Suidobashi (Former Army Arsenal) about 60 years ago and today

History of Suidobashi (Former Army Arsenal)

In a corner north of Suidobashi with the Kanda River at its back, a daimyo garden from the early Edo period and a large stadium with a white roof sit next to each other. The site of the Mito family residence that held the garden was occupied by an army weapons factory from the Meiji era into the 1930s. The aerial photographs show the scene after that factory left. There is no era that shows the factory itself. If you follow the photographs, you can see the process in which only the black woods of the garden stay still, a stadium and an oval track appear on the open ground to its east, and eventually a white roof sits on the position of the track.

The residence garden and the weapons factory

The garden is said to have been built at the residence in 1629 (Kan'ei 6) by Yorifusa of the Mito Tokugawa family and completed in the time of the second lord, Mitsukuni. The name Korakuen was given from the thinking of Zhu Shunshui, a Confucian scholar of the Ming whom Mitsukuni consulted. In the Meiji era the site of the residence came under the Ministry of Military Affairs, later the Ministry of the Army, the Tokyo Army Arsenal was built, and the garden was kept as a garden attached to the arsenal. While the whole residence turned into a factory, only the pond and the artificial hill were protected.

The Kanda Aqueduct, which drew spring water from Inokashira Pond, filled the pond of the garden. The aqueduct passed through the residence and crossed the Kanda River on a raised water channel called Suidobashi (the name means waterworks bridge), the same name as the station, distributing water to the town of Edo. Even after it ended its role as drinking water in 1901, the aqueduct continued to be used as industrial water for the arsenal, and it was abolished in 1933 in step with the relocation of the arsenal. The channel through which the aqueduct passed keeps its form as a stream in the garden.

The turning point was the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Most of the arsenal's facilities burned, and in the garden too, stone bridges and rock arrangements fell. In 1927 it was decided to move the arsenal to Kokura in Kyushu, and the garden passed to the Ministry of Education. According to materials of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the relocation of the arsenal was completed in December 1936, and the City of Tokyo took over the management of the garden. In the same December 1936, the Korakuen Stadium company was founded as a company to build and run a stadium for professional baseball.

In terms of terrain, this area lies on low land along the Kanda River, and only the east side reaches the edge of the Hongo Plateau and is one step higher. The hazard maps of Bunkyo Ward and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government respectively show as assumptions what would happen to the low land along the river in heavy rain or shaking.

The open ground east of the garden

In the photograph from around 1936-42, slightly left of the center of the frame, the woods of the garden sink as a black mass. Its east side is brightly open ground, where lines of roads and square traces that seem to be building foundations remain faintly, with only roofs scattered here and there. It is thought to be the site after the factory buildings were removed. However, the grain is coarse, and even if you zoom in, the oval of a stadium cannot be read clearly. Toward the bottom of the center, the river and tracks run side by side east-west, and on the plateau side to the right, fine rows of houses are packed in black. In the upper right of the frame there is a wide compound where large buildings line up around courtyards. In the lower left corner, the water surface of a moat extends diagonally and joins the river beyond. The whiteness of the open ground stands out all the more, set between the blackness of the rows of houses that fill the surroundings.

In the 1945-50 photograph, an oval stadium appears clearly east of the garden. It is Korakuen Stadium, which opened in September 1937. According to the records of the operating company, at the end of the war the stadium became an anti-aircraft gun position and the field turned into a vegetable garden. In November 1945 it was requisitioned by the occupation forces, and it was released the next year. In the war damage of the same year, 1945, a hall and gates of the garden also burned. In the photograph the lower half of the frame is washed out white, and the fine shading of the rows of houses can hardly be read. Only the woods of the garden and the oval of the stadium keep their outlines within that white expanse.

An oval track and a fan-shaped stadium

In 1961-69, two sports venues line up east of the garden. The one toward the north is a long, narrow oval track, which corresponds to the Korakuen Velodrome, opened in October 1949. To its southeast, on the side near the station, there is a stadium opening in a fan shape, with the color of the ground divided between infield and outfield. South of the two venues, large square buildings line up, and the contrast between the black woods of the garden and the white venues is sharpest in this era. The lower half of the frame, which was washed out white in 1945-50, is also filled with the fine shading of roofs in this era.

Bright green covers the inside of the oval, with several black round dots scattered on it. This is the figure that appears in the 1974-78 photograph. The metropolitan keirin races were abolished in 1973, and the inside of the track was used as a swimming pool in summer and a golf practice range in winter. The outfield of the stadium is green too, and in 1976 artificial turf for baseball was laid for the first time in Japan. In 1979-83, a long, narrow building with a white roof is added on the east side of the stadium. The green of the outfield and the brown of the infield mark off the fan shape sharply, and the inside of the oval is still green. In 1984-86 the oval track still keeps the form of a white line, but the venue closed in 1984.

A white roof on the site of the track

In the 1987-90 photograph, a white, round dome roof sits where the oval track was. It is Tokyo Dome, which opened on March 17, 1988. The fan-shaped stadium in the southeast ended its role in 1987, and its position has turned into an irregular gray surface that looks partway through demolition. The woods of the garden have not changed their form in this era either.

In today's photograph too, the composition in which the white roof of the dome and the green of the garden sit side by side is the same. A large building stands on the position of the old stadium, and the surroundings of the dome are filled with paving and buildings. The wide compound in the upper right of the frame and the water surface of the moat extending diagonally in the lower left are in the same places as in the photograph from around 1936-42. Through the seven eras and today's photograph, only the land east of the garden was largely replaced. Inside the garden, a monument to the arsenal remains, modeled on the shape of the former residence, and something said to be a part of a machine for making ammunition is also placed there. After the times of the residence and the factory, a stadium was built east of the garden. During all that time, only the outline of the garden never moved once.