Edo

Discover the Seto Mimitsuki Mizusashi, a Registered Art Object held at Tokyo National Museum. This Edo-period (late 17th to 18th century) water jar, made at the historic Seto kiln, features a cylindrical body with charming bamboo-shaped handles, an iron glaze layered with poured ash glaze, and a black lacquered wooden lid. Explore its quiet beauty, historical significance, viewing highlights, and visitor information for the museum in Ueno Park, Tokyo.

Discover the Tekagami (292 Leaves), a registered work of art at Tokyo National Museum. Compiled in 1861 by Edo Shogunate official painter Sumiyoshi Hirotsura, this rare album contains 292 fragments of Japan's finest ancient calligraphy spanning a thousand years from Nara to Edo periods.

A pair of six-panel folding screens by Shōkadō Shōjō, one of the Three Great Calligraphers of the Kan'ei Era, featuring delicate four-seasons flower-and-bird paintings interwoven with sixteen scattered waka poems on a shimmering gold-and-silver ground.

A thirteenth-century Southern Song painting of water buffalo attributed to Yan Ciping, owned by the Sen-oku Hakukokan; a National Treasure since 1957.

This National Treasure colophon by Yuan literatus Feng Zizhen praises a lost insect scroll by Song painter Yi Yuanji. Sen no Rikyu's letter saved it from being cut.

Soto-Sakuradamon holds the largest masugata court left at Edo Castle and the ground where Ii Naosuke fell in 1860. Free to pass, and lit nightly until 9 p.m.

Tayasumon in Kitanomaru Park is the oldest surviving building at Edo Castle, dated to 1636 by an inscription on its door fittings. Free to walk through at any hour.

The main hall of Gokokuji in Bunkyo, Tokyo, a seven-bay Kannon hall built in 1697 on the orders of the shogun Tsunayoshi, enshrines a hidden image of Kannon.

The Kobayashi Family Residence, a thatched farmhouse at 750 meters on a ridge in Hinohara, west Tokyo, was built in the early 1700s and is reached by monorail.

Denpoin, the head residence of Sensoji in Asakusa, keeps six buildings from 1776 to 1918, a rare survival of a great Edo temple residence beside its garden.

The Nitenmon Gate of Sensoji in Asakusa, Tokyo, built around 1649 as the gate of a lost Toshogu shrine, survived war and earthquake with its triple-ridge ceilings.

Built in 1632 as the outer gate of the second shogun's mausoleum at Zojoji, this gate is the only part still standing on its own ground after the 1945 air raid.

A late Edo farmhouse in Ome, Tokyo, an Important Cultural Property since 1978. Moved from the Nariki hills, it keeps a cedar-bark and thatch roof. Free entry.

Raised in 1717 for the seventh shogun Tokugawa Ietsugu, this vermilion gate is all that survives of the last Tokugawa mausoleum, the rest lost in wartime raids.

A late Edo document storehouse in Chofu, Tokyo, joined to the main house by a small room, with earthen walls, a gabled roof and plastered shutters. Registered 2014.

A late Edo farmhouse in Irumacho, Chofu, Tokyo, with a hipped thatched roof under sheet metal, an earth-floored doma and five raised rooms. Registered in 2014.

Ishikawa Sake Brewery Nagayamon Gate in Fussa, Tokyo: a late Edo timber gatehouse with rooms beside the passage, a copper roof and bracketed eaves on the front only.

Ishikawa Sake Brewery Bunkogura in Fussa, Tokyo: a small 1863 storehouse dated by ink on its stairs, a former treasure store registered for its fine plaster work.

The Suigyodo of Ontake Shrine in Ota, Tokyo, built around 1867 for cold-water purification, is a small hall with a well and a carved dragon above its front.

For two months in 1868 the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, confined himself in this modest shoin at Kan'eiji, the room where Tokugawa rule quietly ended.