ABSTRACT
When in 1600 the House of Tokugawa achieved national military supremacy at the Battle of Sekigahara, it turned increasingly to buildings, as ‘things seen’, to establish a working definition of authority unseen. The Tokugawa order was created in a protracted process of accommodation with, and eventually assertion over, the authority of the imperial institution above and the power of the daimyo below.6 Much of this accommodation was architecturally achieved. The authority of the Tokugawa shogunate was structured by its specially created architectural setting; the Tokugawa built environment defined spatially the crucial relationships between the shogunate, the imperial court and the regional lords. It achieved this in terms of spatial juxtaposition to establish hierarchy, physical access to equate with political importance, and the use of architecture as the officially sanctioned image of authority both to influence and intimidate.
