Snow has been the backdrop to some of Tokyo's most colorful and epoch-making events.
When pro-emperor, anti-foreigner activists assassinated the shogun's chief councilor, Ii Naosuke, outside the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle (today's Imperial Palace) on March 3, 1860, the blood that stained that day's unseasonably heavy snow signaled the death knell of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
When some 1,500 young Imperial Japanese Army officers seeking a true Imperial restoration seized the nation's capital in an attempted coup d'etat on Feb. 26, 1936, Tokyo was again blanketed with snow. The coup collapsed three days later, but the incident became a major turning point that eventually spurred the rise of fascism in Japan.