LOW CITY, HIGH CITY: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake, 1867-1923

by Edward G. Seidensticker ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 24, 1983

Tokyo may be described as an agglomeration, or a hodge-podge, and so may Professor Seidensticker's notes on the city from 1867 to 1923: the period when old Edo became modern Tokyo--when, as we know from the Ukiyoe prints (many of them, of course, reproduced here), top-knots coexisted with top hats. The Low City refers to the plebeian, lower-lying sections to the east, the cultural heart of old Edo, which was mostly destroyed by the 1923 earthquake-and-fire (as distinct from the patrician High City to the west). But for Seidensticker--a distinguished translator and scholar, and a long-time resident of Tokyo--the Low City has many rich and subtle meanings. It is one of those ""dark medieval corners,"" doomed everywhere, which vanished more rapidly in Japan than in the West; a nexus of popular culture (the Kabuki theater, the licensed pleasure quarters) that gave way to Civilization and Enlightenment; the seedbed of the ""mercantile adventuring. . . that has brought us to semiconductors and robots."" Seidensticker does not explore these aspects in a systematic way, either thematically or chronologically, though there is an underlying movement-in-time and a broad shift-of-focus. Reading the narrative--precise, insightful, ambivalent--is rather like wandering, with the delights of re-cognition. ""Having left shadows behind, Tokyo seemed intent upon becoming the brightest city in the world."" ""Men were in most respects quicker to go to high collar [Western dress] than women. . . . It has to do, probably, with the decorative function assigned to women, and also with somewhat magical aspects assigned to Western panoply and appurtenances."" Early on, Seidensticker speaks of the invention of rickshaws, the advent of department stores, the persistence of smells; midway, he discusses the transformation of geisha houses; closing, he mentions the Chaplin caramels and ""pale"" democracy of the brief Taish period (1912-26). Curios are no more the point, though, than theory. Cultural history for amateurs of Japan and connoisseurs of nuance.

Pub Date: May 24, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION