Tokyo Megacity. Donald Richie
Bridge, in the pleasure grounds of Asakusa, and in the licensed quarters of the Yoshiwara—life was not the stretch of hard labor prescribed by the authorities. Rather, the ideal was drifting as elegantly as possible along life’s river, free (in the words of an Edo poet) “as a gourd floating downstream,” a part of the ukiyo, the floating world.
An attitude cultivated among merchants and artisans was known as iki, a term which we might variously translate. “Cool” comes close, it suggests being “with it” and the Japanese term incorporates an assumed insouciance that refused to assign any particular importance to the stern edicts from the castle. To be sure, the castle was where the power was. Peasant uprisings were put down with brutality, and the kabuki is still full of stories of what happens to those who got caught—often young lovers mating across the social gap and ending up as double suicides.
Koi (carp) appear to swim inside delicate hand-painted laquerware bowls on a reed tray.
A vendor cooks fresh ayu sweetfish over charcoal at a traditional summer street fair.
Businessmen in conservative dark suits stroll beneath maple trees in bright autumn colors at Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens.
A dancer shares a smile at Asakusa’s Samba Festival.
Samurai were forbidden the pleasures of the pleasure-quarters and were subject to discipline if apprehended. The problem was solved when a special kind of hood-like headgear was put on sale. By purchasing and wearing one of these, the errant aristocrat indicated that he was incognito. This was a very Low City-like solution, one which satisfied the aristocrats and the authorities as well.
The authorities themselves were not immune to the charms of this proscribed popular culture. The novelty-loving shogun, Tsunayoshi, in 1682 went to see the first Korean circus to come to Japan. When an enormous whale beached itself in Shinagawa in 1798, the whole carcass was considered so exotic that it was lugged into the gardens of the palace to be examined by the upper classes.
Thus, culture high and low early merged in Edo and the result informs the distinctive flavor of Tokyo even now. There are, in actuality, two Japans. There is the “official” version (tea ceremony, subservient kimono-clad women) which is also the exported version and the one shown visitors. It is also the way that Japanese society likes to view itself, whether or not it happens to be accurate.
Then there is the other Japan, one which might be called the “real” one. Its people, as has been often noted, do not behave like “Japanese” because none of the rules of order and decorum insisted upon by the official version apply. An example might be the people shown in the comedies of kyogen, in the wood-block caricatures of the Edo period, or—in our own time—those shown in pop-lit, in manga cartoons, and in the works of filmmaker Imamura Shohei.
These people, almost always from the lower classes, do not recognize the meaning of fidelity or loyalty, they are completely natural and are to that extent “uncivilized” if civilization means (as it does) an avoidance of the natural.
Imamura himself said that “I happen to be more interested in the Japan that flourished before the artistic decadence fostered by political isolation in the feudal period,” later adding: “The Japanese did not change as a result of the Pacific War … they haven’t changed in thousands of years.”
An elevated expressway and a fast-moving couple cross the Nihonbashi Bridge.
A classic costume is worn with fashionable flair at Asakusa’s Sanja Festival.
Tokyo Skytree and Senso-ji Temple’s pagoda rise above Dembo-in Garden.
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