This Fashionable Tokyo Museum Is Reopening This Spring

After almost 4 years of wide-scale renovations, one in all Tokyo’s premier museums is lastly reopening this spring. The Edo-Tokyo Museum, which focuses on the historical past of Edo (what Tokyo was referred to as between 1603-1868) via the current day, is making its ballyhooed comeback on March 31, 2026.

This was the primary time in its almost 33-year historical past that the museum underwent any important restoration; the work began in April 2022, when COVID-19 nonetheless stored Japan’s doorways shut to worldwide vacationers.

Though the idea of an Edo-Tokyo Museum had been formally deliberate since 1981, Ryogoku was all the time a front-runner to host the ability, on account of its connection to Edo tradition. Not solely was Katsushika Hokusai arguably the world’s most recognizable ukiyo-e (Edo-style woodblock print) artist from the neighborhood, however Ryogoku was additionally probably the most nigiwai (bustling) leisure districts of that period. To wit, sumo had been carried out in Ryogoku because the 1700s; it’s no coincidence the museum sits subsequent to the Kokugikan, Japan’s largest sumo enviornment.

Sarcastically, even earlier than opening its doorways in March 1993, the Edo-Tokyo Museum was making headlines. The avant-garde architect Kiyonori Kikutake designed the construction as a contemporary homage to the Edo interval takayuka-shiki souko (storehouses constructed on stilts). Along with the sumo stadium, it stood in sharp distinction to the in any other case low-key neighborhood.

The underlying objective of the museum is to let guests expertise how every day life has modified over the 420-plus years since Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed shogun by emperor Go-Yōzei, establishing Edo as the brand new seat of presidency. Overseen by New York-based architect Shohei Shigematsu, the revamped constructing may have seen updates made all through its eight—one underground, seven aboveground— complete flooring. Moreover, come opening day, two all-new options will probably be making their debut.

The primary is modeled after an erstwhile monument to the iki (refined) procuring district of Ginza of the Meiji interval (1868-1912). After a hearth devastated its wood storefronts in 1872, Ginza reworked right into a paragon of the industrialized West, with paved streets, gaslights, cafes, and high-end shops. In 1894, Kintarō Hattori, founding father of Seiko watches, commissioned a clocktower to be constructed within the coronary heart of Ginza; it shortly grew to become a logo of the world. As a paean to the unique, a full-scale 85-foot duplicate of the clocktower will probably be a star attraction.

Photos of a number of the museum’s artifacts may also be displayed. This contains all the pieces from woodblock prints and work to housewares, sculptures, and pictures. The projections will seem on each ceilings and columns.

There have been periodic occasions to get individuals excited concerning the reopening, to. Final month noticed a pop-up on the close by JR Ryogoku practice station. Expressly used for occasions, the station’s Platform 3 morphed into the Edo-Tokyo Museum, full with exhibitions, illuminations, meals tastings, and the sense that each the Japanese capital’s previous and future have all the time been at dwelling in Ryogoku.