From Edo Castle, built by Dohkan Ota in the Muromachi period and developed by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Edo period, to the Imperial Palace after the Restoration of the Imperial Rule, this place has continuously absorbed nutrition and today become a “lung” of Tokyo and a symbolic forest.
In the Dohkan era Edo Castle was built at the boundary area of Edo Maejima, the peninsula where a huge diluvial uplands spreading in the Kanto district protruding towards the sea and became a center of the city after the reclamation of the Hibiya inlet by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Most of the enormous stones of the stone wall were transported from Izu Peninsula, wood from the Kiso River basin, mainly by the Tone and Tama River water system and the castle was built by nationwide daimyos and people mobilized from their territories. The castle tower that was burned down in the Meireki conflagration was never rebuilt afterwards.
Today there are countless runners who run proudly around the palace where daimyo’s mansions had once surrounded. Sequence of urban landscape produced by the height difference of 25m has established as a suitable sports scene for the people living in the city. (S.Doi)
