Heritage Walking
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Imperial Palace and Marunouchi: Tokyo Station, Castle Gates and the Edo Castle Keep Base

An outdoor walk from Tokyo Station through the Imperial Palace's outer grounds and, when open, the East Gardens. It does not enter the palace buildings. The route starts at the red-brick front of Tokyo Station and follows the avenue the ambassadors' carriages take, around the plaza before the Imperial Palace and into the East Gardens: a samurai statue, the gate of the Sakuradamon Incident, the Nijubashi view, a royal-wedding fountain, the castle's main gate, a hundred-man guardhouse and the stone base of a keep that was never rebuilt. Nine stops. The East Gardens open only on certain days.

This is a self-guided walk, not a guided tour with a leader: no booking, no fixed start time. See the walking route and the walking map before you go, then follow the numbers — the audio guide plays by itself as you reach each stop. Free, with no app to install and no sign-up.

At ~90 min it fits a half day of independent travel, and joining it to another walk in Tokyo makes a full-day itinerary.

Visiting Imperial Palace and Marunouchi: Tokyo Station, Castle Gates and the Edo Castle Keep Base — hours, tickets and getting there

  • Opening hours East Gardens 09:00–17:00 (1 Mar–14 Apr), 09:00–18:00 (15 Apr–31 Aug), 09:00–17:00 (September), 09:00–16:30 (October), 09:00–16:00 (1 Nov–end of February), last entry 30 min before closing · entrances at Otemon, Hirakawamon and Kitahanebashimon
  • The East Gardens (last three stops) are closed Mondays and Fridays — open on national holidays except the Emperor's Birthday; if a Monday is a holiday they close on Tuesday instead — and 28 December to 3 January and on days of court functions. The outer grounds are open every day.
  • Admission Free · no booking needed for the East Gardens · bags are checked at the gate, so travel light (coin lockers at Tokyo Station)
  • From 15 minutes after sunset until 21:00 the Kusunoki statue, Wadakura Bridge, Sakuradamon and the stone walls are lit
  • This walk views Nijubashi from the outer grounds. To cross it, check the separate Imperial Palace tour arrangements or public greeting events
  • Check the Imperial Household Agency's notices for temporary closures of the East Gardens

Checked 2026-11. Always confirm on the official site before you go.

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Tokyo, Japan · ~90 min · 4.4 km · 9 stops

Stops on this walk

1. Tokyo Station Marunouchi Building 東京駅

A red-brick station of 1914, cut down to two storeys after 1945 and restored to its original look by 2012.

Look across the plaza at the long red-brick building, with a dome at each end. This is the Marunouchi side of Tokyo Station. Its formal name is the Tokyo Station Marunouchi Main Building. Chiyoda City's tourism guide says the station opened in 1914. It was designed by Tatsuno Kingo, the architect also known for the head office of the Bank of Japan. What you see is both old and new. In 1945, a fire caused by an air raid destroyed the roof. In 1947 the building was put back into use, but with two storeys instead of three. The Tokyo Station Hotel's history says it stayed in that temporary form for more than sixty years after the war. In 2003 the building was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan. Restoration began in 2007 and took about five years. The aim, in the hotel's words, was to keep as much as possible of what survived from the original. What had been lost was to be restored faithfully. The building got back its three storeys and the look it had a century earlier. The domes are octagonal. If you step into the north or south entrance hall and look up, the city's guide points to eight eagles in the ceiling. Below them are carvings of eight of the twelve zodiac animals, set by the directions they stand for. The hotel in this building opened in 1915, a year after the station. The city's guide also notes an entrance at the centre of the building used only by the imperial family. When the court holds ceremonies, the state carriages come by the station.

The plaza is a busy public space. When you stop, stand clear of the walkways and the taxi and bus lanes along its edges.

2. Gyoko-dori Avenue

The avenue between the station and the palace, still used by the carriages of new ambassadors.

You are standing on the central walkway of Gyoko-dori, the broad avenue between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace. Look east along it, and the station closes the view at its far end. The name Gyoko means an imperial outing, a journey made by the emperor. The Ministry of the Environment manages the palace's outer garden. The Ministry's history links this avenue to Tokyo's reconstruction after the Great Kanto Earthquake. It was not the first grand road here. In 1906, two avenues were opened in front of the palace to celebrate victory in the Russo-Japanese War. This avenue still has a ceremonial job. When a new foreign ambassador presents credentials to the Emperor, a horse-drawn carriage may be used. The Imperial Household Agency publishes the route. It runs from Tokyo Station along Gyoko-dori, straight across the Wadakuramon crossing, through the outer garden and in at the palace's Main Gate. The carriage for ambassadors is State Carriage Number Four. It was built in Japan in 1913. The Agency says only a few countries in the world, among them Britain and Spain, still collect new ambassadors by carriage. It adds that in Japan, more ambassadors ask for the carriage than for a car. The trees along the avenue are ginkgo. The Ministry lists the ginkgo of Gyoko-dori among the sights of October, when the leaves turn gold.

If a carriage passes, the Agency asks people not to crowd the pavements, to keep quiet, and never to use flash, which can startle the horses.

3. Kusunoki Masashige Statue & the Palace Plaza

A bronze samurai on horseback, presented in 1900, among the black pines of the plaza before the palace.

Look up at the bronze rider on the granite pedestal. This is Kusunoki Masashige, a warrior of the fourteenth century. The Ministry of the Environment, which looks after this garden, tells his story this way. Kusunoki's tactics helped Emperor Go-Daigo overthrow the Kamakura shogunate and briefly return power to the imperial court. Then the emperor's rule came under attack from a rebel general. Kusunoki was ordered into battle against a much larger army. He urged the emperor to think again, and predicted defeat. The battle was lost, and in 1336, rather than be captured, he took his own life. He has been remembered ever since for his loyalty to the emperor. The statue shows him waiting for Go-Daigo to come back from exile in the Oki Islands, in the Sea of Japan. The statue was a gift. The Sumitomo family, who opened the Besshi copper mine, planned it to mark the mine's two hundredth year. They asked the Tokyo Fine Arts School to make it. Its staff, among them the sculptor Takamura Koun, finished it in July 1900, and it was presented to the Imperial Household. The figure is four metres tall, and about eight with the pedestal. The body is said to weigh about six point seven tonnes. Around you spreads the plaza in front of the palace, dotted with about two thousand black pines. The Ministry says this area was an inlet of the sea before Edo Castle was built. In the Edo period, the lords' mansions stood here. In the Meiji era they were cleared on the orders of Ito Hirobumi, and the ground became an open plaza. Planting of the pines began in 1888.

The pines and lawns are cared for by hand. Please keep to the paths and off the roped-off grass.

4. Sakuradamon Gate 桜田門

A double gate of Edo Castle from around 1663, and the moat where a chief minister was killed in 1860.

Look ahead at the gate. In front is a small, sturdy gate. Behind it stands a much larger gate with a long building on top. This is Sakuradamon, a gate of Edo Castle. The Ministry of the Environment's guide calls it the largest gate of the castle still standing. The small gate is a koraimon, and the large one a yaguramon. They stand at right angles, enclosing a square courtyard called a masugata. Anyone who forced the first gate had to turn sharply inside. Soldiers in the building above could then shoot arrows and drop stones on them. The Ministry says this design was very popular in the Edo period. Many of the castle's gates were built this way. The stone walls are laid without mortar. According to the Ministry, most of the huge stones came from the Izu Peninsula, about a hundred kilometres south-west of Tokyo. They would have been brought by boat. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 shook some of them loose, and the gate was repaired and strengthened. Japan's national register of cultural properties dates the large gate building to around 1663. Chiyoda City's guide adds that the iron fittings on its doors carry that year, Kanbun 3. The gate was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1961. The gate is also known for a killing. In 1860, Ii Naosuke was murdered by the moat outside this gate. He was the tairo, the chief minister of the shogunate. According to the city's guide, his attackers were masterless samurai from the Mito domain and others. The Ministry says they were loyalists of the emperor, angered by acts they saw as weakening the emperor's power. In Japan it is known as the Sakuradamon Incident.

The gate is part of a protected historic site. You can walk through it, but please do not climb on the stone walls.

5. Nijubashi View

The two bridges across the moat to the palace's Main Gate, and the name that belongs to only one of them.

Look across the moat. The stone bridge nearer to you leads to the Main Gate of the Imperial Palace. Further back is a second bridge, made of iron. They are the Main Gate Stone Bridge and the Main Gate Iron Bridge. People usually call the pair Nijubashi, the Double Bridge. The Ministry of the Environment, which manages this garden, says that strictly the name belongs only to the bridge at the back. In the Edo period that bridge stood high above the moat. So the wooden bridge rested on a second structure part-way down, a bridge built in two layers, and that is where the name came from. It was once called Gejo-bashi. The present iron bridge replaced it in June 1964. The Ministry calls this the best-known picture of the Imperial Palace. The stone bridge is in front, the iron bridge behind it, and in the distance stands the Fushimi watchtower. The bridges are not in daily use. They are opened for court events, such as the New Year greeting, visits by foreign state guests, and ambassadors arriving to present their credentials. Behind the trees lies the palace itself. The Ministry's history begins with a castle built on this site in 1457 by the samurai Ota Dokan. From 1590 it was the home of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who became the first Tokugawa shogun in 1603. It was the shoguns' castle until the end of their rule in 1867. The emperor moved here from Kyoto in 1869. The present palace buildings were finished in 1968, in the Nishinomaru, the old compound of the retired shoguns.

This is a working palace guarded by the Imperial Guard. Stay on the plaza side of the moat and follow any instructions from the guards.

6. Wadakura Bridge & Fountain Park 和田倉橋

Warehouses on a sea inlet, then lords' mansions, and since 1961 a fountain built for a royal wedding.

You are at the west end of Wadakura Bridge, where it meets Wadakura Fountain Park. Look along Wadakura Bridge. The Ministry of the Environment, which runs this park, describes it as a wooden bridge with a graceful arch. The name is old. The Ministry's history of the park, quoting the National Gardens Association, says the name is thought to come from wata, an old word for the sea. The Hibiya inlet once reached this spot, and storehouses stood along its edge. Hence the place came to be called Wadakura, the storehouses by the sea. When Edo grew, the inlet was filled in. The land inside the gate was given out for the mansions of fudai lords, the long-standing vassals of the Tokugawa. In the Meiji era, a library of the Home Ministry stood here. The fountain has its own story. In April 1959, the Crown Prince, later the Emperor Emeritus, married Michiko. On the wedding day, a committee chaired by the former Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru announced a plan for a great fountain in front of the palace. The landscape architect Tamura Tsuyoshi designed it. He said he used only straight lines and circles, to keep it dignified rather than showy. It opened in April 1961, on the couple's second wedding anniversary. The Ministry's guide says the jets were designed to suggest a chrysanthemum, the flower of the imperial crest, and its buds. The park was rebuilt to commemorate the imperial wedding in June 1993. It was redesigned around the theme of continuity and new development, and reopened in June 1995. The great fountain was renewed, and a waterfall, a water monument and a glass bridge were added.

The fountain pools are for looking at. Please do not wade in them or let children climb on the edges.

7. Otemon Gate

Edo Castle's main entrance, with a larger gate rebuilt in 1967 after wartime destruction.

Look at the gate ahead of you, set into the high stone walls at the end of this forecourt. This is Otemon, the main gate of Edo Castle. The sign text written for the East Gardens says that under the Tokugawa shoguns, from 1603 to 1867, this gate was used by the shogun and the feudal lords. Chiyoda City's guide adds that the lords staying in Edo passed through it when they came to the castle at New Year and for their monthly audiences. Like other gates of the castle, it is really two gates. The small gate in front leads into a square courtyard. Beyond it, at a right angle, stands a larger gate with a building over it. The courtyard slowed attackers down and trapped them in a closed space. They could then be fired on from the upper storey of the larger gate. The city's guide notes the small openings in the white walls around the courtyard, made for firing guns. The city's guide says the gate is said to have been designed by Todo Takatora, a lord famous as a castle builder, in the Keicho era around 1600. It adds that the stone walls on either side were built by Date Masamune. The larger gate was destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War. The larger gate you see was rebuilt in 1967. Since 1968 this has been one of the entrances to the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace. The gardens use parts of the castle's inner compounds. If the gardens are open and you go in, look for the large shachihoko ornament displayed inside the gate. It is shaped like a mythical sea creature. It comes from the roof of the earlier gate, where it guarded against fire. The year 1657 is inscribed on its head.

The East Gardens open only on certain days and at set hours, and bags are checked at the gate.

8. Hyakunin Bansho Guardhouse

A 45-metre guardhouse where teams of armed samurai served in shifts, guarding access to Edo Castle's main compound.

Look at the long, low wooden building beside the path. This is the Hyakunin Bansho, the hundred-man guardhouse. A bansho was a guard post. The Imperial Household Agency says the building is forty-five metres long from north to south. It stands at a key point on the way into the castle. Visitors first passed the San-no-mon gate. Then, before they could reach the Naka-no-mon gate and the main compound beyond, they came past this guardhouse. The Agency says four units of musketeers took turns here, day and night. They were the Koga, Iga, Negoro and Nijugo-ki units. Each unit had twenty officers called yoriki and a hundred lower-ranking samurai called doshin. Chiyoda City's guide says the name is thought to come from those hundred doshin always on duty. The sign text written for the East Gardens calls this the largest of three guardhouses that survive from the Edo period. A smaller one, the Doshin Bansho, stands near the site of the San-no-mon. Chiyoda's guide says only the three senior branches of the Tokugawa family could pass that gate still riding in their palanquins. Every other lord had to get down there and be checked. Chiyoda's guide notes the Tokugawa hollyhock crest on the roof tiles of the Doshin Bansho. The third, the Obansho, stands just inside the Naka-no-mon. It was the last checkpoint before the main compound, so samurai of higher rank served there. After the shogunate fell it became a workshop. It was returned to its old appearance in 1968, when the East Gardens opened. The three guardhouses formed successive checkpoints on the way to the main compound.

The guardhouse is a historic building. You can look in through the front, but please do not go inside or lean on the walls.

9. Tenshudai, Base of the Edo Castle Keep 江戸城

A stone foundation rebuilt in 1658 for an Edo Castle keep that was never reconstructed.

Look at the massive stone platform in front of you. This is the Tenshudai, the stone foundation prepared for rebuilding Edo Castle's keep. The Imperial Household Agency says three successive keeps were built in Edo Castle's main compound during the Edo period. Chiyoda City's guide gives the years: 1607 under Tokugawa Ieyasu, 1622 under his son Hidetada, and 1638 under the third shogun, Iemitsu. The city calls the keep a symbol of the shogun's power. Iemitsu's keep had five roofs and rose fifty-eight metres above the ground, according to the Agency. Its sign text calls it the tallest keep ever built in Japan. In 1657 the Great Fire of Meireki swept through Edo, and the keep burned down. The next year, this stone base was built again. Chiyoda's guide says the work was done by the Maeda family, lords of Kaga. But the keep itself was never rebuilt. The Agency explains why. Hoshina Masayuki was the uncle and adviser of the fourth shogun, Ietsuna. He argued that a keep was not needed in an age when peace was kept, and his view won. The city's guide adds that he wanted the rebuilding of the town to come first. So Edo Castle had a keep for only about the first fifty years of the Edo period. The great lawn to the south was the Honmaru, the castle's main compound, where the shogun's palace stood. The Agency notes two later uses. From 1871, a noon gun fired from the Honmaru every day for fifty-eight years. And in November 2019, the present Emperor held the Daijosai there, a rite performed only once in each reign.

The platform is part of the historic castle site. Stay on the paths and the slope, and keep back from the edges at the top.