The neighborhood takes its name from the silver mint (''ginza'') established there in [[1612]], being moved from [[Fushimi]], where it was previously established in [[1598]].
The neighborhood takes its name from the silver mint (''ginza'') established there in [[1612]], being moved from [[Fushimi]], where it was previously established in [[1598]].
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Ginza was transformed into a rather modern commercial district as early as [[1872]], with funding and planning from the [[Meiji government]]. [[Shinbashi Station]], the railroad gateway to Tokyo for anyone coming from [[Yokohama]], opened in that year and lay just south of the Ginza, while the Foreign Concessions in Tokyo lay just to the east. A tree-lined central boulevard, flanked by gas lamps, arcades, the first sidewalks in Japan, and two-story Georgian-style brick buildings, a "showcase"<ref>Henry Smith II, "Tokyo as an Idea: An Exploration of Japanese Urban Thought until 1945," ''Journal of Japanese Studies'' 4:1 (1978), 53-54.</ref> of Tokyo's modernity, was completed in May [[1877]].
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==References==
==References==
*Arai Hakuseki, Joyce Ackroyd (trans.), ''Told Round a Brushwood Fire'', University of Tokyo Press (1979), 297n248.
*Arai Hakuseki, Joyce Ackroyd (trans.), ''Told Round a Brushwood Fire'', University of Tokyo Press (1979), 297n248.