Deep in the musty pockets and folds of Yanaka, an endearingly unfashionable quarter of Tokyo, ghosts of old Edo linger still. Although the town’s heritage is easily overlooked -- surprisingly few Tokyoites are more than vaguely aware of the name -- those who make the effort to step beyond the drabness of the Yamanote line’s Nippori station, will find a rare enclave of the old city.
Harking back perhaps, to the martial character of certain Buddhist sects, the core town dates back to the Tokugawa Shogunate’s decision to fortify the city’s periphery with temples that would double as fortresses in the event of invasion. The barriers were never put to the test and, although the pastoral woodlands and gurgling streams the area was once famous for have long been gobbled up by urban Tokyo, much remains.
The town owes its survival this century more to luck than the efforts of the conservationists, being one of the few old quarters of Tokyo to have come through both the Kanto earthquake of 1923 and the fire bombing of 1945, relatively unscathed. One of its most important cultural losses, the burning of Tennoji Temple’s famed pagoda by an arsonist in a love-suicide pact occurred one summer evening in 1957. The pagoda, reduced now to four corner stones, was made famous by the writer Rohan Koda in his novel The Five-Storied Pagoda.
As temple lands were reduced, Yanaka became a fashionable, though pleasantly reclusive district for artists, writers, professors and intellectuals. Tenshin Okakura, writer of The Book of Tea, an art critic and educator, set up the Nihon Bijutsuin here, an art school responsible for producing some of the most influential artists of the day. It’s popularity among artists and literati can be traced to the present time, which has known its fair share of the gifted, including a small coterie of foreign luminaries, such as the American writer Donald Richie, who have made Yanaka their home at some time during their sojourn in Tokyo.
The gravestones at Yanaka also read like a roll call of the famous. And the notorious. Upright statesmen, authors and botanists aside, those who committed crimes and sins that caught the popular imagination, like the late Shimada Ichiro, self-confessed assassin of a former home minister, are well represented at Yanaka cemetery as well. The mass murderer -- exclusively of men -- Takahashi Oden, a women "so wicked" according to author Paul Waley, "that several cemeteries claim the honor of containing her ashes," lies here unrepentant.
One of the most rewarding aspects of exploring Yanaka on foot are the number of crafts and trades still visible on its streets and within the tiny work studios and cubby shops of its winding back lanes. The Taguchi Ningyo-ten, specializes in authentic Japanese dolls, many of them miniature masterpieces. Taguchi-san, who lends his name to the shop title, is as busy as any Tokyo fashion designer, constantly putting together new collections and receiving orders from appreciative customers all over the country. His Edo fire fighter and chrysanthemum dolls are especially sought after. Less well-known crafts such as basket weaving, also have their place in the shopping and trade streets of Yanaka. In Miyogi Buseki’s flower shop near the Yamanote line tracks, you can watch craftsmen weaving distinctive, and rather expensive, works called hanakago, or "flower baskets." These are made from bamboo which has been painstakingly smoked over wood and charcoal pits under the eaves of thatch-roofed houses.
Close to Daien-ji is one of Tokyo’s oldest and most exquisite paper art shops, Isetatsu. Here you will find well-crafted fans, combs, dolls and colorful chests of drawers, all handmade from Japanese washi paper. One of its specialties is chiyogami: designs reproduced from original samurai textiles. It’s a small shop with its original exterior still more or less intact. Despite the quality of its goods, most of its products are surprisingly affordable.
The lively downtown atmosphere of Yanaka is enriched not only by its arts and crafts but also its food vendors who ply the streets with wobbly barrows and rickety ambulants, selling grilled corn, sweet potatoes, roasted sembei, baked squid and arrowweed. Torindo, an old shop specializing in an unusual line of sugar-coated vegetables, is well known in the area.
The sensation of time standing still is reinforced in a most literal way at the Daimyo Clock Museum. A fascinating collection of time pieces made exclusively for Japan’s feudal lords are on display here. The clock faces are especially interesting because the hours are marked, not by numbers, but by the Chinese characters used to indicate the zodiac animals. Another collection can be found at the Asakura Chosokan, a sculpture gallery dedicated to the work of Fumio Asakura. His studio-house and courtyard garden are open to the public. The water garden is of special interest as the stones have been arranged to reflect the Five Confucian Virtues. Among the statues of flowing nudes, look out for one of exceptional and, in the context of Yanaka, apposite brilliance --The Gravekeeper. Climb beyond the top floor and you will reach a roof observatory with good views of the surrounding neighborhood.
Religion, commerce and eroticism have always been natural bedfellows in the tolerant ambiance of this quarter. The other half of Yanaka, the press of love hotels on the other side of the Yamanote line, are a spillover from the days when the cemetery’s main road, a tree-lined avenue near the Tenno-ji, a major Yanaka temple, was lined with teahouses which doubled as brothels. These were patronized as much by priests and acolytes as anyone else. The clergy would repair there after --one feels it should have been before -- the evening meditations. The Edo beauty Osen, who rose to celebrity after the ukiyo-e artist Harunobu depicted her in dozens of his prints, worked in one of these shops and is herself buried in Yanaka. A small temple, called the Tennoji Fukusen-in, once stood next to Osen’s teahouse. Much attention was paid to a shrine within its precincts called Kasamori. Its popularity derived from the humorous word play that resulted by reinterpreting the character for kasa so that it would read "syphilis," and the one for mori, to read "protection from." The two halves of Yanaka -- worlds of smoldering incense, smoldering flesh -- can still be visited in one day of high-minded sensuality.
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