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  • Japanese: 江戸 Edo




Nakamise-dôri, leading up to the Hôzômon (Treasure Storehouse Gate) and main hall, with the pagoda off to the left

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-six masugata (square enclosure) gates[5] 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 hundreds of chô or machi within which townspeople (chônin) were organized, to a certain extent, according to their trades.[6] While the city was originally divided into some 300 chô, by the mid-18th century, it had grown to encompass over 1700 chô.[7] Many of these chô were ryô-gawa machi, or "both-sides towns," meaning that a single chô encompassed a certain number of structures on both sides of a main street. Individual properties generally ran about 40 meters back from the street, encompassing storefronts facing the streets, and behind them, homes, storehouses, communal spaces including wells, and garbage and toilet facilities. Each chô typically ran for one block, about 120 meters from one intersection to another, and included a gate and gatehouse (kidoban), a guard house (jishinban), and pipes from the central aqueduct for fresh water, along with a sewer system. Roughly one in ten chô had a watchtower, 10 ken (18.5m) tall, to help guard against fires; each guardhouse also had a lookout constructed on its roof.[8] Many other buildings, meanwhile, had large buckets on the roof which collected rainwater which could then be used to put out fires. The gates of each neighborhood were closed at night by a gatekeeper hired by the chô; the guardhouse, meanwhile, was manned by one local resident of the chô and by a professional guardman, who between the two of them oversaw local chô administration and security.[9] Some 900 additional guardhouses, known as tsuji banya, or "intersection guardhouses," were operated by the shogunate or various daimyô or hatamoto households.[10]

Many of the commoner homes were munewari nagaya (split-roofed longhouses), long houses which extended to both sides of the block, but which were divided in half, such that one family lived in the half facing one street, and another family in the half facing the next street over. Each family's portion of the home was quite small, frequently only three by four meters, including a small earthen-floored doma (kitchen), lavatory, and then a single 2x4 meter or so tatami room in which the family ate, slept, and did all other home activities. There were typically no closets of any kind, and so bedding was typically simply folded up and piled in a corner during the day, while clothes were kept in a pile as well, or in a wicker basket or the like. These homes were built so close to one another that they were sometimes also referred to as yakeya (burning houses), since fires spread from one house to the next quite quickly and easily.[11]

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[12] 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. A number of rice brokers' operations were based here; stipends for gokenin and hatamoto were paid out of these storehouses, as was much of the shogunate's direct operating expenses.[13]


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. The city's main fish market district was located just north of Nihonbashi, and stretched from Hon-Fune-chô and Hon-Odawara-chô. Merchants here included the official suppliers to the shogunate, as well as the chief suppliers to the rest of the city; fish and other seafood sold here came not only from the Sumidagawa and Edo Bay, but from the entire Kantô area.[13] The city's oldest horse-riding grounds were located nearby, in a neighborhood still known today as Bakurô-chô.[15]



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, at which time he had Nihonbashi constructed, and undertook numerous other infrastructure projects to better prepare the city to serve as shogunal capital. Still, it is of note that Tokugawa Ieyasu spent the vast majority of his time in 1600-1605 in Osaka and Kyoto, and after 1605 in Sunpu, making only brief trips to Edo. Once Ieyasu finished using the symbolic centrality of Osaka and Kyoto to support his claims to legitimacy, and to secure the establishment of his new Tokugawa order - including securing ties with the Imperial Court & courtier families, and overseeing numerous fief transfers - it was his son Tokugawa Hidetada who really was the first Tokugawa Shogun to rule in Edo.[16]





In the early 19th century, the city began to see increased waves of newcomers from the provinces. This spurred the development, among those who had been there longer, of an Edokko, or "local/native Edoite," identity.[18]


  7. Gallery labels, National Museum of Japanese History (Rekihaku).[1]
  8. Gallery labels, "Fire Tower," National Museum of Japanese History.[2]
  9. Gallery labels, Edo-Tokyo Museum.
  10. Katô Takashi, "Governing Edo," in James McClain (ed.), Edo & Paris, Cornell University Press (1994), 50-51.
  11. Gallery labels, Edo-Tokyo Museum.[3]
  12. Ryôgoku 両国 literally meaning "both provinces."
  13. 13.0 13.1 Gallery labels, Edo-Tokyo Museum.[4]
  15. Gallery labels, National Museum of Japanese History.[5]
  16. Morgan Pitelka, Spectacular Accumulation, University of Hawaii Press (2016), 86.
  18. Tom Gaubatz, "A Barbershop on Every Corner: Urban Space and Identity Performance in the Fiction of Shikitei Sanba," guest lecture, UC Santa Barbara, 7 Jan 2016.


Edo-Tokyo Museum