Kidai Shoran scroll

The scroll Kidai Shoran, subtitled Excellent View of Our Prosperous Age [in Edo], was painted at the end of the Edo period, around the year 1800.

In this photo you can see a very small part of it, depicting the area around Nihonbashi, which was the commercial center of the city. It looks very crowded, and it surely was... At the time, the Edo population was already over 25 million!