“Morisada’s Sketches”: A One-Man Encyclopedia of Edo-Period Cultural Differences

Japan’s long-running rivalry between the west of the country, including the old capital of Kyoto, and the new capital of Edo (now Tokyo) in the east has fostered regional cultural differences. Kitagawa Morisada recorded many of these in an encyclopedic work that took him nearly three decades in the mid-1800s to write.