LITERARY PSYCHO-GEOGRAPHY

OF EDO/TOKYO & AMSTERDAM

End-Report for the Japan Foundation of the research done by Tjebbe van Tijen in the cadre of the
Medium Term Visitors’ Program in Commemoration with the Okinawa/Kyushu Summit 2000 from
2/10/2000 to 28/2/2001, extended (on own costs) to 28/3/2001

1
LITERARY PSYCHO-GEOGRAPHY OF EDO/TOKYO & AMSTERDAM
End-Report for the Japan Foundation of the research done by Tjebbe van Tijen in the cadre of the
Medium Term Visitors’ Program in Commemoration with the Okinawa/Kyushu Summit 2000 from
2/10/2000 to 28/2/2001, extended (on own costs) to 28/3/2001

This report describes the six different types of activities I have pursued during my
half year stay in Japan:

1. discovering the morphology and many city-scapes of Tokyo;

2. searching and selecting quotations from (translated) Japanese literature with concise and expressive
descriptions of moods evoked by specific areas and realms of Edo/Tokyo;
3. developing mapping principles as navigation instruments through these literary time, space and mood
descriptions;
4. developing visualisation principles to relate the present to the past on the basis of photography and
computer-graphics;
5. making contacts for future development of the project (website for public participation in the searching
and selection of quotations, finding further research opportunities and facilities, finding potential
collaborators who could make and continue the Japanese version of the project);
6. exchange ideas with people in related fields (social geography, urban.anthropology, historical
cartography, inter-action design, sonology/soundscapes, bibliography, literature, visual arts, database
technology, digital mapping).

What is there concretely after six months of work in Tokyo?

• Four hundred quotations, ‘psych-geographic’ descriptions, of the area now called Tokyo, Musashino
Plain a millennium before that, and Edo until one and a half century ago. Fifty thousand words by a
hundred different writers, taken from one and a half hundred different sources, organized in a series of
several related databases (full bibliographical descriptions, authors, quotations, maps, emblematic
photographs, topographical names, glossaries, notes , classification terms). This quantity is only to
give sufficient examples to set rules how to make a large collection of psycho-geographic quotations.
The number of quotes is below 10% of the actual number of quotes needed to be able to experience and
display the complexity of the Edo/Tokyo area through several centuries. This is a task that is far
beyond my capabilities and endurance. From the beginning public participation in the research (through
the internet and public libraries) has been thought of; it will be only through such a modern process of
sharing of knowledge that the project can be realized. (see Appendix II for the texts of the first
example quotes)

• A bibliographical research database with almost seven hundred titles with linkages to the national
academic library system of Japan NACSIS.

• A list of almost two hundred authors/titles which still need to be checked, read, for possible
descriptive passages on Edo/Tokyo. (see Appendix I)

• A series of digital sketches that establish the basic principles for the time/space mapping system and
an inventory of available actual paper and digital maps of Tokyo.

• A first concept for mapping moods as expressed in literary texts, based on color and light changes as
observed by the author and his created subjects (season, part of day, weather, artificial lights,
reflections, light movement, etc.).

1
Literary-Psycho-geography, origin of idea

As my subject may sound unfamiliar and makes one wonder why a Dutchman wants to discover and
compare the psychology of two cities so wide apart and so different as Edo/Tokyo and Amsterdam, I will
start to describe in some detail the origin and development of the actual research project.

The project of literary psycho-geography developed over many years and relates to my double profession
(multi-media artist &librarian/curator) and my long term engagement with citizens actions. It started
twenty five years ago in Amsterdam, being involved in debates and citizens actions related to urban
renewal of parts of the inner city of Amsterdam. That debate centered on differences of opinion about
renewal plans, especially about the building of new transport infrastructure (highways and underground
railways) cutting straight through parts of the old center of Amsterdam and the replacement of houses by
big offices and the like. The debate had several levels: - the preservation of the historical townscape; -
the loss of cheap housing in the inner town; - the breaking up of local communities that for a great part
were going to be forced out of their homes and shops. In this process, that took two decades, a strong
citizens movement arose, and major confrontations with the official politics of those days occurred. The
debate expanded, from local to city wide, and became even an issue on a national level. It resulted in a
chance in public opinion, which led to a fundamental change in the urban politics of the city of Amsterdam.

When the future development of a city or a rural area is debated, when there are new plans that will
change the land- or city scape, plans with a great impact on the people living, visiting or using such areas,
there are mostly two opposing visions, one pointing at needed improvements and gains in the future, the
other referring to the past and what will be lost. There are some times happy marriages between these
two elements, but more often the debate leads to a kind of divorce, with a widening gap between opposing
views, and a tendency in both ‘camps’ to take a more extreme position.

Which past? Whose past?

In such debates the past is often mentioned, not only the spacial properties of buildings, roads and other
urban elements, but also the atmosphere of a certain area, underlaying elements of local history and
culture. This is what led to the idea of ‘literary psycho-geography’. These public debates made me wonder
and I started to ask questions: which past? whose past?

One can remember one’s own history, also talk with older people, but then, when one wants to go back
further in time, one will need to read, because that is about the only way to know how previous
generations experienced their living environment. What to read to get to know the past of a city, or a
certain part of the city? There are the official books of a town’s history that attempt objectivying
experiences from the past. Such texts are often too general and often convey a single truth, a uniform
way of looking at things, while, on the contrary, a town or city is a place of many different phenomena
with many different people all having their own way of seeing things, their own interpretations.

I started to wonder how people over many different generations, living in the same part of town, in the
same area, had been experiencing their living environment in their time. Not to lament things lost, or to
generate a feeling of nostalgia, but as basic material for understanding the present, as a prerequisite to
develop a vision for the future.

1
Understanding the past to shape the future

I started reading, mostly novels and short stories, but also poetry and theater plays, in which in any way,
however brief or vague, the part of the inner city affected by the proposed plans, was mentioned or
described. My search was especially for quotations in which a unity of time, space and mood had been put
to words in an expressive language. At first I limited myself to the part of the inner city where I was
living, later my interest expanded to the whole of Amsterdam and other (mainly) European cities.

In that process of reading into the past and trying to recognize something left over in the present, I
started to systemize my notes and developed a first system to make those quotations function as separate
elements, make them comparable, arranging them in different orders, discovering similarities, making
new associations. At first this was a big card file system with cut out photocopied texts, handwritten
classifications and little photographs. Many years later, in the middle of the eighties, it became a
computer database system, which, at first, could only carry textual information. That system gave a
glimpse of further reaching possibilities and the idea was triggered to develop a system that would allow
to wander through time, space and mood, to encounter all those different experiences of the town, over
years, decades, centuries.

Inspiration from situationist movement

As an artist in the mid sixties, I had been in contact with a political and artistic movement called
‘situationist international’, a loose grouping of artists and intellectuals from different countries that had
developed a criticism of what they labeled ‘the society of the spectacle’. Their criticism was also directed
at the rationalization of the modern city, the utilitarian plans with their division of functions of the city
into separate areas for work, sleep and recreation: the city as a living and working machine. The
‘situationists’ were sensitive to the diversity of atmospheres that still existed in many parts of the city
of Paris and rejected the coldness and the isolated and atomized way of life in the new sleeping towns, the
new suburbs. They were looking for methods to re-introduce poetry in the daily living environment, they
advocated the ‘creation of situations’ (that’s where their name derives from), temporal creative events
where daily life, art and politics would fuse.

From that critical position the situationists developed a method to discover the attractions and diversity
of neighborhoods, that had not yet fell victim to the utilitarian modernization process. One of these areas
were ‘Les Halles’ in Paris, a most complex and attractive area in the fifties and sixties, with a big lively
food market right in the old center (demolished to make place for deep underground shopping centers and
the Centre George Pompidou in the seventies). Other town areas explored by members of this radical art
movement were located in Venice, London and Amsterdam. The ‘situationists’ would wander through such
attractive quarters and neighborhoods, let themselves drift by impulse and tried to describe their
experiences in experimental forms of mapping, that would, instead of objectivying space, visualize
personal experience of space and mark the different atmospheres encountered. These driftings and
mappings were to be used as playful tools for developing strategies to re-introduce poetry in the city-
landscape. The ‘situationists’ baptized their method ‘psycho-geography’. It was an experimental method
of surveying and ‘reading’ the urban landscape, based on an older tradition of preceding artistic
movements like the French and Belgian ‘surrealists’ and ‘lettrists’ with absurdistic pilgrimages and
writers from the 19th century like Baudelaire, De Quincy and Dickens with their explorations and
depictions of the city atmospheres of London and Paris.

I adapted the situationist idea of ‘psycho-geography’ to the circumstances of the urban debates in
Amsterdam and the need to better understand the past, to be able to formulate plans for the future in
which the new would adapt itself to the old, and the old would accommodate the new, wandering and
drifting not only through the actual city-space but also through its multi layered past, I called it ‘Literary
Psycho-Geography’.

1
Definition of literary psycho-geography

Psycho-geography is the art that tries to record and understand the influence of the outer environment on
the human mind and vice versa. Literary psycho-geography is the expression of this phenomena in
literature, whereby literature is taken in its widest possible sense: any writing that manages to capture
the influence of a particular part of a city or landscape on the human mind, or a person's projection of
inner feelings or moods onto the outer environment. Well versed literary texts, poetry, novels or theater
plays, but also popular fiction, comic books, journalistic writing, songs, films, official reports and
advertisement slogans, all these can have fragments or passages that capture 'psycho-geographic
moments' in descriptive text. All these scattered text fragments, when put together, will make it possible
to 'read' the life story of the (city) landscape, to 'map' it's changes of atmosphere and mood. Books make
this liaison with the past possible, they are an interface to learn about a town. This relation can also be
reversed: learning about books and their authors by drifting through the city landscape.

The city writing itself

In 1977 I made the first exhibition on the subject in which a selections of quotations from a wide variety
of books on one particular area (the former Jewish Ghetto of Amsterdam) was displayed together with
contemporary images and indications of locations. In that year the first theoretical article was published
‘Een aanzet tot een literaire psycho-geografie van de Amsterdamse Jodenbuurt’ (an attempt at making a
literary psycho-geography of the Jewish Quarters of Amsterdam). By comparing the writings of several
different writers on the same area, the conclusion was that certain cityscapes were exerting such a
strong influence that they were almost ‘writing themselves’ in the minds of people and would surface in
comparable ways in the writings of authors with different styles, from different periods and different
backgrounds.

New possibilities using computers

In the mid-eighties, with the advent of the personal computer, new possibilities came into sight to combine
text and image and sound in one digital format, allowing for the first time the multiple and fast combination
of series of dramatized ‘psycho-geographic’ quotations taken from a wide variety of sources. In that
period I started to work again with the Australian artist Jeffrey Shaw, with whom I worked together in
the sixties, and we started to discuss the possibilities of making an interactive computer-based system
for the literary-psycho geography.

In 1986 a first series of computer graphics with collages that would be inspired by literary quotations
was produced in the context of a big exhibition on urban plans for a big part of the inner city of
Amsterdam and the revitalization of old harbor areas (in collaboration with Jeffrey Shaw). In this stage
the element of sound was added to the project, whereby the literary text fragments (quotations) were
dramatized, read by actors with added related sound environments (‘soundscapes’ made in collaboration
with the sonologist and ethno-musicologist Fred Gales). A series of psycho-geographic boat tours with
readings of literary texts accompanied by soundscapes was also organized in this period, reviving
memories of the city and linking them to the actual debate on how to formulate the guiding concepts for the
actual urban renewal process in that area. In a later stage this boat tour was adapted for a non-Dutch
speaking audience, with the text translated and narrated life in English for an international audience of
urban historians who could in this way get an intimate and personalized view of two centuries of the
Amsterdam inner town within a two hour boat fare.

1
Studies of other cities

In the beginning of the nineties two studies were made together with Jeffrey Shaw for a possible adaption
of the idea of literary psycho-geography of the German town Karlsruhe and the French town Marseille. In
the end there were not enough financial resources to realize these plans, but it helped to widen the scope
of the research. In 1991, together with Jeffrey Shaw, a second essay on literary psycho-geography was
published, which carried several references to more universal aspects of the relation between cities and
literature:

Cities are not only scenes for plots of novels. The diversity in rooms, houses, streets, buildings, areas,
the multiplicity of atmospheres and impressions, the simultaneity of individual lives, make cities at the
same time models for the structure of novels. In various novels cities, from backgrounds become
protagonists. People and their lives become mere decor.The revolutionary growth of the printing press
pushes the number of writers, books and readers up. At the same time cities grow and change.

Novels relate the changes cities go through, revive what can no longer be lived. Their descriptions are
often only fragments of the composite wholes cities are with their many different parts. The narrative
component tries to offer a view of the whole by connecting the fragments among them. But no novel can
ever present all possible visions. There are ever more separate descriptions. Cities no longer are single
books but multiplicities of books. Who is able to read all of them? Cities initially purporting to be unities
dissolve into multiplicities. They are like trunks of trees disappearing under their foliages.

As seasons rotate leaves wither, fall, are swept away by the winds, become compost in libraries.
Conditionally existing images of time and space, scattered over innumerable book case. Every book a unity
consisting of a multiplicity of relatively independent parts. Pages, like wrongly addressed letters, wait
for brazen readers of their contents. Quotations squirming like earthworms cut to pieces. Guided by
passages in books describing cities readers create their own spaces. Prescriptions on how to understand
novels flutter in the wind. Imposed interpretations do not hold. Every core of understanding is a shell for
further interpretations. As long as cities live and grow writers and readers continue to polish their facets.

1995 first visit to Japan

Four years later I visited Japan for the first time in my life, being invited to give a lecture at a
symposium at Keio University with the theme ‘The Future of the Book of the Future’. It was during that
visit that I was first emerged into the vast city-scape of Tokyo and it made me wonder...
As many people have experienced, at first sight this town seems to have no history at all, but one soon
learns that this a biased viewpoint. Certainly there a re very few buildings from past epochs, but with
sometraining stgructures of the past can clearly be recognized.

1
1998 concept for actual research project

I immediately got interested to see if the idea of ‘literary psycho-geography’ could also be adapted to this
huge and complex city. In 1998 the first concept, basis for the later proposal to the Japan Foundation was
written in which the idea was developed of comparing two cities at the opposite sides of the globe , cities
that are also each other opposite in size and character:

Tokyo and Amsterdam. Contrasting cities, the one a macro-polis, possibly the largest city of the
world, the other a mini-polis, a world village. There are some similarities: both cities are a little
over half millennium in age, both are harbour cities at the seaside with a history linked to rivers,
waterways and reclaiming of land, but that is a feature that, logically, many big cities in the world
have in common. The differences are much more obvious: the contrast between the vast amount of
remainders of different periods of the past in Amsterdam and the apparent lack of it in Tokyo.
Though that is nothing more than a strong first impression, as each landscape, each city have
hidden layers of their past and one needs time to learn to read them in the present. There is the
famous half moon shaped girdle of the 17th and 18th century canals in Amsterdam as it's most
prominent feature. Tokyo has retained it's basic structure of spiralling out quarters from the
central shogunate castle of early Edo times in its modern city layout. Amsterdam is full of tangible
objects of the past, in Tokyo the past is often only there in the names of quarters and
neighbourhoods, bridges, covered waterways, railway stations, bus stops and modern buildings.
There is no way to compare the level of destruction of natural and man made disasters that befell
Tokyo and Amsterdam. Floods, earthquakes, fire storms and aerial bombardments have erased big
parts of the city of Tokyo repeatedly. Amsterdam has experiences only in its early times some fires
and only a few floods with any impact and has been spared a bombardment during the second world
war. There have been what is called a 'bombardment from within ' during the so called Hunger
Winter of 1945 when there was not sufficient fuel left during a cold winter and the emptied houses
of the deported Jewish inhabitants have been ravaged for fire wood and many were demolished in
this process, but this does compare in no way to the hardships experienced by the plagued
population of Tokyo. A milder climate, repeated destruction and the constant fear of another major
earthquake, have also led to a tradition of a more temporary kind of buildings and road structures
than the ones we see in a town like Amsterdam. Changes in the cityscape are much more dynamic in
Tokyo than in Amsterdam. It will be interesting to see if and how, over a long period of time, these
differences are expressed in local literature and other depictions of these two cities.

1
Short overview of activities: October 2000 - March 2001

1- discovering the morphology and many city-scapes of Tokyo

2- searching and selecting quotations about Edo/Tokyo

These two activities were very much interwoven. Riding the city on my bicycle and reading the city
sitting on a chair or mostly on the tatami mat of my ryokan.

The selection of quotations has been one of my main activities in the period of my stay in Japan, as these
short expressive texts are at the core of the project. One could say, as it concerns translated Japanese
literature only and literary and other expressive writings in European languages accessible to me (French,
German, English, Italian and Dutch), that this reading could well have been done outside of Japan. This is
only partly true, as there are far more texts translated from the Japanese in language as accessible to me
in private collections and academic libraries in the Netherlands. Also my reading of these texts was
limited by my still superficial knowledge of the city-scape of Tokyo (having been there, in total, only
three months over a period of four years, in the period 1995-1999. So in the beginning my ability to
localize places mentioned or indirectly indicated was very limited. Intense reading on the one hand and
frequent driftings and purposely getting lost, through and in all parts of the city made me slowly a bit
more aware. These two processes of reading, reading the city in texts and reading the texts back into the
actual experiences structure of the city were mutual supportive.

I did start my research in the Netherlands using the libraries of the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden
(the last one being specialized in Japanese language and culture). Before writing my application to the
Japan Foundation, I had done bibliographical research to find references to literary texts that might have
‘psycho-geographic’ descriptions of time, place and mood of Edo>Tokyo. By using mainly secondary
sources: anthologies and overviews of Japanese literature, specific studies of certain groups of writers,
styles, historical periods, a first database with references to specific authors and titles was made.

Of course the reader writes the text, not just the writer, how else can the text be read? It must be re-
produced again and again, only in the process of reading it is alive... and a text can have many lives, lives
far beyond the control of the writer, the critiques, the translators, the educators, and others who , often
with the best intentions, try to fix what can not be fixed...

Searching for psycho-geographic descriptions within a text, is a special experience, a special way of
handling text... The agile eye will look over a sea of words, focus here and there, at the watch out for any
occurrence where the topos, the land or city scape will surface, often as a swimmer between the waves...
there are certain words, and thus images of words which will halt the eye for a moment, that little tip
could be just the beginning or the end of a passage that might be worthwhile quoting...

There are certain crude methods to navigate a text... the opening of a novel, a chapter, or a closing of such
a separate sector of a book, that is to say for a certain type of text, which will have a structure not just
unique of its own, but much more as yet another example of a certain genre.. So there are actors and
actions and they need to be set in some space, the most conventual being that the space is nothing more
than the backdrop for the actors performing their subsequent activities and interactions.

This report is not the place to give a full description of the method and rules for quoting, it will need
several different examples to explain the method. This formalization of the process of literary psycho-
geography will be ready at the end of April and will be published on the website of Tokyo-Geidai.

A great help was the nice collection of the International House of Japan library in Roppongi, which has its
books directly available to the user from the shelves, and also has a very liberal lending policy for its
members. The main part of my choices were made in this library and through this library that supplied me
with books from other japanese libraries through the Inter Library Loan System.

Appendix 2 gives a list of titles and authors signaled, but for which I could not yet find the time to check
them for possible quotations (almost 200 references).

1
3- developing mapping principles for navigation

From early on Tokyo fascinated me because of the importance of the use of maps and the wide variety of
maps used for all kind of specific purposes. This is not only the case for the actual way of using the town,
with its shifting functions and locations, but can also be observed in Edo times. Already in the beginning of
my research I decided to try to develop a mapping system that could use and display this cartographic
richness. The following illustration shows the main principles:

Circular photographs (often using a fisheye lense) are made of sport, areas, places mentioned in literature
and these elements can shrink and grow, from mere dots (pinballs) to crystal glass baals that reflect part
of the surroundings. These ‘pinpoints’ are connecting time-layers of different maps.

1
Completely different kind of maps, some with, others without scale, can be combined by pointing to the
same location on both maps and connecting them visualy as if a large and long pinpoint was pushed through
them.

2
Again the same map principle in a more schematic representation. These are only conceptual designs, and
much more time and investment is needed to actualy to be able to realize it.

3
This is another example of the same principle whereby circular slices of different maps, all representing
the same area (in this case Ueono Station) are cut out of the original maps and form touchable ‘button’s
that will call up a map of a related place and time.

1
4- developing visualisation to relate the present to the past

As there is often the direct visual relation between the townscape of the present and the past has
disappeared, I did choose for a form of enstrangement to make photographic pictures in the present that
will be a guide to the same spot in the past. The distorting effect of a fish eye lense and also the use of
tele-lense pictures has been tested in a collection of over a thousand digital pictures. These are just a few
examples. The visual effect relates to an old Western tradition of looking in a so called ‘Claude Glass’ to a
landscape, a concenser mirror with optical glasses that would color the view (over one’s back) of the
landscape. The name of that device point back to the 17th century landscape painter Claude Loraine who
was very popular in Europe for his soft tones and ability to depict the complexity of light. I choose to call
these pictures and their function in the navigation process, ‘emblematic’ pointers.

1
Two examples of emblematic pictures with the text they refer to. The left one is a text by Dazai of
Shinbazu Pond, the right one the famous text of Soseki on the pond at Tokyo University.

2
5- making contacts for future development of the project

Website for public participation in the searching and selection of quotations, finding further research
opportunities and facilities. I have spoken with a group of people that have set up a cultural information
website called ‘real.tokyo’ and we did speak about possible later particiaption of this group in my work.

My affiliated institute Tokyo Geidai, by way of professor FUJIHATA Masaki has expressed interest to see
if the continuation of my reserach might be in the future in some way be accomodated by them.

I did speak several timesw with one of the references for my project professor JINNAI Hidenobu of Hosei
University on possible relations with academic and art institutions in Japan.

Finding potential collaborators who could make and continue the Japanese version of the project. Of course
I did meet and did speak with many people on my project during my stay which has helped to develop a
circuit of possible collaborators and people interested to advice and help also in the future. These are not
only Japanese people but also people from other nationalities who have specialized in Japanese language
and culture. One of my enthusiastic supporters in this respect has been the Dutch japanologist Maaike Ono
Boots.

There have been contacts with the cultural attache of the Dutch embassy who has expressed an interest to
support possible future activities which would involve a comparison between Amsterdam and Tokyo.

In the Netherlands I have had several times contacts with the Stimulation Fund for Architectural and Urban
Research, a semi-government body. They are very positive about this project and I will present them in
the coming monthes the result of my studies in Japan and will apply for support for the Amsterdam part of
the study. Als the Municipal Amsterdam Historical Museum, is one of the institutions who have expressed
interest.

6- exchange ideas with people in related fields

The project has a multi-disciplinary character and is based on the collaboration with specialists from
different fields: social geography, urban.anthropology, historical cartography, inter-action design,
sonology/soundscapes, bibliography, literature, visual arts, database technology, digital mapping.

During my stay in Japan I have had regular contact in the first place with FUJIHATA Masaki, professor of
the multi-media department of Tokyo Geidai, that was my host during these monthes. I have had technical
support and the pleasure of exchanging ideas and debating concepts.

Also there have been a close relation with JINNAI Hidenobu, as his vision and analysis of Edo/Tokyo is
very close to my own observations.

On the bibliographical level I have had great support from KOIDE Izumi librarian of the International House
of Japan and her staff. I have been a heavy user of all their facilities.

On the issue of mapping I have had a few meetings with the geographer MORITA Takashi of Hosei
university, who has been willing to listen to me, testing my ideas.

Another map specialist HAGA Hiraku, editor of Kashiwashibo Publishing house that specializes in historical
maps, has been most helpful. He brought me in contact with one prominent map collector of the Edo period
YAMASHITA Kazumasa, who will be supporting the porject in the next stages by supplying photographic
material of his collection for digitazation.

Last to mention is TORIGOE Keiko a specialist in the history and use of sound, who has expressed great
interest in my project and with who I hope to collaborate on the issue of historical ‘soundscapes’ later on.

Tokyo 30/3/2001 = Tjebbe van Tijen

1
Appendix I
list of 200 titles still to be checked for quotations, several hundred quotations more could be found

1
Appendix II
389 quotations on Edo/Tokyo in chronological orderfrom pre-Edo to post-Tokyo = 1000 years

The main source for my research, the shelves with translated Japanese literature in the library of
the International House of Japan in Roppongi

This is still a version in a production stage and needs to be corrected and checked, that work will
take one or two extra weeks. In some cases the author names and titles of Japanese texts are given
in Kanji and Kana, this information is taken from the NACSIS database and ‘parsed’ form that date
automatiucaly. However the NACSIS data is in many cases irregular, so the resulted ‘calculation’
can be sometimes wrong or irregular. When next year the Japanese MARC system will be brought
on-line for the general public, it will be much easier to solve this technical problem. Also the data
supplied in translated works from the Japanese is ofetn not there or incomplete. These are
problems that are beyond the scope of this project.

1
1
0938 Sumida river (opinions differ: could be another river/or location of river)

This is the capital-bird!”

When they still went along further and further, there was a very big river between the
provinces of Musashi and Shimosa. That river is called Sumidagawa. When they stood in a
group on the bank of that river and reflected upon their long journey, they were all worrying,
thinking: “How endless far we have come!” But then the ferryman called: “Come quickly on
board, it is already getting dark!” When they had gone aboard and were about to cross the
river, all were very sad, for each of them had someone they loved in the capital. At that very
moment a white bird with red beak and legs and of a size of a snipe was eating fish while
sporting on the water. As it was a bird which is not seen in the capital, none of them knew it.
When they asked the ferryman, he said: “This is the capital-bird!” Upon hearing this one of
them recited: -
If you are true to your name
Well, let me ask you something,
Captal-bird: -
Is the one I love
Alive or dead?
- so that all in the boat burst into tears.

[adventures of Ariwara no Narihira (?)] 0825-0880 The tales of Ise/Ise monogatari 0938/1957 p.173
1464 Musashino Plain (statue of OTA Dokan in Tokyo International Forum - Marunouchi -
Chiyoda-ku)
from its simple eaves

This house of mine

Is in a grove of pine
Along a blue sea,
And from its simple eaves
One sees high Fuji.

OTA Dokan 1432-1486 {source unknown} 1464 p.

186? Gotenyama (Gate of Dutch Embassy, Shiba-koen - Minato-ku)

once a favourite pleasure resort of the people of Yedo

Other sites in the immediate vicinity had been given to the French, Dutch and Americans
for the same purpose. All these were carved out of what had been once a favourite
pleasure resort of the people of Yedo, whither in spring all the classes flocked to picnic
under the blossoms of the cherry-trees in sight of the blue waters of the bay. Gotenyama
was indeed a famous spot in the history of the Shogunate. In its early days the head of the
State was wont to go forth thither to meet the great daimios on their annual entry into Yedo,
until Iyemitsu, the third of the line, to mark more strongly the supremacy to which he felt he
could safely lay claim, resolved that henceforeward he would receive them in his castle,
just like the rest of hbis vassals. From that time the gardens had been dedicated to the
public use.

Satow, Ernest 1843-193? A diplomat in Japan, the inner history ... 1921, 1968 p.65
1870-1880 Ikenohata next to Shinobazu Pond

one could see, through the branches of the Chinese black pine

Two or three houses away, an inn where geishas entertained had opened recently and it
was sometimes noisy in the evening. But the houses on either side of her father’s place
had their lattice doors still shut, and in the early monring the ssurroundings seemed
unusally quiet. From the bay window of her father’s house one could see, through the
branches of the Chinese black pine, the willow limbs swaying slightly in the fresh breeze,
and beyond, the lotus leaves that covered the surface of the pond. here and there among
their green shone the pink dots of blossoms newly opened in the morning sun. The house,
which faced north, would perhaps be rather cold in winter, but in summer it was ideal.

MORI Ogai 1862-1922 The wild goose/Gan 1911-1913/1995 p.62

1870-1880 Shinbazu Pond looking in the direction of Nezu - Taito-ku

gliding over the black, faintly glimmering surface of the pond.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

Ishihara silently pointed toward the pond. Okada and I peered through the gray-tinged
evening air in the direction he indicated. At the time of the story the whole surface of the
pond from the little ditch that runs down from Nezu to the shore where the three of us were
standing was overgrown with reeds. The dead leaves of the reeds gradually thinned out
toward the center of the pond, where ragged dried-up lotus leaves and sponge-shaped
seed pods dotted the surface, their stems, broken at varying heights, slanting down into the
water at sharp angles and giving the scene a desolate air. Ten or twelve wild geese moved
to and fro among the soot-colored stems of the lotuses, gliding over the black, faintly
glimmering surface of the pond. A few of them sat motionless where they were.
“Do you think you could throw a stone that far?” asked Ishihara, looking at Okada.

MORI Ogai 1862-1922 The wild goose/Gan 1911-1913/1995 p.151-152

189? Tokyo the concentration of many people

a battlefield of more than a million souls

Tokyo! How the two characters of the city’s name set my heart throbbing! Tokyo nowadays
is a battlefield of more than a million souls, jostling each other, trampling each other down,
straining to raise themselves above their fellows; for the ten in every hundred who grow fat
on blood and sweat of their ninety fellow-citizens, a mirage inspiring fugitive dreams of
glory - ask yourself what our capital is today, and you find yourself cursing the place. But in
those days Tokyo was our Promised Land.

KENJIRO Tokutomi 1868-1927 Footprints in the snow/Omoide no ki 1901/1970 p.107

189? Ueno Park - Taito-ku

their branches interlaced, their needles thick and luxuriant

Fall in Ueno Park. Ancient pine trees stood row upon row, their branches interlaced, their
needles thick and luxuriant, of a green so deep as to saturate the heart of an onlooker. The
fruit trees were desolate in contrast; old and young alike covered with withered leaves. The
lonely camellia bushes, their branches laden with flowers, seemed to yearn for
companionship. Several of the delicate maple trees had turned a blazing red. The cries of
the few remaining birds mirrored the sadness of the season. All at once, the wind blew
sharply. The branches of the cherry trees shivered and trembled, shaking free their dead
leaves. Fallen leaves strewn on the ground rose as if moved by a spirit and danced about
in happy pursuit of one another. Then as if by unanimous accord they lay down again.

FUTABATEI Shimei 1864-1909)The drifting clouds/Ukigumo 1891/19?? p.267

190? bridge Rokugo River (Tama-gawa) - Kawasaki

spreading down like monstrous spider’s legs on either side

“Simpleton!” Yoko murmured to herself. Putting him out of her mind as easily as one
tosses rubbish on a fire, she rested her elbows on the rail and let her mind go blank, to feel
on her cheeks the crisp air in which the late summer landscape was bathed. Green, indigo,
yellow -her eyes registred the colours of the scene around her, but no clear outline of its
forms; she was pleasantly conscious, though, of the cool breeze, gently lifting her sidelocks
as it passed. The speed of the train was dizzying. Restlessly, Yoko’s mind travelled around
the dark, nebulous mass at its centre. A good while later, as it seemed to her, with a sudden
head-splittering clatter the train ran on to the iron suspension bridge over the Rokugo River,
startling Yoko out of her dream. At the sight of the great cables spreading down like
monstrous spider’s legs on either side, she stepped back insticntively under the awning,
hiding her head with her sleeves as if praying.

ARISHIMA Takeo 1878-1923 A certain woman/Aru onna 1919/1978 p.39

190? Sanshiro Pond - Tokyo University - Hongo - Bunkyo-ku

...loneliness began to spread across its surface...

He stared at the surface of the pond. The reflection of many trees seemed to reach the
bottom, and down deeper than the trees, the blue sky. No longer was he thinking of
streetcars, or Tokyo, or Japan; a sense of something far-off and remote had come to take
their place. The feeling had lasted but a moment, when loneliness began to spread across
its surface like a veil of clouds.

NATSUME Soseki (1867-1916); Sanshiro, a novel/Sanshiro 1907/1977 - p.22

1905-1906 Yoshiwara (Senzoku) Taito-ku

the din of the crowds around the O’Tori Shrine

The O’Tori-sama Festival was held three times in November this year, and except for the
middle one, the wheather was very fine. Therefore, the din of the crowds around the O’Tori
Shrine on the first and the last fete rose to the highest pitch of the season. Availing
themselves of this occasion, swarms of young people crept into the licensed quarters
trhough the gate of the examination office. The noise they made with their laughter was so
great that the people might be unable to identify its direction without difficulty.
Thick groups were seen straining their way through the crowd by accompanying their
footsteps with threatening shouts. These spirited groups apeared one after another from all
directions, say Sumicho, Kyomachi and the draw-bridges here and there.It was a peculiar
congruity that all noises from the rippling hubbub at small riverside stores toi the convivial
uproar at the skyscraping edifice of O’Magaki seemed to unite to sound like a grand
orchestra. This writer would remind a few happy readers of this spectatcular enchantment
of the festivals in those days.

HIGUCHI Ichiyo (1872-1896) Child’s Play, also translated as “Growing up”/Takekurabe

1923-193? Ginza - Chuo-ku

just a street of wretched stores

I took a stroll along the Ginza, some time after the Great Earthquake. Hastily-built stores
stood side by side, ready for the year-end bargain sale. Many stalls lined both sides of the
street, just as they had prior to the earthquake. The stalls on the west side, sheltered with
red screens, were selling bonsai pots for the New Year.
Window shopping gave me the same impression it had before the earthquake, and so did
the people coming and going along the street. To put it bluntly, the “substance” of the
famous Ginza was nothing more than the people there and the commodities on display. In
other words, the Ginza itself, before the earthquake, was just a street of wretched stores.

TERADA Torahiko 1878-1935 Persimmon seeds 1917/1933/1988

1926 Tokyo metropolis

Ah, Tokyo, you are a murderous machine

The prefectures in the vicinity of the metropolis called Tokyo are being sucked dry of their
economic resources and human talents by the city... Ah, Tokyo, you are a murderous
machine that sucks out the blood of the peasants in the name of capitalistic, urban
civilization.

SHIBUYA Teisuke 18??-19?? Diary quoted in “Peasants, rebels, & outcastes, the underside of
1927 Yoshiwara (Senzoku) Taito-ku

The gay quarters exposes its pale belly

A somber, doleful compound

girt by a high wooden fence.
A black gutter runs still by those open spaces.
Trees grow and the place reeks
with the stench of pallid carbolic acid.
Yoshiwara!
The gay quarters exposes its pale belly,
a dead frog by the dike.

HAGIWARA Sakutaro 1886-1942 Anthology 1927/1993 p.184

193? Shinobazu Pond

A stagnant wind, reeking of sewage, raked the surface of Shinobazu Pond...

What was to become of me? just to think about that was enough to leave me shuddering
and too distraught to sit still, so I left my Hongo apartment dragging a walking stick and
headed for Ueno Park. It was an evening in mid-September. My white yukata was already
out of season, and I felt horribly conspicuous, as I glowed in the dark, and so full of sorrow I
no longer wanted to live. A stagnant wind, reeking of sewage, raked the surface of
Shinobazu Pond. The lotuses growing there had begun to decay, their grisly carcasses
entrapped between bent, elongated stalks, and the idiot faces of people streaming by in the
evening cool wer etched with such total exhaustion that one might have thought the end of
the world was at hand.

DAZAI Osamu (1909-1948) No kidding 1937/1998 p.59-61

193? Ueno Station - Taito-ku

these are the Gates of Hell

I walked all the way to Ueno Station. Through the portals of this “Wonder of the Orient”
swarmed a dark, whrithing, numberless throng. Vanquished souls, one and all. I couldn’t
help seeing them that way. For the farming villages in the North east, these are the Gates of
Hell. You pass through them to enter the big city, and again to return home, broken and
defeated, with nothing but the rags that cling to your ravaged body.

DAZAI Osamu 1909-1948 No kidding1937/1998 p.61

195?-196? edge of the moat at Marunouchi - Chiyoda-ku

watching the swans skim gracefully

Released for the noon break after three hours of work, the office employees of the
Marunouchi area flocked onto the spacious lawns in front of the Imperial Palace for a few
minutes of relaxation. One group, stretched out on the grass, which had just begun to turn
green, were flickering through magazines. Some of the girls were playing volleyball, thier
cheerful voices accompanying the ball at each throw, while others watched them. At the
edge of the moat, beneath the budding willow trees, a young man and his girl were looking
down at the water and watching the swans skim gracefully over its surface.

ENDO Shusaku 1923- Wonderful fool /Obaka san 1966/1974 p.26

195?-196? Maranouchi - Chiyoda-ku

The windows of the buildings too were sparkling

After parting from her brother, Tomoe crossed the Hibiya road junction and headed in the
direction of the Nikkatsu Building. Though it had been raining that morning, the skies were
now perfectly clear and the wet pavements reflected the brilliant rays of the sun. The
windows of the buildings too were sparkling. Foreigners and japanese with briefcases
poured out of the doors, intent on their business. A taxi pulled up and discharged its
passenger, onlt to pick up another. Another busy day had begun.

ENDO Shusaku 1923- Wonderful fool /Obaka san 1966/1974 p.135

196? Tokyo, underground streets and facilities (year 2000 map of underground below
Shinjuku-Station)
to travel from the top of Japan to the bottom,

To cross the city (or to penetrate its depth, for underground there are whole networks of
bars, shops to which you sometimes gain access by a simple entryway, so that, once
through this narrow door, you discover, dense and sumptuous, the black India of commerce
and pleasure) is to travel from the top of Japan to the bottom, to superimpose on its
topography the writing of its faces.

Barthes, Roland 1915-1980 Empire of signs/L'empire des signes 1970/1982 p41-42

197? Tokyo in general, people sleeping in boxes.. (homeless waiting for food Ueno Park -
Taito-ku)
only to persons who are no one

Here is a town for box men. Anonymity is the obligation of the inhabitants and the right to
live there is accorded only to persons who are no one. All those who are registred are
sentenced by the very fact of being registred.

ABE Kobo 1924-1993 The box man 19../1975 p.130

198?-199? Sanya, Iroha Arcade (Nihonzutsumi Taito-ku/Minami-senju Arakawa-ku)

Other lie down on the street,

I proceeded east through the dilapidated arcade, known as the Iroha, which bustled with
evening shoppers. San’ya is home to entrepeneurs, office workers, shopkeepers, and
housewives as well as to day laborers, and the teeming arcade serves the entire
community. The farther east you walk, however, the drearier the surroundings become.
Disheveled men sit in lazy circles drinking and chatting. Other lie down on the street,
sleeping off their liquor. More line up in front of two or three tiny take-out-stalls, waiting to
buy dinner. Still others imbibe at a stand-up bar opening onto the street.

Fowler, Edward San'Ya Blues : Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo 1997 p.2
198? Rikugien Garden - Bunkyo-ku

Multistoreyed flats were going up around the wood

I began to take the children there occasionally. Several times, too, we released pet turtles
or goldfish into the pond. many nearby families who’d run out of room for aquarium
creatures in their overcrowed flats would slip them into the pond to spend the rest of their
lives at liberty.
Rocks rose from the water here and there, and each was studded with turtles sunning
themselves. They couldn;t have bred naturally in such numbers. They must have been the
tiny turtles sold at fairground stalls and pet shops, grown up without a care in the world.
More of them lined the water’s edge at one’s feet. No doubt there were other animals on
the increase -goldfish, loaches, and the like. Multistoreyed flats were going up around the
wood in quick succession, and more living things were brought down from their rooms
each year. Cats were one animal I’d overlooked though. If tipping out turtles was common
practice, there was no reason why cats shouldn’t be dumped here and dogs too.

TSUSHIMA Yuko 1947- The silent traders/Danmari no ichi 1982/1988 p.40

198? Shibuya-station pedestrian crossing

a sea of different-colored umbrellas

The plaza in front of Shibuya Station is a lake at the bottom of a valley where several
rivers meet. When the sluice gates fly open, hordes of people flood into the intersection
from all directions and whirlpools start to swirl. So on rainy days like today it’s a sea of
different-colored umbrellas bouncing and knocking around for space. Made me imagine
some bizarre machine with a lot of gears going round and round for no good reason.

SHIMADA Masahiko 1961- Dream messenger, a novel/Yumetsukai 1989/1992 p.79

198? the meachism of Tokyo in general

the punctiliously correct performance of ritual

This city is a piece of machinery unrivaled in history for size, complexity, precision;
unrivaled for productivity, too, if we measure that in man-miles, sheets of paper, computer
printouts, and radio and TV waves. It’s of a scale that beggars analogy: far more
stupendous than any beehive or termite’s colony, any factory.
The ideas and tools which produced the first archaic prototype of thsi machine came from
the other end of the world, from a culture as unlike Japan’s as any the world has seen. Yet
somehow the Japanese have made it their own. Charmed throughout their history by the
punctiliously correct performance of ritual, they have made of the whole city and its
operation a fantastic diurnal ceremony.

Popham, Peter 19??- Tokyo, the city at the end of the world 1985 p.15
1983 Harajuku bridge over Yamanote-line,Yoyogi Park - Shibuya-ku

watch the young members of the 'bamboo-shoot’ generation.

On Sundays, one corner of Yoyogi Park and the road that runs alongside it are packed
with onlookers who have come to watch the young members of the 'bamboo-shoot’
generation. The spectators watch enthusiastically as the young men and women form
circles here and there and begin a peculiar dance to music from cassette-players. I’m one
of the observers. The bamboo-shoot teenagers sport long, Korean-style robes of white or
pink, and both male and female participants wear rouge on their cheeks. The groups vary
one circle to the next, and each circle has its own leader who sets the pace for the dancing.
Off to the side, a foreigner was zealously cranking away at his 8-milimetre camera. As I
watch the dances, sadly enough I remember the years during the war. When I was the
same age as these young men and women, Japan was already involved in a massive war.

ENDO Shusaku 1923- A sixty-year-old man/Rokujussai no otoko 1983/1993 p.137

2000 Express-way no.6 (elevated and underground)

short embrace of towering light

a girdle drive
a river dive
a twinkling serpentine
a city dance
up ... down
and ... up again
then ... slide
and ride
a folding road
into a wall
down, fall
rise up
wigwagging ways
in short embrace
of towering light

Tjebbe van Tijen (1944-) Circling the Express-way (2000)

L author title published period

2 New Roads in Edo/Edo shimmichi (1678) 1678 167?

au
2 Edo snake sushi/Edo ja no sushi (1679) 1679 167?
au
2 Arakawa no minwa (1989) [Arakawa-ku Ky¯oiku Iinkai 1989 19??
au
2 The Broken Bridge : Fiction from Expatriates in Literary
au
2 Riding the Black Ship : Japan and Tokyo Disneyland 1999 199?
au
2 Chikusai monogatari/{L’histoir de Chikusai} 16??
au
2 Fiction of desire
au
2 Year of the wild boar, an American woman in Japan 1942/1973 193?-194?
au
2 AGATA Hikari (1943-) A family party
au
2 AKUTAGAWA, Ryunosuke (1892-1927): The early life of Daidoji/ 189?-192?
au
2 Alletzhauser, Albert J. Quake (1997) [Bloomsbury; London] 1997 2001-
au
2 anonymous Travels round the east/Azuma meguri (16??) 16??
au
2 AOYAMA, Kunizo (1874-1940) Taish¯o no T¯oky¯o to Edo (1916) [Gakugeisha : 1916 16??-19??
au
2 ARIYOSHI Sawako (1931-1984) The twilight years/Kokotsu no hito {The enraptured man} 1972/1983 & 19??
au
2 ASAI Ryoi (16??-16??) Tokaido meishoki/{Lieux ceelbres di Tokaido} 16??
au
2 Barrell, Tony Tokyo's Burning (1995) (radio play) 1995 1945
au
2 Bauer, Gabrielle Tokyo, My Everest : A Canadian Woman in Japan (1995) 1995 199?
au
2 Blankenship, William D. Time of the Cricket; A Novel of Classic Mayhem in 1995 19??
au
2 Boggs, Thomas Tokyo Vanilla (1998) [Gay Mens Pr; ISBN: 0854492550 [ 1998 199?
au
2 Brackett, D.W. Holy Terror : Armageddon in Tokyo (1996) [Weatherhill; 1996 199?
au
2 Cameron, Carol The 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and Fire 1923
au
2 Collins, Robert J. More Max Danger : the continuing adventures of an expat 1988 198?
au
2 Collins, Robert J. Max Danger : the adventures of an expat in Tokyo (1987) 1987 198?
au
2 Crockett, Lucy Herndon Popcorn on the Ginza, an informal portrait of postwar 1949 1945-1949
au
2 Davidson, Augbusta M. Campbell Present-day Japan (1904) [T.Fisher Unwin; London] 1904
au
2 Davy, Ross Kenzo : A Tokyo Story
au
2 DAZAI, Osamu (1909-1948): The Setting Sun/Shayo (1947/1956) [src01 p.224/src05 1947/1956 19 4?-195?
au
2 DAZAI, Shundai (1680-1747) Collected works/Nankaku-sensei bunshu (17??) 17?? 17??
au
2 EDOIN, Hoto The Night Tokyo Burned 1945
au
2 EIJI, Yoshikawa Fragments of a past
au
2 EMORI, Harumitsu Shinjuku Kabuki-cho (1983) [Chobunsha] 1983
au
2 ENCHI Fumiko (1905-) The waiting years
au
2 ENCHI Fumiko (1905-1986) Masks/Onnamen
au
2 ENDO Shusaku (1923-) Scandal [Peter Owen; London] 198?
au
2 Fitsimmons, Thomas (1926-) Water ground stone (1994) 1994
au
2 FUJI, Keiko Yume wa yoru hiraku/{La reve s’epanouit la nuit}
au
2 FUJIMOTO Kizan (1624-1704) The great mirror of love/Shikido Okagami/{Le grand miroir 1678 1656-167?
au
2 FURUI, Yoshikichi (1937-): The dwelling place/Sumika (1979) [src05 p.182] 1979 19??
au
2 Guillain, Robert I Saw Tokyo Burning : An Eyewitness Narrative from 1939-1945
au
2 Hadfield, Peter Sixty Seconds That Will Change the World : The Coming 1995 1999-2???
au
2 HARUE Shirane Traces of dreams, landscape, cultural memory, and the
au
2 HATTORI Busho (1842-1908) Tokyo shin-hanjo-ki (1874) [src08 p.34] 1874 18??
L author title published period

2 HAYASHI Fumiko (1904-1951) Drifting clouds/Ukigumo [src01 p.308] 19??

au
2 HAYASHI Fumiko (1904-1951) Bones/Hone (1949/1966) [in: “The Shadow of Sunrise” ; 1949/1966 1945-1948
au
2 HAYASHI Razan (1583-1657) A journey of 1616/Heishin Kiko (1616) 1616 1616
au
2 Hearn, Lafcadio (1850-1904) Kokoro : hints and echoes of Japanese inner life (1896) 1896
au
2 HIRABAYASHI, Taiko (1905-1972) Self-mockery/Azakeru (1927) [src010 p.39] 1927 192?
au
2 HIRAGA, Gennai (1728-1779) Nenashigusa 1763
au
2 IBUSE Masuji (1898-) Ogikubo chronicles/Ogikubo fudoki (1982) [src010 p.51] 1982 19??
au
2 IBUSE Masuji (1898-) Hikkoshi-yatsure/Always moving (1947) 1947
au
2 IHARA Saikaku (1642-1693) Ukiyo monotogari/{L’histoire du monde flottant} (1661) 1661 16??
au
2 IHARA Saikaku (1642-1693) Tales of samurai honour/Buke giri monogatari (16??/1981) 16??/1981
au
2 IHARA Saikaku (1642-1693) Vie d’une amie de la volupte/Koshoku ichidai onna 16??/1975
au
2 INNOUE, Yuiichi (1916-1985) T¯oky¯o daik¯ush¯u (1995) [Iwanami Shoten; Tokyo; LC 1995 1939-1945
au
2 INOUYE, Charles Shiro Three tales of mystery and imagination, Japanese Gothic 1992 1873-1939
au
2 INOUYE Jukichi (1862-1929) Home life in Tokyo (1910) 1910 1910
au
2 ISHIHARA, Shintaro Season of violence
au
2 ITSUKI, Hiroyuki Sishun no mon/{La porte de la jeunesse} (196?) [Shukan 196? 196?
au
2 JIPPENSHA Ikku (1765-1831) Shank's mare/Tokaidochu hiza kurige (1809) [src006 1809 1802-1822
au
2 JIPPENSHA Ikku (1765-1831) Travels on foot on the Tokaido/Tkaido dochu hizakurige 1802/1822 1802-1822
au
2 KAMI, Ryosuke Tokyo Sights and Insights : Exploring the City's Back 1992 19??
au
2 KATO, Ikuya (1929-) Edo haikai saijiki (1983) [Heibonsha; Tokyo; LC Call No.: 1983 19??
au
2 KATO, Takeo (1888-1956) Leaving the earth/Tsuchi o hanarate (1920) [src007 p.2] 1920 19 2?
au
2 KATSU Kokichi (1802-1850) Musui's story, the autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai 18??/1988
au
2 KAWABATA Yasunari (1899-1972) Chronique d'Asakusa/Asakusa kurenaidan{Scarlet gang 1929-1935/1 1920-1930
au
2 KAWAKAMI, Hajime (1879-1946) Tales of poverty/Binbo monogatari (1917) 1917 191?
au
2 KAWAKAMI, Hajime (1879-1946) Autobiography/Jijoden (1947) 1947 189?-1946
au
2 Kenrick, Miranda/Kenrick, Yivienne Too far east too long : our Tokyo : three dotty decades 1977 1945-1977
au
2 KINOSHITA Junji (1914-) Hong¯o (1983) [Kodansha; Tokyo; LC Call No.: 1983 191?-19??
au
2 KIRITANI, Elizabeth Vanishing Japan
au
2 Kirkup, James Tokyo (1966) [Phoenix House; London/etc.] 1966 1964
au
2 Kirkup, James Japan behind the fan (1970) [J.M. Dent & Sons; London] 1970 196?-1970
au
2 KITA Morito The house of Nire /Nireke no hitobito) (1964) 1918-1946
au
2 KITA Morito The fall of the house of Nire /Nireke no hitobito) (1964) 1918-1946
au
2 KITAHARA Hakushu (18??-): Tsukiji [src02 p.41] 18??-19??
au
2 KOMATSO, Michi (1924-) Yakenai de kureta sench¯u nikki : kush¯u to kinr¯o d¯oin 1994 1945
au
2 KUBOTA, Mantaro (1889-1963): Asakusa fudoki (1957) [Kadokawa Shoten ; Tokyo; LC 1957 19??
au
2 KUKUZAWA Yukichi (1835-1901) The autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa (18??/1966) 18??/1966 1835-1901
au
2 KUNIKIDA, Doppo (1871-1908) Diary of a drunken man/Shuchu nikki (1902) [src007 p.1] 1902 190?
au
2 KUROSAWA Ikuru/{Vivre}
au
2 KUROSAWA Dodeskaden
au
2 Lawson, Ted W. (1917-) Thirty seconds over Toky (1953) [Random House; New 1953 1945
au
2 Maraini, Fosco Meeting with Japan (1959) [Viking Press; New York] 1959 1945-195?
au
2 MATSUDAIRA, Makoto (1930-) Yamiichi : T¯oky¯o Ikebukuro (1985) [Domesu Shuppan; 1985 194?
L author title published period

2 Meigs, Henry Gate of the tigers (1992) [Viking; New York; LC Call No.: 1992 199?
au
2 MISHIMA Yukio (1925-1970) The green years/Ao no jidai (1940) [src01 p.209] 1940 194?
au
2 MISHIMA Yukio (1925-1970) The faltering of the virtues/Bitokuno yoromeiki [src01 19 ??
au
2 MITAMURA, Engyo (1870-1952) Mitamura Engyo zensh¯u. (1975-1983) [Chuo Koronsha’; 1975-1983 1600-1868
au
2 MIYAMOTO, Teru The people of dream street
au
2 MORI Ogai (1862-1922) The bank of the big river [src02 p.151] 18??
au
2 MORI Ogai (1862-1922) Vita sexualis (1909/1972) [Charles E. Tuttle; Rutland, 1909/1972
au
2 MORI Ogai (1862-1922) Youth and other stories (?/1994) [University of Hawaii ?/1994
au
2 MORI Ogai (1862-1922) The vendetta at Gojingahara/Gojingahara no kataiuchi 1???/1991
au
2 MORI Ogai (1862-1922) Shibue Chusai (19??/1985) [in “Woman in the crested 19??/1985 1816-1884
au
2 MORITA, Masaharu (1925-) Saraba, Kinshi-ch¯o! : T¯oky¯o daik¯ush¯u honoo no 1985 1945
au
2 MORIYAMA, Tae Tokyo Adventures : Glimpses of the City in Bygone Eras 1993 18??-19??
au
2 Morley, John David Pictures from the water trade, an Englishman in Japan 1985 197?-197?
au
2 Morris, John (1895-19??) Traveller from Tokyo (1943/1944) [Sheridan House 1943/1944 1938-1943
au
2 Morris, John (1895-19??) The phoenix cup: some notes on Japan in 1946 1946
au
2 MURAKAMI, Haruki (1949-) Norwegian wood
au
2 MURATA, Minejiro (1857-1945) T¯oky¯o chiri enkakushi (1890) [nagaki Tsunesabur¯o : 1890 188?
au
2 NAGAI, Kafu (1879-1959): The woman in the rented room (1927) [src01 p.53] 1927 19??
au
2 NAGAI, Kafu (1879-1959): Katsushika romance [src01 p.132] 1879-1959
au
2 NAGAI, Kafu (1879-1959): Asong in Fukagawa/Fukagawa no uta [src02 p.45/46] 1908 19??
au
2 NAGAI, Kafu (1879-1959): The fox/Korshikawa [src02 p.137...] 19??
au
2 NAGAI, Kafu (1879-1959): Diary of one recently returned (1911) 1911 191?
au
2 NAGAI, Kafu (1879-1959): Walking shoes/Hiyori geta 18??-19??
au
2 NAGAI, Kafu (1879-1959): Kaf¯u to T¯oky¯o : "Danch¯otei nichij¯o" shich¯u (1996) 1996 18??-19??
au
2 NAKAGAMI, Kenji (1946-died) Map of a nineteen-year-old/Jukyu-sai no chizu (1974) 1974 19 ??
au
2 NAKAGAMI, Kenjji (1946-) Contempt/Keibetsu (1992) [src05 p.152] 1992 19??
au
2 NAKAGAWA, Yoichi (1897-1994) A moonflower in heaven/Ten no yugao (1938/1949) 1938/1949
au
2 NARUSHIMA, Ryuhoku (1837-1884): New chronicle of Yanugibashi/Ryuko Shiushi (1859/1860) 1859/1860 1850 (?)
au
2 NATSUKI Shizuko (1938-) Death from the clouds/Kumokara okura shi (1988/1991) 1988/1991 198?-
au
2 NATSUKI Shizuko (1938-) Murder at Mt. Fuji/W no Higeki (1984/1987) [Ballantine 1984/1987 198?-
au
2 NATSUME, Soseki (1867-1916): Little master (sonny)/Botchan (1907) [src010 p.153/src08 sonny 19??
au
2 NATSUME, Soseki: (1867-1916) Michikusa
au
2 Nilsen, Henning A. (1947-) Pelles Harry (1979) [Gyldendal; Oslo; LC Call No.: 1979 1939-1945
au
2 NIWA, Fumio (1904-): Love letter/Koibumi [src01 p.308] 19??
au
2 NOGAMI, Yaeko (1885-) The maze/Meiro (1956) 1956 1936-1956
au
2 NOSAKA, Akiyuki (1930-): The rioters/Sodoshitachi (1971) 1971 1969
au
2 NOSAKA, Akiyuki (1930-): Shinjuku kaiko/{la fosse marine de Shinjuku} (1979) 1979
au
2 Nouet, Noel (1885-1968) Tokyo fifty sketches/cinquante croquis [as seen by a 1935 1931-1935
au
2 Nouet, Noel (1885-1968) The Shogun’s city, a history of Tokyo (1955/1990) 1955/1990 0737-1953
au
2 OGI, Hiroko Shinjuku blues
au
2 OKAZAKI, Masao Haha ga ko ni kataru Ry¯ogoku Kinshi-ch¯o 1983 19??
au
2 OSANAI, Kaoru (1881-1928) The bank of the big river/Okawabata [src02 p.54/src02 18??-19??
L author title published period

2 OSARAGI, Jiro (1897-1973) The century of the emperor/Tenno no seiki (1967/1973) 1967/1973 186?-19??
au
2 OSARAGI, Jiro (1897-1973) The Journey/Tabiji (1960-1967) 1960-1967 186?-19??
au
2 OSHIMA, Nagisa Diary of a Shinjuku thief [film] 1960
au
2 OSHIMA, Tatsui (1902-1986) T¯oky¯o risai nikki (1992) [Nihon Tosho Senta; Tokyo; LC 1992 1939-1945
au
2 OTA, Masanosuke Hinan kara kikan made : pengash¯u (1923) [Tenky¯o 1923 1923
au
2 Pons, Philippe [ed.] Des villes nommes Tokyo (1984) [Autrement; Paris] 1984
au
2 Prindle, Tamae K. Made in Japan and other Japanese ‘business' novels 1989
au
2 Reddick, Blondine Louise A Month of Revelations in Modern Tokyo, Japan (1992) 1992 19??
au
2 Richie, Donald Tokyo Nights : A Novel
au
2 Riordan, Lee Jishin (1997) [Periplus Editions; Hong Kong] 1997 1923
au
2 Riordan, Lee / Riordan, Barbera Jishin : Lives Shattered, Love Discovered Amid the Great 1997 19??
au
2 SACHI, Mizuno Passion in Tokyo (1996) [Masquerade Books; ISBN: 1996 19??
au
2 SAIJO, Yaso (1892-1970) Aa T¯oky¯o : sanbun, shish¯u (1923) [Koransha; Tokyo; 1923 1923
au
2 SAIJO, Yaso (1892-1970) Aa T¯oky¯o : sanbun, shish¯u (1923) [Koransha; Tokyo; 1923 1923
au
2 SAITO, Choshu (1737-1799) / Edo meisho zue (1917) [Yuhodo; Tokyo; LC Call No.: 1917 17??
au
2 SAKAGUCHI Ango (1906-1955) The idiot/Hakuchi (1946/1961 and 1973) [in “Modern 1946/1961
au
2 Samson, Katharine Living in Tokyo (1937) [Brace & Company; New York, 1937 193?-193?
au
2 SANTO, Kioden (1761-1816) Tsugen Somagaki (1785/1787) 1785/1787
au
2 SAOTOME, Katsumoto (1932-) Heiwa ni ikiru : watakushi no genten T¯oky¯o daik¯ush¯u 1982 1945
au
2 SATA Ineko (1904-) My map of Tokyo/Watashi no Tokyo chizu (1949) [src010 1949 19 4?
au
2 SATA Ineko (1904-) Scharlachrot/Kurenai/{Scarlet} (1936/1990) [Iudicim; 1936/1990
au
2 SATO, Haruo (1892-1964) Beatiful town, stories and essays by Sato Haruo (1996) 1996
au
2 SATOMI, Ton (18??-19??) Putting the old woman out to die/Abasute [src01 p.143] 19??
au
2 SEKIGUCHI, Shoji (1930-) Kodomotachi ni tsutaeru T¯oky¯o daik¯ush¯u (1985) 1985 1939-1945
au
2 SETOUCHI Harumi (1922-) The end of summer/Natsu no owari (1962/1989) 1962/1989
au
2 SHIBAKI Yoshiko (1914-) Snow flurry/Kazahana (1985/1986) [Japanese literature 1985/1986
au
2 SHIGA, Naoya (1883-1971) The paper door and other stories (1987) 1987
au
2 SHIKITEI Sanba (1776-1822) Forty-eight nasty habbits/Shijuhachikusa (1812-1818) 1812-1818
au
2 SHIMAZAKI Toson (1872-1943) Before the dawn/Yoake mae (1929-1935) [src007 p.9] 1929-1935 1929-1935
au
2 SHIMAZAKI Toson (1872-1943) The family/Ie{une famille} (1911/1976)[University of Tokyo 1911/1976 187-19??
au
2 SHISHI, Bunroken: Free school/Jiyu Gakko [src01 p.308] 19??
au
2 SONO Ayako (1931-) Age of fools/Baka no jidai (1976/1980) [Japan Echo 1976/1980 1940-197?
au
2 SUDO, Nansui () The ladies of new style (1887) 1887
au
2 TAKAMI, Jun (1907-1965): Under what stars/Ikanara hishi no shita ni (1939/1940) 1939/1940 1939-1940
au
2 TAKEDA, Rintaro (1904-1946) The eight Ginza blocks [src01 p.58] 19??
au
2 TAMENAGA, Shunsui (1790-1843) Colors of spring: The Plum calendar/Shunshoku 1832-1833 1832-1833
au
2 TAMURA, Taijiro; Streetwalker [src01 p.308] 19 -19
au
2 TAMURA, Taijiro (1911-?) Flesh gate/Nikutai no mon (1947) [src01 p.187] 1947
au
2 TANABE, Moichi (-1981) Waga machi Shinjuku/{Shinjuku my town} (1976) 1976
au
2 TANABE, Moichi (-1981) Mayor of the night (1968) [Yohan Publications Inc.] 1968
au
2 TANABE, Moichi (-1981) Shinjuku keieigaku/{La gestion de Shinjuku} (1978) 1978
au
2 TANAKA, Komimasa Shinjuku fura fura zoku/{Ceux qui derivent dans Shinjuku} 1978
L author title published period

2 TANAKA, Yukiko This Kind of Woman : Ten Stories by Japanese Women 1960-1976
au
2 TANIZAKI Junichiro (1886-1965) Diary of a mad old man (196?) 196?
au
2 TAYAMA Katai (1871-1930) T¯oky¯o shinsaiki (1924) [ Hakubunkan, Taish¯o ; Tokyo; 1924 1923
au
2 TERAKAO, Seiken (1796-1868) Records of Edo/Edo hanjoki (1832-1835) 1832-1835 18??
au
2 TOKUDA Shusei (1871-1943) Rough living/Arakure (1915) 1915 191?
au
2 TOKUDA Shusei (1871-1943) Arajotai
au
2 TOKUNAGA, Naoshi: Street without sun/straat zonder zon (1934) [collection 1934 19 3?
au
2 TOMITA, Hitoshi (1946-) J¯usho to hizuke no aru T¯oky¯o f¯ukei (1989) [Shinjuko 1989 19??
au
2 TOMITA, Hitoshi (1946) Watakushi o aishita T¯oky¯o : ichimei T¯oky¯o suikei kik¯o 1984 19??
au
2 Tracy, Honor Kakemono, a sketchbook of postwar Japan (1950) 1950 1945-1950
au
2 TSUBOUCHI, Shoyo (1859-1935): Dream of the future/Mirai no yume (19??) [src007 p.2] 19??
au
2 TSUBOUCHI, Shoyo (1859-1935): Types of students/Shosei katagi (1887) 1887
au
2 TSUSHIMA, Yuko (1947-) Child of fortune/Choji (1978/1983) [Kodansha; Tokyo] 1978/1983
au
2 UEDA Akinari (1734-1809) Contes de pluie et de lune [Gallimard; traduction Rene 17??/1956
au
2 Wade, Tom Henling Prisoner of the Japanese : From Changi to Tokyo (1994) 1994 1939-1945
au
2 Whiting, Robert Tokyo Underworld : The Fast Times and Hard Life of an 1999 1945-19??
au
2 WHITNEY, Clara A.N. (1861-1???) Clara's diary, an American girl in Meiji Japan (18??/1979) 18??/1979
au
2 Williams, Tennessee In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel
au
2 YANAGISAWA, Shinko (1752-1792) Sh¯okaku nikki (1981-1983) [Yumani Shobo; Tokyo; LC 1981-1983 17??-17??
au
2 YOKOYAMA, Gennosuke Japan’s lower classes/Nihon no kaso shakai (1899) 1899
au
2 YOSHIE Hotta Judgement/Shinpan (1963) 1963
au
2 YOSHIMOTO, Banana (1964-) Lizard/Tokage (1993) 1993
au
2 YOSHIMOTO, Banana (1964-) Kitchen (1987/1991) [in: “New Japanese voices ()”; 1987/1991
au
2 YOSHIMURA, Akira (1927-) / NAGATA, T¯oky¯o no shitamachi (1985) [Bungei Shunju; Tokyo; LC 1985 19??
au
2 YOSHIYUKI Rie (1939-) The little lady/Chiisana Kifujin (1981/1982) [in: “Japanese 1981/1982
au
2 ZAKO, Jun (1929-) Enko wa itsumo modan datta (1984) [Sahi Shunbunsha’ 1984 19??
au