How did oxen become both vital infrastructure and powerful symbols in a major early modern city?

by Youjia Li

Animal: Draft oxen (cattle)
Issue: animal labor, pack animals
Time Period: 1634–1868 (Tokugawa period)
Places: Edo (present-day Tokyo), Takanawa-cho / Shibakuruma-cho (“ox-town”), Nanbu Domain and Shinano/Echigo provinces (northeastern and central Honshu)
Image: “The Ox-Town in Edo,” from Edo meisho zue [Famous Places in Edo], Vol. 7 (3:47), National Diet Library, Japan
Image of “The Ox-Town in Edo,” from Edo meisho zue [Famous Places in Edo], Vol. 7 (3:47), National Diet Library, Japan

This module uses a woodblock-print illustration of Edo’s “ox-town” (Shibakuruma-chō) from the widely circulated pictorial gazetteer Edo meisho zue (Famous Places in Edo) to open a discussion about animal mobility, urban space, and the symbolic presence of working animals in one of the largest cities of the early modern world. The image, depicting oxcarts, cattle, and their handlers in the Takanawa neighborhood, invites students to examine what it meant for large draft animals to occupy a privileged place in the shogun’s capital.

Oxcarts in Edo were an anomaly. Throughout the Tokugawa period, only four cities permitted oxcarts to operate, and their presence was demanded and sustained by the warrior regime for heavy construction and cargo transport. Most of these cattle were not bred locally but traveled over a thousand kilometers on foot from the mountains of northeastern Japan—a remarkable feat in a society where movement in general was strictly regulated. Once they arrived in Edo, the oxen underwent months of intensive training in the ox-town. Masters pierced their noses for rope control, mounted harnesses, and gradually increased the weight and distance of cart loads through the city’s narrow streets. The cattle learned to respond to vocal commands, endure the sound of rattling wheels, and navigate a dense urban environment. After training, they worked nearly without rest, pulling loads of up to 750 kilograms.

The gazetteer image itself is a valuable primary source for visual analysis. As one of Edo’s celebrated “famous places” (meisho), the ox-town became a cultural landmark inseparable from the identity of the capital. Lecturers can prompt students to consider what the image reveals about the infrastructure required to maintain large animals in a rapidly growing city, the everyday relationship between ox masters and their beasts, and how the depiction of working cattle in a built environment contributed to broader narratives of urban prosperity and shogunal power.

Guiding Questions

  1. Look closely at the Edo meisho zue illustration. What elements of urban infrastructure—e.g., streets, buildings, carts, open space—are visible? What does the image suggest about the amount of space that maintaining large working animals required in a densely populated city?
  2. Only four cities in Tokugawa Japan permitted oxcarts. What does this restriction tell us about the political meaning of animal-powered transport in early modern Japan? Why might the shogunate have treated the presence of draft oxen in Edo as a privilege rather than a routine feature of urban life?
  3. The oxen depicted here traveled over a thousand kilometers from northeastern Japan before undergoing months of training in this very neighborhood. How does knowing this backstory change the way you read the image? What is visible in the picture, and which types labor and mobility remain invisible?
  4. The ox-town became one of Edo’s celebrated “famous places” (meisho), depicted repeatedly by prominent woodblock-print artists. Why might a working neighborhood of cattle and carts have become a cultural symbol of the capital’s prosperity? What does this tell us about how animal labor was valued or romanticized in early modern urban culture?
  5. The image shows ox masters walking alongside their animals through city streets. What kind of human–animal relationship does this arrangement suggest? How does it compare to depictions of working animals in other historical or contemporary urban settings you are familiar with?

Homework Assignment 

It is 1720. You are an ox master in the Takanawa ox-town. A new shipment of young bulls has just arrived from Nanbu Domain after a journey of over a thousand kilometers. Write a training journal (400–500 words) covering the first three months in which you document the steps of preparing one ox for cart work in Edo’s streets: piercing the nose, fitting the harness, loading incremental weights, and guiding the animal through narrow roads and over bridges. Ground your journal in specific details from the assigned reading. Then write a brief reflection (100–150 words) stepping outside of the creative voice: what does the training process reveal about the forms of knowledge that ox masters developed through daily physical interaction with their animals?

Read the full chapter "Oxen in the City and Beyond Moving Bovine Bodies and Knowledge Production in the Early Modern Period, 1653–1868"

Supplementary Sources

Li, Youjia. “Oxen in the City and Beyond: Moving Bovine Bodies and Knowledge Production in the Early Modern Period, 1653–1868.” Osiris (forthcoming).

For comparative angles on draft animals:

McShane, Clay, and Joel Tarr.“Controlling Horses and Their Humans.” In The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Greene, Ann Norton. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America. Harvard University Press, 2009.

Multimedia:

Online archive: original documents of the Famous Place of Edo could be found in the digital archive of Japan’s National Archive website: https://www.digital.archives.go.jp/file/1231264

Tokyo Metropolitan Government also made a series of online videos introducing the Meisho collection, which could be found here (but not on the ox-town): https://tokyodouga.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/search/?search_word=江戸名所図会

National Diet Library Digital Exhibition on Animals in the Edo Period: https://www.ndl.go.jp/nature