Tokyo Before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun's City of EDO

Timon Screech,Timon Screech
Publisher: Reaktion Books
February 27 2025
EAN: 9781789149555
ISBN: 178914955X

Items marked as WAREHOUSE may take additional time to be delivered to your address or picked up in the store.

Synopsis: A rich and original history of Edo, the shogun's city that became modern Tokyo.

Tokyo today is one of the world's mega-cities and the center of a scintillating, hyper-modern culture--but not everyone is aware of its past. Founded in 1590 as the seat of the warlord Tokugawa family, Tokyo, then called Edo, was the locus of Japanese trade, economics, and urban civilization until 1868, when it mutated into Tokyo and became Japan's modern capital. This beautifully illustrated book presents important sites and features from the rich history of Edo, taken from contemporary sources such as diaries, guidebooks, and woodblock prints. These include the huge bridge on which the city was centered; the vast castle of the Shogun; sumptuous Buddhist temples, bars, kabuki theaters, and Yoshiwara--the famous red-light district.