| Just in Tokyo by Justin Hall Page #22 This is a browsable copy of the original pdf hosted on Rikai.com If you enjoy this work, please consider donating to the author  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. | |
|
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 | |
|
| |
Japanese capital cities built around the Emperor. Many Tokyo
neighborhoods have character hundreds of years old; some have
evolved modern meaning from rubble following a disastrous earth-
quake in 1923 and the severe firebombing during World War II.
Tokyo has been built and rebuilt; there's a scattershot quality to it. A
modern mirrored office building rises up narrow between a squat
cinderblock laundromat, a leaning wooden house and a small shrine.
referred to as "Edo" when woodblock prints
and kabuki were cutting-edge stuff. Mostly
when people talk about Edo now they refer
to a bygone era. Shitamachi is a broad part
of eastern Tokyo, the older side of town that
best preserves some of the flavors of Edo-
era Tokyo - wooden homes, loads of
shrines and temples, accessible people in
less constant cosmopolitan hurry.
Tokyo. You'll see widespread encamp-
ments. Blue construction tarps have been
fashioned into tents and lean-tos. Get close
and you'll spy some industriousness -
clothes hangers with clean laundry, a golf
bag hung from a tree holding rakes and
brooms. It's rumoured people can receive
postal mail addressed to Ueno Park. Some
of these homeless folk speak English; don't
worry, they'll likely approach you.
shrine, the Tokyo National Museum, the
Natural Sciences museum, a Western art
and refers to those areas
beneath the castle but still within
the city limits. Edward
Seidensticker has felicitously
translated the term as `Low City'
- the hills became the Yamanote,
the `High City'. He has also
estimated that the Low City,
which gave Edo so much of its
character, only occupied about
one-fifth of the city.
It now occupies even less, the
High City has grown so much.
Yet the traditional Low City
perseveres, even now remaining
different in feeling from the
Westernized Yamanote. Now
comprised (according to the
Shitamachi Museum) of Kanda,
Nihombashi, Kyobashi, Shitaya
(Ueno), Asakusa, Honjo and
Fukagawa, it still retains what
little is left of the feel of old Edo
- distinctly plebeian, also fun-
loving, less inhibited than those
remains of areas where the
military aristocracy, the
shogunate, observed its rules of
decorum.
- Donald Richie, Tokyo