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EDO RISING

The Fukugawa Edo Museum is old Edo in one building--a crafts gallery, a traditional theatre, an exhibition hall and, in the basement, a section of Edo itself, wonderfully recreated. There is the rice store and the vegetable shop; the old warehouse and tenament houses complete with outside toilets, wells, and clothes drying on the lines. And on the river-front (real water, real canal boat), right next to the fire-tower, are the boathouse taverns.

You can take off your shoes open the shoji and rummage through the drawers, while outside the cyclorama marks the passing of the day and coming new moon of night. Then the rooster calls and the street cries start and the sun comes up again.

What is it that keeps this wonderful museum from mere gentrification, or from falling into kitsch? It is the authenticity, I think, that concern which indicates belief. Here is a real section of old Edo--maybe the same section where the museum now stands- -somehow preserved. Time has stopped. Pick up an Edo daikon or take an Edo account book out of the drawer, or try on a pair of Edo glasses left on that low desk only 150 years ago. For a moment the past is real.

Fukugawa Edo Museum
1-3-28 Shirakawa
Koto-ku
3630-8625

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