Start with cliches

Start with cliches. When asked for their image of Tokyo, Japanese who live beyond the Kanto reply with two invariabilities. "Too many people in Tokyo" and "People in Tokyo are cold." A friend visiting from a farming town in the American west needed regular reminding that he was not to continually bump into his host. The bumpkin was adverse to contact with strangers and used his host's space for strategic, if hapless, concealment. Concealment conjoined with the nimble agility of the artful dodger is the critical urban skill. It's no gamble, concealment in Tokyo wears a poker face. Fact: specialists train people in Tokyo to smile, and private citizens pay to reacquire the facility.

Tokyo is not the fastest paced city in Japan. Osaka holds that honor, though not perhaps by much these days. After a three-year rotation out of Tokyo, I was surprised to return as a major cultural shift occurred. Tokyoites suddenly began walking on escalators and non-climbers now know they are to shift left and allow the speedy throughway. One sign of the unregenerate, the aged, the newcomer, or the visitor from the less-developed parts of Japan is their unyielding stance on the right-hand side of any people mover. Get a move on. Condemned by cliche, Tokyo wears the mask of "hito-gomi." Official Japan promotes the warm bath of "ningen-kankei."*

Tokyo does have the stress.

Is a large part of the stress the commute? Certainly, trains in the Kansai can be as crowded. Yet consider, half an hour from Osaka and you could be in Kyoto, Kobe, or Nara. Half an hour from Tokyo and you could be in Machida, or Hachioji, (both still Tokyo, of course), Chiba, Omiya, or just south of Yokohama. How inviting. As this comparison suggests, on the face of things, which is how they always appear to a map-reader, Tokyo lacks, shall we say, an immediate sense of diversity. You do have to look for it. On the face of it, speeding by, there is not so much to provoke a smile.

Tokyo is a youngish place. If you can make the time for it, Edward Seidensticker's two-volume history High City, Low City, is an entertaining excursion through Tokyo's past. Tokyo is a boomtown, a Japanese Los Angeles, certainly based upon the long lost remnants of swampy Edo and the Shogun's ceremonial hostage economy. And like both LA and the daimyo family hostages, a great many people in Tokyo are recent arrivals. In fact, comparing pride of place with 'older' parts of Japan, Tokyo has very little history of the sort that gains scholars degrees, you know, the respected sort. The broad picture is clear enough and the Edo Museum is a fine introduction to the official view. But the best of Tokyo, as Seidensticker evidences, is in the small story, what the fedora-wearing news-hounds of a previous age would call the human angle.

Not so from my home, on Shinjuku-dori (avenue) is a large memorial stone. This stone marks the point at which the honey wagons could begin the resale of their product to local farmers. (Honey wagons, for the uninitiated, are collectors of human waste, reused on the farm as fertilizer.) The memorial is slightly older than 100 years. The location is between Shinjuku-sanchome and Yotsuya, well within a boring area of the central district. Tokyo is LA young, filled with outsiders on the make. The core of historic Tokyo deserves your attention.

The new Oedo-sen (Great Edo line) is our newest subway. Designed as an inner circle that disregards the tacky northern satellite Ikebukuro and the upstart southern satellite Shibuya, the Oedo pays honor to the original Tokyo neighborhoods. It is a superb basis for orienting yourself to a proper Tokyo exploration, much more so than the Yamanote circle line, which now is placed in proper historical perspective as a stage of the city's growth. The Yamanote is the National Railways circle of Tokyo, the Oedo is a Tokyo Metropolitan line. These political distinctions, though concealed, are important. Exploring the Oedo takes you further into the city's past, and not just because, in their wisdom, the engineers have lowered the car ceilings by a few centimeters, a notional gesture of respect perhaps to a calmer, and shorter, time.

I picked up from my local Oedo station yesterday one of the line's introductory posters. (Yes, you can ask the authorities for subway posters and, when the scheduled posting period is complete, you may be given them.) Imagine a meter-wide overhead shot of central Tokyo on a clear day from about three thousand feet, to the left the Shinjuku monoliths, to the right the Sumida river and the homey neighborhoods of Shitamachi, (the old Edo, low town). You realize that Tokyo is a fairly uninteresting topographical setting, only now recovering any relation to the visually appealing riverfront area, and still burdened with architectural blandness conditioned by the two hasty emergency rebuildings of the century past and the shoddy taste of fast money bubble boys. But to see Tokyo whole in this way challenges one to also see it up close. The city is spread before you, indeed starts at your very feet, and if you can no longer so easily see the depth of time in the fabric of space, there are many places, where, like a temple bell, a moment of clarity can be reached with a taste, a smell, a glance.

The poster also strikes an unintended note, which for the semiotician, is always the most revealing. The strategically concealed conjures the collective unconscious -- always. The Japanese are, of course, devoted to fantasy characters, and among these characters Doraimon holds a special place. It is Doraimon, the little robot cat from the future who can, from his magic pocket, produce all manner of splendid techno-whimsies to amuse and astound his young friends. On the Oedo poster, smack in the middle, floats a Doraimon rampant. Always diverting, Doraimon's cheerful cartoon image conceals one neighborhood and one important building. Can you guess which one?

William Gatton
April 1, 2001

*"Ningen-kankei" refers to human relationships and basing actions upon the mutual consideration of each other's needs. "Hito-gomi" refers to vast and empty-headed crowds, note the two forming words, people and garbage.