“It must have been remarkably quiet, even in daytime,” writes historian Hiroshi Watanabe of Edo just before it became Tokyo in 1868. It was “already one of the world’s most populous cities. Yet in it there was neither a single horse-drawn carriage nor a single steam engine to be seen.”

Quiet. Where is it to be found? In the past, if anywhere, Watanabe seems to imply in these prefatory remarks to his book “A History of Japanese Political Thought, 1600-1901” (translated by David Noble). Is this paradise? “There were no gas lamps or electric lights. On clear nights the sky above Edo was ablaze with the Milky Way.” What need for carriages, buses, trains, cars, motorcycles, trucks, planes? “As a rule people got around on foot, 40 kilometers was a standard day’s journey.”