スミス英会話高円寺 Tokyo-Edo Museum
“The Edo-Tokyo Museum was founded on March 28,1993, as the place where visitors come to learn more about Tokyo’s history and culture , and which also serves as a projection onto the city and the living of the future. In the Permanent Exhibition area, there can be found original and replicated exhibits, as well as large-scale models, faithful representations of their originals, which have been reproduced after painstaking investigations and research” Tokyo Edo Museum website
During October I visited the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku for the second time, the first time I went there,I and many thousands of Japanese, saw an Exhibition dedicated to Ryoma Sakamoto which was very popular because NHK had run a story about him over a period of weeks about the role he played in the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate.
This time I went to see the “Sumidagawa – The Beloved River of Edo” exhibition which displayed paintings from the 17th century onwards. Many of the 159 items on show are historical treasures including silk screens and art deplicting scenes along the river which passes through seven wards of Tokyo (Kita, Adachi, Arakawa, Sumida, Taito, Koto & Chuo)
There used to be 26 bridges over the river, one every kilometre, and they played a very important part in everyday Tokyo life .Many were by Hiroshige the most famous of which are the Ryogoko bashi & Nihonbashi I particularly liked a 12 panel screen which displayed Tokyo in all its glory with mountains in the background including Mt Fuji which in those days could be clearly seen from the Sumida River but which today due to highrise buildings it is no longer visible from the river’s banks.
At Smith’s School of English in Koenji I use many of these soapbox postings as a talking point with my students -Ken
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