A digital reconstruction of the historical street life in Edo
/Gamze Saygi offers a perspective on the particularities of selected streets of Edo focusing on the role of location in digital reconstructions when hypothesizing on the street life in premodern Edo.
Woodblock print by Ichiryusai Hiroshige depicting Nihonbashi Bridge (ca. 1830s). Source: National Diet Library Digital Collections.
“Crossing Nihonbashi Bridge was like climbing a small, crowded hill. The bridge was not just a place of transit; it was also a place for commerce, begging, stealing, and urgent discussions in unfamiliar accents. Sunburned peasants stood immobile, selling the vegetables they’d carried from their villages. Otherwise, everyone was in a hurry. Few stopped to gaze out over the city, to where the shogun’s castle rose in the distance, or toward the southwest, where Mt. Fuji was visible on clear days, or down to the riverbanks, where warehouses turned their broad white backs to the water. Across the bridge were commoner districts named after the groups of artisans who had been assigned those quarters when the city was first established: carpenter town, sandal town, tatami town. They’d long since become ordinary downtown neighbourhoods.”
In the above quoted paragraph and elsewhere in her book Stranger in the Shogun’s City, Amy Stanley takes us back to 19th-century Japan by providing a window into the culture and landscape of Edo before it became Tokyo. In general, the Nihonbashi neighbourhood which Stanley focuses on was the commercial core of the city, of which even people from small villages knew.[1] Spatially, Nihonbashi had a significantly different material culture than today - prior to the arrival of Western influences and urban planning that followed the Edo-Tokyo transition, it showcased the dramatically different urban scenery of the premodern city.
One strand of the digital urban history project hypothesises on the street life of Edo in three-dimensional (3D) space, through a virtual reconstruction of a long-lost streetscape in Nihonbashi. Above all, a digital reconstruction of this kind requires a deep understanding of everyday life; how spaces were formally and informally shaped and experienced. In the case of Edo, the everyday character of its urban spaces is extremely difficult to capture, on account of their ephemeral nature. This was partly a result of the Edo-Tokyo transition and its consequent dramatic transformation process, which almost fully erased the physical traces of Edo. However, it can also be traced further back, as Edo had a culture of continuous demolishment and reconstruction, due to the physical damage of various fires and earthquakes.
A news broadsheet “kawaraban” depicting the state of the damage after the earthquake of Ansei earthquake (1855). Source: Tokyo Metropolitan Library, Tokyo Shiryō Collection 0277-C56.
This project particularly focuses on the intersection of two arteries in the commoners’ neighbourhood of Nihonbashi: Nihonbashi Street and Honshirogane-chō Street. Located roughly 500 meters to the north from the Nihonbashi bridge, after the famous fish market, and at the crossroad of a bustling ‘high street’ frequented by merchants, Nihonbashi Street lies within the north-south axis of the intersection. Situated along the Kanda moat, connecting the Edo castle to the Kodenmachō prison and the execution ground, Honshirogane-chō Street lies within the east-west axis. Known as the neighbourhood of Honshirogane-chō 2 chome in premodern Edo, the location today corresponds to the Nihonbashi Muromachi 4-chome in Chuo-ku, Tokyo.
The case location on map (from left to right): Japan, Edo/Tokyo, Nihonbashi commoners’ district.
Before considering the challenges and potentials of uncovering historical street life through 3D digital reconstructions, this blogpost will focus on the specific location in Nihonbashi stated above. It will clarify why this area is significant in relation to street life in Edo and consider how it demonstrates the particularities of the historic urban space and the society that occupied it.
It is in the heart of Edo. Nihonbashi bridge, which was a major geographical reference point for travellers, pilgrims, migrants and merchants, was one of the most important connections in Edo. It also provided the name for the local neighbourhood. Although there was social division in Edo, which was reflected in the separation of urban space, [2] the streets within the commoners’ district enabled social interaction and bonding that helped to unite the community rather than acting as division axes.[3] As a result, Nihonbashi, which brought together social groups and expressions of political authority, had a unique significance for urban space, everyday life and physical mobility in historical Edo.
It is representative of Edo’s cultural life. Intellectuals and creative people vitalised Nihonbashi’s economy, and the commercial culture of the merchants had become an important feature of its street life. As Nihonbashi became in the hands of its own resident writers, artists, and publishers, it transitioned economically and socially towards experiences and tastes of the commoner consumer.[4] As Nihonbashi housed tradesmen of all kinds, from famous booksellers to street vendors, its streets were alive with a constant flow of people, goods and social interactions. Status- and class-based order become blurred amidst the crowd on Nihonbashi Street, as clerks mingled with officials, beggars with warriors.
Partial view of the Kidai Shōran showing the Nihonbashi Street at the intersection of Honshirogane-chō Street (ca. 1805). Source: Museum of East Asian Art, Ident.Nr. 2002-17.
It reflects town planning and land use. Edo had a castle at its heart and its surrounding neighbourhoods were structured in a mosaic of grids, wrapping it in a “spiral-” shaped urban layout. [5] The intersection in Nihonbashi is located at the end of the spiral’s tail, within the eastern flatlands, in the core of the commoner’s district. In Edo, the urban planning was regulated around a grid pattern made of square urban blocks, measuring 60 ken (about 109m) at sides. The urban planning regulations also extended to the street widths, the largest being six jo (about 18.2m).[6] On average, an urban block had two to three alleyways – each just wide enough to allow a person to walk through – which gave access to the rear housing lots and local services (e.g., the shrine, the well, the latrines, the waste collection facilities, etc.). These blocks were spatially discrete but densely populated. [7] The intersection in Nihonbashi had different urban features, including a main street, a side street, and an alleyway. As it joined a main street and a side street, the area also a guardhouse and a neighbourhood gate to regulate people’s passage.
It demonstrates architectural culture and space use. In Nihonbashi, typically two-storied townhouses stood next to each other, occupying juxtaposing plots that faced the main street, and these houses create the most dominant spatial component in 3D at street level. Typically, although not uniformly, the townhouses followed a repetitive pattern in design and appeared cohesive. The character of Edo’s built environment was based on three main factors: the size of the building frontage, proportions and the standard of workmanship. This, in turn, created the architectural culture of traditional Japanese housing and allowed for a strong sense of commonality in the urban space, especially along Nihonbashi Street. The architectural components, from the sliding doors of the shops to the latticework of the windows, followed a common pattern. The gabled roofs contributed to the cohesion of architectural design on the Nihonbashi strip, and symbolically represented the social status of the owners. In addition, they created an extended space under the eaves and protected against environmental conditions such as rain and high-summer sun.
Urban sketches by Kitagawa Morisada (1810-?) depicting the architecture along the streets in Edo. Source: National Diet Library Digital Collections.
It reflects the flexible boundaries of the streets. Demonstrating the different modes of interaction between people and the physical environment of the street, the ground floors of Nihonbashi townhouses were designed to provide street space, and usually housed shops or workshops. The absence of any permanent physical attachment at the front façade, such as hinges, contributed to the flux and flexible character of the street space.[8] In addition, the shop eaves, which almost imitated an arcade in design, consolidated the fluidity and blurred boundaries. The traditional shop curtains, at half- and full-length, completed the loose, moveable scene, which were typically dark blue cloth in various sizes and hung at shop entrances. Offering shade, privacy and protection from sun and dust, they were also used for advertising, bearing a trademark or the owner’s crest.
In conclusion, the case location in Nihonbashi can be seen as typical for examining the no-longer existent streetscapes of Edo, representing the historical city’s everyday life, culture, town planning, architecture, and land and space use. Furthermore, everyday activities at the intersection in Nihonbashi impacted the fluidity of spaces, and this makes it a more interesting case to explore and investigate. Consequently, it offers a compelling snapshot of the street as a social space and captures the distinctive material and immaterial culture of premodern Edo street life.
Click on to explore the 3D street views of Edo!
[1] Amy Stanley, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World, First Scribner hardcover edition (New York: Scribner, 2020).
[2] Hidenobu Jinnai, ‘The Spatial Structure of Edo’, in Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan (Tokyo, Japan: Tokyo University Press, 1997).
[3] Genki Takahashi, Edo chōninchi no kūkanshi: toshi no iji to sonzoku. ("The spatial history of the commoner’s district in Edo: maintenance and upkeep of the urban infrastructure") (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2018).
[4] Marcia Yonemoto, ‘Nihonbashi: Edo’s Contested Center’, East Asian History, no. 17–18 (December 1999): 49–70.
[5] Constantine Nomikos Vaporis, ‘Daimyo Compounds’:, in Tour of Duty, Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 128–71, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqtsd.9; James L. McClain and John M. Merriman, Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era (Cornell University Press, 1997).
[6] André Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty-First Century (London; New York: Routledge, 2002).
[7] Theodore C. Bestor, ‘Tradition and Japanese Social Organization: Institutional Development in a Tokyo Neighborhood’, Ethnology 24, no. 2 (April 1985): 121, https://doi.org/10.2307/3773554.
[8] Vinayak Bharne, Zen Spaces and Neon Places: Reflections on Japanese Architecture and Urbanism (Novato, Calif.: Applied Research and Design Publishing, an imprint of ORO editions, 2014).
