Edo-Tokyo Museum, Tokyo

Visitors to Tokyo may be unaware of its long and fascinating history. This museum provides, in a fairly compact space, a hands-on introduction to "Edo" as the capitol was called until the Meiji era around 1868. Take a look at cultural venues, theaters and geisha houses; a demonstration of Kabuki stage tricks, the kimono and textile shops, etc. Then stroll into the Tokyo side of the museum to see exhibits beginning with the westernization of Tokyo and continuing through the Great Kanto Earthquake and the reconstruction of Tokyo following WWII. Edo Castle has an entire floor to itself!

Open Tues-Sun 9:30-5:30 PM except Saturday, 9:30-7:30 PM. Admission is 600 yen for most, although seniors and younger students are 300 yen and college students pay 480 yen.

The Edo-Tokyo Museum is a great place of adults and children alike to learn about the historical aspects of Japan. Do go for the free guided tour given by volunteers. We had a lovely Japanese lady guide who spoke excellent English and made our trip to the museum much more meaningful.

2 more images

This is quite and interesting museum, which tells the story of sleepy Edo becoming the city that Tokyo is today, and it has a lot of interesting exhibits, outlining all kinds of events in the city's history. It is very interesting and worth the trip.

As a footnote though, I was disappointed by the coverage of the massacre of ethnic Koreans by mobs after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 happened. The English commentary has reference to the fact that Koreans were killed, but there is no reference to the fact that Koreans were killed in the Japanese commentary, only that there were massacres. I've put the photos up on this thread for those who want to have a look, but it's disappointing to see Japanese museums distort history once again.

That gripe aside, it's still an interesting place worth visiting.

I think i visited this place. It was set right in the middle of a sprawling garden with big balck ravens crowing about up in the trees. I was impressed by the trees, they're pretty huge as well.

Edo of course is the old name of Tokyo.

The Tokyo Edo Museum offers entrancing displays of daily life in Tokugawa Edo and Meiji Tokyo. Most of the displays consist of elaborate dioramas. The museum also features detailed displays on how to make wood block prints. A wood print had to be carved for each color, and then the color is printed on paper. The prints were popular art that people bought for souvenirs. But artists like Hokusai perfected a unique aesthetic for the prints. These prints were truly the forerunner of manga and anime.

The Edo-Tokyo Museum is housed in a huge and unusual building in the blue-collar area of Ryogoku. This excellent museum chronicles the long history of the city and is split into two main sections, Edo-era and Tokyo-era. It contains many large recreations of buildings from both eras and contains many fascinating artifacts. Multi-lingual guided tours are available, or feel free to just wander around yourself. You could easily spend all day here if you took in everything.

This was a bit of a side trip, I wanted to get to one of the major musuems before I left! There is a lot of history to see here of the old city which was mostly lost in WWII, be sure to check out the grid showing the firebombing of Tokyo which is in the museum as well. If you want to learn some more history of the old city this is defintely somewhere to stop.

The archietecture of this place was great as well, "Museum of the future, TODAY!"

The Tokyo Edo Museum is a great place to go if you would like to learn more about the City and the Region. The museum has a lot of cool information about the city, and the history of the area.

I am a big fan of armour, and seeing Samurai Swords and Armor up close was very cool. But they have a lot more to offer than that, including information about the Nuclear bombs which were dropped on Japan, early boats and and archiological information and more. Plus, they have multilingual information for those of us who are still trying to master the Japanese Language.