for the rest of the Edo period. On clear winter days its upper floors once looked out to Mount Fuji, which gave it its name; today it is one of the few original turrets left standing.

Around it rise the castle's famous stone walls, built by feudal lords who were ordered to ship huge granite and andesite blocks to Edo from the Izu Peninsula. Your guide shows you how to read the stones: carved marks left by different work gangs, the curving lines that spread the weight, and the tight fitting that has resisted centuries of earthquakes. This stop is the heart of any Edo Castle tour.

Honmaru lawn and the castle tower base

The Honmaru, or main enclosure, was the core of Edo Castle, where the shogun lived, governed and received lords in a vast complex of palaces. Almost all of it burned in fires during the Edo period and the late 1800s, and today a broad lawn covers the area, edged by pine and cherry trees. At its northern end stands the tenshudai, the stone base of the castle tower, about eleven metres high and built of pale granite after the 1657 fire.

The tower that once stood here was the tallest castle keep ever built in Japan, but it was never rebuilt after the fire, as the shogunate chose to spend its funds on rebuilding the city instead. Climb the ramp to the top of the base for a wide view over the lawns and the modern skyline beyond the trees. Nearby, a rest house displays a detailed scale model of the lost tower.

Ninomaru Garden and its koi ponds

The Ninomaru Garden occupies the second enclosure of the castle, below the main lawn. Re-created in the 1960s after an Edo-period plan, it is a classic Japanese strolling garden with a winding pond, stone lanterns, a small waterfall and a wisteria trellis. Brightly coloured koi glide under the bridges, and the planting changes through the year: azaleas in spring, irises in June, maples in late autumn and camellias in winter.

This is the calmest part of the tour and many guests find it the best part, a quiet space in the middle of a business district. Your guide finishes the shogun story here, explaining how the castle passed to the emperor in 1868. If you are wondering whether the Imperial Palace is worth visiting when the inner palace itself stays closed, this garden is the answer.