Talk:Edo

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Tokyo
Does anyone still call Tokyo Edo? -- Taku 03:33 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)


 * No, not modern day Tokyo. Referring to Tokyo before its rename is referring to Edo. WhisperToMe 08:22, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Nah but a person born and bred in Tokyo is called an 'Eddoko' —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.173.165.63 (talk)

Derivation of name
I removed the following text from the article:

"Eastern Capital" or "To" - "Kyo" was simply the inversion of the syllables "Kyo" - "To", the name of the former capital.

Even though this seems reasonable &mdash; and even obvious &mdash; in English, a closer look shows that it's not correct. In romaji, note that T&#333;ky&#333; has two long vowels whereas Ky&#333;to has one long and one short vowel. You can also see the difference in hiragana, where T&#333; &mdash; ky&#333; is とう &mdash; きょう&#12288;whereas Ky&#333;to is きょう &mdash; と. And in kanji, T&#333;ky&#333; is 東京 whereas Ky&#333;to is 京都. Although they share one kanji, they are not the same in inverted order.

T&#333;ky&#333; means "Eastern capital"; Ky&#333;to means "capital city."

Fg2 07:30, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Size
Shouldn't some mention be made of Edo's impressive size? It's usually quoted in discussions that it was one of (or the) world's largest cities during the Tokugawa era. (See Tokyo for example.) Brutannica 01:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Possible External Link
The Brooklyn Museum has just put the entire series online as an online exhibition: The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/online/edo/ Brooklynmuseum 23:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Disregard and inaccuracies
I write with great displeasure about the continuous disregard and inaccuracies about the documentations and references of African cultural accomplishments and history. I believe any worth doing is worth doing well.

Unfortunately, this is not the case in many academic institutions, search engines, dictionaries, and even encyclopedias, which should be an accurate place where people come to get most of their information on a daily basis. When you search for the word “Edo” it is unanimously given to the country of Japan as the former name of Tokyo, which actually was once spelled as Yedo or Yeddo. Yedo did not enter world history as a name of a place in Japan and did not become the seat of government until 1603.

The original and the oldest “Edo” is the name of an African people from Western African, who created the Great Benin Empire or Kingdom, which went as far as from some parts of eastern Nigeria to areas past Ghana along the coast of West Africa. The Edo/Benin history dates back to around 1000 AD, which includes our first dynasty - the Ogiso dynasty (there were 35 Ogisos). A lot of traditional rulers in Eastern Nigeria, Western Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Ghana owe their cultural and social existence to the Edo people of Benin (Benin City, Nigeria). Today, the original Edo people reside in Edo State of Nigeria and their capital is Benin (Benin City). Edo is the name of the people while Benin was the name of the land (Empire/Kingdom). The Edo people or Benin Kingdom has had three dynasties. Popular academia for some reason choose to recognize and perpetuate our second dynasty as our beginning when our banished prince (Ekaladerhan, who disguised his name as Izoduwa but was later corrupted to Oduduwa), who was supposed to be executed by his father sent his son from Ile-Ife to continue the linage of Kingship he left behind because he was too old to travel back and his father left no other heir to the throne. This event took place about 1200 AD. If this is the historical fact, why should Yedo (Edo) of Japan be given more preference in academic and reference achieves? I hope race or economic influence has no place in the proper documentation of historical facts or reference? I ask because I see no reason why “Yedo”, Japan of 1603 should come before “Edo”, Nigeria of 1000 AD in terms of historical priority and fact when searching for the word “Edo”. In fact, European explorers, missionaries, traders, and historians have been documenting the Edo people of Benin City, Nigeria since 1486, so I do not know where this bias or negligence came from. Could it be because a people that once ruled an empire that include more than four African countries have now being reduced to a state in Nigeria? Or is preference given to countries or capital of countries over states? I want you to know that unlike many European empires like Rome, the Edo of Benin (Nigeria) forbade their subjects to speak their language, which they considered the language of the King. Instead, each chief in every district of the empire was a relative of the King and was encouraged to marry and learn the language of the conquered peoples. The job of the Chief was to organize and control the people to pay tax and bring resources to Benin, the capital of the Benin Empire or Kingdom in Nigeria. So when the capital of the empire finally fell in 1897 to the British, their influence quickly disappeared. Edofolks 19:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The African topic sounds fascinating, and I invite you to contribute to that article, and to other African history articles. I am sure they could use the help, and they would be great to read. Unfortunately, all too often in this world, the popularity or commonality of something in common knowledge is not based on which is older, or otherwise more important, but simply which, for one reason or another, has entered into the modern popular consciousness on the basis of modern events. Japan is a popular and familiar topic in the West for a wide variety of reasons, probably just as varied and numerous as the reasons why Nigeria and Benin are not. I do not mean to disparage your point - your research sounds very interesting, and very worthwhile. But Japan is one of the great powers today, Tokyo one of the largest cities in the world, and Edo (the Japanese abolished the 'ye' sound in the 1940s) the largest city in the world for several centuries before that. I'm sorry. But it's not like there aren't articles for Edo State and Edo language. Maybe you should create an article for Edo people or Edo culture. That could be great. LordAmeth 08:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Expansion
I've created some headings to help organize the article, and perhaps, hopefully, to inspire contributions and expansion. What I have added thus far today is purely from my own knowledge, so I apologize that none of it is cited. At some point later today, or later in the week, I hope to return with some real sources to expand further. Considering the considerable potential overlap between geography and other topics, it may turn out best in the end to cut down on that section to strictly geographical/topological concerns, discussing the goings-on of various areas in the appropriate sections (government, economy, urban culture). We'll see. LordAmeth 09:37, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Alternate Spelling: Jeddo
Apparently, Jeddo was also an acceptable spelling from at least the 1860's.

A number of place names in the US are based on this spelling Jeddo,_Michigan and Jeddo Pennsylvania

Sources which show Jeddo this as a former name of Tokyo can be found via:

http://books.google.com/books?client=firefox&um=1&q=Jeddo%2C+the+former+name+of+TOKYO&btnG=Search+Books

and some uses via: http://books.google.com/books?client=firefox&um=1&q=jeddo&btnG=Search+Books

Lent (talk) 01:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "Jeddo" was a common variant in German-language texts, etc. — the "J" in German being pronounced like the (initial) "Y" in English. Pinkville (talk) 02:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Photographs
I'd like to suggest that we replace the two photographs on the right margin, which are by Tamamura Kozaburō and Adolfo Farsari, neither of whom was a practicing photographer in pre-Meiji Japan; therefore, neither of these photographs show Edo, rather, they show Tokyo. The panorama by Felice Beato is of Edo (taken in 1865 or 1866) and there are other photographic images of Edo, though not many. I'll see if I can find a couple of good ones. Pinkville (talk) 02:29, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Recorded Population of Edo
Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco reported that the population of Edo was about 150,000 in 1609. The popualtion of Edo grew afte the introduction Sankin kōtai to become the most populous city in Japan. The official area of Edo has slightly changed from time to time. According to a survey in the forth month of Meiji 2 (May, 1869), Edo consists of area for samurai (武家地) (11,692,000 tsubo, 38.65 km², 68.6%) which include Edo Castle and residences of Daimyo, area under Edo machi-bugyō (町方支配場) (2,696,000 tsubo, 8.91 km², 15.8%) and area for temples and shrines (寺社門前地) (2,661,000 tsubo, 8.80 km², 15.6%). The recorded censuses of Edo where only populations of chōnin who lived in machikata-shihaiba and jishamonzen-chi were counted are as follows (only reliable ones are selected):

Populations of Buddhist monks and nuns, Shinto priests, or prostitutes, Eta and Hinin remain in unreliable sources. Populaion of Buddhist and Shinto priests is estimated to be around 40,000; population in Yoshiwara is around 10,000; population of Eta and Hini is around 10,000.

On the other hand, population of samurai class and their servants class has not been recorded in texts, though buke-chi shared about 69% of the area of Edo. 小宮山綏介 (Yasusuke Komiyama) (in 1891) estimated the population of samurai and servants as 300,000; {nihongo|鷹見安二郎|Yasujirō Takami} (in 1940) estimated the population of samurai and servants as 620,000. {nihongo|関山直太郎|Naotarō Sekiyama} (in 1958) estimated the population of samurai and servants as 500,000.Aurichalcum (talk) 09:33, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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Contributing best -
I would love to contribute to this page in any way I can. I noticed there was a lot to expand on and cite, and some sections seem unbalanced, or have little information. Where would be a good place to start? I don't want to step on any toes but I want learn and help also. Kblair9 (talk) 00:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)