Edo-Tokyo Museum

Stand for a moment beneath the building before you go inside. Above your head, a huge body of concrete and steel sits on four enormous legs. The open plaza below lets the wind pass straight through. On some days you can hear the trains of Ryogoku Station nearby. If a sumo tournament is on next door, you may also see wrestlers in cotton robes walk past, their wooden sandals clicking on the pavement.

This is the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It tells one long story: how a marshy fishing settlement became one of the largest cities on Earth. The museum opened in 1993 in the Ryogoku district of Sumida Ward. This is the eastern bank of the Sumida River. For centuries it was seen as the far side of the city, a place of entertainment, markets and crowds. That choice of location is no accident.

Look up at the building again. The architect was Kiyonori Kikutake, a leading figure in the Metabolist movement. That was a group of Japanese architects after the war who imagined cities that could grow and change like living things. The shape is often said to recall a traditional raised storehouse, a building lifted off the ground to protect its contents. Here the treasure being protected is the city's own memory. Many people also say the building's height matches the old keep of Edo Castle.

A note on the building's recent past. The museum closed in 2022 for a long, large renovation of the building and its systems. Exhibits and floor layouts may have changed since then. So if a gallery described here looks a little different in front of you, trust your eyes. The story the museum tells, however, stays the same.

That story begins in 1590. In that year the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu took control of a small castle town called Edo. In 1603 he became shogun, the military ruler of Japan. For more than two and a half centuries, his family governed from here. The emperor remained in Kyoto, but real power sat in Edo. Rivers were redirected, hills were cut down, and land was filled in from the bay. The city grew with surprising speed.

Here is the first surprise. By the eighteenth century, Edo is widely believed to have held over a million people. That would place it among the largest cities in the world at the time, larger than London or Paris. Much of that population lived packed into narrow wooden row houses. The samurai lived in large walled estates. The townspeople — merchants, carpenters, fishmongers — squeezed into whatever space was left.

Inside the main exhibition, one object usually stops people in their tracks. It is a full-size wooden reconstruction of part of Nihonbashi, the bridge at the heart of Edo. The real bridge was the official starting point for the great roads that ran out across Japan. Distances everywhere were measured from it. The museum version covers only part of the original length, yet it is still large. Walk across it slowly. Feel how the boards give a little underfoot.

From the bridge you look down over the galleries below. There you will find detailed scale models of the old city. Tiny figures crowd the streets, carry loads, bargain at shop fronts and stroll along the river. Take your time with these models. Many visitors walk past in a few seconds. Lean closer, though, and you will notice small scenes: a quarrel, a peddler, a dog in an alley. Someone spent a very long time on each one.

The museum also gives real space to the culture of ordinary people. You will see the facade of a kabuki theatre, the popular stage drama of the townspeople, with its bold signs and wooden frame. Nearby are reconstructions of the cramped tenement homes where many families lived. A single small room held a whole household. Shared wells and toilets stood in the lane outside. Life here was public, noisy and close.

Now the second surprise, and a good one for anyone who likes to touch things. Several exhibits here are made to be handled. In the past, visitors have been able to lift a replica chest of gold coins and feel how heavy wealth could be. Others have sat in a reconstruction of a palanquin, the small carried box in which people travelled. It is far more cramped than it looks in old prints. Check which hands-on pieces are available today.

The second half of the exhibition moves into Tokyo. In 1868 the shogunate fell, the emperor moved here, and Edo was renamed Tokyo, meaning eastern capital. Brick buildings, gas lamps, newspapers and trains arrived within a few decades. Then disaster came twice. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the fires that followed destroyed large parts of the city. In 1945, air raids burned huge areas once more. Each time, Tokyo rebuilt.

This part of the museum is quieter in tone. The objects are often simple: a damaged household item, a photograph, a ration book. Many visitors find these rooms more affecting than the grand reconstructions. Then the galleries move into the postwar years. The rooms fill with televisions, appliances and the bright objects of fast growth. It can feel strange to see things your own grandparents might have owned now behind glass.

When you leave, step back out into the open plaza and walk to its edge. Look east toward the curved roof of the sumo hall next door. Look west toward the river that once marked the city's edge. You are standing in the same district where crowds came for fireworks and entertainment in the Edo period. The streets around you were burned and rebuilt more than once. As you walk to the station, notice the small shops and old signs. Pieces of that long story are still here, in plain sight.