Welcome to the Tanbo-chō, or, in English, the Court of Dawn and Dusk. Our goal with this project is to help you better understand the culture of Pre-17th Century Japan. We bring you informational articles and tutorials so that you can both absorb new information and learn by doing.

We are a passionate team with a deep interest in all sorts of different aspects of Japanese history, and we want to share our interests with you. Whether you are looking for information on the origins of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, how to make kimono with traditional fawn-spot tie-dye decorations, or you want to know the difference between hiragana and katakana, we want to help you get the best information you can.

Japan is an amazing place with a long history and a rich and varied culture in every city, town and hamlet. We know there are places where you can get the broad strokes of Japanese history. We want to supplement that knowledge with content about more specific but in-depth parts of Japanese historical culture. We know we can’t cover every subject across more than 800 years of history, but we hope that everything we can cover is useful to someone.

Perhaps even more than bringing you top-notch information, we love to learn new things, too. As you browse our collection, tell us if there is something you would like to learn more about. We will try to learn about it with you, or direct you to someone who does know about it.

In Japan, when new people meet, there is a phrase they use to mean that they want to cooperate with each other. A direct translation is difficult to nail down, but we hope that you can understand our desire for friendship when we say, “Yoroshiku O-negaishimasu.”

Where do we go from here? Well, please see what we have to offer in these sections.