Walking around the Imperial Palace, what surprises you—besides the abundance of green—is the stone walls of Edo Castle (photo: East Gardens of the Imperial Palace). What civil engineering was done in that era? The masonry—massive stones cut and stacked with remarkable skill—is astonishing.
The stone used is largely Seto Inland Sea granite and Izu Peninsula andesite, it seems. With no large dump trucks or cranes, how were they transported across the sea from the Seto Inland Sea and Izu Peninsula? It is a mystery.
According to historical sources, transport was entirely by sea—that makes sense. They would not have carried them over the Hakone mountains on the Tokaido. As boulders, they could not move large quantities. They seem to have been carried little by little on large ships. In Koto Ward there is a place called Furishiba. It is near Kiba. Kiba, needless to say, was where timber was unloaded. Traces remain—lumber dealers still operate, and logs are stored in rivers and canals.
Furishiba, as the place name indicates, was a stone yard of the Edo shogunate—a storage base for stone shipped from the west. From the late Edo period, reclamation advanced, creating areas called Fukagawa Kaiben Shinden Tobichi Furishiba, Kyuzaemon Shinden Tobichi Furishiba, and Kameido-mura Tobichi Furishiba. In Meiji 24 they were consolidated into the new Fukagawa Furishiba. Kiba Station on the Tozai subway line and Shin-Kiba Station on the Keiyo Line are better known, and Ishiba seems somewhat in the shadow—but the stone walls of Edo Castle were built from massive stones that came via Ishiba.
Edo Castle and the streets of Edo were built to a considerable extent with stone brought to Ishiba and timber brought to Kiba—these two towns were at the core of Edo building culture.