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Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake: How the Shogun's Ancient Capital Became a Great Modern City, 1867-1923
This book looks at the metamorphosis of Japan from a country with little contact with the outside world to one brimming with Western ideas and technologies. Seidensticker focuses on Tokyo in the years between the Meiji Restoration and the earthquake of 1923 to illustrate this change. He shows how Tokyo, which was called Edo until 1867, emerged from being the shogun's capital and the biggest city in a country which had been closed to the outside world for two and a half centuries, to a modern city, open to Western ideas.
302 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
Edward G. Seidensticker
62 books40 followersEdward George Seidensticker was a distinguished American scholar, translator, and historian renowned for his translations of Japanese literature, both classical and modern. Born in 1921 near Castle Rock, Colorado, Seidensticker studied English at the University of Colorado and later became fluent in Japanese through the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School during World War II. He served in the Pacific theater as a Marine language officer, later participating in Japan’s occupation and developing a lasting affinity for the country and its culture.
Following his military service, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and briefly worked in the U.S. Foreign Service in Tokyo. Deciding on an academic path, he studied Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo and began translating major literary works. His translations of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country and Thousand Cranes helped introduce modern Japanese literature to a Western audience and contributed to Kawabata’s Nobel Prize win in 1968. Seidensticker also translated works by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima, and his 1976 translation of The Tale of Genji remains a landmark achievement.
He taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Seidensticker also authored literary criticism, cultural histories, and a memoir. He received numerous honors and remains a towering figure in the field of Japan studies.
Following his military service, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and briefly worked in the U.S. Foreign Service in Tokyo. Deciding on an academic path, he studied Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo and began translating major literary works. His translations of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country and Thousand Cranes helped introduce modern Japanese literature to a Western audience and contributed to Kawabata’s Nobel Prize win in 1968. Seidensticker also translated works by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima, and his 1976 translation of The Tale of Genji remains a landmark achievement.
He taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Seidensticker also authored literary criticism, cultural histories, and a memoir. He received numerous honors and remains a towering figure in the field of Japan studies.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 22, 2017
How Tokyo Changed in the Meiji and Taisho Eras
When I was a teenager, I got a summer scholarhip to go live with a Japanese family in Tokyo. The experience changed me forever. Though America long remained the center of my daily life, Japan became for many years, "the alternate world". Japanese culture and the Japanese language fascinated me and I studied both for many years. I subsequently returned to Japan several times and have remained in contact with that family all my life. I'm now nearly seventy-five. The Tokyo I first saw was only 36 years after the great earthquake of 1923 and only 14 years after the catastrophe of World War II. So it is that when I read Seidensticker's account of Tokyo, bits and pieces bob up from the flow of memory, my underground impressions and experiences not-quite-recalled, especially sounds and sights no longer to be found in the Tokyo of today. I found it most engrossing. LOW CITY, HIGH CITY is a local history---mostly of downtown Tokyo where in the Tokugawa period, the Edo culture flourished most. The author traces the tastes and tendencies of the townsmen, and how these changed under the giant wave of Western influence that began after the Meiji Reformation of 1868. He takes the process up to the Kanto Earthquake, which came just three years before the Taisho Emperor died and the Showa era (one of the most momentous in Japan's long history) started.
This is the first part of a longer history of Tokyo, but it may be read on its own. Seidensticker, who died in 2007, was an esteemed translator of Japanese literature, both ancient and modern, who lived there. If you have no acquaintance of Tokyo at all, you will find LOW CITY, HIGH CITY heavy going, I fear. That's because he talks about the city districts, sections, streets, rivers, and parks and how they all changed over time, through numerous devastations by fire, flood, earthquake, and the wish to "be modern". You will find yourself aching for better maps than the two provided which show only broad outlines. The process by which Tokyo, and Japan, transformed itself from a remote Asian city (say in 1850) to one of the centers of the modern world (say by 1970) is a fascinating tale. This book helps reveal to Western readers what happened. Transportation, cultural life, literature, architecture, parks, recreations, land use, prostitution and coffee houses-----the list of topics is nearly endless. Like any local history, the mass of detail sometimes obscures the larger processes and themes. The Low City, by the harbor and along the Sumida River, had been the heart of Edo culture, but by the end of Meiji (1912), it had given way to the High City, that newer section of Tokyo on ridges and hills that surrounded the Low and stretched away south and west, the greater part of modern Tokyo. If you know Tokyo at all, you're going to find a huge amount of interesting and sometimes amusing detail in this well-written book. If you don't, perhaps this is not the place to begin because his weaving and bobbing, jumping around, produce a collage effect rather than a single, direct line to follow.
When I was a teenager, I got a summer scholarhip to go live with a Japanese family in Tokyo. The experience changed me forever. Though America long remained the center of my daily life, Japan became for many years, "the alternate world". Japanese culture and the Japanese language fascinated me and I studied both for many years. I subsequently returned to Japan several times and have remained in contact with that family all my life. I'm now nearly seventy-five. The Tokyo I first saw was only 36 years after the great earthquake of 1923 and only 14 years after the catastrophe of World War II. So it is that when I read Seidensticker's account of Tokyo, bits and pieces bob up from the flow of memory, my underground impressions and experiences not-quite-recalled, especially sounds and sights no longer to be found in the Tokyo of today. I found it most engrossing. LOW CITY, HIGH CITY is a local history---mostly of downtown Tokyo where in the Tokugawa period, the Edo culture flourished most. The author traces the tastes and tendencies of the townsmen, and how these changed under the giant wave of Western influence that began after the Meiji Reformation of 1868. He takes the process up to the Kanto Earthquake, which came just three years before the Taisho Emperor died and the Showa era (one of the most momentous in Japan's long history) started.
This is the first part of a longer history of Tokyo, but it may be read on its own. Seidensticker, who died in 2007, was an esteemed translator of Japanese literature, both ancient and modern, who lived there. If you have no acquaintance of Tokyo at all, you will find LOW CITY, HIGH CITY heavy going, I fear. That's because he talks about the city districts, sections, streets, rivers, and parks and how they all changed over time, through numerous devastations by fire, flood, earthquake, and the wish to "be modern". You will find yourself aching for better maps than the two provided which show only broad outlines. The process by which Tokyo, and Japan, transformed itself from a remote Asian city (say in 1850) to one of the centers of the modern world (say by 1970) is a fascinating tale. This book helps reveal to Western readers what happened. Transportation, cultural life, literature, architecture, parks, recreations, land use, prostitution and coffee houses-----the list of topics is nearly endless. Like any local history, the mass of detail sometimes obscures the larger processes and themes. The Low City, by the harbor and along the Sumida River, had been the heart of Edo culture, but by the end of Meiji (1912), it had given way to the High City, that newer section of Tokyo on ridges and hills that surrounded the Low and stretched away south and west, the greater part of modern Tokyo. If you know Tokyo at all, you're going to find a huge amount of interesting and sometimes amusing detail in this well-written book. If you don't, perhaps this is not the place to begin because his weaving and bobbing, jumping around, produce a collage effect rather than a single, direct line to follow.
April 16, 2018
Tokyo is my favourite city. I love the place, and I love its energy. This book describes its period of transition from being Edo, the shogun's capital, to being Tokyo, the modern national capital, up to the time of the great earthquake in 1923. It was a turbulent time, full of excitement about the new and nostalgia for the old. Earthquakes, fires, war, tearing down and rebuilding--they have destroyed most of that city, but I kept catching glimpses of the city I know in Seidensticker's account of the one that has gone. The city is an enormous palimpsest, where traces of that vanished city linger below the surface like ghosts.
February 11, 2020
Full of facts. Full. Of. Facts. It's a great overview of the developing city, but something perhaps to dip into and revisit if you get a chance to visit Tokyo, as a historical guide book rather than a history book. Impressive research, though.
January 21, 2011
Civilisation and Enlightenment
Low City, Big City is a description of Tokyo during the period that Japan caught up with Western powers after centuries of near isolation. The book does not contain much political, economic, intellectual or literary history, but seems more like an intellectual remembering what he read in the local newspaper. It covers Tokyo during the Meiji and Taishi emperors, and roughly matches a Chinese sexagenary cycle. The title refers to Yamanote as the High City of the intellectual and financial elite, and Shitamachi as the more dynamic Low City of merchants and artisans, and Mr. Seidensticker’s favourite. The book contains some copies of woodblock prints made during this period, depicting interesting, gay coloured scenes of Japan's transition.
At the end of the Tokugawa era in 1863, Edo was more like Washington than London or Paris. As a centre of government, it was not yet a great commercial centre. Edo’s economy was seriously affected by the fact that iIn 1862 Daimyo families were no longer required to live in Edo. Many left, and the population fell from over one million to half a million. With the name change to Tokyo (i.e. Eastern Capital), and the emperor's move from Kyoto to Tokyo, Tokyo started growing again, mainly by attracting people from Japan's northeast. Tokyo was a low rise city, with lots of open spaces, like a collection of villages, with transportation often on foot or by boot. Mr. Seidensticker quotes an attendant of General Grant during his visit to the city in 1879:
There is no special character to Tokio, no one trait to seize upon and remember, except that the aspect is that of repose
Earth quakes and fires were a regular feet of the city, and the city was rebuilt regularly, and almost completely after the great earth quake of 1923, that killed about 100,000 people in which was essentially still a wooden city.
With Japan opening up to the outside world, brick buildings are erected, and gas lights introduced. The first form of transportation on wheels is the rickshaw, a Tokyo original. They would later be replaced by horse-drawn buses, soon electric trams, and trains.
A cultural caesura happens in 1873 when the empress stops blackening her teeth. That year already a third of Tokyo men had cropped hair in the Western style. It doubled in 7 years. Many important changes occur in these years, including like driving on the left, reading from left to right, the introduction of beer, meat and dairy products, the appearance of the first Chinese restaurant, and the fad for rabbits with large floppy ears as pets. The 17th century dry goods store Mitsui (now known as Mitsukoshi) transforms itself into a department store, drawing crowds with culture and entertainment. It becomes a mandatory part of a tour of Tokyo for country folk. Its competitor Shirokiya brought shop girls as innovation. By 1923, two thirds of men wore Western dress in 1923, although women clung to traditional dress longer:
The relationship between tradition and change in japan has always been complicated by the fact that change itself is tradition.
According to Mr. Seidensticker, Tokyo has always been a fun city. Performances and festivals have always been central to Edo and Tokyo culture. Kabuki theatre, the tea ceremony, and elegant "pleasure quarters" of Yoshiwara were important manifestations of this culture. They were considered decadent by Tokugawa bureaucrats. However refined may have been the trappings of the theatre and of its twin the pleasure quarter, sex lay behind them, and worse, the purveying of sex. During the Meiji, the vulgarity is taken out of Kabuki theatre, and its image is consequently upgraded. It was accomplished with new theatres and the imperial family attending plays. Yose, vaudeville was the favourite form of theatre for the poor. The grounds of the larger shrines and temples were often pleasure centres also. The Asakusa Kannon was one vast and miscellaneous emporium for the performing arts. Sumo wrestling was also made acceptable by imperial viewing, and women were gradually allowed to attend this sport with religious significance. At the same time Yoshiwara decayed into prostitution, and tea houses started to operate as liaisons between geishas and wealthy merchants.
Nihombashi became a conservative area of town, whereas the Ginza with its main road of brick buildings became innovative and nouveau riche. Ginza was also the home of Seiko and Shiseido (by a pharmacist who first experimented with soap, toothpaste and ice cream). Earlier generations of rich Tokyoites had a Western building for receiving guests, but lived in more traditional premises themselves. Many shogunate estates gave way to public buildings.
The reign of Taisho saw the emergence of specialist schools and the office lady. During this era cars and motor cycles were introduced, as was asphalt in Ginza. Sanitation and sewage still primitively collected. In the 1920’s still only 20% of the mass was collected.
Farmers, in the days that they bought, were willing to pay more for sewage the higher the social level of the house. The upper-class product was richer in nutriment, apparently. So, apparently, was male excrement. In aristocratic mansions where the latrines were segregated by sex, male sewage was more highly valued than female. It seems that the female physique was more efficient.
Low City, Big City is a description of Tokyo during the period that Japan caught up with Western powers after centuries of near isolation. The book does not contain much political, economic, intellectual or literary history, but seems more like an intellectual remembering what he read in the local newspaper. It covers Tokyo during the Meiji and Taishi emperors, and roughly matches a Chinese sexagenary cycle. The title refers to Yamanote as the High City of the intellectual and financial elite, and Shitamachi as the more dynamic Low City of merchants and artisans, and Mr. Seidensticker’s favourite. The book contains some copies of woodblock prints made during this period, depicting interesting, gay coloured scenes of Japan's transition.
At the end of the Tokugawa era in 1863, Edo was more like Washington than London or Paris. As a centre of government, it was not yet a great commercial centre. Edo’s economy was seriously affected by the fact that iIn 1862 Daimyo families were no longer required to live in Edo. Many left, and the population fell from over one million to half a million. With the name change to Tokyo (i.e. Eastern Capital), and the emperor's move from Kyoto to Tokyo, Tokyo started growing again, mainly by attracting people from Japan's northeast. Tokyo was a low rise city, with lots of open spaces, like a collection of villages, with transportation often on foot or by boot. Mr. Seidensticker quotes an attendant of General Grant during his visit to the city in 1879:
There is no special character to Tokio, no one trait to seize upon and remember, except that the aspect is that of repose
Earth quakes and fires were a regular feet of the city, and the city was rebuilt regularly, and almost completely after the great earth quake of 1923, that killed about 100,000 people in which was essentially still a wooden city.
With Japan opening up to the outside world, brick buildings are erected, and gas lights introduced. The first form of transportation on wheels is the rickshaw, a Tokyo original. They would later be replaced by horse-drawn buses, soon electric trams, and trains.
A cultural caesura happens in 1873 when the empress stops blackening her teeth. That year already a third of Tokyo men had cropped hair in the Western style. It doubled in 7 years. Many important changes occur in these years, including like driving on the left, reading from left to right, the introduction of beer, meat and dairy products, the appearance of the first Chinese restaurant, and the fad for rabbits with large floppy ears as pets. The 17th century dry goods store Mitsui (now known as Mitsukoshi) transforms itself into a department store, drawing crowds with culture and entertainment. It becomes a mandatory part of a tour of Tokyo for country folk. Its competitor Shirokiya brought shop girls as innovation. By 1923, two thirds of men wore Western dress in 1923, although women clung to traditional dress longer:
The relationship between tradition and change in japan has always been complicated by the fact that change itself is tradition.
According to Mr. Seidensticker, Tokyo has always been a fun city. Performances and festivals have always been central to Edo and Tokyo culture. Kabuki theatre, the tea ceremony, and elegant "pleasure quarters" of Yoshiwara were important manifestations of this culture. They were considered decadent by Tokugawa bureaucrats. However refined may have been the trappings of the theatre and of its twin the pleasure quarter, sex lay behind them, and worse, the purveying of sex. During the Meiji, the vulgarity is taken out of Kabuki theatre, and its image is consequently upgraded. It was accomplished with new theatres and the imperial family attending plays. Yose, vaudeville was the favourite form of theatre for the poor. The grounds of the larger shrines and temples were often pleasure centres also. The Asakusa Kannon was one vast and miscellaneous emporium for the performing arts. Sumo wrestling was also made acceptable by imperial viewing, and women were gradually allowed to attend this sport with religious significance. At the same time Yoshiwara decayed into prostitution, and tea houses started to operate as liaisons between geishas and wealthy merchants.
Nihombashi became a conservative area of town, whereas the Ginza with its main road of brick buildings became innovative and nouveau riche. Ginza was also the home of Seiko and Shiseido (by a pharmacist who first experimented with soap, toothpaste and ice cream). Earlier generations of rich Tokyoites had a Western building for receiving guests, but lived in more traditional premises themselves. Many shogunate estates gave way to public buildings.
The reign of Taisho saw the emergence of specialist schools and the office lady. During this era cars and motor cycles were introduced, as was asphalt in Ginza. Sanitation and sewage still primitively collected. In the 1920’s still only 20% of the mass was collected.
Farmers, in the days that they bought, were willing to pay more for sewage the higher the social level of the house. The upper-class product was richer in nutriment, apparently. So, apparently, was male excrement. In aristocratic mansions where the latrines were segregated by sex, male sewage was more highly valued than female. It seems that the female physique was more efficient.
March 18, 2019
3.50 stars
In 2015, I first read its sequel, his Tokyo Rising: The City Since the Great Earthquake (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990) then I got this book early last February; its publication and contents preceding the one I had read. Chronologically speaking, I should have read this book prior to the 1990 edition; therefore, it's a bit tough to recall what I read and wrote this review because it happened the other way round.
To continue . . .
In 2015, I first read its sequel, his Tokyo Rising: The City Since the Great Earthquake (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990) then I got this book early last February; its publication and contents preceding the one I had read. Chronologically speaking, I should have read this book prior to the 1990 edition; therefore, it's a bit tough to recall what I read and wrote this review because it happened the other way round.
To continue . . .
July 26, 2009
I read this just before I moved to Tokyo and it was the perfect introduction to the history of the city. In depth, full of anecdotes and excellently crafted, I couldn't put it down, it took my mind to Japan months before I actually physically arrived.
April 24, 2015
Excellent overview of Tokyo's history.
April 27, 2022
*The second of two books that I read of his within a single volume
Written by the translator of many of Japan's most famous 20th century authors, the two books contained in this volume trace the evolution of modern day (well...up to the late 80s...he didn't know what was around the corner...bubble about to pop...) Tokyo from the Edo it once was.
While full of plenty of actual research and many very specific details, it's a far more engaging and personal look at the city's past than one might find with a more academic text. Seidensticker spent the vast majority of his life in Tokyo and one really gets the sense of this when reading...the things that intrigue him or annoy him (he's wonderfully both nostalgic and curmudgeonly...especially about manga!) and the people, particularly writers, who he either knew personally or knew of. He actually includes descriptions from novels or non-fiction works from writers like Kafu or Tanizaki that describe the Tokyo they know (or think they know, wish they knew, wish still existed...).
This is also a wonderful book for people with a wide variety of interests, as Seidensticker seems to have been, as it ranges all over the place, from subway lines and sewers (or lack thereof) to celebrated Meiji murderesses who played themselves on stage in plays about the murders they'd committed to prefectural rezoning to the horrors of World War II bombing and the 1923 Kanto Earthquake.
As a long-time resident of Tokyo, what I appreciated most about this book was perhaps the way that Seidensticker is able to explain so clearly and concisely (well, mostly concisely) the geography and layout (and makeup) of what seems such a chaotic and jumbled large city to many...and he does this so incredibly effectively in terms of its evolution over time as well. It's so incredible to think of the land of Marunouchi (south of the Imperial Palace), home to the most expensive real estate of all time at the time he wrote the book in the late 80s, being a barren home for badgers and gamblers in early Meiji after it emptied out after its early use as a home for regional samurai families during the Edo period came to an end.
Seidensticker's translation of landmarks might throw a few people though! Never heard anyone call the West Exit of a translation "Westmouth" before (though this is technically sort of right...西口）and he also translates names of buildings that tend to be known by their romanized names in English (like Budokan, Kokugikan, etc.).
Highly recommended for anyone living in Tokyo or interested in the history of Tokyo...which tends to get overlooked for the history of Kyoto, etc. when you first get into Japanese history.
Written by the translator of many of Japan's most famous 20th century authors, the two books contained in this volume trace the evolution of modern day (well...up to the late 80s...he didn't know what was around the corner...bubble about to pop...) Tokyo from the Edo it once was.
While full of plenty of actual research and many very specific details, it's a far more engaging and personal look at the city's past than one might find with a more academic text. Seidensticker spent the vast majority of his life in Tokyo and one really gets the sense of this when reading...the things that intrigue him or annoy him (he's wonderfully both nostalgic and curmudgeonly...especially about manga!) and the people, particularly writers, who he either knew personally or knew of. He actually includes descriptions from novels or non-fiction works from writers like Kafu or Tanizaki that describe the Tokyo they know (or think they know, wish they knew, wish still existed...).
This is also a wonderful book for people with a wide variety of interests, as Seidensticker seems to have been, as it ranges all over the place, from subway lines and sewers (or lack thereof) to celebrated Meiji murderesses who played themselves on stage in plays about the murders they'd committed to prefectural rezoning to the horrors of World War II bombing and the 1923 Kanto Earthquake.
As a long-time resident of Tokyo, what I appreciated most about this book was perhaps the way that Seidensticker is able to explain so clearly and concisely (well, mostly concisely) the geography and layout (and makeup) of what seems such a chaotic and jumbled large city to many...and he does this so incredibly effectively in terms of its evolution over time as well. It's so incredible to think of the land of Marunouchi (south of the Imperial Palace), home to the most expensive real estate of all time at the time he wrote the book in the late 80s, being a barren home for badgers and gamblers in early Meiji after it emptied out after its early use as a home for regional samurai families during the Edo period came to an end.
Seidensticker's translation of landmarks might throw a few people though! Never heard anyone call the West Exit of a translation "Westmouth" before (though this is technically sort of right...西口）and he also translates names of buildings that tend to be known by their romanized names in English (like Budokan, Kokugikan, etc.).
Highly recommended for anyone living in Tokyo or interested in the history of Tokyo...which tends to get overlooked for the history of Kyoto, etc. when you first get into Japanese history.
May 16, 2017
This is an excellent book, revealing the impact of the Meiji Reforms on the urban landscape. Tokyo as the book opens is still very much the shogunate capital of Edo. The "high city" in the title is the elite precincts of the town. The low city is the dynamic area where Japanese culture, the Japan of Kabuki, the Yoshiwara, and the woodblock print industry thrived.
The low city was profoundly affected by the Meiji reforms, but as Professor Seidensticker points out, natural disasters, such as floods and fires could also impact both art and commerce. While the geisha and the Kabuki actor were the celebrities of Edo, Tokyo in the early 20th century was likely as much as to idealize the baseball player and the film star. New institutions such as the department store and new centers of gravity such as the Ginza were as much a result of the Meiji era change as the adaptation of western attire.
Seidensticker is one of the leading translators of Japanese literature and he weaves accounts of the changes to Tokyo during this period, memoirs and short stories. This is a bit of a bonus as it provides material for further reading, particularly Tanizaki's memoirs. This is a marvelous account of Tokyo up to the earthquake of 1923, when all that was built, with the famous exception of Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, would have to be rebuilt.
The low city was profoundly affected by the Meiji reforms, but as Professor Seidensticker points out, natural disasters, such as floods and fires could also impact both art and commerce. While the geisha and the Kabuki actor were the celebrities of Edo, Tokyo in the early 20th century was likely as much as to idealize the baseball player and the film star. New institutions such as the department store and new centers of gravity such as the Ginza were as much a result of the Meiji era change as the adaptation of western attire.
Seidensticker is one of the leading translators of Japanese literature and he weaves accounts of the changes to Tokyo during this period, memoirs and short stories. This is a bit of a bonus as it provides material for further reading, particularly Tanizaki's memoirs. This is a marvelous account of Tokyo up to the earthquake of 1923, when all that was built, with the famous exception of Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, would have to be rebuilt.
June 11, 2018
I find this book useful and interesting because I don't know of another in English that does such a close look at the way Tokyo transformed from the beginning of the Meiji to the end of the Taisho. There was a lot of information that was truly interesting. On the other hand, Seidensticker's tone can be a little condescending. He definitely sympathizes with the sources that seem to think Tokyo only really belongs to a certain class of people (merchants/artisans/ordinary folk from the low city) and both that the people outside that group are usurpers and late comers and that once Edo became Tokyo, it could never be as great as it once was. If you're looking for a scholarly, neutral history of Tokyo's development, this book can be a little frustrating (and could definitely use way more maps), but it's still a good resource.
July 7, 2017
Don't go to Tokyo without reading this book, or you'll be lost in translation. This is not light reading; you'll need to take notes. The shortcut? Start your trip w/ a visit to the Edo Tokyo Museum and take advantage of the free guides --it's probably 2 hours. It's as though the museum and the book collaborated to tell the story. Shocking how many tours don't bother with this key stop. I believe the book is now out of print, but get ahold of a used copy.
April 2, 2018
Seidensticker has done his homework and then some. Packed with historical detail on aspects you never even knew you wanted to know, it is a fluent account of this great city. So much detail, in fact, that he left much of it to a companion volume, 'Tokyo Rising', which picks up in 1923 where the current volume ends.
May 26, 2023
Better as a cultural history than an urban history but this was a lavish read
December 7, 2023
I'll never look at Tokyo the same way after reading this. Excellent from start to finish, and meandering in absorbing ways, like so many areas of the city itself.
April 3, 2023
I approached Seidensticker’s book with excitement as I’d recently finished Yukio Mishima’s ‘Spring Snow’ and was interested in learning more about the cultural history of Japan’s process of ‘Westernization’ or Datsu-A Ron (leaving Asia) through the transformation of Tokyo’s built landscape. However, this excitement quickly faded when it became apparent that the work had no real narrative thrust. Seidensticker seemed to enjoy jumping from topic to topic or from ward to ward without a clear objective. His meandering anecdotes made reading for any length of time a struggle, and I felt suffocated by an encyclopedic cast of local characters from every conceivable walk of life. Additionally, I found Seidensticker’s verbose language distracting and his writing style repetitive. While ‘Low City, High City’ presents the reader with an impressive amount of research (perhaps a lifetime’s worth), the result is confusion as it reads like a pedantic historical guidebook rather than a compelling monograph.
Rating: 1.5/5
Rating: 1.5/5
November 9, 2013
entertaining and does a good job of conveying atmospherics, if a little meandering. i wish i'd read it before i went to Tokyo last time, because it explains the thinking or reasons behind quite a few things that bugged me, like the boring boxy architecture. (not native just to Tokyo, i know, but the sheer amount of it did my head in.) this time, although i'll be able to see almost nothing of what Seidensticker describes, Tokyo being the devouring monster that it is, at least i'll know what was there, and whether i'm in the high city or the low.
April 20, 2013
History of Tokyo from marsh-land meadow to sprawling city.very interesting history book...loved it.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews