Tokyo burned down roughly every twenty years, so its history hides in plain sight: a castle foundation with no castle, a 730 AD shrine wedged between office towers, and a rebuilt Edo tenement lit by artificial dawn. Three days of tracing what survived.
Japan's oldest museum (1872) holds 120,000 objects. Honkan rooms 5–6 rotate National Treasure samurai armour and 12th-century blades; the Heiseikan runs from Jomon pottery of 10,000 BC. Open 09:30–17:00, closed Mondays.
Gilded 1651 shrine to Tokugawa Ieyasu that came through every fire, earthquake and air raid intact. Carved dragons on the Karamon gate are attributed to Hidari Jingoro; 50 bronze lanterns were tribute from daimyo lords.
The stone base of Edo Castle's donjon still stands, though the keep burned in the 1657 Meireki fire and was never rebuilt. Also here: the Hyakunin-bansho guardhouse, where 100 samurai kept watch on the shogun's gate.
Founded in 730 and moved here in 1616 to guard the shogun's castle from the northeastern demon gate. It enshrines Taira no Masakado, the rebel beheaded in 940 whose head, by legend, flew back to Edo. Grounds open around the clock.
Shrine finished in 1920 for Emperor Meiji, its 100,000 donated saplings now a mature planted forest. Kengo Kuma's 2019 museum holds the imperial carriage used to proclaim the 1889 constitution. Museum 10:00–16:30, closed Thursdays.
General Nogi Maresuke and his wife Shizuko killed themselves here in 1912 on the day of Emperor Meiji's funeral, the last recorded act of junshi. Their spare 1902 house and brick stable stand behind the shrine, visible through the glass.
Founded 1869 for the war dead. The Yushukan's frankly nationalist narrative is itself the exhibit, alongside a Zero fighter, a kaiten human torpedo and a C56 locomotive from the Thai–Burma railway. Open 09:00–16:30.
Japan's kilometre zero: every highway distance is still measured from the bronze marker on this 1911 stone arch, successor to the 1603 wooden bridge where the Tokaido began. The 1963 expressway slab above it is being buried underground.
Rebuilt in 1706 by the shogun Tsunayoshi and one of the few complete Gongen-zukuri complexes in Tokyo to survive the war unburnt. A tunnel of about 1,000 vermilion torii climbs the slope to the Otome Inari shrine. Open 06:00–17:00.
A hillside hanamachi that peaked in the 1920s with roughly 600 geisha; around 20 still work the flagstone alleys of Kakurenbo Yokocho, whose deliberate dog-legs and black wooden fences were laid out to hide arriving clients.
A full-scale 1840s Fukagawa block rebuilt indoors — tenement rooms with the residents' possessions, a rice dealer, a boathouse and a fire tower — run on a lighting cycle from dawn to night with cockerels and thunder. Open 09:30–17:00.
Professional sumo began in this precinct in 1684 after the authorities banned street bouts. Stone monuments list every yokozuna since; Ino Tadataka prayed at the gate in 1800 before setting out to survey and map the whole country.