enlarged pictureEdo meisho no e ("Famous Places of Edo"), a print depicted by Kuwagata Keisai in 1803, is an aerial view of Edo as seen from the direction of Honjo, in present-day Sumida Ward, drawn in single-point perspective. This bold composition fits the entire view of the city on a single page, along with a wealth of information about noteworthy spots. From this illustration, it is easy to see that Edo was a city of water and greenery that made ingenious use of its river and ocean resources.
full pictureEvery year on the first three days of the New Year period, the daimyo in Edo were obliged to visit Edo Castle en masse to pay their respects. This folding-screen picture, titled Edo Jo nenshi tojo fukeizu byobu (Folding Screen Scene of New Year Attendance at Edo Castle) was executed in brush and ink by Eiko Satake in 1898. The arrival of numerous daimyo and their vassals at the castle was a famous sight, and many citizens came to see the spectacle. The daimyo had to dismount from their horses at an area known as geba, literally meaning "to dismount," before entering the castle, and the vassals awaited their masters' return here. The gossip and banter exchanged among the waiting vassals gave rise to the phrase gebahyo ("chat at the geba"), which is still used today to mean rumor, speculation, or hearsay.
enlarged pictureThis picture dating to the early Meiji period (1868-1912) shows the front entrance of the building once used as the main Edo mansion of the clan that ruled the Fukuoka domain. When the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was first established by the Meiji government, the ministry used this building as its headquarters. A new brick building replaced the mansion in 1881. Although several daimyo mansions survived as the headquarters of government offices until World War II, most of them were destroyed in the bombings. (Photos courtesy of Edo-Tokyo Museum)
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By Hiroaki Ichikawa
Curator, Edo-Tokyo Museum Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) was a warrior chieftain who became the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate. Ieyasu made Edo the seat of national government in 1603, the year that marked the end of the civil strife that had persisted in Japan for over 150 years. Edo was a long way, both geographically and culturally, from Kyoto, which had served as the capital since the Heian period (794-1185). For over 260 years, from the beginning of Ieyasu's rule until the Meiji Restoration (1868), when the shogunal system was dismantled and political power reverted to the emperor, Edo flourished as Japan's political and economic center. This era is known as the Edo period. Before Ieyasu made Edo the national government headquarters, it was just a provincial town, albeit a bustling commercial hub, on the Kanto Plain. But the landscape changed dramatically after Ieyasu established his base of operations here. The daimyo (feudal lords) from around the country were required to reside in Edo in alternate periods, and in order to comply with this requirement (which was designed to ensure loyalty to the shogunate), they had to build residences in the capital. A single daimyo's residence typically comprised multiple buildings, each occupying a large area of land. By the middle of the seventeenth century, when Edo's land area was about 60 square kilometers, roughly equivalent to the area circumscribed by the present-day JR Yamanote Line (the train line that rings the central part of Tokyo), 70% of the city's land was occupied by the households of samurai, including Ieyasu's numerous retainers. Edo was truly a samurai city, defined by its military presence. This made Edo quite different from European feudal cities, where merchants and artisans were the main characters. When the daimyo departed their homelands to live in Edo, a spatial separation arose between the regions of production and the regions of consumption. Each year, the daimyo were required to send to Edo an amount equivalent to about half of the annual tributes they collected from their home regions. With all of these warrior-consumers in residence, Edo became a consumption capital. The concentration of so much of the nation's wealth in one place spurred a population influx; by the first half of the eighteenth century, Edo had become the first city in the history of the world to grow to a population of one million. The city's prosperity and its status as the country's political and economic center persists to this day, long after its name was changed from Edo to Tokyo. Many of the tracts of land now occupied by government offices, parks, universities, and other major components of the city's and the nation's modern infrastructure were once the grounds of daimyo mansions. For example, the offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are located on the former site of the main Edo mansion of the Kuroda family of the Fukuoka domain. The piece of land that is now Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden once contained the secondary Edo mansion of the Naitos of the Shinanokuni Takato domain. And the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus sits on the former site of the main Edo mansion of the Maedas of the Kaga domain. Many of the daimyo mansions and the land they occupied were handed over in their entirety to the Meiji government and went on to become the sites of today's public infrastructure. And thus Tokyo was built on the foundation of Edo. One might rightly say that Edo was a rough sketch for Tokyo. |