The Palaceside Building appeared this week on TV Tokyo’s “Asa no! Sanpomichi.” It aired around 7:45 a.m. on Monday, August 27.
The program, a “gentle walking show” that began on April 3, 2017, airs Monday through Friday from 7:35 to 8:00 a.m. “We visit neighborhoods in the news and stroll about, meeting all kinds of people. We look for curious things and people that make you gasp, say ‘wow,’ or speak up without thinking” (from the program homepage).
The theme for the week of the 27th was “the Imperial Palace.” Talent and reporter Emiri Nakayama walked a clockwise circuit starting from Kudanshita.
On the first day, the 27th, Takako Takada of the Edo-Tokyo Guide Association led the way. From Nippon Budokan and Yasukuni Shrine they heard how the “tall lantern” along the highway once served as a lighthouse visible from off Shinagawa when there were no buildings; how “Kudanzaka” literally had nine steps in the Edo period and was graded into a gentler slope after the Great Kanto Earthquake; and how the Imperial Palace’s “Tayasu-mon,” the oldest gate still standing at the palace, is a “masugata” gate — a small plaza beyond the first gate, then another gate to the right, designed to trap attackers — among other commentary, listen
ing as they walked on to Takebashi.
This is, in a sense, the gateway to Otemachi; a map first showed that the head offices of four national papers, including The Mainichi Newspapers, are clustered here (photo 1).
Then they arrived at the Palaceside Building. The day’s goal was Takasago on the first basement level, a restaurant that has continued since the Edo period (photo 2). Here Nakayama parted from guide Takada and dropped in on Takasago (photo 3).
Twelfth-generation owner Hiroaki Kumagai explained traditions such as the story that Shinsengumi leader Isami Kondo visited in the Edo period (top photo 4). Nakayama savored the recommended katsu spaghetti (photo 5) — a happy ending.
The program then continued from the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace toward the Palace Hotel in Otemachi, and this day’s
segment came to a close.
As for Takasago’s history, it is said to have begun when Shichibei Takaseya founded the one-dish eatery Takaseya in Keian 3 (1650) in Kanda Mikawacho (today’s Uchikanda 1-chome). Later changes are told in de
tail in installment 22 of the column “Hyakunen Kigyo Noren Sandai-ki” on the NPO Kanda Gakkai’s site (spotlighting long-established shops in Kanda that have kept their noren for three generations or more, with photos and text from the founder to today) (http://www.kandagakkai.org/noren
)(photo below).
