EDOVERSE – Japan invites you to a new world where everything is possible!

After making it through the long pandemic and all its lockdowns (a distant memory, we hope!), everyone’s desire to travel has returned. But we don’t necessarily have to take a flight. Over the last few years, new ways of discovering far away countries have emerged. Come along with the Wakapedia team on a unique trip beyond time and space. Destination? The city of Edo (Tokyo’s name until 1868) during the era when it was the seat of the powerful Tokugawa shogunate, the last feudal government of Japan.

Don’t worry, we haven’t gone crazy and we don’t believe in time machines. We want to invite you on a trip to the Edoverse, a reconstruction of historic Tokyo… in the metaverse!

Don’t really get it? Discover what it’s all about in the following article. We spoke to Yoichiro Kurata, president of the Japanese company Shinwa Wise Holdings Ltd and the originator of this visionary project due to launch in 2023.

What is the Edoverse?

The Edoverse is a virtual reconstruction of the city of Edo created by combining historic research with new technologies. Iehiro Tokugawa, the supervisor of this virtual city, is the 19th direct descendent of the Tokugawa, the feudal family that reigned during the Edo period.

The Edo period is frequently associated with the rigid traditional feudal society and Japan’s isolation from the rest of the world, but it was also an epoch of great refinement and development of Japanese arts and culture; it is a period that has a lot to teach us!

Integrating avant-garde technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrency with social systems of the past, the Edoverse offers a completely new world, in which many different types of action will be possible!

What can you do in the Edoverse?

Users from all over the world can walk around and visit the sites of Edo to discover the culture and the history of this epoch. But there’s more! Each person can personalise their own avatar and choose to become a samurai or a geisha. It all works in a very intuitive and easy way and saves you the time and money of making a real costume. In short, everyone can become an amazing cosplayer in the Edoverse!

We’re not finished yet! In the Edoverse, you will be able to take part in many different activities thanks to unique tokens (substitute digital money) like Edo Coban and Edo Zeni. It will be possible to play fun games, go to a concert, buy art work and land, construct buildings, and even start a business. There are already many interested investors, as was proven by the successful sale of a parcel of land called the Daimyokoji NFT. This land is a digital version of Daimyo Koji which was a royal area strategically located at the entrance to Edo where the feudal lords built splendid homes and temples. Today, it is a central neighbourhood of the capital. The virtual land was commercialised as an NFT in July 2022 and the sale closed in one hour due to high demand.

It will be interesting to see if the buyers make good use of the land and how future development of the community of the Edoverse will be regulated. Will “Edoverse: Welcome Samurai Town” capture our attention in 2023 like “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” did in the past? As they say (mostly our grandparents), only time will tell!

Who is Yoichiro Kurata, president of Shinwa Wise Holdings Co. and the man behind the Edoverse?

Born and raised in a rural prefecture in Japan, Yoichiro Kurata was a normal kid with a passion for drawing until he was nine years old. Then, in fourth grade, he recalls a dramatic turning point. While reading a book about Newton, he felt as if he had been struck by lightning. His grades had always been mediocre, but from that moment he became a bit of a genius. He earned the best grades on all his exams and became a meticulous reader of science books that were complex even for adults. After six months of intense study, he was accepted early to the scientific department of Tokyo University (one of the most selective schools in Japan) where he enrolled in the Faculty of Economics. Passionate about science and math, he also has a great interest in art that he has cultivated since his student days. In 2001, he took over as president of the Shinwa Art Auction (today called Shinwa Wise Holdings Ltd), a company specialising in art auctions. In 2021, the company threw itself into NFTs, the new “gold mine” of the art market.

What is an NFT? Don’t panic, we will try to explain it in a simple way. NFT is the acronym for Non-Fungible Token and can uniquely and securely identify goods and digital products using blockchain technology. The blockchain is like a large shared database, permanent and easy to use, that records commercial transactions on the Internet.

Before embarking on the huge global project of the Edoverse, Shinwa Wise Holdings Ltd developed the sale of NFT artworks with the aim of promoting Japanese artistic culture in the virtual space.

Virtual space as a tool to understand and solve real world problems!

Yoichiro Kurata, being an art-lover, wants to exploit all the possibilities offered by the metaverse to benefit artists and use it as a space to create innovative art works. He empowers artists by offering them the possibility to exhibit their work in galleries and in virtual art collections. Did you know that NFTs guarantee compensation to creators when their work is sold online? (Now you’re up to date!)

In addition to this artistic component, the greatest ambition of the Edoverse is social. It aims to find common solutions to inequality and injustice in the real world.

Communication in the Edoverse will be in English so the space will be accessible to anyone anywhere in the world. For example, user-inhabitants will be offered programs that combat educational disparity or fight poverty with revenue sharing systems.

This “new city of Edo” will permit everyone, in the not-too-distant future, to have their own home and an income in the virtual space. This could help improve their actual standard of living thanks to cryptocurrency and to the online development of skills and new entrepreneurial methods.

The Edoverse will be a platform where everyone can decide who to be and how to shape their own destiny, regardless of their attributes in the real world such as social status, religion, age, or gender.

We at Wakapedia who love freedom and creativity are intrigued by this project! What do you think?

Stay tuned, the Edoverse awaits you in 2023!

Follow @edoverse_project and check the latest news!

Edited by: Kassanda Frua De Angeli