Timon Screech - Tokyo Before Tokyo

Power and Magic in the
Shoguns City of Edo

REAKTION BOOKS

As always, the dedication is to Zoo Murayama, with whom Ive walked the streets of Tokyo, London, Mandalay and so many other cities, for over thirty years

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
4448 Wharf Road
London N1 7UX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2020
Copyright Timon Screech 2020

All rights reserved

The publishers would like to thank the The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation for its support in the publication of this work

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

Page references in the Photo Acknowledgments and
Index match the printed edition of this book.

Printed and bound in Singapore by 1010 Printing International Ltd

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 9781789142709

Edo, c. 1850. Conjectural view of the shogunal city at its greatest extent. Orange for military (samurai) districts, red for commoners, and purple for religious institutions.

Edo Castle

Nihon-bashi

Shinobazu Pond

Kanei-ji

Sens-ji (Asakusa Kannon)

Yoshiwara

Senju

Mokubo-ji

Matsuchi-yama

Azuma-bashi

Kuramae

Rygoku-bashi

Yanagi-bashi

Great River (the Sumida)

Gohyaku Rakan-ji

Tsukada-jima

Zj-ji

Shinagawa

Kaian-ji

Meguro

Yamanote

Shinjuku

T his book is about Tokyo before it became known by that name. Before it became the modern capital of Japan. Until 1868 the city was known as Edo (pronounced to rhyme with meadow). The city of Edo always stood in counterpoise to the more ancient capital of Kyoto indeed, kyto (properly written with a long first o) meant simply the capital. The ancient capital was defined as the place of residence for a shadowy religious-cum-cultural figure known as the dairi, literally the palace. In early times his ancestors had ruled Japan under the title of tenn, or heavenly sovereign. But the heavenly sovereigns lost power to the military class in the twelfth century, with a concomitant downgrading of their title. The dairi are thus the ancestors of the modern emperors of Japan, who in 1868 reconfigured themselves as monarchs on European constitutional lines. Japan became a modern nation state and the dairi relocated to Edo, which therefore became the capital. Since it lies in the east (t), it was named Tokyo (properly, Tky, the eastern capital). Kyto was then turned into a proper name. Those later processes are discussed in the Epilogue; this book is about Edo. It is the story of Tokyo before Tokyo.

The small town of Edo had existed since time immemorial, and prehistoric artefacts have been found in the area. But it was only in 1590 that Edo became important, when it came under control of the Tokugawa family. This great warrior clan had risen from nothing during the previous decades. They won a huge battle in 1600 and in 1603 were able to persuade the dairi to nominate them to the defunct post of shogun, or chief military figure of the state. Shoguns had to be appointed by the dairi, and they controlled and ran a realm over which the latter had notional ultimate sway, if without actual power; in practice, the dairis hand was forced, and once they had secured it, shoguns handed on the title hereditarily. Over history there had been three dynasties of shogun. The Tokugawa would be the last.

In the pages that follow, we will assess Edo, its urban planning, its culture and its life. But this is not a chronology, nor a methodical overview of Edos huge diversity and 250-year history. It is a selection of vignettes that are especially telling about how the city worked and how it was experienced. Part of this story is about the way in which Edo positioned itself against the capital, as we will call it (leaving Kyoto to refer to the city in the modern period). The two metropoles were, and are, almost exactly 500 kilometres apart on an EastWest axis. Today, guidebooks refer to Kyoto as Japans ancient imperial capital, and in a way it is. But in our period, 15901868, the capital was under warrior control every bit as much as Edo was. The dairi was no emperor as we understand the word today. The twin centres of rule and suasion were in actuality both Tokugawa domains.

Japan is an archipelago and an extremely long one. It extends from about 41 degrees north to 31 degrees south and covers some 20 degrees of longitude from east to west. Positioned over a map of Europe, the Japanese islands stretch northeast to southwest from about Bucharest to the middle of the Sahara Desert; plotted over the USA, they cover from Boston to the southeast corner of Texas. Japan is also mountainous, with a topography akin to Switzerland. Nowhere in Europe or North America has such a density of peaks and also such a dearth of open spaces to accommodate centres of human habitation. Over the course of history, Japans few flatlands had been built on. But the area around Edo had not. It lies in the extensive Plains of Musashi, but settlements had remained mostly scattered villages. Being on the coast, the region was home to fishing communities, its position meaning it was also protected from storms: Edo means door to the bay. Yet Edo did not grow. It played no role as a significant centre of any kind and was nothing compared to the great cities of early times not just the capital, but Nara and Osaka too. In 1590 Edo was a backwater.

It lagged for a reason. Edo was as Tokyo still is highly prone to earthquakes. Tremors led to the collapse of buildings, but also, and much worse, the spread of fires as braziers and stoves toppled over. It made no sense to construct buildings of importance here. Earthquakes create tsunamis, and Edos door was only a partial guard against them. Much of Japan is volcanic, and earthquakes are common in many places. But Edo, specifically, is one of the least seismically stable places on earth.

Apart from the rigours of nature, Japan was repeatedly wracked by civil wars. Edo acquired a castle, like numerous other locations in the country, but only late, in 1457, to be precise. Its seaboard location made Edo potentially strategic, if only as a lookout post. Near the bay and above the generally marshy ground was an outcrop, and the castle was built here. It was far from impregnable, and when besieged in 1524 by Hj Ujitsuna, it quickly fell. Below its walls, fishing communities carried on using the sea.

The wide River Sumida meanders along the edge of the Plains of Musashi and empties into the bay here, so Edo had fresh water, too. It happened that a Buddhist temple lay upstream of Edo on raised land, so protected from floods with a surrounding hamlet called Asakusa (shallow grass). Monks at the temple claimed that their icon was capable of working wonders. The place was a site of local pilgrimage, though the name of the temple indicates it was a lowly affair: Asakusadera. The word