Sakuradamon Gate

In front of you is the Sakuradamon, one of the best-preserved gates of Edo Castle. It follows the same plan as the Ōtemon, with two gates and an enclosed courtyard in between, but here almost everything is original: it is designated an Important Cultural Property.

1The Sakuradamon Incident

On 24 March 1860, the day of the Girls' Festival, the daimyō were making their way to the castle for the customary ceremony. Among them was Ii Naosuke, the tairō or chief minister of the shogunate, the man who had signed treaties with the United States and other powers without the emperor's permission. The chronicles recall that it was snowing. Waiting for him beside this gate were eighteen men: seventeen masterless samurai from the Mito domain and one from Satsuma. A gunshot hit his palanquin, and Ii was beheaded in the middle of the street.

The shogunate took weeks to acknowledge his death. The attack showed that Tokugawa power could be struck at the very gates of its own castle, and it opened a decade of violence that ended with the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

Today, ‘Sakuradamon’ is also the popular way of referring to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, whose headquarters stand directly opposite.

2What to look for

• The low outer gate, of the kōraimon type, with its ironwork.
• The square courtyard where attackers would have been trapped had the castle been stormed.
• The wide Sakurada moat, which separated the castle from the daimyō quarter.