Goldfish and Edo Culture at ART AQUARIUM MUSEUM GINZA

The goldfish museum at Ginza Mitsukoshi has given over a booth inside it to the Edo period, and to the question of how a fish became something people looked at for pleasure. The display opened in September 2026 and is made with the Tokyo metropolitan government, as part of the city's work on its Edo past.

The starting point is that glass was costly in the Edo period. Goldfish were kept in tubs and basins and looked at from above, a way of viewing called uwami, which shows the tail spread and moving like cloth. That is what the fish had been bred for, and it is why they were painted the way they were.

From there the panels go to the prints. Goldfish appear often in ukiyo-e because they were something ordinary townspeople could afford to keep, and the display hangs a set of those prints alongside the explanation.

The breeds are set out as well, with the fish swimming in the museum beside them: the Ryukin, which reached Japan through the Ryukyu islands; the Oranda Shishigashira, named for the Dutch because it arrived as a foreign import; the Tosakin, bred in Kochi and made to be seen from above; and the Pingpong Pearl, round as its name suggests. The panels are written in Japanese and English.

The rest of the museum continues the same idea in another form, showing goldfish in lit tanks with scent and sound, some of them set against printed scenes of Edo so that the fish swim through the picture. The display in the booth explains what those rooms are drawing on.