Fun Facts about Japan in the Edo era (1603 to 1867)

Japan is a country that is always at the forefront and will never cease to surprise us! That is why we present you these curious facts about Tokyo, its capital in times of the Edo Era (1603 to 1867) that you may not have known!

70% of the population of Edo were men

Women made up only 30%. Most women married between the ages of 15 and 18. It was considered shameful for women to remain single after the age of 18. They normally did not have the opportunity to marry before the age of 25 due to their jobs. For the most part, they had to spend all their time as servants of some business. If the men worked for a relatively large store or retail business, most of them had no chance of marrying before age 40. This inevitably ended in what we now call an “age gap marriage.”

In the Edo era, the temporary hour system was used .

An hour in the summer was longer than an hour in the winter. The temporal hour system was a way of measuring time by dividing day and night into a certain number of hours.

Most of the fires in Edo were caused by tobacco.

The houses and small constructions in Japan are mainly made of wood and despite cooking inside the house and leaving the fire burning on winter nights, the main cause of the fires was tobacco, which is why the shogunate considered prohibiting smoking inside houses or establishments.

The people of Edo had many kinds of pets.

They kept cats, dogs, and birds, although cats were the most popular, with a pet cemetery in Edo City.

Sushi was considered fast food.

Edo had a large population of single men who came to the city as construction workers. They did not know how to cook well so there was a high demand for food places and delicatessens. The first sushi was “invented” in Edo, 200 years ago.

Much more salt and soy sauce was consumed at all in Edo than in the Kyoto area.

As we mentioned before, the majority of the population in Edo were construction workers and they needed salt because they sweated due to the physical work they did. Interestingly, today people from Osaka or Kyoto say that dishes, especially noodles, in Tokyo are too salty/spicy for their taste.

The city of Edo was a fishing village before it was the capital

In Musashi province in 1457, there was Edo, a fishing village formed by the clan of the same name. When Tokugawa Ieyasu settled in Edo Castle, this town became a metropolis with an estimated population of 1,000,000 in 1721.

A samurai’s salary was not paid in cash but in rice.

The samurai did not own any land. The daimyo or feudal lord used a portion of the revenue from taxing the peasants to provide a salary for the samurai and was usually paid in rice.

There were 550 public baths in Edo by 1860.

Most people bathed every day, and many took them twice a day.

Between 70 and 86% of children in Edo (Tokyo) went to school around 1850.

This rate is significantly high because even in England’s large industrialized cities at the time, only 20 to 25 percent of children went to school.

What other curious facts about Japan do you know? Tell us in the comments!