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TOKYO

THE CITY

It is often said, by Japanese and foreigners alike, that Tokyo is not the "real" Japan. What they mean is that it's not the "ideal" Japan, the Japan of a people unspoiled by the West, where the descendants of the sun goddess live in spiritual harmony with nature in the Land of the Rising Sun.

The nostalgia is understandable. With a population of nearly twelve million, Tokyo reads at times like a lexicon of the problems confronting Japan today. But the ideal Japan, like all objects of nostalgic devotion, is part of an irretrievable past. With barely 125 years of modern history, the Japanese still suffer from growing pains. The events of those one hundred years, the greatest successes and the greatest defeats, were first felt in Tokyo.

Kyoto was the center of the country during the golden days of Japan. There in the rarefied air of the emperor's presence, a court aristocracy pursued a life of aesthetic sensitivity and refinement. What was most important was the turn of a phrase in a cryptic poem, the perfect harmony found in twelve layers of subtly shaded kimono, the just-so sweep of a brush across a sheet of immaculate paper. The present site of Tokyo was then called Musashi no Kuni, a land of fields and thickly forested hills.

Tokyo came of age with Tokugawa leyasu's rise to power in 1600. The daimyo (feudal lords) were brought to submission and the country was ruled for 250 years of domestic peace and isolation from the world under the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo.

Edo had prospered since the mid-fifteenth century as a castle town built by the minor daimyo Ota Dokan. Throughout Japan, the daimyo consolidated their power in castle towns that grew into provincial capitals of cultural and economic activity centered on the needs of the lord and the samurai aristocracy. Primarily constructed for defense, the castles were surrounded by concentric circles of moats and ramparts, the streets laid out in irregular zigzag patterns to surprise and confuse an attacking enemy. The seemingly random pattern of Tokyo streets today is a survival of this early urban planning.

Edo became the greatest castle in the land. The city grew rapidly as the daimyo built homes within the castle walls, alternating residence between their provincial domains and mandatory attendance on the shogun in Edo. With the influx of daimyo and samurai troops, the need for a service class increased. Tokugawa leyasu invited merchants and artisans to the city, assigning them quarters in the eastern marshes by the sea, now the lands stretching west and southwest from Hibiya. Dirt from the top of Surugadai, one of Tokyo's larger hills, was provided to start the process of reclamation from the sea that continues today. By the 1700s, the population of Edo was close to a million, making it possibly the largest city in the world at the time.

The conservative Edo period government legally enforced a strict division of classes, placing the samurai at the top and the theoretically unproductive merchant at the bottom. But the urban samurai had become utterly dependent, and increasingly indebted to, the merchant class. Despite government efforts to enforce the status quo, the merchants continued to prosper. Restricted to shitamachi, the crowded downtown districts, from the merchant and artisan classes emerged a culture that was as vibrantly creative as it was unabashedly vulgar. In the amusement quarters of the city, the merchants escaped from the pressures of the rigid social system and the demands of business. Under their patronage, the arts flourished—the Bunraku and Kabuki theaters, geisha, and ukiyoe-style prints were all products of the time.

Tokugawa rule ended shortly after the arrival in Tokyo Bay of Commodore Matthew Perry and the United States Navy in 1953. Unable to protect the country from the "Southern Barbarians," the government lost its claim to legitimacy. A coalition of powerful families from the southern and western provinces seized power from the shogunate, and in the 1868 Meiji Restoration reestablished Imperial rule. The Emperor was moved to Edo castle and the city renamed Tokyo—the "eastern capital."

The new government quickly realized that national security could best be achieved by meeting the West on its own terms, and a program was undertaken to promote rapid modernization. Things Western were adopted and praised as far superior to Japanese. Foreign experts were sought and extravagantly paid. Tokyo took on a new air as brick buildings, trains, and tailored suits came into vogue.

Patterns of urban use also changed. The daimyo packed up and moved back to the provinces leaving vast stretches of vacant land in the castle areas. No longer confined to shitamachi, the wealthy merchants moved to the western, hilly parts of town. Without their patronage, the arts and entertainment forms of Edo popular culture lost their major source of support. The old pleasure quarters and theaters fell on hard times and shitamachi was left to the poor.

Tokyo continued to grow, and by the 1920s had a population of over two million. Then in 1923 came the Great Kanto Earthquake. The earthquake, and the fires and tidal waves that followed, left nearly 140,000 people dead and half of the city destroyed. Tokyo was rebuilt and in less than ten years the population was again at pre-earthquake levels. In 1932, the city limits were expanded to the current twenty-three wards, boosting the population another two million.

The city has suffered over the years from a variety of natural and unnatural disasters—in the Edo period from over five hundred major fires, from floods, typhoons, earthquakes, and in 1945 from the fire bombings of World War II. Each time, the people reconstructed the city and resumed their lives with a stoic resilience. Tokyo has never had a tradition of permanence.

Now the second largest city in the world, Tokyo sprawls across more than eight hundred square miles of the Kanto Plain. As an urban environment, the capital shows little concern for outward appearances, and evokes neither the alien exoticism of an Asian city, nor the sense of wonder and awe one expects from a city of its size and international importance. But while Westerners build monuments to the future, the Japanese have built and rebuilt for the present. The chaos of the city today is the function of an attitude that puts the exigencies of survival above all other concerns. A major earthquake has been predicted in Tokyo. They happen every sixty years or so; the last one was in 1923, and the next is already overdue. The city keeps building its functional modern high-rises and just waits.

Yet the "technopolitan" Tokyo of first impressions is really just a thin veneer that hides what remains in essence a city of villages. Within walking distance of almost any of the city's major districts are back-street neighborhoods where life operates pretty much the same as in any small suburban community. Shops and homes line the narrow wandering streets where children play and grandmothers chat at the corner fruit stand. The man next door waters his street-side garden in his pajamas each morning and the tofu seller tours the neighborhood in the evening by bicycle, calling out to the local housewives with his distinctive horn.

The districts and neighborhoods that divide Tokyo make it a city of varied pleasures and endless discovery. Each has a history, each growing up at a different stage in the life of the city. Some, aging, are museums of the past; others are still in the first neon flush of youth.

THE DISTRICTS

Roppongi

The most international district in Tokyo, Roppongi is famous as one of the city's major nightlife districts. Less expensive and established than Ginza and Akasaka, more sophisticated than Shinjuku and Shibuya, Roppongi claims some of the best restaurants, bars and nightclubs, and a crowd with more blond hair and blue eyes than any other part of town.

It is also one of the city's high-rent residential areas, a reputation the area has had since the Edo period. One theory on the original of the district's "six trees" name claims that six Edo-period samurai, whose names included the character for tree, lived in the neighborhood. In the Meiji period the area was inhabited by wealthy Japanese and foreigners connected with the newly established embassies. Later the military set up camp toward Nogizaka where the Self-Defense Force headquarters are located today. After the war more foreigners moved in as embassies relocated to the area, and the U.S. military established a base on part of the former Japanese Army lands. It was still a quiet district, notable for a street car running along the main thoroughfare and a few Western-style bars and restaurants serving burgers and pizza.

During the late fifties and early sixties, as the post-war prosperity took hold, the Japanese began to look beyond the need for survival, and the traditional values propagated by the nationalistic wartime government. Roppongi, with its international air, attracted the new cosmopolitan Japanese. In a few cafes and bars—Nicola's, Gino's, and the still famous Chianti—gathered the liberal elite of intellectuals, entertainers, fashion designers, and other notables. The district's popularity grew, more bars and restaurants opened, and the young Japanese who frequented the area were dubbed the Roppongi-zoku—the Roppongi people.

Life in Roppongi starts at the Roppongi crossing and its tribute to the Japanese love of coffee shops and kitsch architecture—the famous Almond (pronounced amando)—a multi-story pink coffee shop with some of the worst coffee and cakes in town. This is, however, a major landmark and the corner in front a favorite rendezvous spot.

By day, Roppongi is relatively quiet—nothing seems to be open before 11:00 A.M. Worth visiting are the Axis Building, full of shops specializing in contemporary interior goods, and Wave, one of the first high-tech record shops in the world.

A short walk down the hill from the main crossing is Azabu-juban, a neighborhood shopping area that grew up as a textile center producing linen cloth, asa, from which the area gets its name. Restaurants, bars, and discos are moving to this area in increasing numbers although it remains a cozy shopping street by day.

Nishi Azabu—Hiro-o

As Roppongi reached a virtual nightclub saturation point in the early eighties, the fallout from the its burgeoning prosperity drifted into some of the city's residential and warehouse districts. At one point it seemed that nearly every really hip bar was located in Nishi Azabu. It is still a neighborhood rich in great restaurants and bars.

More residential than the Kasumi-cho area, Hiro-o has typically had the rather dubious reputation of being the "gaijin ghetto" (gaijin means "foreigner") of the city. Expensive company-subsidized apartment complexes are full of foreign executives and their families, while two large Western-style supermarkets help comfort the homesick. One street near the station is a more traditional Japanese-style shopping area, and Arisugawa Park is a short walk away.

Shibuya

One of the first things anyone should know about Shibuya is the heart-warming story of Hachi, a dog of the native Japanese Akita breed. Hachi would escort his master, a professor at Tokyo University, to Shibuya Station each morning and return in the evening to meet him on his way home from work. One day the professor suffered a stroke and never came home, but the faithful Hachi returned to the station each evening to wait. This went on for seven years. When Hachi finally died in 1935, he was on the front page of all the major newspapers. Gifts and letters poured in from around the country, and a bronze statue of Hachi was erected in the plaza in front of the station. Hachiko Square (North Exit) is probably the most famous meeting place in the city. The real Hachi was stuffed and is part of the collection of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As a district, Shibuya fits somewhere between the wildness of Shinjuku, the kids of Harajuku, and the sophistication of Roppongi. There is an abundance of department stores, boutiques, record shops, and theaters. In the evening the area draws crowds of students and young office workers to its inexpensive discotheques and nomiya (Japanese-style bars). Since the 1980s, its development has been spurred by the "store wars" between competing department store chains: Seibu and its Parco, Seed, Prime, and Loft Buildings; Tokyu with its Tokyu Plaza, Tokyu Hands, 109, and Bunkamura; Marui with its several fashion buildings.

Until recently, Shibuya was a quiet residential area. Named after the Shibuya family whose castle was located here, during the Edo period the district was just one step up from the provinces. After the Meiji Restoration, the samurai residents vacated and the lands were used for tea fields and grazing. When the earthquake destroyed much of Tokyo in 1923, people moved from the center of town and undeveloped, almost rural districts like Shibuya, Meguro, and Setagaya became heavily residential. After the war, Shibuya housed one of the city's largest black markets.

Daikanyama—Ebisu

A short distance from Shibuya, Daikanyama has been a model for the development of Tokyo's peripheral residential districts. Since the seventies when the Maki Fumihiko-designed Hillside Terrace complex was first opened, the area has grown slowly and gracefully with shops, restaurants, and the occasional gallery. Like many of the recently developed, or soon to be developed, neighborhoods, public transportation is limited making them favorite destinations for weekend drivers. The streets are lined with foreign imported cars and their fashionably dressed passengers.

Benefiting from this popularity, Ebisu has followed suit and is now positioned to become one of the next hip areas. Already restaurants, clubs, and shops are filling the back streets and the major Sapporo Beer development is guaranteed to change the face of the neighborhood.

Harajuku

Dedicated to youth, fashion trendiness, and the belief that all consumers under twenty-five are created equal, Harajuku thrives as the kid's capital of Tokyo. The district swarms with the well-dressed pampered youth of Japan, raised in an era of post-war prosperity and carefree consumerism. But the rigorous school system, the pressures for conformity applied to the salary-man, and the satisfied-housewife pattern of life have their young victims. Many of the dancers who have filled Harajuku's Yoyogi Park every Sunday for the past decade or so are the ones who can't make it in the system or simply don't care to try. In an ironic display of rebellious behavior, the kids dance in well-choreographed, polite groups—usually boys with boys, girls with girls. The original dancers in the later 70s were named the Takenokozoku, or "bamboo-shoot-people," after the bright Asian-style costumes made by a boutique called Takenoko. In the eighties James Dean was the role model and fifties nostalgia reigned. Since the nineties, the dancers have been joined by growing crowds of foreign, often Middle Eastern, laborers who gather nearby.

The spirit of Harajuku is as infectious as it is insipid. For young fashion, the district beats any other part of Tokyo. Most of the big designers' boutiques are in nearby Aoyama and Shibuya, but cheap knock-offs and play clothes overflow from the hundreds of shops near the central crossing and lining the back streets. The main landmark is the La Foret fashion building, and down the street toward Togo Jinja shrine is Takeshitadori, famous for its bargains in trendy fashions.

North of the district is Yoyogi Park, the Meiji Jingu shrine, and its outer gardens. The park attracts some of Tokyo's more individualistic inhabitants—dancers and street performers of all kinds, and toward the north end of the park a few saxophonists or trumpeters will invariably be practicing their instruments in the bushes.

Aoyama

The post-Harajuku generation finds more of interest in the neighboring Aoyama district, where life moves at a more sophisticated, expensive pace. The main street, Aoyama-dori, stretches from Shibuya to Akasaka, meeting along the way a number of side streets that spawn ever growing numbers of boutiques, specialty shops, and restaurants. Kotto-dori, on the Shibuya end, is famous for its antique shops. The road to the Nezu Museum nearby has boutiques by Tokyo's top fashion designers and many top European designers as well. It also boasts Tokyo's first major building by Osaka-based architect Ando Tadao—La Collectione.

Aoyama has more good design and architecture than any other district. The Spiral and Tepia buildings by Maki Fumihiko, Collectione by Ando Tadao, the Mori Hanae Building, and Sogetsu Hall by Tange Kenzo, and dozens of other smaller buildings by young and emerging Japanese architects as well as work by well-known western architects such as Mario Botta and Aldo Rossi.

The Edo period Aoyama daimyo family lived here, leaving for posterity their name and the family graveyard, now the Aoyama-bochi, a great place for a quiet stroll or for viewing the spring cherry blossoms.

On the Akasaka end of Aoyama-dori is a huge walled-in green spot that hides the Akasaka detached palace, the latter being an official state guest house modeled after Buckingham Palace on the outside and Versailles on the inside.

Shinjuku

A showcase for all the worst aspects of the city's chaos, Shinjuku has, at the same time, a stronger, more vibrant spirit than any other part of town. Much of the spirit borders on sleaze. Shinjuku is the latest of the late night districts, and one of the cheapest. It's here that night-time revelers come to escape the sophistication and civility of the city's chic southwest districts.

Shinjuku has always had a rather questionable reputation. During the Edo period it was a small lodging town, not even within the city limits. A fight between a local brothel owner and the younger brother of an influential samurai official led to the area's disappearance. But fifty years later it grew up again and became a major pleasure quarter frequented by the lower classes.

In 1889 Shinjuku Station was built with a new train line servicing the western suburbs. The area immediately prospered. The residential population increased, as did the number of pleasure houses. When courtesans were liberated in 1872, the formalities of the geisha entertainments were abandoned, and most of the former geisha houses became simple houses of prostitution with rooms for rent. Shinjuku was notorious for having more such rooms than any other part of town. Plans to clean up the neighborhood and relocate the pleasure quarter were drawn up but never put into effect.

The area continued to grow and in 1920 part of it was annexed into the city's Yotsuya Ward. The rest of the district became a part of Tokyo in 1932 when the city limits were redrawn. The station became increasingly important as a commuter transfer point and is now the largest in the country, handling over two million passengers a day.

Shinjuku has prospered. Around the station are found some of the highest rents in Japan. Department stores, boutiques, fashion buildings, and the huge Shinjuku Station underground arcade serves commuters on their way home or suburbanites in for the weekends when the major thoroughfare becomes a pedestrian "paradise" (or "hell" depending on how much you like mobs). Students from the surrounding universities form another big part of the crowd.

But life in Shinjuku really begins after dark. Kabukicho is the center of the action. The Kabuki theater originally planned as a cultural focus for the neighborhood never materialized, but gave the district its name. In its place a modern pleasure quarter flourished after the war. The area has numerous movie theaters, and the surrounding streets are famous for their x-rated establishments and "pink" cabaret (in Japan "pink" is the symbolic x-rated color). This is where you're most likely to spot yakuza types—the Japanese mafia who are easily recognized by their gangster-style dress, their squared-off crew cuts or short perms, and the notable absence of fingers.

Goruden-gai, another famous neighborhood now threatened by the forces of redevelopment, is a street full of quirky, tiny closet-sized bars and is one of the few parts of town where a little caution is advised. Shombenyokocho, near the train tracks on the west side of the station, is yet another drinking area. Full of cheap nomiya, the name literally translates as "piss alley." Ni-chome is the gay bar district.

The Nishi-guchi (west-side) of Shinjuku claims more skyscrapers than any other part of Tokyo. Built on land that was formerly a water and sewage treatment plant, the area is properly antiseptic. The oldest building dates from 1971. In 1991 after years of planning, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government opened its new city hall. The controversial, almost gothic architecture of this huge Tange Kenzo-designed building has become Shinjuku's proud new landmark and a rather thought-provoking symbol of 1980's Japan.

Ikebukuro

Ikebukuro is basically a less interesting version of Shinjuku. A commuter's town, the district lacks specific character. The major attractions are the sprawling Seibu Department Store (at one time the largest in the world) and the sixty-story Sunshine City complex.

Until the Meiji period the district was one of farm and forest lands, famous as a spot for viewing the summer fireflies. A small bag-shaped pond in the area gave the district its name-Ikebukuro means literally "pond bag." A train station was built in 1903 and served, at the time, about thirty passengers a day. Now it's second only to Shinjuku.

In the thirties, Ikebukuro was a haunt of artists and writers, and the area was dubbed, in all seriousness, "Ikebukuro Montparnasse." The district later became the site of Tokyo Prison. After World War II, the prison was renamed Sugamo by the Occupation Authorities and was used to hold Japanese war criminals. Seven men, including Field Marshal Tojo Hideki, were hung in the prison. In 1958 the name was changed back to Tokyo Prison, but the building was torn down in 1972 to build a new cultural center for the area. The Sunshine City Building now stands on the site.

The west side of Ikebukuro Station is similar in flavor to Shinjuku's Kabukicho. Here and behind the Bungei-za Theater on the east side are two "dangerous" areas with the reputation for being the scene of an occasional gun battle between rival yakuza gangs.

Until recently the area was known for its inexpensive accommodations and was favored by students but now is home for huge numbers of predominantly Asian resident foreigners.

Akasaka-Nagatacho

The side streets in Akasaka are lined with Japanese-style buildings of a uniform sand color, with discreet signs giving the name of the restaurant. These are not places that the ordinary foreigner can enter, nor the ordinary Japanese for that matter. Most of these ryotei restaurants require an introduction. In the evening geisha are called, and over bottles of saké (rice wine) and meals in the best Japanese tradition, politicians, and big business types cement those bonds of friendship so important in the greater world of economic and governmental affairs. On a back street hill nearby is a row of empty rickshaw. In the mid-Meiji period there were over fifty thousand in the city, but the rickshaw are now used only by geisha on their way to a party.

Yet the discreet ryotei seem somehow anomalous in an area now dominated by the glitz and glamour of the entertainment scene centered around the hundreds of tiny restaurants, noisy nomiya, hostess bars, cabarets, and TBS Television, which since 1960 has ensured a steady flow of TV personalities and their fans into the neighborhood.

Hotels give the district an added international dimension. The major ones are the New Otani, the Akasaka Prince, the Akasaka Tokyu (otherwise known as the "Pajama Hilton" for its pink and white striped exterior), the Capitol Tokyu, and the remains of the ill-fated New Japan Hotel, which burned up along with a number of tourists in a fire that led to a wave of new safety regulations for hotels.

Top level Edo period daimyo had lived in the area during the Tokugawa reign. The neighboring Hie Jinja shrine was one of the big three shrines of the time. In the early Meiji period, the daimyo moved away and the government confiscated the lands, turning them to agricultural uses. Akasaka became a hill of tea bushes and akane, plants that produced a red dye, giving the district the name which translates to "red slope." The military moved in later, while the Nagatacho area north of Akasaka became the center of Meiji period state government. The reputation of the "Akasaka ryotei," and their tradition of serving power and politics, dates from this time. The "Akasaka geisha," the lowest class of geisha during the Edo period, were upgraded to entertain the important clientele and are still considered some of the city's best.

Ginza

Ginza used to be synonymous with the glamour of big city life in Tokyo. Elegant, expensive, and at one time the most international part of the city, Ginza inspired a string of hit songs in the first half of the century. Best remembered are songs like "Ginza Rhapsody," or "Ginza Can-Can Girl." Even the American surf-rock band The Ventures wrote a song called "Ginza for Two" (an interesting bit of trivia—The Ventures were a big success here in the early sixties and, until recently, toured Japan every year). The name Ginza has now become another way of saying "shopping street"—there are some 450 "Ginza streets" throughout Japan and the number is still growing.

Originally little more than a swamp, Ginza was among the first areas reclaimed from the sea during the reign of Tokugawa leyasu. Overshadowed by the more prosperous Nihombashi area, Ginza grew as a town of artisans and craftsmen. In 1612 the Tokugawa silver mint was moved to the area. Gin mean silver and za means a licensed association of craftsmen; the district earned its name from the numbers of craftsmen working in the metal. When the mint was moved during the Meiji period, the name remained.

The Tokugawa (Edo) period ended with the challenge from the West and Ginza was one of the first parts of the city to feel the effects of the Meiji government's modernization program. When the area was destroyed by fire in 1872, the government hired the British architect Josiah Conder and planned a model Western-style urban center. Nearly one thousand brick buildings were constructed, tiled pavements laid, and willow trees planted. The first horse trolley in Tokyo passed through Ginza to Nihombashi and Shimbashi. The first gas lights in the city were installed, turning Ginza into a night life area. A single lamp post remains across the street from the Matsuya Department Store.

Ginza-dori in 1928. Courtesy of Shiseido Co., Ltd.

While the brick buildings created quite a stir, most remained vacant long after completion. Though fireproof in theory, the buildings were badly ventilated and believed to be hazardous to health. Still, crowds of people turned out to see the novelty, and the commercial success of Ginza dates from this time. Shopping in Ginza by day, with evening strolling by gaslight, became a fad that led to the coining of a new term ginbura meaning "wandering around in Ginza."

Another term coined in the Meiji era was haikara, or "high collar," a reference to Western-style shirts that became the Meiji era equivalent of the modern "trendy." At the time this meant "Western" and Ginza more than any other part of Tokyo was the center for all that was Western and new—men's suits, watches, meat eating, and coffee drinking.

The area was full of new ideas and entrepreneurs. The famous cosmetics company Shiseido was started in a small Ginza pharmacy in 1872 by Fukuhara Akinobu, a former pharmacist for the navy. The Seiko watch company began as a retail and repair shop opened by Hattori Kintaro. By the Taisho period all the major department stores had opened branches in the area. The Ginza Matsuzakaya was the first department store in the country that didn't require its customers to take off their shoes.

After the war Ginza was the first place to which prosperity returned. The department stores were crowded again, exclusive boutiques began to fill the back streets, and Ginza was called the "Fifth Avenue" of Tokyo. The neighborhood became a treasury of expensive Japanese restaurants and clubs catering to the businessman of the future economic miracle. Even now Ginza claims the largest number of public establishments in Tokyo.

Expensive and conservative, for the postwar generation Ginza has less shopping appeal than the newer districts to the West. Yet somewhat incongruously, the area has Tokyo's largest concentration of art galleries, many of which specialize in the young and avant-garde.

Hibiya—Kasumigaseki—Yurakucho

Like Ginza, Hibiya was part of the marshland reclaimed from the sea during the early Edo period. Close to the central part of the castle, daimyo mansions occupied the grounds. With the early Meiji period exodus of daimyo families from the city, the area was left an empty wasteland. Part of the land was used as the first parade ground for the new Western-style military. Nearby were built the Rokumeikan in 1883 and in 1890 the original Imperial Hotel.

The Rokumeikan was a state-owned guest house designed by Josiah Condor. One of the more idealistic endeavors of the Meiji period establishment, it was believed that, by inviting foreign diplomats to parties given at the ornate western-style building, Japan would be placed on the roster of civilized nations.

The Imperial Hotel was built on the site of the present hotel building. Originally designed by a Japanese, the second building was the work of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The Wright building was torn down in 1968 and the third and present hotel constructed.

The military gave its parade ground to the city in 1893. The initial plan was to build a concentration of government office buildings on the site, but when the land proved unable to support the weight of the proposed constructions, the area was made into the city's first western-style park and opened in 1903. If you happen to take a bus tour that passes through the area, the tour guide is likely to make some slightly risque joke about Hibiya Park's reputation as a favorite spot for lovers. As early as 1908, the police were raiding the park and fining indiscreet couples.

Hibiya is now the home of numerous theaters and movie houses, as well as the famous Takarazuka Theater.

The neighboring Yurakucho area is known for its cheap yakitoriya beneath the elevated train tracks. During the first five years after the war, General McArthur's headquarters were located in the Yurakucho Daiichi Seimei Building (the room remains, though you can't enter). The area had a large black market and was full of U.S. soldiers, prostitutes, orphans, and shoeshine boys. Even today, there are several blocks near the station with a slight postwar air about them.

Kasumigaseki is a short walk through Hibiya Park. In this district of government offices, there are ministries of just about everything—MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry), the National Diet building, and the Prime Minister's Official residence. The thirty-six story Kasumigaseki Building, constructed in 1968, was proudly known as the first Japanese skyscraper.

Marunouchi

Marunouchi is as prestigious as business addresses come in Japan, and most major corporations are located here. Typically, little of the corporate income, however, has been spent on image and the area remains architecturally one of the least interesting in the city.

Marunouchi's reputation was set in the early part of the century. Like many of the city's central areas, the land had been vacated by the samurai at the start of the Meiji period and had been taken over by the new government. Owned by the military, the lands were left unused by all but rickshaw pullers and other Meiji period lowlife characters and became known as "Gambler's Field." The land was put up for sale and first offered to the imperial family, who were unable to raise sufficient funds. In 1889 it was bought by the already powerful Mitsubishi Company.

Plans were made for the Mitsubishi purchase to become a new business district and Josiah Condor was commissioned to build a brick office center modeled on London's Lombard Street. The first building was completed in 1894, and about twenty-five years and twenty-seven brick buildings later the development was completed and became known as Tokyo's "Little London." The buildings were torn down after the war and the area took on its current middle-of-the-road modern air.

The strategic location of Tokyo Station was largely responsible for the success of the new development. Built as the main terminal for trains from the south, the main entrance faced toward the palace and the Mitsubishi buildings, rather than the more established Nihombashi and Kyobashi districts. The Mitsubishi gamble paid off (whether someone else was paid off to ensure the pay-off is another story), and by 1922 over half of Japan's major corporations had already relocated there.

Tokyo Station, home base of the famous Shinkansen "Bullet Train," was built in 1914, and is the oldest remaining station in the city. The Japanese had just beaten the Russians in war and, full of pride and patriotism, decided to build a station to shock the world. Amsterdam Station was chosen as the unlikely model and a vaguely post-Victorian red brick building was erected. The old building can still be seen from the west side of the station. Uninspiring though the building may be, it was the site of two famous political assassinations: that of Prime Minister Hara Takashi by a nineteen-year-old youth in 1877, and in 1930 that of Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi by a right-wing terrorist.

Shimbashi—Shiba—Hamamatsu-cho

Situated at the southern end of Ginza, Shimbashi has always been the less illustrious neighborhood of the two. The station was one of the first in the city, and the original terminal for trains from the south. The surrounding area was known for its shopping arcades, bazaars, and cheap drinking spots. The "Shimbashi geisha" quarter was one of the two great geisha districts of the Meiji period.

Ginza was centered closer toward Shimbashi during the early Meiji period. But, with the opening of Tokyo Station, Shimbashi lost its prominence and the center of Ginza moved north to the crossing where it remains today. The old station was closed and a new one built on the old drinking area. The shops moved to the side and the district is still known for its tiny restaurants, nomiya, and salaryman clientele.

South from Shimbashi is Shiba, an important Edo period temple district protecting the castle from the south, a direction that, according to superstition, was a potentially dangerous one. Zojo-ji, a Tokugawa family temple, was the area's greatest.

The sea reached as far as the Zojo-ji daimon (main gate) at the beginning of the Edo period. A port served merchant vessels, and salt was made on the beaches. Hamarikyu, a villa of the Tokugawa shogun, and its extravagant gardens stretched along the Shiba coast. Now only the gardens remain. Reclamation projects moved the sea far away, and by the Meiji period Shiba became one of the city's industrial districts.

Now Hamamatsu-cho to the west of Shiba borders the sea, its coast lined with warehouses and piers. Takeshiba Sanbashi pier serves ships to the islands lying off the Izu Peninsula. Hamamatsu-cho is best known for its World Trade Center, built in 1970, which became the second tallest skyscraper in Japan. The terminal for the monorail to Haneda Airport is connected to the Trade Center. A copy of the Brussels Manniken-Pis is in the Hamamatsu-cho Station building. Since 1956 this statue of a small naked boy has collected an extensive wardrobe of clothing donated by concerned women passengers. The wardrobe now includes over two hundred outfits that may make the statue one of the best dressed works of public art in the world.

Another famous neighborhood copy is the Tokyo Tower. Built as a tourist attraction in 1958, the tower unfortunately fails to lend the area the hoped for European flair.

Nihombashi—Kyobashi

Old money and conservatism usually go hand-in-hand, and Nihombashi is no exception. Nihombashi has been the center of big money in Japan since the Edo period, and most of the country's big mercantile families started off in this neighborhood.

Nihombashi was the first of the merchant neighborhoods designated by the shogun to be reclaimed from the sea. Wit h the construction of the Nihombashi Bridge in 1603, it became the official last stop on the famous Tokaido route from Kyoto and the point from which all roads in Japan were measured. Rebuilt in 1911, the Nihombashi and the nearby Tokiwa are the oldest bridges in the city.

The district grew up as the heart of commercial Edo with a fish market, the shops of craftsmen and artisans, and offices of money-changers. One of the most densely populated districts of the city, wooden houses were cramped together along the narrow alleys and backstreets. The homes of wealthy merchants and a few of the samurai aristocracy lined the banks of the river.

Nearby was the Kyobashi district, named for its "capital bridge" (the Chinese character for the kyo in Kyobashi is the same kyo as in Tokyo and Kyoto). Next to the bridge was the first Kabuki theater, built in 1624 by Nakazawa Kanzaburo.

The Nihombashi and Kyobashi areas had, in the early days, been full of theaters and temples, while neighboring Ningyo-cho was famous for its pleasure quarters. By the late Edo period all were moved to the northern outskirts of town by the conservative shogunate. The wealthy downtown merchants then traveled north for their pleasures, and the trip was usually by boat from the Kyobashi bridge.

With the changes that came during the Meiji period, the wealthy merchants moved away from the area to the prestigious residential districts to the south and west. Not as receptive to change as Ginza and Marunouchi, Nihombashi was slow to catch up with the modernism of the new era. But by the end of the Meiji period, the district had come into its own with a series of monumental buildings of an architectural style that blended European classical elements with traditional Japanese. The Bank of Japan opened its new building in 1896, and more banks and government offices followed. The department stores—Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya—expanded and added floors.

Little remains from the early days—a few Edo period shops and some bridges and buildings from the Meiji and Taisho periods. The commercial banks are still there as is the stock exchange. But among the major business districts in Tokyo, Nihombashi retains the greatest sense of history and a quiet dignity.

Tsukiji

Tsukiji is one of Tokyo's more offbeat tourist attractions. At the main fish market for the city, buying and selling starts at about 5:00 A.M. and finishes shortly after noon. An early morning trip to the market for a fresh sushi breakfast is a great way to start off a day of sightseeing in Tokyo.

Until the 1923 earthquake, the fish market was located in the heart of Nihombashi, near the Bank of Japan and Mitsukoshi Department Store. When nearly four hundred people died there during the post-earthquake fires, the market was torn down and rebuilt on its present site.

Tsukiji, formerly the mouth of the Sumida River, was a major Edo period reclamation project, the name meaning "constructed land."

When the country was opened to the West during the Meiji period, Tsukiji was built as a foreign settlement to isolate and protect the citizens and foreigners from each other. The area was never much liked, except by the Christian missionaries who built St. Luke's Hospital and St. Paul University. The Hoterukan Hotel was built nearby, an early attempt at Western architecture with over two hundred rooms. In 1869 the Tokyo government opened the Shibaura pleasure quarter in Tsukiji in an attempt to please the foreign population. The quarter had over two hundred houses with nearly two thousand geisha and courtesans, but the Shibaura was more than most of the prudish foreigners could take. The quarter never prospered and was shut down shortly afterward.

At the end of the nineteenth century when the treaties with foreign powers were revised and autonomy returned to Japan, foreigners were permitted to live where they chose in the city. Most moved from the settlement and the remaining buildings burned down in the earthquake.

Kanda—Jimbocho

It was with dirt from the top of Kanda's Surugadai hill that the marshlands of early Edo were reclaimed. Nearly half of the hill was carried off over the years and by the late Tokugawa era the hill had a large flat plateau on the top.

Kanda means "god's field," the land having originally belonged to Ise Jingu shrine, the oldest in Japan. The area developed as a town for workers and craftsmen; its fruit and vegetable market provisioned the castle. Edo Period gangsters frequented the district and its bath houses, known for their rather tough breed of women.

The Meiji-period haikara liberals and intellectuals found a home here. The Nikoraido Russian Cathedral was an impressive foreign monument for the neighborhood; there were bookstores and the highest concentration of universities in the city.

The district now has the feel of a classic university town. The nearby Jimbocho secondhand book district adds to the general intellectual atmosphere and over sixty percent of Japan's publishers are in the neighborhood. The district also has many sporting goods stores catering to the average student who, once through the "examination hell" that comes before acceptance into university, spends more time drinking, playing sports, or going to mah-jongg parlors than studying.

Also in the Kanda district are a number of restaurants that date from the Edo period, including Tokyo's most famous noodle shop—Yabu Soba.

Ochanomizu—Hongo—Yushima

With Kanda, these areas make up the major students' districts of Tokyo. Always fond of foreign analogies, the Japanese like to call this the city's "Quartier Latin." The district's real name Ochanomizu means "tea water," a reference to the waters of a nearby spring that were used by Tokugawa leyasu for the tea ceremony.

The district's reputation for education dates from the Edo period with the construction of the official Confucian Academy for the shogunate. The Yushima Seido shrine, formerly part of the school, still survives.

Hongo's Tokyo University, popularly known as "Todai," is the most prestigious university in the country. In January and February each year, hundreds of hopeful junior high and high school students make a pilgrimage to the area, walking from Yushima Seido, to Yushima Shrine (dedicated to a famous Heian period scholar) and finally ending up at the gates of "Todai heaven." Complementing the district's overall educational atmosphere is a nearby concentration of love hotels.

Akihabara

The electronics discount district of Tokyo, Akihabara is a good place to go to experience the productiveness of the country. Besides the electrical goods that interest most foreigners, the selection of home appliances built for the Japanese domestic market is also fun to browse through.

The district was formerly the grounds of an Edo period shrine called the Akiba, or "autumn leaf." When the shrine was destroyed in one of Kanda's frequent fires, the lands were cleared as a fire break and became known as the field of Akiba or Akibagahara. The land was later used as a freight depot by the Meiji government, and the name took on its current form.

Korakuen

Korakuen is best known among the Japanese for its baseball stadium, the site of the yearly Japan Series. From 1871 until the end of World War I, the stadium grounds had been occupied by a government munitions factory that was then moved to Kyushu. The stadium was built in 1934 with Babe Ruth invited as the honored guest at the opening ceremony.

The Korakuen Station was torn down and replaced by the "Big Egg" stadium in 1988. Like the Kasumigaseki Building, the "Egg" has become a standard of measurement and comparison for things of overwhelming size—the annual amount of garbage produced by a particular ward will be likened to filling the "Big Egg" three times, or a new development will be a mere half.

The name Korakuen comes from the Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens that date from the early Edo period. One of the most famous and most beautiful in the city, the garden offers a striking contrast to its namesaké stadium and the surrounding amusement park that now dominates the area.

Shinagawa

The original Shinagawa Station, located nearer to the sea than the present one, served the first Japanese rail line that ran from here to Yokohama (Kanagawa Prefecture). The line was later extended to Shimbashi. One of the most striking of Meiji period modernization efforts, the first trains were expensive and used only by the wealthy, government officials, and foreigners. A story is told of how when the Japanese first boarded the trains, they politely removed their shoes on the platform before entering the cars. Upon arrival, the Japanese passengers disembarked, astonished to find that their shoes were not waiting outside the door where they had left them.

Shinagawa had been a major stop on the Edo-period Tokaido route to the south, growing up as a way station with inns and a pleasure quarter that was second only to the famous Yoshiwara. The pleasure quarter declined in the later Meiji period when the station was moved to its current site.

Meiji-period Shinagawa was part of the city's industrial zone, though now little remains of the district's early flavor. The station is still an important transfer point, but the surrounding area is best known for its hotels and for being the location of the Sony headquarters.

Ningyocho

Ningyocho is a quiet neighborhood, known to most foreigners as the location of TCAT, the Tokyo City Air Terminal, with its bus service to Narita Airport. Close to the central Edo period business districts, Ningyocho was a major amusement center with kabuki theaters, and the famous Yoshiwara geisha district. The area was named "doll town" for the number of shops selling dolls to the theater audiences.

Ningyocho lost its geisha, and later its theaters, to Asakusa in the north. The city's doll shops are now in Asakusabashi. On the outer fringes of the Meiji period downtown development, Ningyocho escaped the era's modernization madness and settled into the quiet shitamachi (downtown) neighborhood it remains today.

Along the main crossing is a shopping area. Some shops are historical. Kotobuki sells the same traditional sweets they've been famous for since the late 1800s. Suitengu Shrine is still visited by expectant mothers and those with newborn babies.

Asakusa

Tokyo passed through various stages of growth, and the districts of the city followed along, or were left behind, as modernization and new modes of transportation changed the patterns of urban life. The original shitamachi areas—Nihombashi and Ginza—moved with the city into its Meiji period growth, and are, now, more memorable as districts from the early modern era. But the feeling of the shitamachi era remains in a district that was, in the early Edo period, a very distant neighborhood of marginal interest to the central downtown populace.

Asakusa flourished after the Edo period Tempo Reforms enacted by the financially unstable Tokugawa government. The theaters and pleasure quarters were moved here from the downtown districts in an attempt to encourage the merchants to lead more frugal lives, while the samurai class as a whole was slowly sinking into poverty. Asakusa thrived through the Meiji and Taisho periods, but when the railroads became important, Asakusa Station remained a minor stop, and the modernization that changed the real downtown areas never affected it. Today Asakusa retains more of the old Tokyo shitamachi character than any other part of town.

The district is centered around Senso-ji temple, popularly known as the Asakusa Kannon-dera. Dating from the eighth century, the temple enshrines a small golden statue of Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, found by local fishermen in 628. At least that's how the legend goes. The statue is never on view and no one ever seems to have seen it, but its existence has never been questioned by the millions of pilgrims who flocked to the area and continue to come today.

This northern tip of the city was originally underwater, and later became a fishing village. As the temple attracted ever greater crowds of worshippers, the surrounding area filled up with shops, and the sometimes bawdy forms of entertainment typical of many Edo period temples. When the theaters and pleasure quarters entered the area its amusements increased and so did the crowds.

Moved from its original Ningyocho home, Yoshiwara to the north was the most famous of Edo and Meiji period geisha districts. The downtown merchants traveled by boat from the southern parts of the city along the Sumida River, often finishing the trip on foot through the cherry-tree-lined park that stretches from the main Asakusa bridge north on both sides of the river.

At the start of the twentieth century, Asakusa was still largely rural in character, and much of the city's rice land was found in the area. But by the end of the Meiji era, the district claimed the highest population density in the city. The Yoshiwara geisha quarter had declined with the advance of modernization, and was destroyed in the fire of 1911. When the district was rebuilt, its days of glory were clearly over.

Asakusa continued to prosper through the Taisho and early Showa periods. The Kabuki theaters moved back to their original downtown homes as the new day made the old popular culture respectable. Movie houses took their place and the first film showing in Japan was held in Asakusa in the early thirties.

The district was badly scarred by the war. Fire bombing destroyed most of its monuments. Asakusa and its temples were rebuilt, but the postwar city looked more to the western districts and Asakusa was gradually left behind.

Asakusa is one of the last strongholds of the Edokko, the born and bred child of Edo. The shitamachi spirit and sensibilities remain here. Craftsmen work in their traditional shops, in the traditional way, maintaining the sense of pride for which the Edokko was famous.

Ueno

When the fabled cherry blossoms burst out in spring, the favorite viewing spot for the average Tokyoite is Ueno Park. Since the Edo period, Ueno Hill was famous for its blossoms, but, surrounded by the Tokugawa family temple complex, the viewing was kept fairly sedate. Things have changed and now Ueno draws huge crowds to frolic beneath the blossoms.

It is quite a spectacle, though not nearly as poetic as might be imagined. On approximately four tatami mat-sized sheets of plastic (about eight square meters), cardboard or cloth, the parties gather. A row of shoes fringe the sides of the mat and each area is separated from its neighbor by ropes and strings tied between the trees. By day things remain quiet, with families making up the greater part of the crowd. But after dark, thousands of office workers make a mad rush for the little plot saved by a junior co-worker whose assignment was to sit in the park and hold that space. Until 10:00 P.M. when the park closes, the crowds will eat, drink, and sing songs, getting for the most part absolutely plastered and feeling very Japanese. Stray foreigners are almost always invited to join a group—which can be amusing for a while. When the crowd disperses, the park is left quiet, filled with the pink blossoms and mountains of garbage deposited by the nature loving revelers. This is one cultural experience you shouldn't miss.

During the Edo period, Ueno was one of the city's main temple districts. Being in the northeast quarter of town, the temples served to protect the castle from this traditionally dangerous direction (demons were believed to favor this route of attack). The temples were also planned to double as forts in the event of a military attack on the city. The main temple was Kan'eiji, where six of the fifteen Tokugawa shoguns were buried.

In of the Meiji Restoration, the city of Edo was turned over to the new government without a fight. The few remaining Tokugawa loyalists retreated to the hills surrounding the temple and a final battle was fought. The loyalists were soon defeated, but most of the temple complex was burned.

In early Meiji, plans were drawn up to build a medical school on the former temple grounds. When a German doctor was consulted about the project he suggested that the medical school be located elsewhere and the hill be turned into a park. His suggestion was followed and in 1873 Ueno became the first public park in the city. Officially named the Ueno Royal Park, the land was transferred to the royal family in 1890, and on the marriage of the Showa emperor in 1924, was returned to the city. The renaissance-style building of the National Museum in the park was a gift from the citizens of Tokyo in commemoration of the emperor's wedding.

The park was the first place in Japan to have a museum and a zoo. It now has four major museums and the zoo that is famous for its pandas and the rather sad condition in which the animals are kept. Shinobazu Pond in the western portion of the park was originally part of the marshlands that covered most of the downtown districts. Annexed to the park in 1885, it was a favorite spot for viewing waterlilies.

Aside from its cultural attractions, Ueno is known for the large numbers of country people who stream into its station from the north. Less sophisticated than downtown Tokyo, old shops and restaurants remain from the Edo period when its main street was one of the busiest shopping areas in the city. After the war a large black market flourished beneath the railroad tracks. The market is still there and, though no longer a black market, Ameyoko retains much of the flavor of one.

Further north of Ueno is Yanaka, a continuation of the Ueno temple district. This area escaped the fires of the earthquake and World War II; numerous small temples, shrines, and old shops remain. The Yanaka cemetery is another famous spot for cherry blossom viewing.

Asakusabashi—Kuramae—Ryogoku

Asakusabashi is a wholesale district known for its shops selling dolls, toys, novelties, and seasonal decorations. The district is named for the Asakusa bridge that crosses the narrow Kanda River.

Yanagibashi, the "Willow Bridge," crosses the Kanda further down, close to the point where it meets the Sumida River. The bridge was famous for its geisha quarter and as a departure point for boat passage to the northern Yoshiwara. The Yanagibashi area was the more conservative geisha district of the two. At its peak in the late Edo and early Meiji periods, it faithfully maintained the traditional ways. The boathouses later became ryotei, the most exclusive type of Japanese restaurant. A few ryotei remain in the neighborhood today, and boats can still be rented near the bridge.

Kuramae was a rice warehouse district in the Edo period. Since 1954, sumo tournaments had been held in the area's Kokugikan. But sumo really belongs to the other side of the Sumida River, to Ryogoku. In 1985 a new sumo stadium was opened and the tournaments returned to their true home.

Ryogoku literally translates as "both countries," the Sumida River having long separated the districts on either side. In the Edo period, bridge building was restricted by the government in order to make an attack on the capital more difficult for potential invaders. But when hundreds of people were trapped and killed on the banks of the river during one of the many Edo fires, the shogunate permitted a bridge to be constructed in the area.

Ryogoku remains the center of sumo. Many of the stables where sumo wrestlers live and train are located in the area. During the Tokyo sumo tournaments the wrestlers wander around the streets in all their enormous glory.

Fukagawa—Kiba—Tsukudajima

Fukagawa lies on the east side of the Sumida River, south of Ryogoku, bordering Tokyo Bay. The district and the neighboring Kiba were known through the Edo period for their lumberyards. The skills of the early lumber-yard workers are now commemorated in a yearly festival in Kiba. Both areas often suffered damage from the frequent floods of the Sumida. Flood control banks have been built along the river's edge, protecting the lands but destroying much of the neighborhood's atmosphere.

Until the early Meiji period, Fukagawa was one of the less densely populated districts in the city. Convenient to cheap water transportation, it became one of the major industrial districts of Meiji-period Tokyo.

Tsukudajima lies to the southwest. The island has grown with postwar reclamation projects, but the original part of the island escaped from the constant fires of the downtown district as well as those of World War II. In spite of recent development and an increasing number of tall buildings, the back streets remain closer to those of the Edo period city than any other part of town.

Tokyo Bay and the Developing City

One tends to forget that Tokyo has a waterfront. Tokyo Bay and the Sumida River that were so important to Edo Tokyo have long been lost to the people of this city. For years laws have restricted the use of the Tokyo waterfront to industries that depended upon the sea. Only relatively recently were these laws repealed.

In the 1980s Tokyo began a vigorous program of planned development along the waterfront—its last remaining, undeveloped resource. Initial stages of planning seemed to offer a hope that the people of Tokyo would soon be able to breathe the sea air, that restaurants and shops could face out on something more than a gray street. Bold plans were discussed, great hopes rose, but the forces that be seem to have swayed the tide in their favor and the waterfront risks being lost to the people once again.

Spurred on by the property boom of the eighties, huge developments grow along the banks of the river and bay. In a city gasping for breath, only token parks—strips of uninviting concrete walkways and plazas have been left in exchange. A public golf course built on an island created from a garbage fill gives off so much methane gas that smoking is forbidden for fear that the greens might explode. And, while the recession that hit Japan in the late eighties has slowed this "progress" down a bit, it is hard to know what the long-term affects will be.

Throughout Tokyo, old neighborhoods have been unceremoniously decimated by the omnipresent and seemingly omnivorous machines that push down and crush the fragile old wooden houses as a child might smash a tiny wooden fort. What replaces these remains of the past offers the promise of a mediocre future. Aging wooden homes are replaced by multi-unit "kit" houses or antiseptic apartment blocks. The aggressive, monumental architecture characteristic of new development sites never seems to work.

Of course, there are some exceptions. There is more good contemporary architecture in Tokyo now than there was in the early eighties, there is better art. There are new neighborhoods blossoming in former warehouse or residential areas. There is a new form of contemporary life emerging from the chaos of the city.

It is difficult to guess what this rapidly and radically changing metropolis will be like in a few years. But the real life of Tokyo will not emerge from the big developments planned by Japan, Inc. It will emerge from the individual creativity and energy of the people who live here. It will flourish in funny little pockets here and there, in overlooked neighborhoods where, as in the past, the traditional and the avant-garde will coexist, on a human and intimate scale, each playing off the other in that fascinating, sometimes whimsical way that will always make Tokyo an exciting place to be.