Tag - edo-period

 
 

EDO PERIOD

Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 5, 2014
A firsthand account of vice and profit in Edo
Riding the circular Yamanote Line on a Sunday in Tokyo, it is easy to daydream. Those who have found themselves at times wondering what the city might have been like in the past are likely to enjoy the aptly named "Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai,"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 21, 2014
Japan's isolation didn't stop the West lending its colors
A common misperception of sakoku, Japan's closed-door isolation policy gradually enacted from 1633 by Tokugawa Iemitsu and his successors, is that Japan forsook the outside world.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Apr 26, 2014
Spring greening in Koganei
It’s time to bask in sunshine, birdsong, and blossom-filled breezes. Koganei Park, situated at the center of the Tokyo metropolis, looks like the ideal spot for such a “spring-gasm.” The JR Chuo express train whisks me from Yotsuya to Musashi-Koganei in less than 30 minutes, and I alight with glee....
LIFE
Oct 11, 2009
Fake names were to the fore in many a rise from humblest to highest
Here's a beguiling irony: Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), architect of Tokugawa Japan's rigid class structure and the author, in 1587, of a firm ban (not firmly enforced) on surnames for commoners, was himself born without a surname.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 29, 1999
'Kaempfer's Japan': Tokugawa Edo as never before
Engelbert Kaempfer, German physician and historian, first arrived in Japan in 1690 to take up the position of physician at the Dutch trading agency on the island of Deshima in Nagasaki Harbor. Although Japan had already secluded itself, the Dutch traders were allowed a certain amount of freedom. This...

Longform

Growing families are being priced out of Tokyo’s condo market, forced to choose between downtown convenience and suburban space.
Is living in central Tokyo still affordable?