Th Edo-Tokyo Museum
The Edo-Tokyo Museum (©The Edo-Tokyo Museum)


















































The Edo-Tokyo Museum
The reproduction of Nihonbashi (©The Edo-Tokyo Museum)







































































The Edo-Tokyo Museum
Visitors cross the bridge to enter the Edo Zone. (©The Edo-Tokyo Museum)
By Makoto Takeuchi
Director, The Edo-Tokyo Museum

Four hundred years have passed since Japan's capital moved to Edo, the city now known as Tokyo. The Edo-Tokyo Museum, which showcases the history and culture of this period, is popular among locals and tourists alike. Rather than focusing on the ruling warrior class of the Edo period, the exhibits are designed to convey a detailed picture of how ordinary people lived. The displays make people feel as if they are experiencing history for themselves. For example, visitors enter the permanent exhibit area by crossing a replica of Nihonbashi, a famous Edo-period bridge. Japanese visitors have said they find our exhibits intimate and easy to understand. And visitors from other countries often comment that our museum lets them see how Japanese people really lived more clearly than any other museum.

The Edo-Tokyo Museum is Japan's first museum related to the history of a city. It was planned and constructed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and completed in 1993. In its first 10 years the museum has attracted 17 million visitors. Non-Japanese visitors made up about 7% of this total, and recently this percentage has been on the rise.

The museum has a floor space of some 30,000 square meters and is divided between the main building (located in Yokoami, Sumida Ward) and the annex (located in Sakuramachi, Koganei City). The main building contains the permanent and special exhibitions. The annex is an outdoor museum, the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum.

The open-air architectural museum is a collection of buildings and other structures representative of Edo and old Tokyo. Among them is Kodakara-yu, an old public bathhouse that was moved to the annex from central Tokyo. The open-air museum is a favorite of Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki, who says that coming here stimulates his creativity. He has visited over 100 times. It was here, Miyazaki says, that he solidified the concept for his film Spirited Away, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film at the 75th Annual Academy Awards.

Experiencing History Close Up
The museum's main building is divided into three zones. The Edo Zone covers the Edo period (1603-1868, when Tokyo was known as Edo); the Tokyo zone covers the history of the city after 1868, when it became known as Tokyo; and the History Zone presents the story of the Edo/Tokyo region from prehistoric times. To enter the Edo Zone, visitors cross a reproduction of Nihonbashi, a wooden bridge constructed in 1603 in what later became known as the Nihonbashi district. Visitors cross the bridge into an Edo-period cityscape, with full-size partial reproductions of period structures, including the Nakamura Kabuki Theater and the row houses inhabited by ordinary people. The reproduction of the theater conveys the excitement felt by people of the day when famous actors appeared there. The row-house reproduction includes a highly realistic scene of a midwife giving a newborn baby its first bath as the family looks on. This reproduction is an example of the experiential quality of the exhibits at the museum. This section of the museum also has highly realistic miniature models that recreate, in all their bustle, the commoners' district of Ryogoku and the largest dry-goods store in the city, Mitsui Echigoya, which later became the Mitsukoshi department store.

In this section of the museum, one can also view the process by which traditional colored woodblock prints were produced. Part of the genre of woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, which had a huge influence on the American and European art world starting in the late nineteenth century, these colored prints are the product of a trinity of artists - ukiyo-e artist, horishi (carver), and surishi (printer) - working perfectly in tune with one another. As visitors observing the exhibits at the museum can see, a staggering amount of skill and precision is involved. Visitors are deeply impressed by the high-precision work of the printer in printing intricate pictures of 10 or more colors with not a line out of place.

Visitors pass under the Nihonbashi bridge to reach the next section of the museum, the Tokyo Zone, which re-creates the atmosphere of Japan's moves to westernize during the early Meiji period. Of the many newspapers published during this vibrant era, one of the most popular was the Choya Shimbun. The Tokyo Zone contains a full-size partial reproduction of the newspaper's offices; this reproduction vividly conveys the vibrant spirit of the times. Also on display in the Tokyo Zone is a 1/25-scale reproduction of the Rokumeikan, a building where government officials held receptions and balls for foreign dignitaries. To the citizens of a country that had only just begun to open itself up to the world, this Western-style building, designed by the British architect Josiah Conder, was a dazzling sight. The Rokumeikan display changes throughout the day, so visitors can get a glimpse at the evening galas and other functions that kept the place buzzing with life around the clock.

The third zone of the museum is the History Zone. As the name suggests, this part of the museum gives an overview of the Edo/Tokyo region's history, from prehistoric times to the present day.

An Ideal Spot to Take Foreign Guests
The Edo-Tokyo Museum conveys the distinctive qualities of the Edo/Tokyo region and of Japan's capital city during each period of its history. From a Japanese visitor's perspective, the museum's life-size reproductions and miniature models are like a history textbook come to life. As they enjoy the displays, they also get to review what they learned in school. Details of everyday life, such as the extent to which people reused and recycled things (unlike its modern-day counterpart, Edo was a city that produced little waste) and the leisurely pace of ordinary people's routines, really come across in the exhibits. Ordinary people typically lived in row houses, side-by-side with strangers, and through the exhibit one can readily see how this fostered a spirit of interpersonal harmony and a willingness to compromise. I think that modern Japanese people have become more self-centered and are losing this spirit. The commoners' way of life in the Edo period had some shining qualities, and I would like to see people today take a leaf out of their book.

One of our frequent visitors is the president of a trading company. I asked him why he comes to the museum so often, and he replied, "When foreign clients come to Tokyo, I bring them here first to impress upon them the fact that Japan has this history. And our business talks go smoothly from that point on."

That company president is not the only one who has realized that the Edo-Tokyo Museum is an effective tool of "diplomacy." A number of government ministries and agencies have added the museum to the list of places where they take visiting dignitaries. When government officials bring their foreign guests here, they notice the expressions on the guests' faces that says they are glad they came. As a result, more and more officials are becoming convinced that this museum is attractive to foreign as well as Japanese visitors. I want to work hard to establish the Edo-Tokyo Museum in people's minds as being comparable to the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London - as the museum to visit when you come to Tokyo.