Timon Screech’s new book is an excursion to the historic city of Edo, the “Tokyo before Tokyo” of the title. Although in reality this city has been obliterated by fire and earthquake, wartime bombing and peacetime redevelopment, here it comes back to life through historic maps and screen paintings, ukiyo-e prints, and printed books.
Screech begins with an introduction to the panoramic paintings depicting Edo in the seventeenth century, now known as the Edozu byobu (screen paintings of Edo). This is followed in the first chapter, “The Ideal City,” with a discussion of the cosmological dimension to the plan of Edo, based on geomancy adopted from China. Heian-kyo (now known as Kyoto), with its grid plan, serves as an exemplar. The author then describes how Edo grew within this cosmological thinking to arrive at the castle city of the Tokugawa. A status-based zoning system enforced control and visual order, with...
University of California Press