The Bells of Old Tokyo

by Anna Sherman

  The eastern districts used to flood every autumn. Very great floods happened roughly once every generation in the seventeenth century, but became more frequent, until by the nineteenth century they occurred one year in every four. The city’s governors would then break the levees that protected the eastern bank, and let the water surge over the fields and farms near Minowa and Kameido. Farmers on this side of the river built houses on mounds of banked earth. They stowed ‘boats beneath the eaves of their homes, and measured floods less by the bursting of levees than by how far above the floorboards the waters rose.’

  After the fall of the Tokugawa, the eastern districts retained an atmosphere of melancholy dissolution, of dissipation. The writer Nagai Kafū remembered how, before the 1923 earthquake, the alleys east of the Sumidagawa still passed through open rice fields, groves and ponds full of lotuses blooming ‘in rank profusion’. The earth here was dark and damp, its streets narrow; the place all ‘mossy shingled roofs, rotting foundations, leaning pillars, dirty planks.’ A soaring tiled roof would be a temple, but one almost always in bad repair. ‘Moss flecked tombstones lay falling over into marshes that had once been garden lakes but had so decayed that it was difficult to know where the bank gave way to water.’ The land was cheap and it was useful to be so near the river’s wharves, so Mukōjima and Honjo became industrial zones; the old houses were pulled down and replaced with factories.

  During the firestorms that swept Tokyo after the 1923 earthquake, more than thirty thousand people died just west of Honjo, in Yokoami. As one of the ward’s few open areas, the police directed refugees running from fires on the river’s western bank, here. It was a catastrophic mistake. The crowds were carrying papers, clothes, wooden screens. Winds carried sparks and embers across the river from central Tokyo, and the bundles began burning. Then tornados of fire swept through the park, trapping those who had come for shelter. Almost no one who went into Yokoami got out.

  * * *

  The Air Raid Memorial was supposed to have had its own space, separate from the 1923 Earthquake Memorial, alongside a lavish museum devoted to peace. Some survivors lobbied that the museum acknowledge Japan’s ‘invasion, colonization, and annexation of parts of the Asian continent … and the carrying out of numerous state-sanctioned atrocities by Japanese troops.’ The museum’s founders hoped it would mourn not only the air-raid deaths of 1945 but also ‘worldwide victims of the war’.

  Right-wing members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly opposed the museum altogether, describing the plans as ‘anti-Japanese’, and ‘masochistic’. They demanded that the air-raid memorial not mention other victims of World War Two, and that it be built in Yokoami, alongside memorials to the earthquake. Japan’s property bubble had just burst, so the Assembly blamed lack of money for scrapping the museum. It was a compromise that made no one happy but right-wing bureaucrats.

  Tsuchiya’s simple monument was what remained of a grand design. It is also why Tokyo, where more people died than in Nagasaki or Hiroshima, has no central focus for its memories of World War Two. There is no equivalent of Nagasaki’s A-Bomb Museum; nothing like Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial.

  ‘It’s the Age of Mass Forgetting. We live with such a flood of news that we forget what’s real,’ Tsuchiya said. ‘In a single day, we get ten years’ worth of news. To survive, we have to forget things: we forget things we hate. We forget things we love. We forget who we are.’

  * * *

  Tsuchiya was not an obvious choice to design the air-raid memorial. He was an outsider, born not in Tokyo but in the northern prefecture of Fukui. And his earliest works were elegies for the living, not for the dead.

  His first art memorializes the salaryman, the stoic office worker who represented Japan in its richest, most confident era. Tsuchiya first began creating installations during the 1980s, when Japan’s bubble economy was at its most frenzied; when the country was awash with money that fueled a blaze of destruction. Anything old, anything unfashionable, was thrown out. Furniture. Clothes barely worn. Blenders and irons and printers that still worked.

  Maybe that’s why Tsuchiya’s work turns people into objects: strip lights arrayed in asterisks, books stacked into a helix, even office chairs – all stand in for human subjects. The line between what we own, and who we are, is so blurred that it dissolves. For the Air Raid Memorial, people were turned into flowers. Every spring, a hundred thousand are replanted.

  While the Air Raid Memorial was being built, Tsuchiya also created a great rose made out of ashes. From the burned rubble of twenty houses, he made a single gray flower, whose petals splay outward in roulette curves, like a Spirograph.

  ‘The rose was made out of houses built for salarymen. Each house was supposed to last only thirty years. To be consumable. So that ash is memory,’ Tsuchiya said. ‘And that’s how Japan builds: our architecture has always been something that has to be renewed – think about the shrines at Ise, rebuilt every twenty years. Or that famous palace in Kyoto, the Katsura: have you seen it? It’s three hundred years old, but the structure isn’t original. Like our own bodies, which are always being renewed. We last because our cells don’t last. – Nothing lasts.’

  * * *

  Working with ash is difficult. Ash is not solid. It is not hard. It has no fixed shape. But Tsuchiya has made it his signature medium.

  ‘When I look at ashes, I’m seeing time. I’m thinking of my father. He made new clocks and he fixed broken ones. Whenever he finished with a clock, he would hang it on the walls of our house. Kachi kachi kachi kachi…’

  ‘We say, “tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock”—’

  ‘… When I was young, I couldn’t get away from that sound. I almost went crazy listening to it!’

  One of Tsuchiya’s installations consisted of three hundred clocks hanging in a sealed metal room. ‘It was a flood of clocks … after my father died, I thought of it as his portrait. He had been weak for so long, that after his cremation, everything he had been, turned to powder. And I … I ate some of his ashes. So that he could live on. In my heart.’

  丸

  の

  内

  ‘Marunouchi’

  Imperial rule over the eight corners of the earth.

  Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro

  Marunouchi: New Origins

  Edo burned, and was reborn, many times. Tokyo, too.

  The city’s most beautiful incarnation was also its shortest-lived; the imperial capital of the early Shōwa era, a capital that existed between the fires of 1923 and the fires of 1945.

  It was an Art Deco city, of new bridges spanning its old canals; of shimmering streetlamps, buildings picked out in sherbet-colored neons, a city of silhouettes and symmetries, of the geometries of shadow and light.

  On 26 March 1930, the young Emperor Hirohito issued a rescript congratulating Tokyo on completing its reconstruction after the earthquake:

  Profoundly impressed with the splendid achievement of completing the reconstruction of the Capital, through the loyal cooperation of officials and citizens, in such a comparatively brief period of time, We hereby express the greatest pleasure and satisfaction.

  Yesterday, on a personal tour of inspection through the reconstructed portion of the City, We were rejoiced at the marvelous transformation and restoration everywhere in evidence.

  On this happy occasion, We express the hope that all Our subjects will continue to unite in heart and mind for even further development of the Capital.

  No mention was made of the more than six thousand Koreans and the eight hundred Chinese who had been lynched in the aftermath of the earthquake, while the police not only looked on, but colluded in the killings. Kawabata witnessed the scripted anarchy that followed the fires, when Japan’s colonial subjects became scapegoats for the disaster. ‘You thought it was perfectly normal,’ Kawabata wrote, ‘to see people beaten to death with iron bars’ among the ‘burnt walls, fallen tiles, singed electrical wires, clouds of dust and ashes all over the place.’ T
okyo’s police and city authorities themselves put about rumors – which were completely unfounded – that seditious Koreans had been poisoning wells and setting off explosions; for days afterward, self-appointed vigilante gangs murdered anyone perceived to be an outsider. As the historian Gennifer Weisenfeld has shown, films of the massacres were confiscated and destroyed, and the memory of those deaths was erased ‘so the city authorities could tell Tokyo’s earthquake story as one of resilience, unity, and innocence.’

  Alternative histories exist, but in the 1930s as now, they are histories visible only to the knowing eye.

  * * *

  The reckoning of time in Japan is tethered to the emperor’s body.

  For more than a thousand years, a special name has been given for an emperor’s reign, which the Japanese call nengō. Nengō always have aspirational meanings, like ‘Original Happiness’ or ‘Prolonged Wealth’ or ‘Great Peace’.

  In the pre-modern era, a new nengō would be announced not only when a new emperor took the throne, but also after disasters: an earthquake, a flood, a famine, or an epidemic. A comet could trigger the naming of a new nengō, or a terrible defeat in war. It was believed that disasters polluted time, and that time could be cleansed with a new name.

  But from the Emperor Meiji onward, the nengō changed only when an emperor died. After Meiji (‘Enlightened Rule’, 1868–1912) came Taishō (‘Great Righteousness’, 1912–26), and then Shōwa (‘Enlightened Peace’, 1926–89). When Emperor Hirohito died in 1989, ‘tens of millions of calendars were discarded and replaced as the nation literally went back to year one. Time had been renewed.’

  Births, deaths and marriages are still registered using nengō, rather than Western dates. Since the late nineteenth century, Japan has used the Western calendar, but never the Christian system of counting years from the birth of Christ. So World War Two is calculated to have ended in Shōwa 20. The Berlin Wall fell in Shōwa 64. The end of the Cold War gave its name to the reign of Emperor Hirohito’s successor, Emperor Akihito: Heisei (‘Peace Everywhere’), because he ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. The 9/11 attacks happened in Heisei 13. Under the old system, the emperor’s astronomers might perhaps have restarted time by calling a new nengō after the so-called Bubble Economy collapsed in 1991, or after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. But Heisei – Peace Everywhere – has continued on, while North Korea launched missiles into the Sea of Japan and the United States fought al-Qa’eda.

  And Shōwa was always Shōwa, an era that folded up within itself the aftermath of the 1923 earthquake and World War Two, as well as the country’s years of wealth, and the post-war Peace Constitution, in which the Japanese people ‘forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.’

  * * *

  In 1940, the Japanese empire celebrated the 2600th anniversary of the mythic first emperor Jimmu and his ‘Eastward Expedition’ from the southern island of Kyūshū to Honshu, Japan’s main island. The anniversary celebration was called Kigen, or ‘Origins’. It was the beginning of time:

  The first emperor Jimmu’s mother was the daughter of the sea god.

  Jimmu said, ‘The gods gave this reed plain to our ancestors, who threw open the barrier of Heaven and cleared a cloudpath.’

  At this time, the world was desolate. It was an age of darkness and disorder. People’s minds were unsophisticated. They roosted in nests or dwelt in caves. The remote regions did not enjoy the blessings of imperial rule. Each village had its own chief, and the lands were divided and strife reigned.

  The Salt Sea Grandfather said to Jimmu, ‘There is a beautiful land in the East, circled by blue mountains. It is the centre of the world. Go there, and make it the capital.’

  Jimmu said, ‘I am the descendant of the sun goddess, and if I march against the Sun to attack my enemy, I act against the way of Heaven. But if we keep the sun goddess at our backs, we shall follow her rays and trample our enemies.’

  In the six years of our expedition, in the region of the Central Land, is no more wind and no more dust. Truly we should make a vast and spacious capital, and plan it great and strong.

  The capital will be extended to embrace the universe.

  The story acted as model and justification for Japan’s efforts to conquer Asia. In one of the many histories of Japan published in 1940, the amateur historian Fujitani Misao scoffed that, when the Japanese empire was being founded around 666 BC, ‘not one of the Western powers now struggling to gain the hegemony of the world had reached even the “quickening” stage yet.’ Germany, Great Britain, and America were all parvenu civilizations. In contrast, Fujitani wrote, Japan ‘has trodden a straight path of ascent, going ever upward step by step … History has not been a record of rise and fall, but truly a record only of advance. It is also worthy of note that this growth was not the result of either the maltreatment of other races in quest of territorial expansion or their oppression arising from the selfish desire of the strong.’

  * * *

  On Sunday 10 November 1940, across Japan’s East Asian dominions, from the Kuril Islands off Siberia in the Sea of Okhotsk through Korea and Manchuria, southward to the Philippines, twelve thousand Kigen Anniversary nationalistic events were held. The main celebration was in Tokyo’s Marunouchi, near the Imperial Palace, and that ceremony was broadcast throughout the empire by radio.

  Tokyo itself was now sacred because the emperor and his family lived in the city. Preparations had begun three months before, during the heat of high summer: gold and purple chrysanthemums planted, a dais built for the emperor, stands constructed for fifty thousand guests.

  During the ceremony, Marunouchi’s many office buildings were completely empty, the American ambassador wrote in his dispatches. ‘No one is allowed to look down on the Emperor, and I noticed how completely vacant the roofs and windows were.’ After weeks of conserving electricity, however, the city was lit up for the anniversary, and those empty windows glittered and blazed with light.

  * * *

  At 8.30 a.m. on 10 November, guests began arriving at the Marunouchi plaza.

  At 9 a.m., loudspeakers throughout Tokyo sounded:

  EVERY CITIZEN SHOULD CELEBRATE! EVERY CITIZEN SHOULD CELEBRATE! EVERY CITIZEN SHOULD CELEBRATE!

  At 11 a.m., Emperor Hirohito and his wife arrived. The national anthem was sung: May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations, until little stones become rocks and are covered with moss.

  The prime minister stood and, pausing every three or four words, read out congratulations on the 2600th anniversary of Jimmu’s reign:

  The sacredness of our national structure is unparalleled in all the world. This humble subject most respectfully considers that our present Emperor is wise, virtuous and brave. Under the present world situation, His Highness has dispatched forces to a foreign land, concluded an alliance with friendly Powers to establish the stability of East Asia and thereby promote the peace of the world. This entirely coincides with the initial ideas of Emperor Jimmu at the outset of his task.

  The 2600th Anniversary Anthem was sung. The prime minister threw his hands to heaven, and cried: Long Live His Majesty the Emperor! three times. The audience responded with perfectly synchronized bows and shouted, Banzai!

  At 11.35 a.m., the emperor and empress departed, and the ceremonies were declared over.

  * * *

  On the Asian mainland, quagmire: by 10 November 1940, a hundred thousand Japanese soldiers had died in China, though less than a fifth of the country was under Japanese control. Six weeks before the Kigen celebrations, Japan had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, in the hopes, Japan’s Foreign Office stated, that ‘the spreading of world disorder could be prevented: the alliance contributes to world peace.’

  The Tripartite Pact with Hitler and Mussolini infuriated the Americans, who retaliated by levying embargos against the export
of scrap iron and petrol. America began advising its nationals to evacuate Asia, which outraged the Japanese. The American ambassador to Japan advised pro-Western Japanese that goodwill missions to Washington would be ‘wasted’ without policy changes. The Japanese pressed the Americans to stop funding Chiang Kai-shek’s armies in China, and to respect Japan’s sphere of influence in East Asia. Neither the American nor the Japanese government was in the mood to compromise.

  But during the Kigen ceremonies, the two sides put on the appearance of affability, with the American ambassador offering congratulations on behalf of the entire Diplomatic Corps; he closed his remarks with the hope that ‘Japan would contribute to the general culture and well-being of mankind.’ The French ambassador later recalled that Emperor Hirohito, otherwise motionless throughout the entire program, ‘nodded vigorously’.

  Kigen parties lasted all week. Tokyo’s citizens waved flags and sang songs and visited imperial sacred sites. Trams and buses were covered with brilliant lanterns and festooned with bright flowers. One of the emperor’s poems was set to music, and a Shinto dance choreographed for it too:

  To the deities of Heaven,

  To the deities of Earth,

  I will pray:

  May the world be at peace, the sea calm

  as on a morning with no wild waves –

  北

  砂

  ‘Kita-suna’

  Running

  On the road of fire

  Sō Sakon