Megacity One: Life in Edo
Jordan Sand, 3 June 2021
For more than two hundred years there was a megacity in Japan that almost no one from outside the country had ever seen. Edo, capital of the Tokugawa shoguns, began as a minor castle town around 1600 but grew rapidly after the Tokugawa dynasty demanded that around 250 feudal leaders establish estates in the city. Commerce flourished thanks to their conspicuous consumption. By 1720, Edo had...