A journey to the heart of Japan
The Shinkansen is commonly known outside Japan as the ‘bullet train’ but the word actually means ‘new trunk line’. It is a high-speed passenger train system which now stretches from the southern island of Kyushu to the main island of Honshu with Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo connected. A new line stretches north from… [Read more]
The idea of making a pilgrimage to visit religious places is present in nearly every culture and religion. In Japan, it is typical of both major religions, Buddhism and Shinto from early times, but it was an idea which grew in popularity in the Edo period (1603-1868). To make a pilgrimage is, usually, to travel…. [Read more]
The idea of planting trees along the roadside to provide shade for travelers had occurred to the Chinese when they developed their highway system more than 2000 years ago. Almost certainly the idea was copied by the Japanese, along with all other features of Chinese highways, when they laid out their own highway system at… [Read more]
Omote (the public face) and ura (the private face) are twin concepts that are applied to almost any aspect of Japan or life in Japan. Omote refers to the image which an individual, a company, or any institution wishes to present to outsiders or the public in general. As with any image, omote is composed… [Read more]
Although only a small town, Ashita boasts the oldest surviving honjin on the Nakasendo. It has also been owned by the same family since its’ original construction in the late 16th century. Ashita honjin offers a unique opportunity to observe one story of the changing fortunes of the most important building in any post-town, from… [Read more]
The mountains in Japan are very steep and the rocks unstable due to weathering. Landslides are common whenever there are heavy rains. Many rural villages have established themselves along the edges of sharply defined valleys. They frequently are placed below steep hills, on land which could serve no agricultural use in order to maximize the… [Read more]
Textbooks: Edwin O. Reischauer, John K. Fairbank and Albert M. Craig, East Asia: Tradition and Transformation The Cambridge History of Japan (6 volumes) Peter Duus, The Rise of Modern Japan Kenneth Pyle, The Making of Modern Japan W.G. Beasley, The Modern History of Japan George Sansom, A History of Japan (3 volumes) George Sansom, Japan:… [Read more]
The origins of department stores go back to 1673 when the Mitsui family established a dry-goods store in Edo, at the terminus of the Nakasendo. The shop was eventually renamed Mitsukoshi in 1928 and was the basis for the commercial success of the family; Mitsui became an extended corporation before World War II and has… [Read more]
Nihonbashi, which means ‘Bridge of Japan’, is less impressive than one would imagine. As the point from which all highway distances are measured, it seems that it should stand out in the urban landscape. Instead, it has a dirty, stagnant canal under it and a rumbling elevated expressway above, adding dark shadow to a peculiar bouquet, especially in summer…. [Read more]
It may seem odd to refer to Tokyo as a village. It has, after all, a population of about 8 million within the narrow definition of the city and some 30 million within commuting distance from the city center. Yet it is a village in the sense that each area of the city is very much like a… [Read more]
Until the 1960s, it was very rare to find a building above six or eight stories anywhere in Japan. The country was so plagued by earthquakes that construction technology and the law prohibited tall buildings. In the terrible earthquake of 1923 which killed over 100,000 people in the Tokyo Yokohama area, the only real skyscraper… [Read more]
The University of Tokyo is considered the best university in Japan although Kyoto University runs a close second. Commonly called Todai which is short for Tokyo daigaku, the institution has always had a privileged place in the educational system. In this century, the university-level system evolved into seven national universities before 1945, all equal in… [Read more]
The average Japanese student entering university will have just completed ‘examination hell’. University entrance exams are rigorous and demand years, not weeks or months, of hard study. Many students fail their exams the first time and choose to spend a year or more studying at private cramming schools in hope of passing the exams next… [Read more]
Nightlife today is varied and intense. Both large and small cities have areas of concentrated nightlife: rows of pubs, bars, cabarets, restaurants, coffee shops, discotheques, ‘love’ hotels, games parlors, pachinko joints or tall buildings with the rows of advertisements running vertically up the facades instead of horizontally. Areas of Tokyo like Kabukicho in Shinjuku are… [Read more]
Itabashi is typical of many gentrified post-towns: few of the old buildings of the post-town remain, but the route of the old highway is still easy to spot running as a narrow back street while the modern highway by-passes the town at a respectful distance. It is not uncommon for areas within urban districts which… [Read more]
Although local government in Japan centers on the 47 directly elected prefectural assemblies, the day to day affairs of public administration are performed at a lower level of local government – the municipality. Each prefecture is divided into about 60 municipalities, with a total of just over 3,200 in the country as a whole. Each… [Read more]
Easily the dominant metropolitan area in Japan, Tokyo is also, very arguably, the leading city of the world. Strictly speaking, however, there is no such place as Tokyo City. The area that might be referred to as ‘downtown Tokyo’, near Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace, is but just a small part of Tokyo prefecture…. [Read more]
With the rise of the samurai class and the need to keep land holdings intact, inheritance tended toward inheritance by a single son during the centuries before the end of the Edo period. In the Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu established a ‘code’ which did not specify that the eldest son would inherit. In the early… [Read more]
In the Edo period, urban renewal was accomplished on a regular basis as a result of fire – a major hazard which frequently swept through parts of the large cities and devastated smaller towns. Edo took particular pride in the frequency of fires and the speed with which the city recovered from them. Merchants kept… [Read more]
Given the size of the country and its geography, trains are the best form of transport between most points: only a traveler moving between the extreme ends of the country would save time taking a plane instead of a train. The Shinkansen lines which are still being built are based on technology which is fundamentally… [Read more]
Like all major urban areas in the world, Japanese cities have seen massive suburban expansion in recent decades. The nature of suburban development, however, has been significantly different from that in most other countries. Many Japanese suburbs have developed around what were once small villages and towns rather than as divisions or subdivisions carved out… [Read more]
Tateba or rest stops were located mid-way between post-towns. Typically, they were a small cluster of tea houses which were unofficially established by local people who took advantage of the needs of travelers who would stop for a rest and some refreshment before moving on to the next official post-town. Today, some tateba have disappeared… [Read more]
Japan is known as a land of earthquakes and volcanoes but, except for rare catastrophic events such as the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, the greatest danger from nature is normally associated with Japan’s climate. Heavy rain is the most persistent cause of death through natural disaster, regularly accounting for the lives of between 30 and… [Read more]
It seems ironic that while successful rice cultivation depends on the controlled flooding of rice fields in early summer, the fear of floods brought about by natural causes is one of the greatest that rice farmers have to face. Inundation of the fields at the wrong time of year, particularly just before harvest, can be… [Read more]
Living conditions in Japan are a study in contrasts, but not in the way you can find extreme poverty and extreme wealth in the United States. Income distribution is far more even, but the actual living conditions, in comparison to foreign countries, are a different matter because of the cost of commodities such as land… [Read more]
Despite the impression widely held outside Japan that the country has a society based firmly on consensus and harmony, modern protest has a rich history. Some of the reason for this may lie with the Allied Occupation which sought to instill individualism and individual right among the population while strengthening organizations which could resist authoritarian… [Read more]
There is a long tradition of rebellion by peasants in premodern times. Revolts sometimes occurred because of starvation as a result of crop failure. At other times, peasants revolted as a limited protest against the government of the time. Their intention was not to overthrow the government, but to gain something specific, like relief from… [Read more]
Yakuza are criminals who are organized into criminal organizations somewhat like the Mafia in the US and Italy. For many decades, the yakuza were a relatively minor type of criminal, but in recent decades, they have become more of a problem. Until the early 1960s yakuza concentrated on gambling, especially pachinko, and the entertainment industry… [Read more]
Very few types of gambling are legal in Japan except for betting on horse-racing, motorboat racing and so on. Pachinko is the one of the few games which is legal although pinball games abound especially at festivals. Card games such as poker are not legal if played for money. Mahjong is commonly played, often for… [Read more]
In the early 1870s, a French military observer, Leon Descharmes, noted that with the invention of the rickshaw it was possible to travel the eighty miles from Takasaki to Tokyo in a single day on the existing roads. He went on to say that: although the route may appear good at a dry season of… [Read more]
Walk Japan Ltd.
1736 Radio City,
505 Hennessy Road,
Causeway Bay,
Hong Kong SAR
© Copyright 2021 Walk Japan
