The women’s palace – what it all came to …

The poet Basho wrote:

Summer grasses –
All that remains
Of mighty warrior’s dreams

Was reminded of this poem when I went back to the women’s palace, the women’s vast palatial residence which formed a huge proportion of Edo Castle, the shogun’s headquarters. (Akin to a harem, the women’s palace housed 3000 women and the only man who ever entered was the shogun …)

Of course I knew what to expect, having been here many many times before, particularly when I was researching my novel The Last Concubine. But all the same, having spent so many months and years in my imagination in the women’s palace, it always comes as a bit of a shock to see what’s actually left now.

The main impression one gets is of how truly vast it was. I paced it out – an enormous expanse, the whole of this vast lawn – but all that is left is the vast granite foundation stones of the mighty five storey donjon tower that once stood there and which burnt down centuries before the period I write about.

All the same it was extraordinary to walk along the very paths which hundreds of daimyo walked along and past the very canals they passed when they came to pay homage to the shogun – as did Townsend Harris, the first American consul.

And thus after a mere three days in Tokyo we set sail again, along the bay to Yokohama …

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All photographs © Lesley Downer.