yukio mishima, spring snow (the sea of fertility), 1966
tokyo, 1912: the first of mishima’s tetralogy is set in what was once a beautiful city suburb, where old japan meets new.
“there were several pavilions used for the tea ceremony and also a large billiard room. behind the main house, wild yams grew thick on the grounds…a path led up a small hill to the plateau at its top, where there was a shrine was in a corner of a wide expanse of lawn.this was where his grandfather and two uncles were enshrined…the wisteria was always in all its splendor when the family gathered here for services”. shibuya
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david mitchell, dream number 9, 2001
In search of his father, Eiji Miyake enters the surreal and frenetic world of modern Tokyo.
“I have a view from across the street of the Panopticon’s main entrance. Quite a sight, this gothic zirconium skyscraper. Its upper floors are hidden by clouds. Beneath its airtight lid, Tokyo steams – 34c with 86% humidity a big panasonic screen says so tokyo is so close you can’t always see there are no distances everything is above your head dentists day care centers dance studios even the streets and sidewalks are built on murky stilts venice with the water drained mirrored planes climb over mirrored buildings drones with fine stripes a hairdresser with a lip piercing midday drunks housewives loaded with children .not a single person stands still.” omekaido avenue
ryu murakami, in the miso soup, 1997
all the darkness, claustrophobia and confusion of today’s city in a scathingly elegant thriller.
“it was still early in the evening when we came out onto a street in tsukiji, near the fish market. from the top of the pedestrian overpass we saw hongan-ji temple… the road leading to kachidoki the bridge was wide but dimly lit with few shops or restaurants and only an occasional passing car never been here before this was a very different tokyo from places like shibuya or shinjuku wooden bait and tackle shops with roofs that and torn billboards alongside gleaming new convenience stores and futuristic high-rise apartment complexes rose skyward on either side of narrow, retro streets lined with dried fish wholesalers.” kachidoki bridge
haruki murakami, after dark, 2004
On a night in seedy downtown Tokyo, dreams and reality collide in typical Murakami style.
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“they call this place an ‘amusement district’. the giant digital screens attached to the sides of the buildings go silent as midnight approaches, but the speakers in the storefronts continue to broadcast baselines hip-hop exaggerations. a large game center packed with young people; wild electronic sounds; a group of college students walking out of a bar; teenage girls with bright bleached hair, healthy legs sticking out of micro miniskirts; men in dark suits rushing across diagonal junctions for the last trains to the suburbs.” shinjuku
jonathan lee, who is mr. satoshi?, 2010
a fun and moving journey into the urban maelstrom of tokyo by an important new voice in british fiction.
“Behind us we had left the airport debris behind us and the taxi cruised down streets lined with buzzing neon shapes. Glowing skyscrapers clustered haphazardly on the horizon, sheets of sunlight crashing Against their glass walls, these glass buildings looked so delicate against the smoky highway, laden as it was with the metallic rattle of cars, buses, and trucks, that it was hard to believe they belonged to the same world. “No book or movie had prepared me for Shibuya’s million-color marbling. its lights blazed incredibly brightly, dimming only as the taxi was sucked into a tunnel. when we resurfaced seconds later, I felt like a newborn unable to assimilate the world outside the womb. fluorescence poured from the street signs with strange letters, filling the porches of shops and seeping under the arches of the alleys.” shibuya
yasunari kawabata, the scarlet gang of asakusa, 1930
A tour de force from a Nobel Prize winner, set in what was Tokyo’s traditional entertainment district before the war.
“suppose now that it’s after three in the morning and even the wanderers are fast asleep, and here I am walking the senso temple grounds with yumiko. dead ginko leaves flutter down, and we hear the roosters crowing… right at the neck of the gourd shaped pond there is this little island, wisteria lattice bridges stretching from each shore. there, by the fatsa bush under the weeping willow in front of the shop of tachibana fish stew, a large man is standing eating the wheat crackers that have been thrown at the carp in the pond.” asakusa
donald richie’s reader: 50 years writing about japan, 2001
From culture and travel to people and style, this Tokyo-based author has been writing about Japan for half a century.
“what I find as I walk and walk and walk is a whole city with its own bus station, its stories, its monuments and buildings. although right in the middle of tokyo, it is suburban and there are trees everywhere parts, even a park within this park, a glen with a lake of lke. sanshiro, I read. this must refer to the hero soseki natsome of ozu who came from the countryside to go to what was then tokyo imperial university… the style is late thirties – art deco. and when i look at this pre-war city, i remember tokyo in 1947 when everything, everything that was left, looked like today.” tokyo (university of tokyo )
kafu nagai, geisha in rivalry: a story of life, love and intrigue in the geisha quarter of shimbashi, 1917
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No one has written as insightfully or beautifully about Tokyo’s geisha as this master writer.
“her hair was styled in a low shimada style with a silver covered fretwork comb and jade hairpin. she had changed into a light crepe kimono with a fine parting. the effect was quite refined, but perhaps fearing it would look too old for her, she had added color with elaborate embroidery.Her obi was made of old-fashioned kaga-style crepe, lined with black satin, and fastened with a sash of light blue dyed crepe. in a bold pattern.” shimbashi
angela carter, meat and mirror fireworks, 1974
An English woman wanders the streets of Tokyo in search of her lost lover in one of Angela Carter’s brilliant short stories set in Japan.
“walked under the artificial cherry blossoms that decorate the chandeliers from april to september. they do it so that the playgrounds have the look of a continuous carnival, no matter what waves of agitation disturb the ambient”. incessant crowds, endlessly circulating, quiet, friendly and melancholy crowding in the dank web of alleys under a false roof of umbrellas… the city, the greatest city in the world, the city designed to meet none of my expectations European, this city presents to the foreigner a way of life that seems to have the enigmatic transparency, the indecipherable clarity of a dream.” yoshiwara
edmund de waal, the amber-eyed hare: a hidden heritage, 2010
edmund de waal first came across his family’s netsuke carvings in his uncle’s tokyo apartment. in the book he describes several visits to the city.
“and one afternoon a week spent with great-uncle iggie. walked up the hill from the subway station, past the shiny beer vending machines, past senkaku-ji temple where the forty-seven are found the samurai are buried, past the strange baroque meeting room of a shinto sect, past the sushi bar run by the bluff mr x, turning right at the high wall of the prince’s garden takamatsu with the pines… his desk had an empty blotter, a sheaf of his letterhead and pens at the ready, though he was no longer writing. the view from the window behind him was of cranes. tokyo bay disappeared behind condominiums forty floors. shinagawa
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