Shitamanchi Museum

The Goonies would describe the Tokyo National Museum as being full of the "rich stuff", they would describe the Shitamachi Museum as being dedicated to the goon docks where they are from.

The Shitamachi area used to be solid working class, the museum has preserved an idea of what that used to be like with a recreated street with houses you can sit in as long as you remember to take off your shoes. You can also pose in some working class attire, play some typical games from the time period.

There is a cover charge for the Shitamachi museum.

It's set during the late Edo and early Meiji era (basically the era of Queen Victoria and the better escapades of Sherlock Holmes) so it's also kinda cool to see predominantly old school Japanese urban environment sprinkled with more modern conveniences.

There is a lot of history attached to the Ueno area. It's long been used as a park - the locals have been going crazy for the cherry blossom festivals here long before it was cool for tourists. The Tokyo National Museum even has paintings of previous festivals that look like a scene from the drunken louts at the Melbourne Cup.

When the Meiji restoration booted out the Tokugawa Shogunate, they fought a major battle in Ueno for control of Edo (Tokyo). If you're going to have a battle, best to do it in the local park.

The Meiji restoration of the Imperial crown was also strongly motivated by a desire to rapidly modernise in the face of western colonial encroachments into Asia.Taking a cue from the Great Exhibition in London, Ueno was used as the site of the National Industrial Exhibitions, designed to bring modern technology to Japan and attempt to encourage it's adoption. The creation of a thriving merchant district and black market in the area may or may not be connected... (achievement unlocked in any case).

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 destroyed large sections of Ueno around where the Shitamachi Museum currently is. Ueno Park itself though was a refuge from the fires and also where a lot of the recovery efforts were organised from. The impressive talent the Japanese have for disaster recovery and mitigation basically started in Ueno.

During WW2, Ueno was frequently used again as a disaster recovery zone from the bombings, but was also victim of a few horrors of it's own. The fate of the animals of the Ueno Zoo was turned into a famous book called the Faithful Elephants - spoiler alert - it's considered a tragedy and there are shrines dedicated to the animals... :/

Immediately after the war when things started to get pretty post apocalyptic, the Ueno Shosei Kai, which later became the Ueno Tourism Association was formed to restore the park by replanting 1,250 cherry blossom trees - or basically all of the trees in the tourist pics. i.e. Ueno was pretty much a post war recovery turning point.

Two Chinese pandas, Lan Lan and Kang Kang arrived in the Ueno Zoo in 1972 to commemorate the normalisation of relations between China and Japan. And so began the introduction of pandas into the Japanese pantheon of cute.

And of course in modern times, Ueno has become a centre of Japanese and Asian culture and arts due to the concentration of art galleries and museums and the park is still crazy popular in Tokyo as one of the open areas left.

Observations:

Public spaces are much more useful than casinos and shopping centres.

Kaiju Collected:

None - don't kill the faithful elephants!Read more