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Edo has not disappeared from Tokyo; I just didn't know how to look for it

2026年8月13日 06:44

I thought that Edo no longer remained in Tokyo.

The Meiji Restoration, the Great Kanto Earthquake, air raids, the Olympics, and the bubble economy. Tokyo is a city that has been destroyed and rebuilt time and time again. Because of this, I had assumed that almost all traces of Edo had been lost. To be honest, there were times when I felt fed up with Tokyo, with its rows of skyscrapers and excessive crowds. I believed that if I wanted to feel the depth of history, I had no choice but to go to Kyoto or Nara. However, while living in Tokyo with that mindset, a sense of being a stranger, of having no roots, followed me around in the city where I lived. Reading Toshio Kohara's "Color Edition: Finding Edo in Tokyo" completely changed that feeling. Edo had not disappeared. I just didn't know how to find it.

You can read Toshio Kohara's "Color Edition: Finding Edo in Tokyo" here.

The forest of the Imperial Palace and the water of the moats were also landscapes chosen by Edo.

The perspective this book presents at the beginning is that Edo was a nature-rich town of samurai surrounded by trees and waterfronts. It is said that Tokugawa Ieyasu chose this land as his base to make the most of maritime and water transport. Because it was an artificial city built in accordance with the natural terrain, a cityscape in harmony with water and greenery was born. The current skeleton of Tokyo, with the lush forest of the Imperial Palace in the center and moats filled with water surrounding it, is truly a remnant of the landscape that Edo chose. With abundant color photographs, this book carefully guides you through historical sites such as the University of Tokyo's Akamon Gate, Korakuen, Hama-rikyu, Kaneiji Temple, Zojoji Temple, Meiji Jingu, and Edo Castle, even telling you what to pay attention to when looking at them. It is said that the majority of former Edo was occupied by samurai residences, with the remainder divided between temple/shrine grounds and commoner districts. It covers the surprisingly numerous remnants of the samurai town, temples and shrines that survived earthquakes and war, and Tokyo as civil engineering heritage such as waterworks and moats. The contrast that in the West, gardens were meant to geometrically dominate nature, whereas in Edo, nature and people were seen as harmonized and integrated, is also an interesting point. In each chapter of this book, there are many discoveries waiting that will make you realize that places you have visited many times were actually connected to Edo.

My familiar commute suddenly began to have depth.

Before reading this book, Tokyo was just a background for me to pass through. But after reading it, when I walk along the moat on my usual commute, I have come to think that the people of Edo also looked at this waterfront. Just as there are voices of people who grew up in Tsukishima saying they encountered a past of their local area they didn't know, layers of time that I hadn't seen were overlapping right next to my own living area. When I walked around the neighborhood with this book in hand on the weekend, I found traces of daimyo residences in corners I had thought were just office buildings. Tokyo, which I should have been fed up with, began to look like an attractive city with depth. Even though I was standing in the same place, the scenery I saw changed completely. The city I should have been tired of due to its skyscrapers had, before I knew it, turned into a place where I wanted to take a walk.

If I had remained ignorant, I would have walked right over Edo under my feet.

If I hadn't encountered this book, I would have continued to walk over the Edo remaining under my feet without ever realizing it. The author, Toshio Kohara, is a historical critic who studied history at Waseda University, has a deep knowledge of castles, and is a writer who also has newspaper serials. Precisely because he has covered a wide range of eras, focusing on Japanese medieval and early modern history, his writing style, which builds up the overall picture of Edo from small traces on street corners, is persuasive. There may be an Edo you haven't found yet on the road you take every day.