Exploring Tokyo’s Past at the Edo-Tokyo Museum
There’s no other city quite like Tokyo. It enthrals visitors with its high-tech feel, its safety and cleanliness, its historic temples and shrines, and its mind-boggling train and subway system. Not to mention its sheer size.
Behind this ultra-modern city of more than 9 million people – 13 million if you include the greater Tokyo area - lies more than 400 years of sometimes turbulent history.
Want to delve into the past? Then be sure to add the Edo-Tokyo Museum to your itinerary. It’s an ideal destination for anyone wanting to know how the city was born and how it grew into the place it is today.
Housed in a striking building in Tokyo’s Ryogoku district, the museum opened in 1993. It’s dedicated to the city’s history and culture, both during the Edo period that lasted about 260 years from the early 1600s, and in the years since. Here’s the official website.
Edo was the name of the city established by the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu in the area of today’s Tokyo in 1603. Although Kyoto was Japan’s capital, Edo grew to become a major city and the de facto capital, with its own distinctive culture.
In 1868, the Meiji Restoration ended the rule of the shoguns and restored the emperors to power. The capital was moved from Kyoto to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo.
The heart of the museum is the permanent exhibition on the 5th and 6th floors. It features both original objects and replicas, some full-size and some built to scale.
Among other things, it looks at the lives people led, the architecture, how ordinary households changed over the years, and what people did for entertainment (it includes a model of an old kabuki theatre).
Other exhibits highlight the construction of roads and moats, the growth of book and woodblock printing, and the changes in commerce as the city grew.
The 6th floor is the best place to start. It includes a full-size replica of the old Nihonbashi Bridge, one of the main symbols of Edo, from which you can look down on the displays on the floor below. The 5th floor is where you’ll probably want to spend most of your time.
Exhibits on the 20th century include the development of television, the introduction of cars and the reconstruction of Tokyo after the Allied bombing raids of World War II.
Other floors house special exhibitions, restaurants, shops and a large, open terrace. The special exhibitions change regularly; when I visited, an exhibition featured the works of five artists from the Edo era.
The museum’s a good fit for older foreign travellers for several reasons:
It’s easy to reach by subway train. It’s a short walk from Ryogoku Station on the Oedo Line or the adjoining Ryogoku Station on the JR Sobu Line.
Visitors aged 65 and over get a 50 percent discount on the entry fee. Some countries don’t extend such discounts to foreigners but Japan does. Bring your passport to prove your date of birth. Entry to the permanent exhibition costs 600 yen (around US$5.50) or 300 yen for those 65 and over. There’s a separate fee for special exhibitions. The museum is wheelchair friendly.
Many of your fellow visitors will be older Japanese. As I looked around, it seemed to me that most other visitors were either older people or groups of schoolchildren. While the children were eager to try the hands-on exhibits like old bicycles, rickshaws and palanquins, some of the older folk were perhaps reflecting on their own place in the world as they learned more about their city’s history.
The museum has lots of seats for people wanting to relax and take a breather: enough to meet demand even at busy times. This may seem like an obvious amenity but not all museums offer it, at least not to this extent.
The exhibits have detailed descriptions in English. If you want a guide, volunteers are on hand free of charge, speaking Japanese, English and several other languages. Free audio guides are also available in several languages.
With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics drawing close, the museum is expecting more visitors than usual and plans to train more volunteers and stage relevant new exhibitions.
The museum is open every day except Mondays and public holidays, from 9.30 am to 5.30 pm (7.30 pm on Saturdays).
And if you feel like immersing yourself further in the Edo era, take a 10-minute walk from the museum to Ryogoku Edo Noren, a dining street resembling an Edo-period village. It has restaurants, shops and bars, and even a sumo wrestling ring, a sport the Ryogoku district is famous for.
Header image: © Cowardlion
