Tokyo Rising: The City Since the Great Earthquake - Hardcover

Seidensticker, Edward G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394543602 ISBN 13: 9780394543604

Publisher: Knopf, 1990

Synopsis

A continuation of the author's history of Tokyo explains how the city recovered from both a major earthquake and Allied bombing raids in World War II

About this title

Review:

[Seidensticker] has written a kind of cultural anatomy of the metropolis, embracing its folkways, its architecture, its street speech, its crime lore, its entertainment, its art. (New Yorker)

James Joyce once declared that if turn-of-the-century Dublin were to vanish from the face of the earth it could be rebuilt on the basis of Ulysses. In Tokyo Rising, Edward Seidensticker seems to have exercised a similar, nonfictional ambition...Seidensticker's history of Tokyo is a loving elegy to a lost city. (Jay McInerney New York Times Book Review)

The most distinguished living celebrator of Tokyo in the English language...When the city has been transformed yet again, some writer will feel the deepest nostalgia. One may only hope that he or she will express it with the wit and style of...a Seidensticker. (Ian Buruma New York Review of Books)

Rich, fascinating cultural geography...Low City, High City and Tokyo Rising are guidebooks to an unforgettable journey. (Bloomsbury Review)

Instead of an economic or sociologic determination, [Seidensticker] focuses on the effect upon society of the disappearance of this theater building, that café, those geisha houses, markets, and other landmarks, and their replacement stores, subways, and so on... Packed with original material and insights, [this book is] invaluable to scholars, students, and Tokyophiles. (Kirkus Reviews)

[This] vibrant, intimately detailed volume...is much more than a portrait of Tokyo; in good measure, it is a serendipitous social history of modern Japan. (Publishers Weekly)

From Publishers Weekly:

As this vibrant, intimately detailed volume opens in September 1923, Tokyo is rebuilding after a devastating earthquake and fires; Japan is run by the Taisho emperor, a mentally incapacitated figurehead. Tokyo would rebuild a second time: after the Allied bombing raids of WW II and the typhus plague of 1945-46. By the book's close, the city is the hub of a contemporary Japan that has largely overcome strong feelings of inferiority; yet it is still a very insular town, one that effectively excludes foreigners from much of its pulsating life. This sequel to Low City, High City is much more than a portrait of Tokyo; in good measure, it is a serendipitous social history of modern Japan. Interwoven with 72 photographs, the narrative covers sundry topics from nightlife to the arts, all set in the context of Japan's metamorphosis from 1930s jingoistic, repressive state to its emergence as the world's chief creditor nation.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0394543602
• ISBN 13: 9780394543604
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 362