How did Tokyo—Japan’s capital, global city, tourist hotspot and financial center—get to where it is today? Tokyo–or then, Edo–had a rather unglamorous start, as a backwater on Japan’s eastern coast before Tokugawa decided to make it his de facto capital.
<a href="https://history.williams.edu/profile/emaruko/">Eiko Maruko Siniawer</a> picks ten distinct moments in Edo’s, and then Tokyo’s, history to show how this village became one of the world’s most important cities. Moments like a brief crackdown on kabuki theater, or the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics make up the chapters of what’s appropriately titled <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/history/east-asian-history/tokyo?format=PB">Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo</a> (Cambridge University Press: 2025)
Eiko is the Charles R. Keller Professor of History at Williams College. A historian of modern Japan who has researched a wide range of topics, she is the author of three books—<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801456824/ruffians-yakuza-nationalists/">Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860-1960</a> (Cornell University Press: 2015), <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501778797/waste/#bookTabs=4">Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan</a> (Cornell University Press: 2024), and Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo. She has also published articles in leading academic journals, such as “‘Affluence of the Heart’: Wastefulness and the Search for Meaning in Millennial Japan” in the Journal of Asian Studies, and “‘<a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/126/2/530/6316740">Toilet Paper Panic’: Uncertainty and Insecurity in Early 1970s Japan</a>” in the American Historical Review.
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at<a href="https://asianreviewofbooks.com/"> The Asian Review of Books</a>, including its review of <a href="https://asianreviewofbooks.com/ten-moments-that-shaped-tokyo-by-eiko-maruko-siniawer/">Ten Moments That Shaped Tokyo</a>. Follow on Twitter at<a href="https://twitter.com/BookReviewsAsia"> @BookReviewsAsia</a>.
Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at<a href="https://twitter.com/nickrigordon?lang=en"> @nickrigordon</a>.
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