10 Best Museums in Tokyo | Condé Nast Traveler

"Journey 400 years back in time to Japan’s past, when shoguns ruled the isolated nation with an iron fist. The Edo-Tokyo Museum recreates this formative era through detailed architectural models and scale reconstructions of Tokyo’s historic neighborhoods. Original woodblock prints and maps round out the nuanced picture. The museum highlights not only the larger political forces at play, but also the day-to-day lives of ordinary citizens. To enter the permanent exhibition area, visitors walk across a reproduction of the Nihonbashi Bridge before peering into replicas of tenement houses and other long-lost landmarks. As you move through the exhibits, you’ll learn about everything from the Edo period’s robust publishing industry to the rise of arts such as kabuki theater and ukiyo-e, or woodblock printing. After thoroughly exploring the past, the museum takes visitors through Tokyo’s rapid transformation from a sheltered, feudal society to a globally oriented 21st-century metropolis." - Diana Hubbell