Tokyo YY - Tokyo Faces

Tsukudajima was little more than a protuberance of gray mudflats, unpromising silt deposits until, like potters' clay, it was worked into two well formed islands at the mouth of the Sumida River. By the early Meiji period three reclaimed islands, Ishikawajima to the north, the mid-isle of Tsukudajima, and Tsukishima to the south, were melded.

The name Tsukudajima means “Island of Cultivated Rice Fields,” a reference to the rural outskirts of Osaka the first island fishermen came from in the 17th century. Before nearby Tsukiji became the world's largest wholesale fish market, sorting and dispatching catches from around the world — shrimps from Thailand, tuna from Tasmania, eels from Taiwan — the Nihonbashi fish market, located under the eponymously named bridge, was the place for restaurateurs and distributors to shop. This market is thought to have been created from surplus catches coming from the nets of the Tsukadajima fishermen.

Scowling mask in a Tsukudajima shop window

Ostensibly brought up from Osaka to Edo in order to supply the fussy kitchens of the shogun with whitebait, the ulterior reason seems to have been that the castle, the center effectively of a totalitarian police state, required a well placed body of spies and informers to keep an eye on shipping movements in the bay and to report back anything suspicious or untoward. Many of the descendants of these original espionage related fishermen still work at nearby Tsukiji.

Long nights in the bay or further afield required stocks of food that would keep at sea. Experts at drying, curing and preserving food, the islanders created a nourishing preparation made from seaweed and shellfish, that was then seasoned with salt, soy sauce and sugar. The result, know as tsukudani, was sold in shops and on the quays of the island to sailors, warehousemen, and those visiting the shrine to make offerings to Sumiyoshi Myojin, protector of seafarers. There are still three shops left making tsukudani, the best known being Tenyasu, located near the torii gate facing the waterfront.

The black-tiled roof, blue door banner and steady trickle of middle-aged women — the sweet, fishy taste of tsukudani has long been out of favor with the young — are practically a landmark of the island. Developers and the possibility of the Tsukiji wholesale market one day being relocated, are persistent threats to Tsukudajima's heritage.
Sumiyoshi shrine has an imposing brown stone marker set in bluish stone in its compound. The memorial, called Katsuozuka (“Bonito Mound”), is the site of a service each year to mollify the souls of the bonito that end up in tsukudani. The shrine is a branch of the Grand Sumiyoshi mother shrine in Osaka. Vestiges of the shrine's role as a protector of sea travelers, fishermen and sailors can be seen in salt-encrusted carvings on beams and transoms on some of the small outer buildings. One particularly realistic relief shows fishermen in a skiff, firewood burning in a metal basket as they cast their nets in the bay at night. The scene is repeatedly brought to life in popular ukiyo-e prints of the day.

A lighthouse memorial next to the towering apartment of River City 21

Look carefully at a washstand whose openwork is of an unusual quality, believed to have been crafted by the ukiyo-e master, Sharaku. Its authenticity is only of passing importance as the question of whether Sharaku ever really existed remains a mystery. Whoever he was — nobody seems to have ever met or seen him — his work gained an enormous following in Edo, the works standing out for the wonderfully expressive, startled facial masks and gecko-like fingers of the subjects. Whether they are the genuine remains or an empty hoax, his gravestone, Sharaku no bohi, is marked here. Enigmatic to the end, the single line inscription reads, “This is the place of death.”

Tsukudajima's short tidal inlet and the nearby towers of River City 21

A few steps beyond the shrine, Tsukudakobashi is an attractive bridge with a red handrail that spans a narrow, tidal inlet where you can get a decent whiff of the sea and a modest insight into the former life of this quarter.The fisherman's shacks and boathouses are less dilapidated than they were just a few years ago and the number of vessels severely depleted. Old timers sit in a small, dusty park at the end of the inlet wondering, no doubt, how it all came down. There is a demon seed in this city. The Construction Ministry, the peacetime equivalent of the Imperial army, at least in regard to the urban landscape, have shown little mercy in slicing up communities or entrapping them between diminishing smidgens of the past and the jackhammer of the future. Tsukudajima is another victim of mercenary development. The north portion of the island, known as River City 21, has been aggressively developed, its 40-storey residential skyscrapers, conference halls and Italian bistros more in keeping with Shinjuku or Ikebukuro than a former fishing village. The taller buildings, massed like triffids around the old town, look ready to annihilate the feeble wooden structures at their feet.

Spared the great fires of Edo and the earthquake that struck Tokyo in 1923, however, the cozy huddles of housing blocks that give Tsukudajima its distinct character are, with the exception of the obtrusive mishmash of high tension wires, exposed fuse boxes, and temporary looking buildings which make one area of urban Tokyo hardly indistinguishable from another, in fairly good shape. Many of the houses, especially those in the vicinity of the shrine, have well finished features that include black ceramic roofs, oxidized copper finials of an aged, green patina, and well seasoned wood walls. It was heartening to see one house being sensitively restored, wall panels modeled exactly on the originals, beautifully cut by carpenters on the sidewalk in front of the house, being put in place.

Until 1964, when a 230-meter bridge to the island was completed, Tsukudajima's only direct connection with central Tokyo was by ferryboat. Despite the offshore tankers on the other side of the island and commercial planes descending on their flight paths into Haneda, the journey must have been a unique time slip. The ferry began operations in 1645.

A inari fox statue guards the sides of a small shrine within the grounds of Sumiyoshi jinja.

On 27 August 1964, without the slightest fanfare for the passing of an era, the last ferry to cross the Sumida made its journey into the watery reaches of the city's notoriously short memory, the last link to a way of life that can be found only in the work of novelists and poets, in the compressed perspectives and supra-real colors of woodblock prints and, perhaps, among the last survivors of Tsukudajima and their elegant homes.