Welcome to the Nineteenth-Century Edo Project

The Nineteenth-Century Edo Project is the first part of what will be an ongoing initiative to bring together historical material related to Japan housed in the libraries and museums of the University of Michigan. The Project is centered on an interactive map of the city of Edo (Tokyo) from the University's Map Library, the Manpō o-Edo ezu, published in 1849 and printed 1852. The site is intended to serve as an introduction to the geography, history, and culture of nineteenth-century Edo, "not simply the largest city in Japan" -- as Isaac Titsingh wrote at the end of the eighteenth century -- "but quite possibly the world."

The goal of the Nineteenth-Century Edo Project is both to make historical materials easily accessible in digitized formats and, simultaneously, to encourage students to re-engage with the archives housed at the University, to experience what the historian Marc Bloch once so wonderfully described as "that perpetual renewal, that constantly reborn surprise, that only the struggle with documents can provide."

About the Project

The Nineteenth-Century Edo Project is supported by funds provided by a Spring/Summer Research Grant from the Rackham Partnership Program and a Social Science and Humanities Fellowship from the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program at the University of Michigan. Read more...