Edo

• Other Names: 江府 (Koufu), 東都 (Touto)
• Japanese: 江戸 Edo

"Edo Meisho Screen(part). The oldest extant image of Edo.

Edo was the political center of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate, and a major center of economic power and of developments in popular culture (e.g. publishing, kabuki, pleasure districts), along with Kyoto and Osaka. Edo rivaled Beijing for the honor of largest city in the world (by population) from the 18th into the 19th century; in 1868, Edo was renamed Tokyo as the imperial capital was moved there from Kyoto.

Due to the presence of the shogunate government, and the sankin kôtai system (and the many daimyo mansions in the city as a result), Edo was a very samurai-heavy city. Commoner spaces occupied a mere one-fifth of the urban area, though their economic and cultural presence was extremely influential.

Geography

The city was organized around Edo castle, more formally known as Chiyoda castle, which had been the chief headquarters of Tokugawa Ieyasu since 1590. The city overall was organized roughly in a spiral, and in accordance with traditional geomancy. Thirty-two gates controlled access to the city, and different segments of society were restricted, to some extent, to different parts of the city. Sections of the northeastern part of the city were inhabited by shogunal vassals, while many lower-ranking samurai lived in a different area. Parts of the southwestern section of the city were merchant and artisan districts, divided into over 300 chô or machi within which townspeople (chônin) were organized, to a certain extent, according to their trades.

The Sumidagawa (Sumida River) ran along the eastern edge of the city, dividing Musashi province, in which the city sat, from Shimousa province. The Ryôgoku Bridge took its name from its location spanning the river and connecting these two provinces. Sections of the river were lined with the official storehouses of the shogunate, storing especially goods (mainly rice) collected as taxes, and giving that neighborhood the name Kuramae ("before the storehouses"), a placename which remains in use today.

The oldest Buddhist temple in the city, Sensô-ji, founded in 628, sat in the northeast corner of the city, a traditional location for powerful temples believed to defend a city from demonic or evil forces emerging from that direction. Beyond the temple district were eta districts, including pottery kilns where roof tiles were made; this was considered a "dirty" profession, and dangerous - due to the fires and temperatures involved, and the wood & paper nature of the city's architecture - and so this was kept outside of the city borders proper. Beyond those districts, in turn, lay the Yoshiwara pleasure districts.

Nihonbashi, meanwhile, located between the castle to its west, and the river to its east, was the center of commercial activity in the city, and the official center of the entire country, from which all distances were (and still are) measured. The area was connected to the Sumidagawa, and by extension to the port and to access to incoming and outgoing trade, by a canal. Nihonbashi also marked the starting point of five major highways, known collectively as the Gokaidô, or "Five Highways," chief among them the Tôkaidô, linking Edo with Kyoto (and numerous locations in between), and beyond it with Osaka.

History

The Musashino area was long considered a backwater, a long distance from the classical capitals and cultural centers of Nara and Kyoto. In Heian period poetry and classic narratives, it is associated strongly with wide open moors with tall grasses, and with bandits, though the Sumidagawa, and the view of Mt. Fuji also feature in literature of this time.

Edo castle was founded in 1457 by Ôta Dôkan, though the neighboring fishing villages and the like are not really considered to have become a city of any note until the late 16th century or so. Tokugawa Ieyasu made Edo castle his chief headquarters in 1590, and established it as the center of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603; after Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu made sankin kôtai (alternate attendance) mandatory for all daimyô beginning in the 1630s, it became essential for each daimyô (or at least the vast majority) to maintain a mansion in Edo, and the samurai population of the city surged.

Beyond the mere construction of the daimyô mansions themselves, this spurred considerable land reclamation projects and the like, which reshaped the landscape and expanded the city dramatically and rapidly. Very soon, the samurai population of the city alone exceeded 100,000. By the mid-18th century, the total population of the city broke one million, roughly the size of London and Paris combined; only Beijing, which also boasted a population around one million, had anywhere near this number of people.

Much of the city was destroyed in the 1657 Meireki Fire, as it would be again by fires which swept quickly through the wood and paper landscape, ravaging it. But, reconstruction took place quickly and thoroughly.

References

• Ching, Francis D.K. et al. A Global History of Architecture. Second Edition. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. p590.
• Moriya, Katsuhisa. Ronald Toby (trans.) "Urban Networks and Information Networks." in Chie Nakane and Shinzaburô Ôishi (eds.) Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan. University of Tokyo Press, 1990. pp97-123.

Links

Edo-Tokyo Museum