Shitamachi means "lower city" and refers to the original working-class quarters of the city, into which the people were squeezed in what was then the world's greatest population density, during the Edo period. It's opposed to the Yamanote, the mountain area, the high-class part of Tokyo where the shogun and the other upper classes lived.
Amid the glitzy high-tech building of Tokyo, something of the Shitamachi feeling survives in the areas around Ueno and Asakusa as well as in other less-developed areas of the city. Not much of the actual Shitamachi is really around anymore. As with most Japanese cities, what wasn't ravaged by the terrible fires that razed neighbourhoods over and over, was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. And what survived that was flattened during the three days of incendiary bombing in 1945 that are estimated to have killed 100,000 people in Tokyo alone.
So the Shitamachi museum was created to show what old Edo and Tokyo were like for the common people, since so little is left from that time. It's a small museum, and the upper floor exhibit has little information in English, though it's still fun to see the pictures of the popular actors and singers, and to play with the wooden toys from the period which you are allowed to touch. Everything in the museum was donated by local residents.
But what makes the museum really worth visiting is the first floor, which holds wooden buildings that were moved to the museum and carefully restored, fitted out in the style of the 1920s before the great earthquake, when most homes in the area resembled them. You can enter the buildings (taking off your shoes of course!), walk on the tatami floors, and touch anything in the rooms. There are English speaking guides willing (and eager) to walk you through and explain the details of what you find.
The first house is that of a merchant, a relatively wealthy resident. In this case he was a maker of hanao, the cloth straps that transform a piece of wood into a geta, or traditional Japanese slipper. The wooden part would be made somewhere else, with this kind of specialisation very typical for Japanese craftspeople. We could see the area where he sat working, the workshop beside it, and the front area where customers were received. No space was wasted even in the richer house - the steep stairs hid sliding door cupboards to use all possible storage space. The house also had a wooden basket suspended from poles. In case of fire, the few valuables would be tossed into it and it could then be easily carried by the fleeing residents...such was the regular occurrence of this threat.
Beside this was a tenement house area - well and clothes washing area shared for the tenement, and then the individual wooden homes. One small place had a tiny candy shop built into it, which would be a gathering place for neighbourhood children home from school. Another was a workshop where an artisan made copper kettles. Many of the people in tenement houses worked in the nearby merchant's workshops, but getting by was hard and so there were also lots of side businesses like the candy shop, often run by grannies to make ends meet. This is the best kind of museum since it is so easy to imagine real life for real people when inside it - and being able to touch their actual possessions made it all the more immediate.
But while most of the wooden homes are gone, you can still tell the Shitamachi from the Yamanote. One small wooden house squeezed between large concrete buildings still holds a workshop where day in and day out, a man sits painting chochin, the red or white lanterns that hang outside restaurants to advertise their specialisation. And the area is also home to most of Tokyo's estimated 30,000 homeless, mostly middle-aged men who usually disappear during the day and then emerge at night to rebuild their cardboard box homes in the covered shopping arcades. My first night in Tokyo I wandered just south of my hostel into one such, where everyone was just finding their spot for the night. I felt like I should leave right away - not for my safety, but because it felt like walking uninvited right into someone's living room.
Today in the rain there were many more of them sheltering in the areas around the station, and though they were ignored by passersby, at least they weren't being hassled. Ueno Park contains an actual tent city, with ropes and tarps separating homes, and lots of washing hanging up to dry. I saw one man last night in the downtown area near the government buildings, lying on a concrete slab and doing Sudoku, looking quite as if he were in his bedroom.
Another Shitamachi touch is the conversation the hotel manager is having right now with another guest, about how you have to be careful in these budget hostels (many older Japanese men seem to live here; at least one has been staying here for 5 years!). This one is ok, but at many of the others you have people starting fights, passing out from drink in the hallways...he also touched on his past as a gangster in LA. Shitamachi with a vengeance!
However I feel perfectly safe here, and indeed my major interaction with the long-term Japanese residents has been saying good morning and good night. Yesterday as I sat here typing, one of the older permanents guests walked by and randomly handed me a fruit cup! It may not live up to the cliches about Tokyo, but Taito-ku is a good place to be.
Photo: decaying lotuses in Ueno Park lake.
Amid the glitzy high-tech building of Tokyo, something of the Shitamachi feeling survives in the areas around Ueno and Asakusa as well as in other less-developed areas of the city. Not much of the actual Shitamachi is really around anymore. As with most Japanese cities, what wasn't ravaged by the terrible fires that razed neighbourhoods over and over, was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. And what survived that was flattened during the three days of incendiary bombing in 1945 that are estimated to have killed 100,000 people in Tokyo alone.
So the Shitamachi museum was created to show what old Edo and Tokyo were like for the common people, since so little is left from that time. It's a small museum, and the upper floor exhibit has little information in English, though it's still fun to see the pictures of the popular actors and singers, and to play with the wooden toys from the period which you are allowed to touch. Everything in the museum was donated by local residents.
But what makes the museum really worth visiting is the first floor, which holds wooden buildings that were moved to the museum and carefully restored, fitted out in the style of the 1920s before the great earthquake, when most homes in the area resembled them. You can enter the buildings (taking off your shoes of course!), walk on the tatami floors, and touch anything in the rooms. There are English speaking guides willing (and eager) to walk you through and explain the details of what you find.
The first house is that of a merchant, a relatively wealthy resident. In this case he was a maker of hanao, the cloth straps that transform a piece of wood into a geta, or traditional Japanese slipper. The wooden part would be made somewhere else, with this kind of specialisation very typical for Japanese craftspeople. We could see the area where he sat working, the workshop beside it, and the front area where customers were received. No space was wasted even in the richer house - the steep stairs hid sliding door cupboards to use all possible storage space. The house also had a wooden basket suspended from poles. In case of fire, the few valuables would be tossed into it and it could then be easily carried by the fleeing residents...such was the regular occurrence of this threat.
Beside this was a tenement house area - well and clothes washing area shared for the tenement, and then the individual wooden homes. One small place had a tiny candy shop built into it, which would be a gathering place for neighbourhood children home from school. Another was a workshop where an artisan made copper kettles. Many of the people in tenement houses worked in the nearby merchant's workshops, but getting by was hard and so there were also lots of side businesses like the candy shop, often run by grannies to make ends meet. This is the best kind of museum since it is so easy to imagine real life for real people when inside it - and being able to touch their actual possessions made it all the more immediate.
But while most of the wooden homes are gone, you can still tell the Shitamachi from the Yamanote. One small wooden house squeezed between large concrete buildings still holds a workshop where day in and day out, a man sits painting chochin, the red or white lanterns that hang outside restaurants to advertise their specialisation. And the area is also home to most of Tokyo's estimated 30,000 homeless, mostly middle-aged men who usually disappear during the day and then emerge at night to rebuild their cardboard box homes in the covered shopping arcades. My first night in Tokyo I wandered just south of my hostel into one such, where everyone was just finding their spot for the night. I felt like I should leave right away - not for my safety, but because it felt like walking uninvited right into someone's living room.
Today in the rain there were many more of them sheltering in the areas around the station, and though they were ignored by passersby, at least they weren't being hassled. Ueno Park contains an actual tent city, with ropes and tarps separating homes, and lots of washing hanging up to dry. I saw one man last night in the downtown area near the government buildings, lying on a concrete slab and doing Sudoku, looking quite as if he were in his bedroom.
Another Shitamachi touch is the conversation the hotel manager is having right now with another guest, about how you have to be careful in these budget hostels (many older Japanese men seem to live here; at least one has been staying here for 5 years!). This one is ok, but at many of the others you have people starting fights, passing out from drink in the hallways...he also touched on his past as a gangster in LA. Shitamachi with a vengeance!
However I feel perfectly safe here, and indeed my major interaction with the long-term Japanese residents has been saying good morning and good night. Yesterday as I sat here typing, one of the older permanents guests walked by and randomly handed me a fruit cup! It may not live up to the cliches about Tokyo, but Taito-ku is a good place to be.
Photo: decaying lotuses in Ueno Park lake.
