I. Transportation Guide (Part 1) Destination: Edo Harbor in the Keicho Period

“What fun it is to walk the streets of Tokyo in the footsteps of history!” I thought this after experiencing a tour of the remains of old rivers, which is already guaranteed to be an interesting street walk, with a guide who is very knowledgeable about history. Although Tokyo’s landscape seems to be completely covered in concrete, we can actually find reminders of the past here and there. This fact touches our hearts. Place names containing the words “hashi” and “bashi” (bridge) are an easy clue. Kyobashi and Shinbashi are both used as town names and station names. Kajibashi is used as the name of an intersection and a street. A less-known place is the expressway tollgate called Shirauobashi Tollgate.

Edo was called the “City of Water” because of its extensive network of canals and waterways. Originally, the name of Edo is said to be derived from the word “Irie no to,” which means “the entrance of a bay.” As the name suggests, at the end of the 16th century when Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, entered Edo, the area from Nihonbashi to Kyobashi, Ginza, and Shinbashi was a peninsular-shaped low-lying land called Edomaejima (island), and the shallow water of the Hibiya Inlet extended to the area to the west from Hibiya Park to around Otemachi Station.

After the establishment of the Edo shogunate, circular moats were constructed around Edo Castle, and a huge city area was formed. The shogunate government carried out the civil engineering by ordering feudal lords to provide labor, materials, money, and even technology. This was called “tenka bushin”, which means civil engineering work ordered by the government.  With this method, the development of the city of Edo progressed rapidly.

At the same time as the castle was built, the Hibiya Inlet was filled in with the excavated soil, and the new land was used as the grounds for the feudal lords’ residences. Some parts of the Inlet were left unfilled to create an outer moat for the castle. In addition to their original purpose of protecting the castle, they also served as flood control and a waterway for transportation. In addition, rivers were constructed leading to the sea and riverbanks were formed. In this way, land reclamation was carried out repeatedly, and the city of Edo expanded into the sea. With each land reclamation, a new waterway was created.

As the castle was built, the city was also built, and the function of the castle was further enhanced by the newly constructed waterways. In this way, the construction of Edo Castle and the development of the city were two sides of the same coin. What sustained Edo, a major consumer city with a population of one million, were the canals and waterways, which were constantly improved and expanded.

Learn about one aspect of Edo’s bold infrastructure development through the story of a river. Let’s begin this journey by tracing its changes.

There used to be a river called Kaedegawa along the line connecting the Edobashi and Kyobashi junctions of the Metropolitan Expressway Inner Circular Route. A 1.2-kilometer-long stream branched off from the Nihonbashi River to the south and joined the Kyobashi River and the Sakuragawa River (Hacchobori).

On the west bank of the river was a Honzaimokugashi, a place where timber had been unloaded since the early Edo period. It was a busy place where many woodworkers and merchants processed and sold the timber. At the beginning of the Showa period, a canal was constructed to connect to Tsukiji Market, which was built after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and this boat transportation route was heavily used over a long period of time. After World War II, however, its role came to an end as motorization accelerated. Reclamation began in 1960, and the river had completely disappeared by 1965.

Today, a highway runs along the former route of the river, and many of the bridges still exist to be used to cross the highway. The old river has become a road, and cars come and go instead of boats. This scenery makes it easy to imagine what the river was like in the old days. But what if you were told that in the distant past, at the beginning of the Edo period, this was the boundary between the land and the sea?

The transformation of the sea into a river was initiated by a single order of the shogun. In 1611, the second shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Hidetada, ordered the construction of funairi-bori.

Funairi-bori refers to a pier and its waterways where boats are towed and moored. At that time, funairi-bori was needed to transport building materials for the castle. Needless to say, in the days before cranes, moving heavy objects by water was more convenient than by land. Of course, there had been riverbanks for unloading stones and timber for the construction of castles. It is said, for example, that the riverbank of the Kamakura River at the present Uchikanda 1 and 2-chome had existed since the Middle Ages. From the time Ieyasu entered Edo, stones from Izu Province and timber from Sagami Province were unloaded there. (The name comes from the fact that timber merchants from Kamakura controlled the functions of the riverbank.)

However, as the construction work progressed, they needed a bay facility for more efficient transportation. Then, they chose the coast on the eastern side of Edomaejima because it faced the open sea. Unfortunately, Edo Harbor is a shallow sea, and it was difficult for a large ship to approach the shore. So, Hidetada ordered the construction of funairi-bori and the improvement of waterways so that construction materials could be transported by boat as close to the construction site as possible.

At the same time as the excavation of the funairi-bori, the surrounding area of the nearby sandbar  was reclaimed using the excavated soil and sand. The land developed by this method is the area in and around the present Kabuto-cho, Kayaba-cho and Hacchobori, and the canal that was left unfilled was the Kaedegawa River. We know this because the Picture Map of Bushu Toshimagoori Edonosho (commonly called the Kanei Edo Map), which is said to have been drawn in 1632 and describes the detailed appearance of Edo in its early days, shows the Kaedegawa River and the comb-shaped excavated funairi-bori.

Although the map has deteriorated and is difficult to read, there are as many as nine funairi-bori’s. The particularly long one in the center is called Momijigawa River and a bridge called Nakabashi Bridge was built in the middle of the waterway. In his book Edo Was Built This Way (Chikuma Gakugei Bunko), Masao Suzuki speculates that nearly half of the other waterways were as long as the Momijigawa River and reached the outer moat when the funairi-bori’s were dug. The piers were lined up from Nihonbashi to Kyobashi on the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station, and boats were constantly coming and going. It’s a spectacular sight to imagine even now.

As I have explained, the former coastline was transformed into a river and a huge bay facility. The building materials transported by sea passed through the Hacchobori Canal, which was constructed at the same time, and were unloaded one after another at the funairi-bori on the Kaedegawa River.

The whole area must have been filled with the hustle and bustle of workers sent from all over the country, speaking their dialects, from early morning until sunset. The hardest task was said to be moving the stone requiring a hundred bearers, which was brought from Izu Province. To unload the stone, it must be placed on a wooden sledge  and wound up with a human-powered winch. After unloading, the sledge was placed on rollers made of logs and split bamboo, which were covered with seaweed to make them slippery, and pushed along for transportation. Some pulled the sledge, some pushed it from behind to help, and some led the way from the side. The sledge made a dull roar, the logs rattled, and workers shouted rhythmically. Nearby, woodworkers and stoneworkers might have been working on the timber and stone that had just been delivered, and the sound of chisels and hammers might have echoed.

The lives of the workers who came to Edo from their hometowns to do hard physical labor in the harbor are not clear. Still, one drawing gives us a glimpse of their lives. It is a Folding Screen of the Construction of a Castle (owned by the Nagoya City Museum) made in the late Keicho period (1596–1615). There is an opinion that this drawing depicts the construction of Sunpu Castle, which began in 1607. On the screen, workers are not only carrying stones and timber and stacking up the stone walls, but also having big fights and enjoying a drink in a teahouse. Udon noodle restaurants, temporary theaters, and entertainers spinning plates are also depicted, and we can see that services such as food, drink and entertainment for workers were already established at that time. It is said that workers were often paid in rice. So, they would probably have exchanged the rice for cash to buy daily necessities and enjoy some entertainment for a change. Where people gather, businesses are created around them, which in turn attract more people to enter a cycle of market expansion. This is true all the time. It is not surprising that the same thing happened along the Kaedegawa River and led to the development of the area.

Funairi-bori is believed to have been completed by the end of the Keicho period, four years after the shogun’s order. This bay facility attracted people and goods and served as a catalyst for the development of Edo. But its life was surprisingly short. If the inference of Mr. Suzuki, whom I introduced earlier, is correct, its reclamation had already begun in the Kan’ei period (1624–1644). After that, reclamation gradually progressed, and the area was converted into a residential area for merchants and workers. By 1845, the last small part of the Momijigawa River had completely disappeared.

When it became necessary, people built it even if it was difficult. When it was no longer needed, people always tore it down and rebuilt it. Especially in the modern era, as motorization progressed, some rivers were filled in for reconstruction after the Great Kanto Earthquake or for debris removal after World War II, and others were filled in and eliminated to improve public hygiene during the period of rapid economic growth. Although there are no rivers or bridges today, the fact that water once flowed there is inscribed in the place name.

The current landscape of the remains of the former Kaedegawa River, with the expressway and sooty noise barriers, is also an extension of Edo’s city development. The fact that it is and has been constantly changing is the only thing that has not changed since this area began its development as a city (to be continued in Part 2).

Cooperation with: Research Center for Sustainable Societies of CTI Engineering Co., Ltd.
References:
Chuo City Chronology (Edo Period vol. 1, 2 and 3) (1985) edited and owned by Kyobashi Library, Chuo City, Tokyo
Masao Suzuki (2000) Edo Was Built This Way – Restoring an Illusory Century, Chikuma Gakugei Bunko
Masao Suzuki (2003) Illustrated Guide: Encyclopedia of Rivers and Waterfronts of Edo and Tokyo, Kashiwa Shobo
Kenji Sugawara (author and editor) (2011) Guide to Edo and Tokyo Tracing the Remains of Old Rivers, Yosensha
Kozo Suzuki (2019) Reading the Topography and Economy of Edo and Tokyo from Maps, Nippon Jitsugyo Publishing