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A History of Tokyo 1867-1989: From Edo to Showa: The Emergence of the World's Greatest City
"This is a freaking great book and I highly recommend it…if you are passionate about the history of 'the world's greatest city,' this book is something you must have in your collection." --JapanThis.com
Edward Seidensticker's A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo's transformation from the Shogun's capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style that won him admiration as the foremost translator of great works of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his brilliant vision of an entire society suddenly wrenched from an ancient feudal past into the modern world in a few short decades, and the enormous stresses and strains that this brought with it.
Originally published as two volumes, Seidensticker's masterful work is now available in a handy, single paperback volume. Whether you're a history buff or Tokyo-bound traveler looking to learn more, this insightful book offers a fascinating look at how the Tokyo that we know came to be.
This edition contains an introduction by Donald Richie, the acknowledged expert on Japanese culture who was a close personal friend of the author, and a preface by geographer Paul Waley that puts the book into perspective for modern readers.
Edward Seidensticker's A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo's transformation from the Shogun's capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style that won him admiration as the foremost translator of great works of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his brilliant vision of an entire society suddenly wrenched from an ancient feudal past into the modern world in a few short decades, and the enormous stresses and strains that this brought with it.
Originally published as two volumes, Seidensticker's masterful work is now available in a handy, single paperback volume. Whether you're a history buff or Tokyo-bound traveler looking to learn more, this insightful book offers a fascinating look at how the Tokyo that we know came to be.
This edition contains an introduction by Donald Richie, the acknowledged expert on Japanese culture who was a close personal friend of the author, and a preface by geographer Paul Waley that puts the book into perspective for modern readers.
640 pages, Paperback
Published April 9, 2019
4 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Edward G. Seidensticker
60 books39 followersEdward George Seidensticker was a distinguished American scholar, translator, and historian renowned for his translations of Japanese literature, both classical and modern. Born in 1921 near Castle Rock, Colorado, Seidensticker studied English at the University of Colorado and later became fluent in Japanese through the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School during World War II. He served in the Pacific theater as a Marine language officer, later participating in Japan’s occupation and developing a lasting affinity for the country and its culture.
Following his military service, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and briefly worked in the U.S. Foreign Service in Tokyo. Deciding on an academic path, he studied Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo and began translating major literary works. His translations of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country and Thousand Cranes helped introduce modern Japanese literature to a Western audience and contributed to Kawabata’s Nobel Prize win in 1968. Seidensticker also translated works by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima, and his 1976 translation of The Tale of Genji remains a landmark achievement.
He taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Seidensticker also authored literary criticism, cultural histories, and a memoir. He received numerous honors and remains a towering figure in the field of Japan studies.
Following his military service, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and briefly worked in the U.S. Foreign Service in Tokyo. Deciding on an academic path, he studied Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo and began translating major literary works. His translations of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country and Thousand Cranes helped introduce modern Japanese literature to a Western audience and contributed to Kawabata’s Nobel Prize win in 1968. Seidensticker also translated works by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima, and his 1976 translation of The Tale of Genji remains a landmark achievement.
He taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Seidensticker also authored literary criticism, cultural histories, and a memoir. He received numerous honors and remains a towering figure in the field of Japan studies.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 25, 2025
This volume bundles together two books, the apparently classic Low City High City, on how Edo became Tokyo, and Tokyo Rising, on everything that happened after. There's a particular clique of western writers on Tokyo who worship this man and his books - Donald Richie, Ian Buruma, etc, and if you've read those you know what you'll get here. For most of book one and at least half of book two, there are really three professions in Edo-Tokyo - writer, actor, prostitute. If you want to know about anyone who didn't work in any of those capacities you'll find it a little wanting. Those interested in the city will enjoy a lot of the intense geographical detail, though a book with so much architecture in it really ought to have been a little better informed. Throughout, Meiji is presented as a golden age - more specifically, the Asakusa district in Meiji is - and everything else is a decline or unworthy of his attention. A mild saving grace in book 2, when he's writing about the city he actually lived in, is a salty scepticism about what we now know as the bubble era that can be quite engaging, if you don't mind the combination of political conservatism and thigh-rubbing prurience.
June 30, 2019
This is the kind of history book I've wanted to read for years; detailing the rise of a city I've had a bit of an obsession with my whole life. While I hoped for a competent and well-written piece of work that detailed the history of the city as well as its institutions I instead got a mess of a book, a release that could only have been allowed by the laziest of publishers with no quality control.
Edward Seidensticker is apparently a translator and perhaps that is where he should have stayed because his long history of Tokyo is among the most scatterbrained affairs I've ever forced myself through. Rather than presenting information under headings or having any form of narrative structure, Seidensticker decides to just talk about whatever with no rhyme or reason. One paragraph will talk about lumber and the next will talk about sumo. Any serious history buff looking for good information can find it here, obviously this is a well researched and informative book for those who can manage the style, but for me it was like a dozen books on the subject put in a blender and pasted together. Or a schizophrenic historian's overlong lecture.
Compounding this issue is the fact the writing is just plain awful. Seidensticker is rarely compelling and the awful punctuation, run-on sentences, and style itself reeks of the first draft of a college thesis.
And even worse is the over-reliance on the same few sources. This book has a lot of information and I'm sure much of it is fact but there are few sources and the majority of the primary sources are used again and again and again, something I find critically questionable in a book that would have needed abundant research to pull off. The same four or five people show up as sources and most of them are literary rather than providing any factual support. It's questionable and makes the book that much more hard to read for the serious history buff.
Overall, this book was a waste of 25 dollars and I wish I could get my money back. It suckers you in with a subject matter many would find fascinating then leads you on a amateur and schizophrenic tour of Tokyo's history.
Edward Seidensticker is apparently a translator and perhaps that is where he should have stayed because his long history of Tokyo is among the most scatterbrained affairs I've ever forced myself through. Rather than presenting information under headings or having any form of narrative structure, Seidensticker decides to just talk about whatever with no rhyme or reason. One paragraph will talk about lumber and the next will talk about sumo. Any serious history buff looking for good information can find it here, obviously this is a well researched and informative book for those who can manage the style, but for me it was like a dozen books on the subject put in a blender and pasted together. Or a schizophrenic historian's overlong lecture.
Compounding this issue is the fact the writing is just plain awful. Seidensticker is rarely compelling and the awful punctuation, run-on sentences, and style itself reeks of the first draft of a college thesis.
And even worse is the over-reliance on the same few sources. This book has a lot of information and I'm sure much of it is fact but there are few sources and the majority of the primary sources are used again and again and again, something I find critically questionable in a book that would have needed abundant research to pull off. The same four or five people show up as sources and most of them are literary rather than providing any factual support. It's questionable and makes the book that much more hard to read for the serious history buff.
Overall, this book was a waste of 25 dollars and I wish I could get my money back. It suckers you in with a subject matter many would find fascinating then leads you on a amateur and schizophrenic tour of Tokyo's history.
September 1, 2022
Try to imagine the call of the Owai san. ‘Owai! - Owai! Edo women, dressed in kimono with blackened teeth and shaved eyebrows bringing their buckets for grateful collection from their tighly packed wooden houses in narrow steets.
While in Europe it was simply thrown into the roadway below, this was sustainability Japan style during the Edo Period. It is said the Owai san would pay more for mens than womens and the more wealthy districts also dictated higher prices. The Owai-san would pull his heavy cart from downtown Nihonbashi all the way to the west side of town where there was a distribution point to the farms and rice fields.
The shell mounds at Omori dating from the Jomon period (14000-300BC) tell us people have lived in this area for a very long time. The endless immaculate metropolis of concrete and glass, now home to upwards of 30 million people living in crammed conditions but almost entirely without crime, violence, or even the slightest dirt on any street was, not such a long time ago, a sleepy fishing village built on a shallow marshland.
Since 1603 the Shogun ruled all of Japan from Edo Castle. The western concept of status and privilege through trade has always been taken for granted, but in Japan the Samurai were of the highest class. The merchants were of the lowest order. Even then, a million or more people were crammed into the flat land between the Edo Castle and the river. Making their best for a happy but humble life. Loyalty and submission and suppressed individualism without force. But just incase people did not obey all of the strict rules there were three execution grounds in the northern part of the city. This book covers two of them (Kotsukappara and Denmacho) and in doing so the story of Takashi Oden, who in 1879 became the last woman in Japan to be put to death by beheading.
Ikuyo-e, the famous woodblock artists, show us the beauty and nature that existed just a few hundred years ago. The Japanese psyche as reflected in the religion of Shinto is very close to the natural world, the seasons, increasingly these days ripped apart and challenged by a modern glass and concrete jungle.
This book talks in detail about that place Yanagibashi which had a strong tradition of the Geisha. When I cross that bridge at Yanagibashi I can feel those times gone by whisper to me. It still holds a mystique, but imagine. Stand on the bridge and take yourself back to what it was in those times. The Geisha party is now held in a high rise tower if at all, but then, arriving at a Yanagibashi restaurant by boat, cherry blossom in bloom. This was before the Kanda river was walled off.
The city has spread so far in recent times we can easily forget that essentually Tokyo is a water city. There is no Grand Canal and much has been filled in or otherwise used for 'Blade-Runner' type highways crushing all in their path, but if you look carefully the old waterways still whisper their existence. When Perry arrived in Japan in 1853 two hundred and fifty years of Japanese isolation came to an end. The Meiji period saw incredible industrialisation - certainly one of the most remarkable events in human history.
In 1858 a US warship in Nagasaki brough a Cholera epidemic to Japan. In 1866 there were rice riots. But by 1872 Ginza was lined with Red Brick buildings and there was gas lighting from Ginza all the way to Asakusa. Trains started to run from Shinagawa to Yokohama. There were western style dance parties at the Rokumeikan and a Seven Story Tower near Asakusa brought a view across the city and a glimpse on different floors of technological wonders from various foreign lands.
The Salvation Army tried to resuce the women of the Yoshiwara. There was a terrible fire in 1911.
So many new bridges were built using steel construction. The rare example of the Tokiwa Bridge and the Bank of Japan Building still survive from the Meiji period. Almost everything else is now gone. The Nihonbashi Bridge, original 1603, was made in modern style in 1911 but it is now covered by a highway. The Kachidoki Bridge was named for the ’shout of Victory’. Constructed in 1940 it celebrated the victory against Russia in 1905.
These examples are only a few of the very interesting topics the author brings us back to.
I picked up this book in a second-hand shop in the foreign section. I hesitated as it looked like a run of the mill tourist book, but the insights, experience and deep knowledge of the author make it a true gem.
I so much wish that more of the past still existed in Tokyo but often I am surprised by what I can find. Certainly this great book makes the search and discovery much more possible and even for what we cannot find we can take a brief silent moment to stop and imagine.
While in Europe it was simply thrown into the roadway below, this was sustainability Japan style during the Edo Period. It is said the Owai san would pay more for mens than womens and the more wealthy districts also dictated higher prices. The Owai-san would pull his heavy cart from downtown Nihonbashi all the way to the west side of town where there was a distribution point to the farms and rice fields.
The shell mounds at Omori dating from the Jomon period (14000-300BC) tell us people have lived in this area for a very long time. The endless immaculate metropolis of concrete and glass, now home to upwards of 30 million people living in crammed conditions but almost entirely without crime, violence, or even the slightest dirt on any street was, not such a long time ago, a sleepy fishing village built on a shallow marshland.
Since 1603 the Shogun ruled all of Japan from Edo Castle. The western concept of status and privilege through trade has always been taken for granted, but in Japan the Samurai were of the highest class. The merchants were of the lowest order. Even then, a million or more people were crammed into the flat land between the Edo Castle and the river. Making their best for a happy but humble life. Loyalty and submission and suppressed individualism without force. But just incase people did not obey all of the strict rules there were three execution grounds in the northern part of the city. This book covers two of them (Kotsukappara and Denmacho) and in doing so the story of Takashi Oden, who in 1879 became the last woman in Japan to be put to death by beheading.
Ikuyo-e, the famous woodblock artists, show us the beauty and nature that existed just a few hundred years ago. The Japanese psyche as reflected in the religion of Shinto is very close to the natural world, the seasons, increasingly these days ripped apart and challenged by a modern glass and concrete jungle.
This book talks in detail about that place Yanagibashi which had a strong tradition of the Geisha. When I cross that bridge at Yanagibashi I can feel those times gone by whisper to me. It still holds a mystique, but imagine. Stand on the bridge and take yourself back to what it was in those times. The Geisha party is now held in a high rise tower if at all, but then, arriving at a Yanagibashi restaurant by boat, cherry blossom in bloom. This was before the Kanda river was walled off.
The city has spread so far in recent times we can easily forget that essentually Tokyo is a water city. There is no Grand Canal and much has been filled in or otherwise used for 'Blade-Runner' type highways crushing all in their path, but if you look carefully the old waterways still whisper their existence. When Perry arrived in Japan in 1853 two hundred and fifty years of Japanese isolation came to an end. The Meiji period saw incredible industrialisation - certainly one of the most remarkable events in human history.
In 1858 a US warship in Nagasaki brough a Cholera epidemic to Japan. In 1866 there were rice riots. But by 1872 Ginza was lined with Red Brick buildings and there was gas lighting from Ginza all the way to Asakusa. Trains started to run from Shinagawa to Yokohama. There were western style dance parties at the Rokumeikan and a Seven Story Tower near Asakusa brought a view across the city and a glimpse on different floors of technological wonders from various foreign lands.
The Salvation Army tried to resuce the women of the Yoshiwara. There was a terrible fire in 1911.
So many new bridges were built using steel construction. The rare example of the Tokiwa Bridge and the Bank of Japan Building still survive from the Meiji period. Almost everything else is now gone. The Nihonbashi Bridge, original 1603, was made in modern style in 1911 but it is now covered by a highway. The Kachidoki Bridge was named for the ’shout of Victory’. Constructed in 1940 it celebrated the victory against Russia in 1905.
These examples are only a few of the very interesting topics the author brings us back to.
I picked up this book in a second-hand shop in the foreign section. I hesitated as it looked like a run of the mill tourist book, but the insights, experience and deep knowledge of the author make it a true gem.
I so much wish that more of the past still existed in Tokyo but often I am surprised by what I can find. Certainly this great book makes the search and discovery much more possible and even for what we cannot find we can take a brief silent moment to stop and imagine.
March 4, 2023
I felt like I got scammed when I bought this. Edward Seidensticker was very knowledgable and notably translated The Tale of Genji, but he died in 2007. This book, published in 2019, is a slapped together collection of his writing. It's not a comprehensive history of Tokyo, but a cash grab made to seem like one. The book is actually more of a treatise on the before and after of the 1923 earthquake, followed by Seidensticker's scattered impressions of Tokyo until 1989. Much of the book is anecdotal and while the stories are interesting on their own, they're buried in a brick of outdated takes and biases.
December 7, 2025
It is a big book. But Tokyo is a big city. Covers cultural history particularly well. It does wander a bit which can make it hard to keep track of the line of discussion, but ai forgave this as it was trying to cover so much !
I have lived in Tokyo for a decade and found it fantastic to learn about many of the locations and towns I only knew the modern versions of.
I have lived in Tokyo for a decade and found it fantastic to learn about many of the locations and towns I only knew the modern versions of.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews