(Voice actor) Mr.Chris Koprowski

The Imperial Palace is where the Emperor currently resides, but when the Tokugawa regime was governing, it was called the Edo castle. In this castle, successive Tokugawa shoguns lived and ruled from here. This was a castle to which Ieyasu Tokugawa, the founder of the Tokugawa regime, made major upgrades. Ieyasu Tokugawa had controlled Mikawa (now a part of Aichi prefecture), Suruga (now a part of Shizuoka prefecture), Toutomi (now a part of Shizuoka), Kai (now Yamanshi prefecture), and Shinano (now Nagano prefecture) until then, but because of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who seized power before Ieyasu, his territory was changed to the Kanto region. So, Ieyasu made the Edo castle the base to run Kanto’s politics. In 1590, the Edo castle underwent major upgrades and remained the center of politics for about 270 years. And the town of Edo kept flourishing. A town that maintained peace without any big wars for this long is rare worldwide. Did you know that one factor that contributed to this is feng shui? In feng shui, northeast and southwest are called demon’s gate and demon’s back-gate, respectively, and it is said that change comes from here. Change, for the regime, could mean a new force that replaces them. So the Tokugawa regime tried to protect the Edo castle by making large shrines and temples on the demon’s gate and demon’s back-gate and praying for the prosperity of the Tokugawa regime and Edo to oracles and monks. It was a monk named Tenkai Nankobo who proposed this feng shui-based urban planning. Tenkai was involved in the early stages of politics of the Tokugawa regime as the mastermind behind Ieyasu. Tenkai is a man of mystery. His birthplace is not known, but when Ieyasu moved to Kanto, his name came up as Ieyasu’s mastermind. There are theories that, since a person like Ieyasu trusted him, he must have been an admirable person, or that he was a member of the Ashina family, a feudal lord in Oshu (now Tohoku region), or that he was a member of the Ashikaga family, the shogun before the Tokugawa clan. There is even a theory that Mitsuhide Akechi, who had a relationship with Ieyasu, became Tenkai. Whatever the case, what did Tenkai Nankobo, who earned Ieyasu’s trust, do to the town of Edo to protect Edo castle? Find out through the story while referring to a map of Tokyo.