Located within the leafy expanse of Koganei Park, far from the glass towers of central Tokyo, the Edo-Tokyo Open-Air Architectural Museum slows the city down and allows its past to remain physically present. Opened in 1993 as an annex of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, the museum was created to rescue buildings that could no longer survive in their original locations, victims of redevelopment, natural disasters, or changing social needs. Spread across more than seven hectares, it gathers 30 structures dating from the Edo period to the mid-Showa era, carefully relocated, reconstructed, and re-inhabited with objects, textures, and atmospheres.
Entering the grounds feels like crossing an invisible threshold. Modern Tokyo fades, replaced by gravel paths, wooden facades, and the subtle creak of floorboards. Architecture becomes a narrative device, guiding me through centuries of urban transformation.
The Center Zone: Power, Ceremony, and Transition
I begin in the center zone, where architecture reflects authority, refinement, and historical turning points. The Former Kokaden Hall, now serving as the visitor center, was originally built for the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of the Japanese imperial line in 1940. Its presence alone speaks to the symbolic use of architecture in modern nation-building. Nearby stands the Former Jishoin Mausoleum, dating back to 1652. Built by master shogunate carpenter Kora Muneyoshi, it carries the solemn restraint of early Edo-period religious architecture.
The House of Takahashi Korekiyo is perhaps the most emotionally charged site. Completed in 1902, it blends Japanese design with early Western influences, including glass windows, still a novelty at the time. Standing in the upstairs room where the former prime minister was assassinated during the February 26 Incident of 1936, history suddenly feels close and human. Political ideology, architecture, and private life intersect here with chilling clarity.
The West Zone: Suburbia, Modernity, and Experimentation
Moving west, the atmosphere shifts. Farmhouses from Musashino sit alongside suburban residences shaped by Western influence. The Tsunashima family farmhouse, with its thatched roof and sunken hearth, anchors the zone in agrarian life. Volunteers still light fires to fumigate the roof, filling the air with the faint scent of charcoal. Inside, the layout speaks of seasonal labor, family hierarchy, and continuity.
In sharp contrast stands the House of Kunio Maekawa, built in 1942. Designed under wartime restrictions, its modernist clarity feels astonishingly contemporary. Maekawa, a former apprentice of Le Corbusier, demonstrates how Japanese architecture absorbs global ideas without losing restraint.
The Tokiwadai Photo Studio captures another aspect of modern life. Built in 1937 in an Art Deco style, its large north-facing windows flood the interior with soft, indirect light, carefully designed for portrait photography. Before cameras became household objects, studios like this played a crucial social role. Families arrived dressed in their best clothes to mark milestones (graduations, marriages, departures for war).
What emerges from the West Zone is a mosaic of transitions. Walking through it, I am struck by how well the museum has managed to capture Tokyo in motion, testing forms and lifestyles that would eventually define the modern city, while still tethered to the textures of the past.
The East Zone: Shitamachi Life and Collective Memory
Stepping into the East Zone feels like entering into a neighborhood momentarily paused in time. The narrow street of Shitamachi Nakadori unfolds with a quiet intimacy, its buildings aligned closely, their façades speaking in the modest, practical language of early Showa-era downtown Tokyo.
What immediately strikes me is how architecture here serves everyday needs rather than ideals. Shops open directly onto the street, thresholds are low, and interiors feel close to the body. The stationery store Takei Sanshodo draws me in instinctively, and its most striking feature is a wall entirely covered in small wooden drawers, each once holding paper goods, brushes, or ink. It is an image that feels oddly familiar. Hayao Miyazaki famously drew inspiration from this very wall when designing Kamaji’s boiler room in Spirited Away (2001), and standing before it, the connection feels undeniable.
In fact, much of Spirited Away seems to echo through this street. The slightly disorienting, empty, uncanny town that opens the film takes visual cues from Shitamachi Nakadori itself. Just a few buildings away from Takei Sanshodo stands Maruni Shoten, a kitchenware store whose exterior closely resembles a shop seen in the film. The resemblance, which is neither a commemoration nor a tribute, simply exists because it is embedded in the material reality Miyazaki observed and absorbed.
That connection feels especially fitting given the museum’s location. Studio Ghibli is based in nearby Koganei City, and Miyazaki has long visited the museum as a source of inspiration. His relationship with the site goes beyond observation: he even designed Edomaru, the museum’s mascot, a symbol of the dialogue between architecture, imagination, and storytelling.
Further along the street, Kodakara-yu, the public bathhouse built in 1929, anchors the neighborhood in ritual and community. Inside, a painted Mount Fuji rises above the empty baths, serene and watchful. This sento famously inspired the bathhouse in Spirited Away, and yet here, stripped of fantasy, it feels even more powerful. Public bathhouses were once essential social spaces, places where the boundaries between private and communal life dissolved. Standing inside Kodakara-yu, I can almost hear echoes of conversation, splashing water, and the rhythm of daily life.
The East Zone is not isolated from the rest of the museum’s narrative. Nearby, the pitched red roof of the De Lalande House introduces a Western accent, while Kunio Maekawa’s modernist home reminds me that Tokyo’s transformation was never linear. Even the vintage tram, once running through Shibuya, extends the sense of movement and connection beyond the street itself.
What lingers most as I walk through this area is the feeling that these buildings are inhabited by memory. Each shopfront, bathhouse, and signboard invites speculation about the lives once lived here. The East Zone invites wandering, recognition, and imagination. In doing so, it allows both children and adults to get gently, willingly lost in time.
Architecture as Urban Memory
What sets the Edo-Tokyo Open-Air Architectural Museum apart is its refusal to isolate architecture from daily life. Interiors are furnished, shops feel paused rather than abandoned, and buildings are arranged to recreate streetscapes rather than monuments. Even outdoor exhibits (a vintage tram, a bonnet bus, an ornamental lamp from the Imperial Palace) extend the story beyond walls.
Walking these paths, I am struck by how Tokyo’s transformation becomes legible through kitchens, bathhouses, shop counters, and living rooms. Inequality, modernization, disaster, and resilience are all written into wood grain and floor plans. This museum offers a space where time is layered rather than erased. It allows Tokyo to be understood as an accumulation of lives, aspirations, and structures, fragile, adaptable, and deeply human.
Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum
TOURIST ATTRACTION- Japan, 〒184-0005 Tokyo, Koganei, Sakuracho, 3 Chome−7−1 内 都立小金井公園
- ★★★★☆
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