00:02 John Daub: Hello everybody! I'm in Mito City in Ibaraki Prefecture, and this here behind me is the Tokugawa Museum. If you don't know who Tokugawa is, Ieyasu Tokugawa, this is him right here. This is the Shogun of Japan from the year 1600. We're talking like 450 years ago, something like that. You do the math. But this place is one of the must-stop places when you come to Mito City, which is about 65 minutes on the express train from Tokyo. So we left Ueno at 10 o'clock in the morning and arrived here at 11:05, so it's not that far. And just taking in this beautiful autumn weather, I have found my co-reporter for this episode. She's over there.

00:48 John Daub: Who are you sitting with? I am the historical person that is... Who is Tokugawa Ieyasu. Tokugawa Ieyasu! Can you believe that? Please meet my friend. Nice to meet you, sir. We should bow, right? Yeah. So this is Tokugawa Ieyasu. He became the Shogun in the year 1600, okay?

01:20 Jennifer: He was born in, I think, the mid-1500s.

01:26 John Daub: And he unified Japan.

01:28 Jennifer: Yeah, very tough guy he was.

01:32 John Daub: Exactly. Yes. You know, there's been this movie last summer called... It's the big war that's called Sekigahara. Sekigahara. And this is when he won the war and he unified Japan, right?

01:47 Jennifer: Right.

01:47 John Daub: This is the picture after when he became Shogun, Sekigahara. From the year 1600. And in fact, this might be the pose from this painting of him in that statue.

01:59 Jennifer: I think that is.

02:00 John Daub: Look at the way his feet are. I think it's pretty famous. Yeah. This painting. I remember when I was a kid studying about Japanese history, that was the one that I first saw. And this building here, this is the Tokugawa Museum, is very, very beautiful.

02:15 Jennifer: It was built... They started building it in 1967.

02:18 John Daub: So this is the 50th anniversary of it. It was completed in 1977. So... And today is 2017. That makes us 50 years here at the Tokugawa Museum. So very, very cool. You can see the beautiful autumn tree. The little tree. The leaves falling just underneath it. Just keep it the way it is. It's a lovely building. And you have Ieyasu himself sitting there on the bench.

02:44 Jennifer: I wonder actually... I don't know who's behind...

02:45 John Daub: Okay, let's go get it. Let's go see who's behind him. Let's go see who's behind him.

02:53 Jennifer: I'm sorry, sir. We forgot you. We are so rude. Who's that?

02:57 John Daub: This is the second one. Mitsukuni.

02:59 Jennifer: Yeah. Who's very famous for being in a TV drama in Japan right now, right? Apparently, he's one of the most beloved shoguns of Japan's history. Known for being a handsome man. He's very often depicted in dramas.

03:20 John Daub: In gold. Happy to see me. So, let's go take a look at the museum. Let's see.

03:28 Jennifer: So, inside I believe they have items that the family owned?

03:35 John Daub: Yes. Is it? Yes. Okay. We'll show you when we get inside, but you can see that the Tokugawa family is very famous last name in Japan. If you say Tokugawa, everybody knows because of the shogun. I think, yeah. But I mean, even foreigners, especially if you study Japanese culture and Japanese history, it's always Tokugawa or Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga. I think are the two most famous historical personages, right?

04:05 Jennifer: Yes.

04:06 John Daub: There is the sign. Welcome to the Tokugawa Hakubutsukan (museum). Please come in. It's lunch time. Yeah, it's lunch time. Gift shop. Wonderful. I think this is the mascot, right?

04:31 Jennifer: Oh.

04:32 John Daub: The museum's mascot. Is it? Yeah. Very cool. It looks like an albatross. Yeah. You know? Let's start from the beginning. Yeah.

04:46 Jennifer: So this is the Tokugawa family tree and it's really long. You can see from the beginning. Wow. Right here, Ieyasu Tokugawa.

04:57 John Daub: This is the first Tokugawa and the Mito branch of the family is down here and you can see from one to 15. So now we're at the 15th generation of the Tokugawa family here in Mito, which is very cool. You know that I used to live in Wakayama. That's the south of Osaka and I also had a family living in the area. It's called the Kii area. They have a branch here.

05:27 Jennifer: And here's the map of the Tokugawa family in Japan. And this is the kanji for Tokugawa. It's the river, these two here.

05:37 John Daub: And there's Hokkaido, nothing up here. But when we get down to Honshu... You mean no Tokugawa family. Yeah. There's no Tokugawa family in Hokkaido. That's what I mean. But if you see the main family locations are here in Mito. This is Tokyo. So this is where we are now. Right. This is Tokyo. Then this is Nagoya. And I used to live near where Tokugawa Ieyasu was born in Okazaki City. That's a very important place to remember. Okazaki City.

06:09 Jennifer: And this is down in Wakayama. This is where you used to live, right?

06:11 John Daub: That's where I am from.

06:14 Jennifer: You're from... Not from Bordeaux.

06:16 John Daub: I am from Bordeaux. I was sent to Wakayama with... I came to Wakayama in a barrel of wine.

06:23 Jennifer: Oh, you did not.

06:24 John Daub: That's the story.

06:25 Jennifer: That's the story.

06:26 John Daub: I kind of believe her. I don't know why. She came in a barrel of wine to Japan. And they have... So, ok, so they had also a branch family in Takamatsu.

06:36 Jennifer: That's Takamatsu, right? Yeah. Takamatsu as well. In Kochi. In Shikoku.

06:41 John Daub: I had forgotten that. It's hard. One of the things with this museum is that there's not much in English yet. Yeah. But I believe that they're... With the 50th anniversary here and more appeal for tourism, there's a lot more tourists coming to Japan. A lot of these places, the museums that are famous are starting to convert over to English. But before that happens, we're going to explain it to you, right?

07:04 Jennifer: Oui.

07:05 John Daub: Oui. All right. This is also the city of Mito. I love these old maps. Yeah. Those are amazing. But actually, see here?

07:15 Jennifer: It's written... It's written... It's upside down, right?

07:18 John Daub: Oh, right. It is. Here, it's shiro (castle). Oshiro. But here, it's upside down. Yeah. So it's like maybe, you know, it was like... Oh, it was probably, you know, like a ball. Don't you think?

07:33 Jennifer: How do you say... A ball?

07:36 John Daub: A map.

07:38 Jennifer: Oh, right. Like a globe.

07:39 John Daub: But like a globe. Voilà. A globe. Because... And you would turn it... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's that. So yeah, this is off of a globe. And down here, it's all straightened out maybe. Now you can see today, this is where Mito Station is. And this is where the lake is. And this is where the famous garden.

08:03 Jennifer: Kaiyū-en (strolling garden).

08:04 John Daub: Ah, yes. The beautiful garden. I wish we had the time to go and see that amazing park. Mito is famous for being one of the places with one of the three great gardens in Japan. The other one is in Kanazawa.

08:20 Jennifer: Unified Japan.

08:22 John Daub: There he is in a painting. Yeah.

08:27 Jennifer: And the second, Tokugawa...

08:32 John Daub: No, maybe not. No, this is not. I think this is his brother maybe.

08:36 Jennifer: Oh, no. Yorifusa.

08:40 John Daub: He looks more serious. He looks like a serious guy. Here we go. This is the second shogun.

08:50 Jennifer: This is Mitsukuni. Tokugawa Mitsukuni. Yeah, and that's the one who was the most popular amongst people. He was known for being a very handsome man.

09:01 John Daub: Yes. All the women were running after him in the castle. Yeah, he was a ladies' man. Okay. Yeah. It looks good, decked out in that kimono. And we have some other paintings. And this was the last shogun, right?

09:19 Jennifer: Yes.

09:20 John Daub: This is Yoshinobu. He was the shogun from 1837 until 1913. And I believe this is when the... Look at this picture when he was small.

09:30 Jennifer: That's his baby picture?

09:32 John Daub: Oh, man. I think so. That's cute. Isn't it? Yeah. And there's the military outfit.

09:38 Jennifer: Yeah, osode koro. Oh, when he was a child.

09:42 John Daub: Right. Very cool looking. He actually has... Yeah, you can see he has the same lips and eyes. It's a good portrait of him, actually. Yeah. Can you see the resemblance? Yeah. You can see from the mouth and the eyes. The mouth and the... That part is the same. Yeah, you can see the resemblance between the mouth and the eyes. Yeah. I can see it.

10:09 John Daub: The last shogun, this was during the Meiji Restoration, so the transfer of power went to the government. Yeah. There's a lot of history here. We're gonna walk over now towards the swords. I like the swords.

10:22 Jennifer: She likes the teacups. Or do you like the swords, too?

10:25 John Daub: I like anything that has history. Yeah, yeah. I like history.

10:32 Jennifer: If you've studied a lot of Japanese history, Mito is one of the places that you have to come because there's a lot of... Because Tokugawa family was here, there's a lot of history based in this area of Japan, in Ibaraki.

10:47 John Daub: Is it over there? Yeah, there's one room over there, but the sword room... We kind of scouted this before we started. Okay. We couldn't resist. Yeah. I'm just... I'm mesmerized with that one sword. Yeah, but don't tell anybody. Okay, don't tell anybody what that sword is. Okay. It's just cool. It's like, what? What's that doing here?

11:09 John Daub: All right, before we enter, there's a chance we might lose a signal. If this happens, I'm gonna insert this on Instagram or later on in another feed because I don't want you to miss this. But if we lose the signal, don't worry, we'll be back on. Because... Because it seems like we're going deep, deep inside this museum. And there is nobody, right? There's nobody in here because it's lunchtime. It's our museum today. It's our museum. That's right. It's great. All right.

11:40 John Daub: This is pretty cool. We're going deep. This is a car driven... I guess it says 1955 in it. Because you didn't explain well, maybe you can do that later, how we ended up being here.

11:46 Jennifer: You have connections.

11:54 John Daub: Okay. Yeah. That's true. But you can see here, that is one of the things that they used to show that there was a VIP, right? An important person. They held it in the distance. I'm afraid to go in there because we might lose the signal. We're going in deep, deep into the Tokugawa Museum. Okay, let's do this. Ready? Three, two, one. All right. Hold your nose. Splash. I'm going straight. I'm going straight for it.

12:25 Jennifer: You see it? No, no.

12:26 John Daub: I'm going straight for it. I can't wait. Yeah. You see it right there?

12:28 Jennifer: Yeah.

12:29 John Daub: It's right there. This is the sword that Tokugawa Ieyasu used from the Battle of Sekigahara. This is the Sekigahara sword that they used in the battle from 1600, wasn't it?

12:44 Jennifer: It was like, that's the original. I don't remember. Originally, they reproduced it, right?

12:50 John Daub: Oh, they did a reproduction. Yeah. Tokugawa 15. It was the 15th member of the family. They made a reproduction of the sword. And you can see in the hamon (temper line), the swordsmith smithing the waves of the...

13:05 Jennifer: The leaf.

13:06 John Daub: Yeah. Of the steel. What is the name of that steel?

13:09 Jennifer: I made a show on this. Oh, gosh, John. My memory is fading me, but it's a very precious steel that's only made in Japan. Yeah. And there is, if you show at the back of the mirror, the lady explained us that the two sides are shaped differently because they are... They are reproducing the both sides of the leaf. So this is why it's not the same pattern on this side and on the other side. Yeah, the pattern is different. Can you see that, everybody? The pattern is different. It's very strange on it. Maybe it's easier if you show this example.

13:46 John Daub: That's right. Yeah. They said, she told me that it was a secret how they did it. You see how... Voila. You can see the waves. You can see the waves and the pattern here. And there's no waves. There's no waves on there. That's hard to do, to control the waves. And they made it because it... What did you say?

14:03 Jennifer: It looks like a leaf? It's both sides of the leaf.

14:06 John Daub: Yeah. And both sides are different, look different like this. Yeah. Very cool. So I... And you can see that they're making it. This is Tokugawa 15, the director of the museum now, and he's making the sword. He's with the swordsmith. A reproduction, a recreation of the original sword from the Sekigahara. The sword of battle.

14:29 Jennifer: That's so cool.

14:30 John Daub: I'm telling you right now, this is one of the coolest things I've seen because this takes me back to the 1600s. Right. It's a different world. Yeah. You can feel history here. Yeah. You can really feel the history here.

14:45 Jennifer: I don't want to go too deep into the museum. We're going to take our chance, but... The tea.

14:50 John Daub: Oh, the tea cups. All right. Show us, Jennifer. Follow her.

14:57 Jennifer: So these are really amazing because... This is the tea cup. It's the shogun, the seventh. Here, the ninth shogun, Tokugawa shogun, made those two cups. There, it's the seventh. Over there, we have the sixth. So these are so precious. And sometimes they take these out from the museum for very special guests, and they do the tea ceremony with those. And apparently everybody's shaking because they're worried. Yeah. They might drop those and break those, you know, because they are so unique, right?

15:35 John Daub: These tea cups were made by the shogun. Yes. Centuries and centuries ago. Yes. And then they bring it up for VIP. And what is the VIP going to do? They're going to just be mind blown. The shogun from 500 years ago used this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, this is insane, right?

15:54 Jennifer: This is insane.

15:55 John Daub: The sixth one, yeah, ninth one. The sixth shogun used this, right? The sixth Tokugawa, and then the ninth. Here, seven, and those two is the ninth. These are more recently, but that's not that recent. These are like generations ago, right?

16:09 Jennifer: And this is Tokugawa shogun who made those cups with his own hands, right?

16:16 John Daub: Yeah. It's like Napoleon made those. And he drank tea with his own lips. Just to show you the level. I mean, this is amazing. Anybody would want to drink tea in those, I think.

16:26 Jennifer: I would love to have some tea. I wouldn't shake, I think.

16:30 John Daub: I think it's a good idea. Yeah. This one is the oldest, right? Ninth shogun. Ninth one. So, maybe I think this one is the oldest, the black one. Yeah. Because it's the sixth one. Right. Well, it's still very impressive. And there's a lot of artifacts here from the Tokugawa family. This is one of the reasons why I think there's a symbol of the family, right, on this lacquer box?

16:53 Jennifer: Yes.

16:55 John Daub: Now, this is also something that blew my mind. Should we talk about it?

17:00 Jennifer: All right. Let's go straight to the big one. Just go straight to the big one.

17:04 John Daub: Let me explain. I'm just going to show you the big one. Okay. All right. So, this is the big one. What is this?

17:13 Jennifer: What do you think? Yeah. What is this? Yeah. What is this?

17:16 John Daub: This is what we call a hanko (seal), or a stamp, or a chop. Except this chop is massive. I've never seen one this big. Can you see if I come here? Can you see how big it is? That's pretty big. Can you see? It's four times my head, right?

17:34 Jennifer: Four times your head? I think more like five or six. At least. How big is your head?

17:38 John Daub: It's big. And she said that it weighs five kilos. That's immense. My hanko is square like this for my company, but it's this big and fits in my pocket. This one does not fit in your pocket. This one fits like nowhere. It's huge. Yeah. So, apparently, they would put this on the big one. On the big official maps? Yeah. On the maps. Do they have any maps here? Do they? I didn't see any with that hanko on it, but it is very, very unique and very large. Hopefully, the signal stays here.

18:17 John Daub: When the Meiji Restoration started and foreign power started to come to Japan, this is when we started seeing cannons and a lot of artillery. Before this, people in Japan, samurai warriors, would use swords. And then, when the next generation...

18:32 Jennifer: You know what this is? Who's the boss? Who's the boss?

18:36 John Daub: I guess you're the boss. Yeah. No.

18:39 Jennifer: Oh, sorry. You ruined my story. Oh, sorry. She's holding my hand. Stop it. Really? Yes.

18:48 John Daub: So, this... Oh, go back to your position. So, this symbol, not the woman, is a symbol of a VIP. It's a very important person. On the battlefield. And... On the battlefield. On the battlefield. So, you knew... Yeah. So, you knew where that person was by this. So, this is where, you know, it was always by Tokugawa Ieyasu and all the other shogun on the battlefield. They would... People would know where he was thanks to this. Yes. Right. And then, when, you know, guns and sniper rifles came out, it was not good to show that. But this was during the Edo period, right?

19:30 Jennifer: Yes.

19:31 John Daub: So, not during the Meiji Restoration. This was before they had artillery. They only had swords. 1853. 1853. Yeah. This is from 1853. And this, this painting... Now, painting art back then wasn't put on a canvas like the Europeans did it. They would do it on, like, scrolls. And you can see amazing detail of life back in, like, a couple hundred years ago during the... I guess this was the Edo period. Yeah. The Edo period, right? Yeah. Yeah. You can see life back then. They had pink horses. They didn't have pink horses, but...

20:11 Jennifer: There's no date. There's no date on it. But what blew my mind, okay...

20:15 John Daub: What blew my mind is how thick that scroll is. And this is one out of 19 scrolls. One out of 19. And you can see there's a picture showing the detail and kind of giving you some background history. Again, there's not much... There's not much here. There's not much here in English. In fact, very little. But if you do some research online before you come here, this is an extremely, extremely valuable visit for anybody coming to Mito City. And it's such an easy access from Tokyo, right?

20:52 Jennifer: Yes.

20:52 John Daub: I didn't see the time in the train. Oh, no? No? No, I mean, you have the eki-ben (station bento). You have the ben. Right. Right.

21:07 John Daub: So now we're back in the glass hallway, which is really cool. This tree, I was told, was planted at the beginning of the 20th century, in the early 1900s, and it came from the United States. So there's a piece of America planted in the middle of Mito, which I thought was pretty cool. Of course, it's surrounded by banana-looking trees, which is pretty cool. Thank you very much for the super chats, everybody, by the way.

21:35 Jennifer: In Mito? Why banana trees in Mito? I mean, it's not so popular. I'm not sure.

21:39 John Daub: It actually looks pretty cool. It's pretty cool because they designed this glass hallway, right?

21:43 Jennifer: What was it? The grandfather designed this building. Yes. And this glass hallway, I really like it. It gives you a sense of the nature around it.

21:53 John Daub: And even from the outside, don't you think that it really fits in the nature? It's not disturbing anything. It's really like it fits in the surroundings.

22:05 Jennifer: That's true.

22:06 John Daub: Now, there is some armor. There is some armor. I'm over here. There is some armor inside the hallway there, but it's really deep in there, and we would have lost the signal. I recommend you come here. It was from the second Shogun, Mitsukuni Tokugawa. You can see his original armor, which is really interesting to see. There's one more room. We're going to do a quick... Maybe the signal, hopefully, will be okay. It'll be okay. We're going to take you in really quickly to take a look at the second room.

22:38 John Daub: Again, we've got swords. And this is all... This seems like Mitsukuni's room. Look at that. That's history. This room is quite large as well. I don't know if the signal is going to stay. The name of this museum, once again, for everybody just joining us now, is the Tokugawa Museum. Tokugawa was a famous name because the family became the Shogun in the year 1600.

23:14 John Daub: And we're just going to do a quick walkthrough of this room. This is kind of impressive. This is the history, right? You can see written in books of the Tokugawa family. The Tokugawa family and the Shogun. And the Tokugawa family, they're also historians. They're students of Japanese history. And these books are very old.

23:36 Jennifer: When did they start doing this? It's, I think, the first or the second Shogun who asked... Actually, he created this team to write about history because nobody had done it before. Yeah. And they were very interested in history. And actually, for many... For a very long time, people would study history based on these books. Right. Because none existed at the time apart from those. Yeah. They would draw scrolls and art and pictures. And this is the first account of the book. So it's very important. Sorry. It's written... It's the second. So it's Mitsukuni. Mitsukuni. Yeah. This room is pretty much dedicated to Mitsukuni. He was the... If you started this stream in the beginning, he was the very head of the Shogunate. He was the handsome idol Shogun. Oh, yes. Right? You remember? He's the one... I think he's in a TV drama here in Japan. Yeah. So he's one of the most famous Tokugawa in Japan. Probably not as... So much well-known as Ieyasu in the West. We know Ieyasu, but Tokugawa Mitsukuni was a big... It's a big deal here.

24:45 John Daub: This book is a book of pharmaceutical drugs, right?

24:51 Jennifer: Yes. He's saying... It's also Mitsukuni. He was very much interested in food and how to heal the body with food and herbs, etc. So that's why this is a book that interests me more here. Yes. And so it was... Look how old it is. You know? It's one of the first, if not the first book about how to use herbs and plants and food to heal your body. So it's a reference here. Yeah. It's the first book that kind of documented things that healed the body using food and almost like an organic guide to good health. I guess it's one way to see it.

25:37 John Daub: Now, Mitsukuni Tokugawa, he was taller than all the other people. The average height back then was like 150 centimeters, which is quite short. I guess it's like 5 foot 3 or something. He was 170 centimeters. He was quite tall for people in that age. And I guess it's about 5 foot 9, 5 foot 8. And there he is right there. And you can see this is his original undergarment, right? So they have that in the museum, which I thought was pretty cool. It's pretty clean for 400 years ago.

26:12 Jennifer: Apparently he studied, you know, in China. Yeah. They use a lot of... They've been using herbs. It's called Kampo (Chinese medicine). Yeah. And he was studying Kampo with a Chinese professor. So that's why this is a Chinese garment. Right. I thought the style was unique. Yeah, it is a Chinese garment. He was quite a student, wasn't he, Mitsukuni? Apparently so. Yeah.

26:37 John Daub: So this is the second room. I hope this gives you a good sense. I just wanted to give you an introduction to what this museum is like. There's the family ceiling glass, which I thought was pretty cool.

26:49 Jennifer: I knew you want to go... I know you want to go and... Go ahead and do it. Do it. I know she wants to go on the other side. Go on the other side. Do it. Go on the other side. There she is.

27:00 John Daub: You know me. I can sense she wants to go back there and... We've been doing this for so long. We know each other quite well. Yeah. So on this map, you can see just quickly, this is Edo or Tokyo where we started today. And Mito City is just right up here. It's not that far, 65 minutes on the express train from Tokyo. Again... It's quicker than sometimes when I go from one place to another. From one place to another in Tokyo, you know? Right. It was pretty fast.

27:35 John Daub: Once again, just to let you know, we're making this video as part of a day stream, like a challenge from IbaKira TV. IbaKira TV is the Ibaraki station. If you go to IbaKira TV, you can see some interesting stuff from this prefecture. And our challenge today is to do some live streams from really cool places like this. All right.

28:00 John Daub: So I hope you enjoyed this very quick tour of the Tokugawa Museum. It smells good. It does smell good. I'm getting hungry too. I hope you enjoyed this quick tour of the Tokugawa Museum. Jennifer and I will be doing another live stream in... In a few. In a few. So until then, we'll see you and have a good day.

28:22 Jennifer: He's still out there. He's waiting for us. He's waiting for us. Bye.

28:29 John Daub: Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.