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Home> Reading> Business Report> "Edo in the palm of your hand." Introducing "Hyper Edo Expo," an experiential app that lets you enjoy Edo life and culture on your smartphone!

"Edo in your hands." "Hyper Edo Haku," an experiential app for enjoying Edo's life and culture on smartphones, was launched!

Business Report
Edo-Tokyo Museum Smartphone App "Hyper Edohaku"

Due to large-scale renovations, Tokyo Metropolitan Edo-Tokyo Museum (hereafter referred to as "Edo-haku") will be closed for an extended period from April 1, 2022, until fiscal year 2025 (planned). To allow visitors to enjoy the museum's collections and learn more about them during this closure, the experiential app "Hyper Edo-haku" was released on Friday, April 22, and a production announcement was held on the same day.

Press presentation held in front of the Nakamura-za Theater at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Photo by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture.

"Hyper Edohaku," jointly developed by Edohaku and game company Rhino Studio Co., Ltd., with the theme of "searching, finding, and collecting Edo," is Japan's first smartphone application with a game engine provided by a museum.

This project was developed as part of the Tokyo Smart Culture Project, which digitizes, records, and preserves cultural resources, including the collections of Tokyo's cultural institutions, and provides a variety of viewing experiences. As Nitta, Manager of the Edo-Tokyo Museum's Business Planning Division, said at the production presentation, "Japan's most advanced online museum initiative" This is an entirely new type of virtual museum that has never existed before.

The app is set in the late Edo period around Ryogokubashi Bridge, which is crowded on the first day of the opening of the Sumida River. The user takes on the role of Edohakun, a character who lives in a local tenement house, and collects 100 related items selected from the Edo Exposition's collection of approximately 370,000 items.

Users walk around Edo as "Edohakun"
The scenery around Ryogoku Bridge (left) fully reproduced by 3DCG was created based on the "Ryogoku Bridge Nishizume Model" (right) on permanent exhibition at the Edo Expo.

"For example, in the camel show house, tap the item you want to see. This is an actual flyer for the show, and it comes with an interesting commentary by the curator of the Edo Expo, such as “There was an unprecedented camel boom at that time, and the number of spectators exceeded 5000 a day.” You can save and look back at the collected materials or enlarge them on your smartphone screen, so you may be able to discover various details that you don't notice in normal exhibitions." says production producer TAGUCHI Hitoshi.

Producer Hitoshi Taguchi
If you tap on a camel in a camel hut, you'll see information about the camel. (Right) The acquired materials are archived for review.

Katsuya Taniguchi, director of Rhino Studio Co., Ltd. has taken the lead in faithfully recreating the model of Ryogoku Bridge Nishizume in the permanent exhibition at the Edo Expo.
The unique characters, such as the "kappa" and a member of the "niwaka," who dress up in costume to enliven the occasion, were also designed from painting materials owned by the Edo Exposition.

The figure on the right dressed as an octopus is based on a member of a group of improvised plays called "niwaka" depicted in ukiyoe by Hiroshige UTAGAWA.

In this way, the Hyper Edo Expo features 112 different characters, from vendors to sumo wrestlers, camels, elephants, and more, recreated from the exhibits. The different gestures of the people of Edo were created based on motion capture by Ryotaro Fujima, a Japanese dancer who can also play female roles.

Director Taniguchi Katsuya explaining motion capture
You can experience the life of the Edo people with events such as fireworks from the Sumida River.

At the Hyper Edo Expo, users can actively gather materials and discover new knowledge in the Edo space. Akiko Haruki, a curator at the Edo Expo who was in charge of developing the app, says, "New added value to the museum's one-way information service."

Edo Expo curator Haruki explains the significance of the app as a museum

"The development of this app, which conveys the interest of materials that are often overlooked in regular exhibitions, together with the sense of presence in the lively area of Edo, is an epoch-making development in museum history in that it proposes a new way of presenting the collections. Please enjoy it casually with the image of "carrying around Edo"." says curator Akiko Haruki.

At the "Ryogoku Bridge Nishizume Model" exhibition at the Edo Expo, where the app was created.

Currently, only the iOS version is available, and the Android version is scheduled for release at the end of June. “Hyper Edohaku ” is produced by an application that can be updated at any time, and new contents set in the Ginza area of Tokyo are planned to be added within this fiscal year, following“ Edo no Saiba Ryogoku. ”.

Reporting and text by Setsuko Kitani
Photo by Yosuke Hoshino

Edo-Tokyo Museum Virtual Museum
Smartphone App "Hyper Edo-haku"
Special Website https://hyper.edohaku.jp/ryogoku/

Please also enjoy the high-definition drone footage of the permanent exhibition of the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which was taken before the museum closed.
Flythrough: The Edo-Tokyo Museum in 2022

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