You cannot see it. That is the point. Millions of people walk the gravel paths around the Tokyo Imperial Palace each year, jog the famous five-kilometer loop encircling the moats, and photograph the stone walls and pine trees without ever glimpsing the building where the Emperor of Japan actually lives. Fukiage Palace sits deep within the Fukiage Garden on the western side of the imperial grounds, screened by dense woodland planted over centuries. No public tour reaches it. No observation deck overlooks it. The Emperor's home exists at the geographic center of Tokyo and at the center of Japan's constitutional monarchy, yet it is one of the least-seen significant buildings in the world.
The land beneath Fukiage Palace carries layers of power. Edo Castle was built on this site in 1457 by the warrior Ota Dokan, then transformed by Tokugawa Ieyasu into the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate after 1603. For more than 250 years, the shoguns ruled Japan from these grounds. The Fukiage area -- the western portion of the vast castle complex -- served as the shogun's private garden. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the last Tokugawa shogun vacated the castle and the emperor moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, claiming the old seat of shogunal power as his own. The grounds became the Imperial Palace. The total palace complex covers approximately 3.41 square kilometers in the heart of Chiyoda ward, surrounded by moats filled with water that once protected samurai lords. Today those moats reflect skyscrapers.
The current Fukiage Palace was designed by architect Shozo Uchii and completed in 1993 at a cost of 5.6 billion yen -- roughly 52 million US dollars at the time. It is a reinforced concrete structure of approximately 4,940 square meters, spread across three floors including a basement level. Sixty-two rooms are divided among three wings: a residential wing of seventeen private apartments on the eastern side, thirty-two office rooms on the northern side, and eleven rooms dedicated to guest receptions on the southern side. The architecture is deliberately understated. There is no grand facade, no towering roofline meant to impress from a distance. The palace was built to function, not to be admired -- a private home for a constitutional monarch whose public ceremonies take place elsewhere, in the separate Kyuden state function halls.
Japanese imperial naming conventions attach the palace's official title to its occupant. When Emperor Akihito abdicated on April 30, 2019 -- the first abdication by a Japanese emperor in over two centuries -- the residence was formally renamed the Fukiage Sento Gosho, reflecting its status as the home of an emperor emeritus. Akihito and Empress Michiko remained in the palace until March 31, 2020, when they moved to the Takanawa Imperial Residence to allow renovations. Their son, Emperor Naruhito, moved into Fukiage Palace in September 2021 with Empress Masako and their daughter Princess Aiko. With Naruhito in residence, the building reverted to its simpler designation: Gosho, meaning simply "the palace." The name follows the emperor; the building stays the same.
From the air, the Tokyo Imperial Palace grounds form an unmistakable void in the density of central Tokyo -- a dark mass of forest and water where the city's relentless grid simply stops. The East Gardens are open to the public and draw visitors to the remnants of Edo Castle's stone foundations and turrets. But the Fukiage Garden, where the palace hides, remains closed. Photography is prohibited inside the residence, and the Imperial Household Agency releases only occasional carefully chosen images. The palace exists in a state of deliberate obscurity, a contrast to the transparent constitutional role of the monarchy it houses. Emperor Naruhito greets the public from the balcony of the Kyuden on New Year's Day and his birthday, but his daily life unfolds in the hidden rooms behind the trees. In a city of fourteen million people, the emperor's home is the quietest address.
Fukiage Palace is located at 35.684°N, 139.748°E within the western portion of the Tokyo Imperial Palace grounds in Chiyoda ward. From the air, the palace grounds are instantly recognizable as the large forested area surrounded by moats in the center of Tokyo, bordered by Marunouchi's office towers to the east and the National Diet Building to the southwest. The Fukiage Palace itself is hidden under the tree canopy on the western side of the grounds. Tokyo Heliport (RJTI) is approximately 6 nm to the east. Haneda Airport (RJTT) lies roughly 8 nm to the south. Note: flight restrictions apply over the Imperial Palace. The grounds are best observed from a respectful altitude of 3,000+ feet AGL.