MASAKADO

In the heart of Tokyo's financial district, between towers full of banks, there is a small piece of land that no one is allowed to build on. Every morning, office workers stop there to bow. It honors a man who died in the year 940, fighting the emperor's government: Taira no Masakado, the warrior who called himself "the New Emperor" of eastern Japan — and who, over the centuries that followed, became the guardian of Edo and of modern Tokyo itself.

How did a man the court called a traitor become the protector of Japan's capital?

This book tells the story as it happened. It follows a grandson of an imperial prince, raised among the horses of the eastern frontier, who served the most powerful man in the capital, survived an ambush by his own family, answered the court's summons and was pardoned, let a trapped uncle go free, made peace in a neighboring province, and was cleared of a false charge by five provinces — until his refusal to hand over a man who had asked for his protection set off a rising that lasted only three months.

Then it follows what came after: the villagers who would not forget him, the traveling priest who made him a guardian, and the Tokugawa shoguns who placed his shrine at the "demon gate" of Edo Castle to protect their city.

Told as a narrative history, with a cast of characters, a map, and a travel guide to the places in the story, this book relies on the old chronicle known as the Shōmonki and says plainly where it does. Legends such as the flying head, and modern theories such as the "Big Dipper" of shrines around Tokyo, are clearly marked as legends and theories. The ghost stories get only a brief mention. This is the story of a man the east chose to honor.

Inside, you'll find:

- The prince's grandson raised on the eastern frontier, and his years in the capital
- The family war, the court's summons, and the uncle he chose to let go
- The peacemaker of Musashi, and the false charge five provinces helped him answer
- The man he would not hand over, and the three months that made him "the New Emperor"
- The captives he sent home in kindness, and the soldiers he sent home to plant
- How Ōta Dōkan, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the shoguns made his shrine the guardian of all Edo

This book is for:

- Readers who love Tokyo and want to know the story beneath its streets
- Readers who want a clear, carefully sourced account of one of Japan's most misunderstood figures
- Readers of the "Great Figures of Japan" series looking for its first story from the 900s

If you want a horror story about a vengeful ghost, this is not your book. If you want the true story of a man who stood between the people of the east and the officials who ruled them — and whom the east has honored as its guardian since 1309 — turn the page and meet the real Masakado.