Hirakawa Gate, Tokyo

The Hirakawa Gate on the northern edge of Edo Castle grounds — one of the few surviving castle gates from the Tokugawa period — appears here as a monument to the military past of what became the Imperial Palace complex. Kasamatsu repeatedly depicted the gates, moats, and walls of the old castle grounds, finding in them a layered archaeology of Edo-period power that persisted beneath the surface of modern Tokyo. The gate's stone foundations and wooden superstructure offered a formal study in architectural preservation.