The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum is a museum of historic Japanese buildings. It’s located in Koganei City, about 30 kilometers west of the city center of Tokyo. Since the 17th Century, Tokyo has lost many valuable historical buildings because of fires, floods, earthquakes and warfare. In 1993, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government established the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum as the Edo-Tokyo Museum Annex. This museum aims to relocate, reconstruct, preserve, and exhibit historical buildings of great cultural value as well as to pass on these valuable cultural heritages to future generations. For example, public bathhouse “Kodakara-yu” is one of my favorite architectures in the museum (see the photo below).
The exhibitions in the museum are not only architectures. Please look at the top photo. It’s unit 7514 of the electric car Tokyo Metropolitan Government (Toei) 7500 series. The 7500 series was commissioned is 1962 as a middle-sized (12.52-meter-long) double-axle bogie car for the Tokyo tramlines. It has two 60 kW direct current motors, and its maximum operating speed was 40 kilometers per hour. After operating for 16 years, unit 7514 was retired from the track in 1978. Incidentally, unit 7504, which I showed my past post, is a “sister” of this tramcar. You will notice the difference of the body stripe between the two cars. The red-colored stripe of unit 7514 was adopted in 1962 when the 7500 series debuted. On the other hand, the blue-colored stripe of unit 7504 was adopted around the year 1975, when the one-man (without a conductor) operation began.
