A woman in a kimono stood between portraits in kimono on display at the Fukagawa Edo Museum

Woman in a kimono seen between the portraits — Portraits at Fukagawa Edo Museum

Upon entering, I was greeted by a variety of portraits. All of the portraits are of people from the Edo period who are related to Fukagawa. This is the Fukagawa Edo Museum, located near Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station. It is a museum that collects, preserves, and exhibits materials related to the Edo period.

I entered the building and first saw the corner in front of the entrance honoring Yokozuna Taiho. He was also a person with ties to Fukagawa. I was a little surprised to learn that Taiho, who is known as one of the great Yokozuna, was born in Sakhalin, a former Japanese territory, and his father was Ukrainian. Like Starffin, who was a baseball player, he seems to be of the so-called white Russian émigré . In the past, there must have been many Russians who hated the Russian Revolution and defected to Japan.

Still reeling from the shock of Taiho, I proceeded into the museum. The people in the portraits that greeted me here were all born and raised in Japan, but they were all active in the Edo period. It was no wonder, since there was no place for foreigners or people born in foreign countries to play an active role in Japan, which had adopted a policy of national isolation.

The first thing I saw was a portrait of Takizawa Bakin. He was born in 1767 in Fukagawa, and was the novelist. Next to him, keeping an eye out, was Sakuma Shozan, an Edo-period military strategist, Cheng-Zhu scholar, and thinker who opened a Western artillery school in Fukagawa. There were also portraits of Santo Kyoden, Tsuruya Nanboku, and Matsudaira Sadanobu. All of them were dressed in kimono. In between these portraits, I saw a woman dressed in kimono.

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