I. Transportation Guide (Part 2) Destination: Nakabashi Hirokoji in the Tenpo Period

2023.12.26

Nihonbashi Symbolizes a Peaceful World

In the Edo period, Nihonbashi was an urban tourist destination that everyone wanted to visit at least once. The Nihonbashi River, which flows under the bridge, is said to be an artificial river created by diverting the Hirakawa River (the old Kandagawa River), which originally flowed into Hibiya Inlet, into the Sumidagawa River. The first bridge over the river was built in 1603. The following year, in 1604, the road to the bridge (today’s Chuo-dori) was improved, and Nihonbashi was designated the starting point of five major highways.

 

  • Eight Views of Edo: Nihonbashi on a Hazy Sunny Day by Keisai Eisen, said to have been drawn around the Koka period (1843–1846). It depicts the hustle and bustle of travelers and peddlers carrying freshly bought fish from the fish market in Nihonbashi with shoulder poles. (Image is courtesy of National Diet Library Digital Collections)

Because of its convenient access by both water and land, markets gathered around Nihonbashi, and the streets were crowded with people going to and from the markets. Well known is the fish market located in the area up to the Edobashi Bridge on the north bank. On the opposite bank was the Yokkaichi Market, and salted and dried fish were sold there. The Edobashi Bridge used to be a little downstream from where it is now. It was located where the Nihonbashi River makes a shallow U-shaped bend. The bridge was moved to its present location when Showa Street was opened as part of the reconstruction projects following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

 

It is said that in the old days, when people came to the end of the bend in the river near the Edobashi Bridge, the view suddenly opened up, and they could see the arched Nihonbashi Bridge in front of them. Beyond the bridge, they would see Edo Castle and, in the distance, the sacred mountain of Mt. Fuji. In order to demonstrate the authority of the shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu is said to have banned the construction of buildings with two or more stories and dared to build the Nihonbashi Bridge in a place where people could see both Mt. Fuji and Edo Castle at a glance. If it was his intention to design the landscape in this way, he succeeded. In later years, Mt. Fuji and Edo Castle were often painted together and the bridge became a scenic spot that symbolized Edo.

 

People crossed the bridge for a variety of reasons. Some crossed to make a living, some crossed to start their journeys, and some visited there for sightseeing. Nihonbashi became a place where various people, including locals, tourists, and even feudal lord’s processions, were welcomed and sent out.

 

The novelist Asai Ryoi described the extraordinary congestion in his book Famous Sights in Edo published in 1662 as follows: “On the bridge, people of high and low status and even the vehicles of the nobility go up and down, back and forth. It is like ants making on a pilgrimage to Kumano.” If it was that crowded, just crossing the bridge would be a struggle. In addition, it is also written that if they were not careful, they might get pushed over or kicked over, or their belts and bags might be cut, and their swords or other belongings might be stolen. If this is not an exaggeration, the bridge must have been a very dangerous place. It seems that there was no time to relax and enjoy the scenery.

 

Then, where did the travelers actually go to prepare for the journey or to rest? This time, I would like to take you to a certain entertainment district near Nihonbashi that many travelers stopped by but which is now completely forgotten.

Broadway in the Early Edo Period

Leave Tokyo Station from the Yaesu exit, opposite to the Imperial Palace. Walk down Yaesu-dori, which stretches out in front of you, until you reach the intersection with Chuo-dori, called Nihonbashi 3-chome. At this intersection, you will see the Echizenya Building, which was built during the post-war reconstruction period (1952), and the Museum Tower Kyobashi, which was just completed in 2019. If you look carefully, you can feel the layer of time here. But at first glance, it is just an ordinary urban intersection.

 

Surprisingly, this was a place where many people stopped by during the Edo period. It was called “Nakabashi Hirokoji.”

 

  • Easy-to-Read Map and Guide of Edo (partial) (Hyoshiya Ichirobee version) published in 1680

  • Current map. In the Easy-to-Read Map and Guide of Edo, the western half of the Momijigawa River has been reclaimed to become Nakabashi Hirokoji and the eastern half of the river remains. The area on both sides of the street (Chuo-dori) between Nakabashi Hirokoji and Kyobashi (left side of Nakabashi Hirokoji) is the present Minami-tenmacho 1 to 3-chome. (Image is courtesy of National Diet Library Digital Collections)

Among the places called Hirokoji, Ueno Hirokoji and Ryogoku Hirokoji are probably the most famous. Many of them were created after the Great Meireki Fire of 1657, which burned down most of Edo, as firebreaks by widening streets to prevent the spread of fire. Contrary to intentions, once an empty space was created in a densely populated area, street vendors soon gathered. A variety of businesses were set up there, including theaters/show tents (temporary huts with bamboo walls and straw mats for roofs), teahouses, food stalls, and barbershops (providing men with grooming services, such as haircuts and shaving) to form a downtown area.

 

Nakabashi Hirokoji was as busy as other Hirokoji streets. However, the history of this place as an entertainment district dates back to before it was rebuilt as Hirokoji.

 

The name Nakabashi comes from the name of a bridge that used to be located between Nihonbashi and Kyobashi. In Part I, I wrote about the funairi-bori waterways dug in Edomaejima. Among them, the name of the bridge built over the large waterway to the outer moat called Momijigawa was Nakabashi. It was located between the two busy bridges, Nihonbashi and Kyobashi. Looking at the Folding Screen of the Picture Map of Edo (owned by the National Museum of Japanese History), which is said to show Edo in the Kan’ei period (1624–1645), we can see that many boats and people were going back and forth even then.

 

In addition, there was Minami-tenmacho to the south of Nakabashi, or on both sides of Chuo-dori Street, which corresponds to the present Kyobashi 1 to 3-chome. When we hear the name “tenmacho,” we naturally think of Nihonbashi Odenmacho and Nihonbashi Kodenmacho. Three tenmachos, including Minami-tenmacho in addition to the above two, were responsible for Edo’s “tenma” role. Tenma means horses that were kept at post stations along major highways to transport official messengers and cargo for the shogunate. Along with the improvement of the highways, the shogunate introduced a system of relay stations where horses were changed to continue transportation. In short, it was an infrastructure that had a dual role of transportation and communication. It was free for official use and available to the general public for a fee. One of these was Minami-tenmacho, which was an important transportation hub connecting to the first post station on the Tokaido Highway, Shinagawa-juku.

 

It was located by the water and along a highway. What is more, it was near Nihonbashi, a place that attracted the admiration of all travelers to Edo, and Tenmacho was also nearby. With such an excellent location, there is no reason why it should not be prosperous. The novelist Tokunaga Tanehisa wrote the following about the Nakabashi Bridge in his book Tokunaga Tanehisa’s Travels in 1617, describing his journey from Kyoto to Edo.

 

“When I crossed the Shinbashi Bridge, I found people from Edo gathered there. Everyone seemed to be crossing the Kyobashi Bridge. I also saw the performance of the Kyogen dance and puppet show in Nakabashi. Especially, the wooden puppets manipulated by strings were very entertaining.”

 

He said that after passing through the crowds of Shinbashi and Kyobashi, he came to Nakabashi, where there were Kyogen dance and puppet show theaters, and the movements of the wooden puppets were very entertaining.  He wrote in detail about the entertainment that was gathered in Nakabashi, rather than Shinbashi and Kyobashi. This means that it was so fresh and memorable to him. In addition, in 1624, Saruwaka Kanzaburo opened a theater called Saruwaka-za (which later became Nakamura-za, one of the three main theaters in Edo) in the Nakabashi Nanchi. This is considered to be the beginning of Edo kabuki.

 

Later, in 1632, the Saruwaka-za theater was ordered to move to Negicho (around Nihonbashi Horidomecho 2-chome) on the grounds that it was disturbing public morals near Edo Castle. In 1651, the theater moved again to Sakaicho (around Nihonbashi Ningyocho 3-chome) and settled there. Today, Ningyocho is famous as a theater district, but it was much later that the area gained this status. In the early Edo period, the most famous theater district in Edo was Nakabashi.

  • Nihonbashi 3-chome intersection. The Nakabashi Bridge used to be here. The Echizenya Building is on the right corner and the Museum Tower Kyobashi is on the left corner. On the center median of Yaesu-dori Street (far right in the photo), there is a monument to Jan Joosten, a Dutchman. Yaesu-gashi was named after him. Actually, it was located on the Marunouchi side, but it is believed that the monument was built here because this area was renamed Yaesu in the Meiji era.

  • Birthplace of Edo Kabuki monument was supposed to be here, but was built in Kyobashi due to lack of space. This is a bit confusing.

Nakabashi Hirokoji, an Oasis for Travelers

The Momijigawa River was reclaimed during the Shoho period (1644–1648) and became Nakabashi Hirokoji after the Great Meireki Fire of 1657. It was not until 1845 that the area was completely reclaimed. Famous Views of Edo, published in 1836 and famous for its illustrations by Hasegawa Settan, shows the Nakabashi Bridge after the Momijigawa River was completely reclaimed.

  • Nakabashi Hirokoji depicted in the Famous Views of Edo, compiled by Saito Gesshin, illustrated by Hasegawa Settan and published in 1836. (Image is courtesy of National Diet Library Digital Collections)

It is the twilight of early autumn, when the heat finally begins to subside. Imagine you are sitting on a bench in a large teahouse, quenching your thirst with a cup of Japanese green tea and looking out at the street. Samurai in hakama skirts, travelers wearing yamagasa hats, lively palanquin bearers, and people enjoying the cool evening breeze are strolling around Hirokoji as they please. It is crowded with travelers at any time of the four seasons, but today is especially busy because it is the Bon Festival.

 

In the teahouse across the street, women on the second floor stare absently out at the street, and men gather to start a loud party. Children with lanterns pass by in front of you, and women lead the children by the hand. You hear the sound of fireworks crackling from across the street, and the children are frolicking and running away from the fireworks. They are so cute and make you smile. Is that a water vendor over there? A young man with a bare shoulder gulps cold water. As you stare blankly at the street, darkness creeps in before you know it, and the light of the lanterns grows stronger by the minute.

 

Looking at this picture, I was interested in the teahouses. If you look closely, you can see that the teahouse on the left side of the intersection has a sign saying “Ogawa” and the teahouse on the right side has a sign saying “Kankiku.” Since it was drawn by the realistic illustrator Settan, these teahouses must have existed. In the special issue entitled “Newly Selected Famous Views of Tokyo” of Japan’s first illustrated magazine Genre Painting, there is a description of Nakabashi Hirokoji: “There are waiting room and teahouses called Ogawa and Kankiku at the east and west corners of the intersection.” It also says that they are always crowded but were especially crowded in the summer when people send and wait for their friends who go to visit Ooyama. Ooyama is located in the Tanzawa Mountain Range in Isehara City, Kanagawa Prefecture. It has long been worshiped as a sacred mountain and was a popular resort easily accessible from Edo. The two teahouses in Nakabashi were the meeting place for such an occasion.

 

Then, on which of the four corners were these two teahouses located? The only description in the Newly Selected Famous Views of Tokyo is that they were on the east and west corners. So, we cannot determine their exact locations from that. However, it said that the two teahouses were also mentioned in a poem in the Famous Views of Edo in Poems, illustrated by Utagawa Hiroshige. I checked it out. In this book, there was an illustration that looked like a quick sketch, and Ogawa was drawn on the right and Kankiku was on the left. The positions were reversed from those in the Famous Views of Edo.

  • From Volume 5 “Nakabashi” of Famous Views of Edo in Poems compiled by Tenmei Rojin Takumi and illustrated by Utagawa Hiroshige. It has a preface dated 1856. The image on the right is an enlarged illustration. The arrows indicate the gates to Nakabashi. (Image is courtesy of National Diet Library Digital Collections)

My joy at finding the illustration did not last long. Soon, to be honest, I felt like I was at a dead end. It is possible that the same thing was depicted from the opposite direction in Famous Views of Edo and Famous Views of Edo in Poems. But it is also possible that one of them was drawn incorrectly. Is there any other clue that might help me? Then I noticed the large kido gates (arrows in the upper right picture) drawn in Famous Views of Edo in Poems.

 

Kido are gates that were built in each town during the Edo period for security purposes. They were opened at 6 a.m. and closed at 10 p.m. When the gate was closed, visitors had to speak to the gatekeeper and go through the side gate. Since kido gates must have been important to the people of the town, they could not have been carelessly misplaced in a picture, I thought. Then, I took another careful look at Famous Views of Edo. At the bottom of the right page, I noticed two pillars that looked like kido gates standing on both sides of the road! It can be said that Famous Views of Edo and Famous Views of Edo in Poems were drawn from opposite directions with the kido gate in the middle.

 

Then, I took a close look at the Easy-to-Read Map and Guide of Edo introduced earlier, and found small squares drawn at the end of Nihonbashi 4-chome, on the north side of Nakabashi Hirokoji. These were the marks of the kido gate pillars. Putting all these together, Kankiku was located in the east and Ogawa in the west, both facing Minami-tenmacho. In other words, they were located at the entrance to Tenmacho and served as a meeting place where people could meet up with their friends before setting out or to say goodbye.

  • The right page of “Nakabashi” in Famous Views of Edo. The pillars marked with arrows are kido gates.

  • An enlarged version of Easy-to-Read Map and Guide of Edo. Compared with today’s map, Ogawa was located where the Echizenya Building is and Kankiku was where Museum Tower Kyobashi is.

It is unclear when the two teahouses disappeared from the town. In the 1853 edition of Saisenki, which describes the fashions of Edo, the names of Kankiku and Ogawa were listed, but in the 1865 edition of Saiseiki, only Kankiku is listed. Ogawa may have lost the business competition with Kankiku. Then, when did the winner, Kankiku, close its business? It might be when the horse relay system came to an end.

 

In the Meiji period, Nakabashi became the name of a streetcar station. However, the station was abolished in the Showa period. In 1931, Nakabashi Hirokoji-cho was incorporated into Kyobashi 1-chome. After that, the name gradually faded from people’s memories.

 

Last, I would like to present a poem about Nakabashi Hirokoji from the above-mentioned Famous Views of Edo in Poems.

 

“The boiling hot summer day has passed, and it has become cool on the reclaimed land where Ogawa and Kankiku stand.”

 

The two teahouses on the reclaimed land were places where people could forget the heat of a summer day for a while. If you did not know the history of this big street, you would just pass it by. But the past is quietly buried there. Every street has its own history, as long as people walk back and forth. With this thought in mind, I set up my smartphone camera at this intersection where the sun was shining brightly on the road surface.

 

References:
Kyobashi City History, Vol. 1 (1937), edited and published by Kyobashi City, Tokyo
Edo Geography, Vol. 2 (1964), edited by Edo Sosho Kankokai and published by Meicho Kankokai
Newly Selected Famous Views of Tokyo, Vol. 25 (reprint edition) (1973), Kokushokankokai (first edition published by Touyodou in 1900)
Newly Selected Famous Views of Tokyo, Vol. 29 (reprint edition) (1973), Kokushokankokai (first edition published by Touyodou in 1901)
Chuo City Chronology (Edo Period vol. 1, 2 and 3) (1985) edited and owned by Kyobashi Library, Chuo City, Tokyo
Shujin Taihei (author) and Kazuo Hanasaki (commentary) (1994) Detailed Fashion in the Edo and Meiji Period, Taihei Bunko

Yuko Shibukawa
Writer/Editor

Editor and writer mainly on food and crafts. Author of The Secret of Rice Omelets and the Mystery of Melon Bread – The Story of the Birth of Popular Menu Items (Shincho Bunko). Editor and compiler of Hand-crafting Your Life – The Earthenware and Life in Iwai Kiln in Tottori by Noriyuki Yamamoto (Stand! Books), Nichiniimashi – Ryukyuan Cuisine and Okinawan Words that Will Create a Better Tomorrow by Ayaka Yamamoto (Bungeishunju) and more.

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