Leaving Palaceside Building, we wander around Tayasu-mon at Edo Castle (the Imperial Palace).
According to the Chiyoda City Tourism Association website, the Tayasu-mon area was anciently called “Tayasu-guchi” or “Iida-guchi,” with a road toward Jōshū. The gate name is said to come from farmland (“peasant fields”) inside the gate and a “Tayasu Daimyōjin” shrine there.
Now a quiz: where is this “Tayasu Daimyōjin” today?
Answer: Tsukudo Shrine — read “Tsukudo.” It sits in a valley between buildings behind Kitanomaru Square (site of the former Nippon Shinyō Bank head office) in front of Kudanshita Station on the Tokyo Metro Tozai Line — a neighbor of Tayasu-mon. It was rebuilt in 1994 as a concrete-walled shrine hall wedged into an office building.
This blog introduced it on February 24, 2012 as a shrine linked to Lord Taira no Masakado. Masakado was a warrior of the 10th century who rose in Ibaraki south through Chiba north and was finally killed as an imperial rebel — this is the story of his “head.”
The shrine website (http://www.tsukudo.jp/) says that when Masakado was killed in 940 and his head taken to Kyoto in a bucket, it was secretly removed and enshrined at a Kannon hall near present Ōtemachi, called “Tsukudo Myōjin” — the origin of the shrine. After Edo Castle was built, the hall was placed northwest of the castle in 1478; in 1552 (Tenbun 21) it moved to Tayasu village in Kami-Hirakawa (near Kudanzaka and Mochinoki-zaka), took the place name and was also called Tayasu Myōjin, counted among Edo’s three great shrines with Sannō (Hie) and Kanda Myōjin. This is the origin of Tayasu-mon’s name.
But the shrine itself was forced to move when Tokugawa Ieyasu entered Edo in 1589 (Tenshō 17) for castle expansion (building the Ninomaru, etc.) to the Shimotaya-Ushigome-Mitsuke rice-store site (near present JR Iidabashi); then in 1616 (Genna 2) for outer-moat expansion to Tsukudo Hachiman-chō, Shinjuku. It was renamed Tsukudo Myōjin, then Tsukudo Shrine after Meiji. In April 1945 (Shōwa 20) the hall and treasures burned in the war; rebuilt in Fujimi, Chiyoda in September 1946, then moved in 1954 to present Kudankita. Busy history indeed.
In 1875 (Meiji 7) Amatsuhikohone-no-ninigi-no-mikoto, grandson of Amaterasu, was enshrined as chief deity. The website notes: “Because Masakado, the sole deity until then, was cold-shouldered by the Meiji government, a god closely tied to the emperor was raised as ‘chief deity’ for convenience — likely to preserve the shrine’s former rank.” Masakado as rebel — perhaps unavoidable.