Van Fleet - Tales of old Tokyo: the remarkable story of one of the worlds most fascinating cities

Tales of Old Tokyo

By John Darwin Van Fleet

ISBN-13: 978-988-82734-5-4

Copyright 2015 John Darwin Van Fleet

HISTORY / Asia / Japan

First printing Summer 2015

EB068

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Published by Earnshaw Books Ltd. (Hong Kong).

Tokyo. Probably the most populous city in the world in the early 19th century. Invasion by foreign navy in 1853. Revolution in 1868. Consumed by fire in 1872. Meteoric return to the top rank of worldwide cities by the end of the 19th century. Capital of the first non-Western country to defeat a Western power in war (1905). Devastation by earthquake and fire, killing more than 100,000 (3% of the total population) in 1923. Descent into fascist nightmare in the 1930s.

Devastation by fire-bombing, again killing more than 100,000, in 1945. Population reduced by half, as the survivors fled. Meteoric rise (again) to the top rank of worldwide cities by the 1960s, as Japan became top five in global GDP. Host of the Olympics in 1964.

Is there any city in human history that has experienced so much shock, so much change, in such a short time? The Japanese famously like to consider themselves exceptionalthe history of their capital city since the mid-19th century gives them abundant reason to conclude that Tokyo is, historically speaking, unique.

The Black Shipsan image of the U.S. navys second mission to force open Japan, in 1854.

The old Shinbashi Station, where Tokyos Shiodome Station now stands, circa 1890

Tokyos sense of exceptionalism, and its instability, are grounded in part in geology. The city rests uneasily on the far eastern edge of the massive Eurasian tectonic plate, which underlies most of Europe and northern Asia, but Tokyo is also within a short bus or boat ride of at least three other tectonic plates: the Okhotsk (north), Pacific (east) and Philippine (south). No wonder then that Japan, host landmass for about 3% of the worlds people, also hosts a disproportionate share of the worlds most deadly earthquakes.

From 1853 to 1964, Tokyo experienced not only natural cataclysmsthe earthquakes and subsequent fires, and policide by firebombingbut also social transformations hard to fathom in their magnitude: the enforced opening of the capital and the country to foreign trade and residence beginning with Commodore Perrys 1853 invasion, the transformation of the governmental system in the late 19th century and the concurrent modernization at breath-taking speed, the subsequent rise of Japan to become one of the worlds leading economies and military powers, marked by their (Pyrrhic) victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904 1905), the sociocultural promise of the Taisho Democracy period (roughly 1915 1930) destroyed by creeping fascism, the militarization of the capital from that point until 1945, the occupation by the U.S. from August 1945 and yet another total transformation of every aspect of society, and the evolution from the utter devastation of 1945 into one of the worlds leading cities, capital of a country that had clawed its way back up to the top five in global GDP, by the time of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

Tokyo street scene, 1947. The banner announces the launch of an annual charitable campaign that continues today.

I lived in Tokyo from 11 July 1991 until 20 December 2000, the decade that followed the infamous bubble economy of the 1980syet another transformation. I thank Earnshaw Books for the opportunity to construct Tales of Old Tokyo as one of EBs Tales of Old series.

Construct is the correct verbrather than offering lots of my own prose, in the spirit of the other works in the Tales of Old series I have mostly cobbled together the words of those who knew Tokyo first-hand between 1853 and 1964, along with images created during those years.

Note on name order: In the parts of the body of the work that Ive constructed (not including the acknowledgements at the back), I present Japanese peoples names in their usual order, family name first, given name second. I present Western names in their usual first name/last name order. Quotations are, to the degree possible, precise in (mis)spellings, etc.

Tokyos Nihonbashi in the days when one could easily see Mt. Fuji from it, circa 1860

Among the more than three hundred images in Tales of Old Tokyo, virtually all are so old that they are now in the public domain. We have attempted at the back to cite some of the more recently published works from which we have sourced images. We regret any omission and will correct it in updated versions of Tales of Old Tokyo.

Foreigners flying the Japanese flag at the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, 24 October 1964

The annual October O-Eshiki festival at Ikegami Honmon-ji, in todays Ota ward of Tokyo, circa 1930

An early 19th century etching of a geisha and her servant