Alison Broinowski, Rachel L. Miller
· 2023
Abstract
Edo in 1590 was a small castle town on the Sumida River when Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shgun of the period, surprisingly chose it as the site for his capital.It remained so for 265 years while the Tokugawas were the de facto rulers, with the imperial line continuing in Kyoto. 1 After the restoration of Emperor Meiji in 1868, the last two shguns retired to Kyoto, and Edo was renamed Tokyo (Eastern capital).The castle became the Imperial Palace, wealthy merchants bought land and the new nobility were granted properties and built Western-style mansions.A modern city rose, with buildings for government in Kyobashi, for business in Marunouchi, and for entertainment in Asakusa.'Tokio [sic] looks like a series of villages', said an American observer in 1879, 'with bits of green and open spaces and inclosed [sic] grounds breaking up the continuity of the town'. 2 It quickly became a wheeled city.Many canals and rivers were confined or paved over for the roads and railways that shrivelled the distance between the old localities.Successive Imperial