Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination Book 34)

by Stephen Mansfield

  A nightingale sings.

  The battle was an act of gallantry with little hope of succeeding, a model of the kind of noble failure much beloved of the Japanese and, in the dramatization of history so characteristic of this storytelling city, an example of events instantly requisitioned as literary and theatrical narrative.

  Meiji Imperium

  1868-1912

  The emperor, Son of Heaven, remained in a hermetic seclusion in his palace in Kyoto. But even there, behind high walls of clay and tile and the nine gateways that led to the imperial presence, life was stirring. The first two Englishmen to be granted an audience with the mythical emperor, Sir Harry Parkes and A. B. Mitford, encountered a fifteen-year-old adolescent dressed in a robe of white brocade, with trousers of vermillion silk trailing several yards behind him. His teeth, the astonished guests noted, were lacquered black, the upper lip gilded, the lower painted crimson; sooty arcs had been painted high on his forehead above shaven eyebrows, and his cheeks were rouged. Mitford captures the occasion:

  We were standing in the presence of a sovereign whose ancestors for centuries had been to their people demi-gods... The sanctity of their seclusion had been inviolate, they had held no intercourse with a world of which they knew nothing. Now, suddenly, the veil of the temple had been rent, and the Boy-God had descended from the clouds to take his place among the children of men... and had held communion with The Beasts from Without.

  Under the new, as yet uncertain order, those members of the samurai class who had remained loyal to both shogun and emperor were ruined overnight, forced in many cases to sell off their family heirlooms, even used clothes. Daimyo compelled to maintain large estates in Edo now packed up their possessions and left for the provinces, taking their families and retainers with them. Hundreds of acres of choice land fell vacant. These well appointed plots formed the core of the modern, westernized city that would soon grow. Many of the estates were used by foreign legations.

  The departure en masse of an entire social class, about to be rendered anachronistic by reform, triggered civil disorder as ronin and thieves, the two practically synonymous at this historical juncture, set about occupying these mansions, using them as strongholds from which to rape, plunder and murder in the manner of marauders. Trade slumped as merchants closed down their shops, traders sealed their warehouses and thousands of townspeople fled the city, leaving Edo vulnerable.

  Land prices fell and so did the population, from two million to 600,000. Grass grew in the streets outside the abandoned residences of the daimyo. The future business quarter of Marunouchi, Nihonbashi and the administrative district of Kasumigaseki languished as their great mansions were deserted and empty streets invaded with weeds. Pedestrians venturing into the area, even during daylight hours, risked attack by armed robbers. The novelist Nagai Kafu, born in 1879 and a child at the time, captured the sense of insecurity in an autobiographical story called The Fox.

  The talk was uniformly cruel and gory, of conspirators, of assassinations, of armed robbers. The air was saturated with doubt and suspicion. At a house the status of whose owner called for a moderately imposing gate, or a mercantile house with impressive godowns, a murderous blade could at any time come flashing through the floor mats, the culprit having stolen under the verandah and lain in wait for sounds of sleep.

  Order was restored with the arrival of the boy emperor who, with a retinue of one thousand soldiers, entered the city on 26 November 1868. The streets on that day were completely silent as the emperor made his slow procession towards the castle. Things livened up the following month when a national holiday was declared and 2,563 barrels of royal sake were distributed throughout the city.

  Restoration and Renewal

  The policies initiated after the arrival of the young emperor were defined by the word ishin, usually translated as “restoration”. More accurately, the term stood for renewal, a revitalization involving the collective energy of the entire populace. Emperors to this day are invariably called on to provide commemorative verses when the occasion calls for it, a court tradition members of the royal family seem to genuinely enjoy. The Meiji emperor’s verse in honour of the new age was nothing if not prophetic:

  It is time for men

  Who were born in the land of warriors;

  It is time for them

  To make themselves known.

  In a charter oath that called upon the people to renounce much of the past in an effort to become as powerful as the West, the young emperor told them that “knowledge shall be sought throughout the world,” a pledge that was firmly honoured. Fukoku Kyohei, denoting “Rich Country, Strong Army”, a fresh slogan for an age characterized by rallying cries, captured the aspirations of the times.

  Edo had acquired its new name Tokyo, meaning “Eastern Capital”, on 13 September 1868. For several years the two names co-existed. As the feudal bastion transformed itself into a modern city, even the perception of time changed, or at least the method of fixing it, with Japan adopting the western calendar on 1 January 1873. The perceptions of foreigners also underwent changes. The travel writer Isabella L. Bird, visiting the city in 1878, summed up the distinction between the names when she wrote, “It would seem an incongruity to travel to Yedo by railway, but quite proper when the destination is Tokiyo.”

  While most people embraced the new order, the sense of unease at the encounter with the outsiders was expressed by a radical political movement whose slogan, Sonno joi, can be translated as “revere the emperor, expel the barbarian.” The imminent dissolution of the feudal samurai class and its replacement by a conscript army, along with the arrival of the “barbarians” themselves, engendered yet another instance of xenophobia in the form of the League of the Divine Wind. Members of the league held that self-purification and sincere living would cause the Japanese gods to send a kamikaze (divine wind) to expunge foreign influences. In the meantime, its followers took more practical steps by carrying self-purifying salt on their persons in the event that they met someone in western dress. Money of foreign design or provenance was handled only with the aid of chopsticks.

  The more western-allergic ex-samurai sought further protection by covering their topknots with metal fans when they rode under the newly installed telegraph wires. Rumours had already spread among common folk in the countryside that the wires were somehow connected with black magic rites practised by Christians. In the end samurai managed to keep their titles and modest stipends, but in all other respects they were turned into superannuated warriors.

  The New Age

  The promulgation of the Meiji constitution took place on 11 February

  1889. Materially it made little diffrence, but psychologically a great shift took place. Members of the merchant class, in particular, may have made themselves affluent, but their prestige and self-esteem had been relatively low. Now they were liberated from the shame of a rank that left them wealthy but despised. Playwright Hasegawa Shigure, a native of Nihonbashi, described the sense of release experienced by her father with the declaration of the Meiji constitution as “the end of the old humiliation, the expunging of the stigma they had carried for so many years as Edo townspeople.” Outcast groups like the eta were emancipated from their wretched status. The stigma ran far too deep, though, to be so easily waved away with the mere signing of a document.

  In this new age, overtures were made to the foreign powers and audience quickly sought with the emperor. The Japan Times Overland Mail commented on this extraordinary turn of events in the 13 January 1869 issue:

  ... an Imperial demi-god, unapproachable, sacred from the eyes even of his own nobles: in December asking admission within the circle of civilized sovereigns, attempting the part of a constitutional monarch and preparing to receive the representatives of a score of foreign nations and foreign services, every individual of which the law, but a few short years ago, enjoined each true Japanese to slay, should he dare to pollute the soil of Nippon with unholy tread.

  The empe
ror found himself in a role he was born for. His position in this new order was clear. A divine ruler, embodying the revival of traditional moral values, he was also expected to symbolize the progressive doctrines of Meiji, to steer the nation in the manner of a benign philosopher-king to the forefront of the civilized world. Any lingering reservations were assuaged with yet another rousing slogan typical of early Meiji’s ambitions and optimism. “Japanese Spirit and Western Culture” implied a fruitful convergence of refined abstraction and materialism.

  By the early 1870s the majority of Japanese, caught up in the headlong rush to acquire western knowledge and technology, had abandoned their desire to cling to or recreate the past. Though with some difficulty, the new government set about trying to transform the manners and cultural habits of Tokyo, prohibiting public displays of nakedness that might upset the sensibilities of westerners, forbidding lighting bonfires on the streets, washing dirty dishes in the river and urinating in the gutters in front of shops. Confusing the similar Japanese ideograms for urinal and post box, one incident saw a visiting group of farmers mistake a post box for a public urinal. Like the Tokugawa elders before them, the Meiji authorities were uncomfortable with unregulated pleasure. Writers were repeatedly inveighed to be more high-minded, to eschew low-life themes for more pious and patriotic subjects.

  Certain practices and punishments associated with a feudal, premodern Japan were gradually abolished. Among the more draconian penalties scrapped under the new Meiji enlightenment were burning at the stake, crucifixion, torture to extract confession and the tattooing of criminals. It also banned the public display of heads, but not before one or two foreign photographers had recorded the grisly scenes.

  A Foreign Settlement

  Some of these early foreign residents could be found living in Tsukiji, where a daimyo estate had existed until recently. The name Tsukiji, signifying reclaimed land, was a reference to the mud flats that once stood between branches of the Sumida river. Tsukiji’s long association with fish began with the founding of the city and when catches were landed and auctioned on a nearby beach. Sparsely populated, its festering mud flats and brackish wells made it one of the least desirable areas of the city. If that were not enough, its areas of vacant ground were used as a noisome dump for refuse. The only space at the government’s disposal to offer to foreigners as a port settlement, the area was duly cleared, its legions of scavenging crows and kites dispatched, and orderly streets and graceful houses built over the tips. Marvelling at the changes, one Japanese writer watched the new settlement rise “month by month, until the new buildings resembled the teeth of a comb in closeness and orderliness. There was no longer any stinking refuse or hollow places filled with stagnant water at Tsukiji.”

  Yet the new settlement, failing to attract the number of merchants it had expected, was doomed from the start. For one thing, the shallow harbour precluded the thriving maritime trade the Japanese had anticipated. There was also a psychological barrier; Tsukiji’s river-facing, gated settlement cooped within canals reminded foreigners of Deshima in Nagasaki, the man-made island built to house and confine the Dutch traders during the xenophobic Edo era. Many subsequently moved out, drawn by the cooler slopes and better facilities of nearby Yokohama. The death knoll of the settlement came in 1872 with the great fire that devastated large parts of the city, including much of Tsukiji.

  The area had provided early foreign residents with glimpses of a life yet to change. Junks with large saffon and white sails passed along the canal here on the incoming tides, loading up on timber, while ferryboats transported people from bank to bank. Ernest Satow, a British diplomat who wrote extensively about these early years of contact between Japan and the West, recalled his impressions of Tsukiji:

  Curious duck-shaped boats of pure unpainted wood, carrying a large four-square sail formed of narrow strips of canvas loosely tacked together, crowded the surface of the sparkling waters. Now and then we passed near enough to note the sunburnt, copper-coloured skins of the fishermen, naked, with the exception of a white cloth around the loins, and sometimes a blue rag tied across the nose, so that you could just see his eyes and chin.

  City Transformations

  Westernization was initially slow to sink in, but the stage props - the redbrick buildings, horse-drawn trolleys and top hats - appeared quickly enough. Western-inspired fads, fashions and conveniences grew rapidly after a number of national exhibitions displaying modern machinery, gadgets and devices were held in Ueno Park. The times and the exhibits were new but Edo had had its own share of exhibitions. One memorable event, organized by Hiraga Gennai in 1757 and held in the grounds of the Confucian Yushima Seido temple in the Soto-Kanda district, displayed rare species of birds, shellfish and plants. Edo had always been good at combining commerce, worship and the arts.

  A Hiroshige print depicts townspeople flying kites on the slopes of Kasumigaseki during the New Year’s holiday. Kite flying had long been popular among Edo’s lower orders. Flying their kites above the heads of the warrior class is said to have given them a momentary sense of imagined superiority. An ideogram is written boldly on the kite at the top of the print, the first Chinese character of the publisher’s name responsible for the print series, an astute way to advertise the company.

  What was new in these Meiji-era events was the intent that exhibitions should be insistently modern and firmly urban. A circular sent out to exhibitors before the event warned darkly that no fish, exotic birds, rare plants or older works of art were to be presented. The First National Industrial Exhibition held on Ueno Hill in 1877 focused largely on manufacturing, metallurgy, machinery, agriculture and gardening, though one exhibitor managed, in the spirit of the Edo period fairground, to sneak in a ten-foot-high treasure ship made of sugar.

  If early visitors to Tokyo were surprised by the size and sprawl of the city, they were also struck by how quiet it was. The atmosphere of a provincial town was probably due to the lack of machinery, the absence of horsedrawn traffic clattering over cobblestones. Carts were drawn by men. In the very first years of Meiji there were still no wheeled vehicles in Tokyo. Carriages drawn by oxen could occasionally be seen, but these were restricted to members of the imperial court in Kyoto. The townspeople generally travelled on foot, even along the great highways like the Tokaido. Those who could afford to, rode horses or were carried in simple palanquins called kago, hung from a single pole balanced between the shoulders of bearers.

  A new Japanese invention called the jinrikishaw was well suited to Tokyo’s narrow streets and lanes. In another concession to western sensibilities, rickshaw runners were required to cover themselves in more than the traditional loincloth normal at the time. Many of the rear parts of rickshaws were decorated with images clearly influenced by art emerging from the pleasure quarters. The owners of these new conveyances were required to remove the more suggestive decorations. The sudden appearance of the rickshaw spelt the end of palanquins, which disappeared virtually overnight.

  Fashions and Fads

  The cultural schizophrenia of the times, with its willingness to jettison traditions and customs that might offend foreigners or make them form a low opinion of Japan as a backward society, resulted in some odd revisionism. The novelist Mishima Yukio, that arch-critic of Meiji capitulation, looked back on the era, likening it to “an anxious housewife preparing to receive guests, hiding away in closets common articles of daily use and laying aside comfortable everyday clothes, hoping to impress the guests with the immaculate, idealized life of her household, without so much as a speck of dust in view.”

  The modification of social practices in the early Meiji years, partly inspired by fear among the Japanese that they would be mocked by foreigners, resulted in curious measures. Ancient phallic stones were covered up or consigned to the storerooms of temples, a prohibition on the longestablished practice of mixed bathing was soon enforced, traditional buildings not deemed to be western enough were threatened with demolition; even the performance
of Noh dramas was brought into question. Public spaces around the approaches to Tokyo’s main bridges - a semi-free public domain where a lively mix of food vendors, tricksters, mountebanks and prostitutes gathered, erotic shows and ribald melodramas were performed in reed-screen playhouses, and satirical verses criticizing government policies stuck to the bridge stanchions - came under official control.

  When the new Shimbashi railway station was unveiled by the emperor on 12 September 1872, those invited to attend the opening ceremony, with its bunting, flags, cannonades and other unfamiliar western-style trappings, were warned not to turn up in traditional working clothes, hanten jackets or country-style momohiki pants, or to display any form of nakedness. In an age excessively concerned with outward appearances, it was another example of the easy translation of Victorian propriety into Meiji prudery.

  Walking the new westernized streets of Marunouchi

  A fad for eating meat was endorsed by Fukuzawa Yukichi, one of the leading intellectuals of Meiji, who advocated that its consumption would improve the nation’s physique. The emperor himself soon declared that he would henceforth eat meat. Although there had been hunters’ markets in Edo, where permitted meats such as boar, poultry and deer were sold, often under the euphemistic labels of “medicine” or “mountain whale”, a combination of Buddhist strictures against the eating of animal flesh and its prohibitive cost obliged most people to depend on fish for their animal protein. Far more than just a fad, eating meat represented the breaking of a Buddhist taboo on the consumption of animal flesh. With the state bent on elevating Shinto, with its emperor-centred worship, one wonders if this was not a deliberate violation.