Edo-Tokyo Museum

Yesterday we went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which offers a history of the city from its origins in a small fishing village (Edo, early 17th century) to the 1964 (the Olympics). The museum was fascinating as much for how it presented this history as for the history itself. Much of the story of Tokyo was told in terms of the history of this or that network or system: the development of roads, the origin of the modern department store in the early kimono shops of the eighteenth century, the adoption of the stock market and banking in the 1890s, the appearance of firemen's brigades in the 17th century, and so on. It was probably revealing that the museum itself is modeled not on a palace but on a form of grain warehouse. Here's the exterior, and under the giant canopy (about four stories high), to the right, you can see an escalator modeled on (I think) a grain conveyor...

One of the most fascinating things about the museum was its constant use of maps, charts, and dioramas, and we wanted the students to think about why information was presented in this way, and what one could learn from the dioramas. The one below depicts 17th century Edo, still a small town, and with binoculars at each end of the table, you could zoom in on the little figurines, each incredibly detailed. Below (two pictures down) is a zoom shot of one of the buildings.
Here's another typical and interesting presentation of information. If you didn't know better, this might look like a subway map, but it's a genealogical chart of the succession of the shoguns.

And this is a life-sized model of the shogun: very different from its European counterpart, which would be standing or on horseback, and probably a bit larger than life.