Moving The Margins of Tokyo: Paul Waley

Urban Studies, Vol. 39, No.
9, 1533– 1550, 2002
Moving the Margins of Tokyo
Paul Waley
[Paper rst received, January 2002; in nal form, February 2002]
Summary. We make sense of urban space by investing it with names, names that over time
accrue meanings both polyvalent at any one point in time and mutating through time. The extent
and meanings of Shitamachi, one of Tokyo’s central territorial concepts, have changed
signi cantly throughout the city’s history. In this paper, I rst chart these changing meanings
and then set the territory within the wider terrain of capital city as vehicle for the twin interests
of state and capital. Urban space in Tokyo was used as a formative setting onto which to inscribe
an idea of modernisation. Within this larger picture, Shitamachi was seen as representing a past
vision of the city, one that was inimical to the interests of a modernising state. It became an
industrial zone, a margin within the folds of central space. In recent years, a reassessment has
occurred. Shitamachi is now widely celebrated as a space of communal memory and historical
identity, even though its extent and meanings remain contested. The richly symbolic spaces of the
imagination are thus rooted within a changing political economy.
Shitamachi, the Shifting Terrain

Shitamachi as Downtown while Yamanote has shifted even further
west. For much of the 20th century, Shita-
Shitamachi and Yamanote are central to ur-
ban discourse on Tokyo. They are the main machi was slowly marginalised but, more
street-level, vox-pop. divisions of the city recently, as it has attenuated in its spatial and
and they are also spatial metaphors for the social signi cance, it has been reinvented,
kind of people who live there, for differing both through a process of internalisation and
approaches to life. The terms apply, in the through one of celebration. A consideration
case of Shitamachi, to the atlands in the east of this passage out to the margins and then
of the city and, in that of Yamanote, to the back to a newly de ned centre forms the
hilly west. At one level, simply put, Shita- focus of this paper.
machi is the home of the petty entrepreneur; The story of Shitamachi is one that could
Yamanote of the salaried of ce worker be told of many great urban centres, for
(Dore, 1958). Shitamachi and Yamanote while the articulation of this process of mar-
have no administration nor borders and, hav- ginalisation and reinvention varies from
ing no borders, the ground they are conven- place to place, the central driving-forces tend
tionally thought to cover (to the extent that to be the same—capital and the state. Parts of
any such claim can be made) has shifted. the right-bank centre of Paris, to take but one
Shitamachi has moved east from the city obvious example, had long been sidelined as
centre, which itself has shifted westwards, fresh forms of capital and state power shifted
Paul Waley is in the School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. Fax: 0113 233 3308.
E-mail: p.waley@geog.leeds.ac.uk .
0042-098 0 Print/1360-063 X On-line/02/091533-18 Ó 2002 The Editors of Urban Studies

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DOI: 10.1080/0042098022015164 6
1534 PAUL WALEY
the focus of activity westwards (Sutcliffe, follows an asterisked note appended in

1970). More recently, new manifestations of Japanese:
speculative and consumption capital have
helped to bring about a re-evaluation of these There is no English equivalent to Shita-
areas, as of once-declining central districts in machi. For example, it cannot be trans-
other cities, and to reinvigorate them through lated with [the English word] downtown.
injections of social, cultural and commercial In order to say “brought up in Shita-
activity, occasionally directed towards exist- machi”, there is nothing to do other than
ing communities, more often involving rst say something along the lines of [in
tourism and gentri cation. The case of English] “I was brought up in Asakusa
Tokyo is indicative for a number of reasons. (Ueno, Tsukiji, etc.)” and then to explain.
The city was already, before the advent of a Not everyone agrees with the dictionary, it
Westernising, modernising regime in 1868, would seem; however unhelpful it may be,
at the heart of the country, both as locus of downtown is certainly the most common
power and as terminal point for production translation of Shitamachi. There is hesitancy
activity—headquarters of the shogunal here then, rst about how much of Tokyo can
government and the largest centre of con- be included within Shitamachi, secondly
sumption in Japan. Indeed, it is likely to about whether Shitamachi is a part only of
have been the most populous city in the Tokyo, and thirdly how to translate Shita-
pre-industrial world until being overtaken in machi into English.
the early 19th century by the archetypal mod-
ern metropolis and imperial capital, London.
It was a city with a thriving if inward- Shitamachi as Centre and Region
looking commercial structure that helped to The city of Edo, later to be renamed Tokyo,
animate a vibrant and highly commodi ed was founded in 1590 in the east of Japan, far
urban culture. Shitamachi, later to become a from the large urban settlements of Kyoto
petty industrial hinterland, was the platform and Osaka. It became the country’s political
on which this commercial and cultural ac- and military centre shortly thereafter, when
tivity was based. Tokugawa Ieyasu uni ed Japan under his
What are the origins of the term Shita- leadership. Shitamachi appears to have
machi? According to a gazetteer compiled emerged early in the ensuing period of Toku-
under the auspices of the shogunal adminis- gawa shogunal power (1600– 1868) as a to-
tration in the 1820s, “Shitamachi is an abbre- pographical designator for the centre of the
viation of ‘the quarters under the castle’ ” city. Various references make it clear that
(Takeuchi, 1973, p. 302). Kôjien, the princi- already by the end of the 17th century, Shita-
pal Japanese-language dictionary, de nes machi was commonly understood to signify
Shitamachi thus in its 1990 edition: the centre of the city, where the townspeople
A low-lying urban area. Urban districts had been settled, while the hilly Yamanote to
inhabited preponderantly by traders, arti- the west of the castle was the domain of the
sans, and the like. In Tokyo, it refers to samurai (Takeuchi, 1985, p. 132). This per-
Taitô, Chiyoda, and Chûô wards and the ception of the urban territory appears to have
areas to the east of the Sumida river [see been reinforced over the following two cen-
Figure 3]. turies or so until, in the decades shortly after
the fall of the shogunate, the author of a
The main Japanese– English dictionary, pub- historical evocation could write with only
lished by Kenkyûsha, offers the following minimal ourish that:
hesitant explanation in English of Shita-
machi: “The traditional shopping and enter- At the centre of the city was Nihonbashi.
tainment districts (of a city, particularly The several quarters situated on each side
Tokyo), geographically low lying”. There of Nihonbashi—to the east as far as the

MOVING THE MARGINS OF TOKYO 1535
Figure 1. Edo, early to mid 19th century.
Ryôgoku River; to the west, the outer a more metaphorical sense for the animated
moats; to the north, Sujikaibashi and the quarters occupied by the townspeople—
Kanda River; and to the south, Shin- merchants, artisans and lower orders—at the
bashi—was called Shitamachi. All the rest foot of the Tokugawa shogun’s castle. From
was called the edge of town [basue] early times, Shitamachi the place was closely
(Kikuchi, 1905/1965, p. 9) (see Figure 1). associated with the people who lived there
and whose alleged attributes imparted to the
It would be exaggerating to suggest that Edo location its rich texture of social imagery.
and Shitamachi were coterminous, but there Shitamachi was the city of Edo, and the
was certainly a large degree of con ation. merchant or artisan inhabitant of Shitamachi
The name Edo referred not only in a descrip- took pride in considering himself (not her-
tive way to the city itself, but it also stood in self) an Edokko, ‘child of Edo’. The spirit of

1536 PAUL WALEY
the Edokko, or so it has been argued by the espousing modernising ideals for their coun-
historian Nishiyama Matsunosuke, is formed try, based on Western models. The people of
of an admixture of feelings of centrality and Shitamachi, on the other hand, came to be
the regional spirit of the east of Japan. One seen as representatives of the old order and
of the de ning aphorisms attached to the defenders of traditional cultural forms. They
Edokko was that he should be born ‘under were increasingly con ned to a defensive
the knee of the shogun’, or within sight of position, guarding old traditions and old so-
the roof tiles of the shogun’s castle. At the cial norms (Smith, 1960).
same time, however, the Edokko embodied In the popular imagination as well as in
some of the traits of rebelliousness and bra- the topographical literature, Shitamachi had
vado associated with the more impulsive, by now expanded northwards to include the
rough and independent ways of the people of entertainment district of Asakusa and nearby
the less developed east of Japan—seen, for areas (Figure 2). These new contours are
example, in acting style for the kabuki stage delineated in a gazetteer published in 1894:
(Nishiyama, 1973). This independent spirit “Kyôbashi, Nihonbashi, Kanda, Shitaya, and
was de ned in the rst place in contradistinc- Asakusa, those ve wards are commonly
tion to the military residents of the Yaman- called Shitamachi” (quoted in Yamaga, 1979,
ote, but also to the inhabitants of Osaka p. 69). Yamanote too spread outwards. This
(Smith, 1986). Shitamachi was Edo and Edo was where the modern inheritors of the cul-
was de ned in distinction from Osaka and tural tradition of the samurai lived, where
Kyoto, the other great urban centres of pre- in-comers from the provinces settled, bureau-
modern Japan. crats, businessmen, bankers, military of cers
and professional people of all stripes. These
were the residential areas for the new and
Shitamachi as Centre and Margin
aspiring middle classes. Shitamachi, home
Around the turn of the 20th century, with for the successors to the merchants, artisans
Tokyo having been established some decades and backstreet inhabitants of Edo, now en-
previously as rst national and then imperial compassed not only the business centre of
capital, a crucial rescripting of the city be- town but also the domain of the city’s proto-
gan. Edo was fashioned as a separate entity, industrial class. It was both centre and mar-
a different place for different times (Gluck, gin at the same time.
1998). Shitamachi, so closely associated with This self-conscious modernising period
Edo, became by extension linked to the past under the emperors Meiji and Taishô (1912–
and all it might be thought to have stood for, 26) was also one of discovery and growing
while Yamanote, equated with Tokyo, came awareness of social margins. The concept of
to be seen as the city of the present and the poverty was of course a new one, seen as a
future. The “incorporation of a historical di- form of social depravity, as a departure from
mension” was, in the words of Henry Smith social norms (Taira, 1968, p. 156). Its ‘dis-
(1986, p. 373), “critical to this transformation covery’ in the largest Japanese cities, Tokyo
of the Shitamachi/Yamanote distinction”. and Osaka, followed soon after a similar
The old commercial centre of the city, Shita- apprehension in London, and was articulated
machi, where the merchants and artisans and as a re ection of European trends. Thus,
lower echelons of society had been concen- Mayhew and Booth were often quoted by the
trated during the Tokugawa shogunate, be- early Meiji social explorers. The ‘poverty
came under the reign of the Meiji emperor grottoes’ (hinmin kutsu) that they discovered
(1868 – 1912) one pole in a bi-polar urban were tucked in the folds of the city and,
con guration. Yamanote stood for a national increasingly, their existence was seen as a
culture where people spoke the standard, na- characteristic of the north and east, the areas
tional language (Isoda, 1975). The inhabi- that formed an expanded Shitamachi. Pov-
tants of Yamanote were thought of as erty was thereby spatially formed and the

Figure 2. Tokyo, approximately 1910.
spaces it was seen to ll were increasingly by the 1920s, they punctuated much of Shita-
treated as marginal terrain, in a process not machi and were to be found in equal measure
dissimilar to that occurring in British cities on the east bank of the city’s main river, the
(Ward, 1976). The pockets of poverty that Sumida. This was an area referred to in much
had been ‘discovered’ grew and spread until, of the topographical literature as kawamukô,

1538 PAUL WALEY
a vaguely dismissive term meaning ‘on the this second de nition, we see an entirely
far side of the river’ (Nishimura, 1926/1971, separate part of the city being referred to as
p. 2). Shitamachi, a stretch of south Tokyo running
along the bay. Shitamachi was no longer for
everyone a circumscribed geographical ter-
Shitamachi as Region and Periphery
rain. It had become so closely associated
By the time of the post-war decades of rapid with certain attributes—at least in the minds
economic growth, Shitamachi was generally of some writers—that it could be used to
considered to include a much wider swathe describe other spatially distinct parts of the
of east and north-east Tokyo, taking in ter- city sharing these features (Bestor, 1989).
rain that had only recently been urbanised Shitamachi could exist wherever small facto-
(Yamaga, 1979; Kata, 1980). Shitamachi was ries and densely packed housing were to be
by now associated with small family enter- found and wherever a petty industrial class of
prises and with a sense of close-knit neigh- small entrepreneurs lived—owner-operators
bourhood. Families worked together, often of manufacturing plants mainly in the elec-
from the front room of their house, used as a tronic and machinery sectors, of construction
workplace, with the wife/mother (an import- and distribution companies and of small re-
ant gure in this modern Shitamachi) as ac- tail outlets. Shitamachi was innâ shitei (inner
countant and the eldest son trained to city), without the gentri cation or (with the
succeed the father. Shitamachi contained an important but particular exception of the
extensive industrial structure of manufactur- Koreans) the non-national migrant communi-
ing, wholesale and distribution which sup- ties of a North American or British city
ported and interconnected with large-scale (Waley, 1999).
enterprise but which was widely considered Shitamachi inhabitants, being for the most
different. By some it was seen as a nostalgic part migrants from rural areas, failed the
relic of earlier industrial practices, by others standard test of the ‘child of Shitamachi’,
as an important but highly vulnerable that she or he be a third-generation inhabi-
alternative to large business (Takeuchi, 1978; tant. In the popular imagination, the city was
de Vos, 1973; Patrick and Rohlen, 1987). now divided between a west of the city in-
The sense of a close community was related habited by of ce workers, bureaucrats and
not only to historicist visions of Edo back- professional people and an east occupied by
streets but also to the higher incidence of industrial and commercial entrepreneurs and
more densely packed pre-war housing cre- workers. That of course was a gross sim-
ating spatial intimacy and to signi cant in- pli cation, but it was generally held to be the
ward ows of migrants from rural areas of case and it did re ect the changes that had
the north-east, one of the poorest parts of occurred in the city in the wake of the great
Japan. earthquake of 1923 and the air raids of 1945,
The city was no longer represented in in both of which almost the entire extent of
terms of poverty pockets or factory chim- Shitamachi had been destroyed, as well as
neys. Instead, we read of belts, circles and many other parts of the city. The earthquake
zones (Figure 3). In his Tôkyôto shin shi in particular has been seen by historians as a
(New Gazetteer of the Tokyo Metropolis; watershed, after which the old ‘historicist’
1949), the geographer Tanaka Keiji de ned Shitamachi way of life evaporated and the
Yamanote and Shitamachi as the two compo- Shitamachi diaspora to the Yamanote hills of
nent parts of the rst of several concentric the west reached its peak (Ishizuka and Nar-
rings around the city centre, while in an ita, 1986). If, under the Tokugawa shogu-
encyclopaedia of place-names published the nate, Shitamachi had stood for centrality and
following year, Shitamachi was divided into regional spirit, and if in Meiji years it had
four parts: central, intermediate, eastern and been both centre and margins within that
southern (Yamaga, 1979, p. 75). Already in centre, by the time of the 1960s and 1970s

Figure 3. Tokyo, showing different readings of Shitamachi, 1950s to 1970s.
it was all region and peripheral urban normally a centre of political power, of so-
space. It still represented a different way of cial convention, of symbolic performance.
life, but one that had become increasingly Indeed, marginal places can exist as much at
marginalised. the centre as in the peripheries, on the out-
skirts of towns and cities or the remoter parts
of states and political spaces. “Margins”,
On the Margins of the State and its Capi-
writes Kevin Hetherington (1998, p. 107),
tal
“are not only things pushed to the edge, they
Shitamachi may have been marginalised, but can also be in-between spaces, spaces of
what and where are these margins into which traf c, right at the centre of things”. For
it had been thrust? Margins can only exist in Shields (1991, p. 3), “The marginal places
juxtaposition to a centre or some sort of core, that are of interest are not necessarily on

1540 PAUL WALEY
geographical peripheries but … they have tions of society, identi ed groups it con-
been placed on the periphery of cultural sys- sidered marginal and dismissed them to
tems of space”. peripheral places away from the centre
Margins can be internalised within the in- (Rabinow, 1989). No longer, for example,
dividual mind and the collective memory. would rich and poor share urban space so
That which is gone, in the past, is reinter- easily. The poor were now counted and la-
preted as backward, marginal to the new belled, and then driven out from increasingly
mainstream. Conversely, imagination recen- prestigious and expensive city centres. The
tralises margins, which come to appear dis- centres of new industrial nation-states had
tant, old, quaint, exotic and are therefore their roles reinforced. They were now sym-
treated in lm, ction and other media. Often bols of national unity. They had symbolic
enough, the collective imagination picks up messages to deliver both to people at home
on the lives of marginal people and turns and abroad. Indeed, they were a crucial part
them into swashbuckling outlaws or charis- of the whole nation-building project. “It is
matic religious leaders. Around their once- well worth noting”, write Agnew and Dun-
marginal lives and works grow stories and can (1989, p. 3), “that nation-building itself
images that occupy central spaces in the rested upon the privileging of certain places
popular imagination. The places in which as capitals, as seats of festivals, or what have
they lived and with which their activities been called les lieux de mémoire”.
are associated (the Dead Sea, Sherwood For- Within capital cities, speci c buildings ac-
est) might once have been marginal, but cumulate special symbolic signi cance. Of-
they become as a result central in the collec- ten they are at the centre of struggle and
tive imagination. Margins are in this way con ict.
celebrated.
Cathedrals, parliaments, monuments, state
To the extent that margins exist as
buildings and other such places come to
identi able space, the nature of this space is
represent forms of authority in a society.
social, and space is social in many different
This is most clearly shown during times of
ways. The landscape, the built environment,
revolt or revolution when these central
is socially formed, socially produced, to use
values are challenged (Hetherington, 1998,
Lefebvre’s more signi cant and charged for-
p. 115).
mulation (Lefebvre, 1991; Unwin, 2000).
Our social imaginations are suffused with These buildings and the con icts that have
spatial understandings; we avoid some areas, swirled around them have formed the stuff of
enjoy others. Our spatial imaginings are so- a stream of distinguished geographical writ-
cially informed; the myths, legends and po- ing, from David Harvey’s discussion of the
ems that underpin our cultural being create religious weight of the Sacré Coeur in Paris
imaginary spaces, ll our minds with deep (Harvey, 1985) to James Duncan’s evocation
inner landscapes (Tuan, 1974; Lowenthal, of the changing landscape of Kandy (Dun-
1985). The existence of marginal spaces is an can, 1989) to Jane Jacobs’ discussion of
entirely social construct. Margins are the con ict over the formation of place-identity
space given over to difference, the mental in the City of London (Jacobs, 1994). Most
and physical location of that which is un- national capital cities also have open spaces
orthodox or polluted or rejected or avoided of special symbolic signi cance. The Chi-
by the social forces emanating from the nese government has been reminded on
centre. many occasions of the enormous power of
The recognition of marginality, of mar- Tiananmen, that vast open space in front of
ginal people and places, is an intrinsic part of the Forbidden City (Samuels and Samuels,
the modernising project. With its superior 1989). In other cities around the world, the
capacity for co-ordination and social control, vision of the crowds from the favelas, the
the modern state differentiated various sec- barrios or the ghettos invading a central

symbolic space is a nightmare one for the ues dominating state-orchestrated discourse
authorities. The governments of ‘developing’ in Japan.
countries and of their capital cities have been In order to forge a vision of consensus, the
keen to keep their marginal populations out Japanese state has had to deal with difference
of city-centre areas. In various ways, the and it has done so in various ways. Morris-
authorities have tried to eliminate the people Suzuki (1998, p. 32) talks about “the modern
of the kampung from the central spaces of transfer of difference from the dimension of
metropolitan Jakarta (Leaf, 1996). They have space to the dimension of time”. In its poli-
successively banned the operators of various cies towards people inhabiting territorial pe-
kinds of non-vehicular transport as well as ripheries, the state characterised them as
hawkers and roadside stalls from the city’s backward and used this as rationale for incor-
main thoroughfares. The margins are purged porating them into the mainstream of na-
from the centre in the rush to be modern. tional life. It has used other strategies too
If margins are a concomitant of modernis- towards its marginal populations. It has dis-
ation, then the process of modernisation is an persed them where possible; rag-pickers and
important vehicle for de ning the nature of others of Tokyo’s poorest communities were
marginality. In this respect, Japan presents a repeatedly moved out of the urban limits. It
particularly interesting case in point. Both has denied their existence; the day labourers’
the Japanese themselves and Westerners district of Sanya is not mentioned in street
have long tended to portray modernisation in maps of Tokyo. It has appropriated them
Japan as commensurate with Westernisation where possible and desirable; this is the case,
and therefore as a break with the past. The for example, with top Korean sports players
process of modernisation involved large and entertainers.
doses of centralisation and standardisation The success of the Meiji state is well
(Gluck, 1985). The polarisation of functions exempli ed by its ability to appropriate the
within the national capital has been particu- central spaces of the old city and to do so in
larly pronounced during three periods: at the a way that diminished the chance of confron-
peak time of Meiji nation-building (the tation across the urban territory. The impact
1880s and 1890s), in the pre-war period of on the city and its inhabitants of the decline
militarisation and during the economic and fall of the shogunate and the transfer of
bubble of the 1980s. By the 1930s, Japan power to the imperial government was con-
was already one of the most centralised siderable; half the city’s population returned
countries in the world. In the post-war to their home provinces. Nevertheless, armed
period, more and more institutions, functions resistance in Edo to the advancing imperial
and corporate interests were located in forces in 1867 was limited to a band of
Tokyo. A conscious decision was taken early Tokugawa loyalists. These die-hards staged
in the Meiji era to make the Japanese spoken their last stand on Ueno hill, land that was
in the Yamanote hills of central and west sacred to the shogunal family. They were
Tokyo, once occupied by samurai from defeated and the temples on the hill were
throughout the country, the national lan- nearly all destroyed in the ghting. With
guage. Along with the language went the such a lack of externalised opposition—
customs and manner of dress associated with either to the shogunal or to the imperial
this Westernising élite. In its project of mod- authorities—there were few if any sites
ernisation, the Japanese state played a very around which active resistance might de-
important role, in fashioning consent and velop, few if any features of the landscape
creating support for its vision of a consensual associated in the popular imagination or in
and largely mono-cultural, mono-ethnic so- later state-sanctioned commemoration with
ciety. Indeed, throughout the modern era, acts of resistance or opposition. Ueno hill,
consensus and harmony, attained through co- for example, was successfully transformed
option and appropriation, have been the val- by the new imperial government as a site for

1542 PAUL WALEY
national exhibitions, for a university, zoo and city’s business, professional and clerical
national museum. classes. As a result of these changes, many
Urban space in Tokyo thus became a cen- older and less prosperous residents were
tral element in the growing power of a par- driven out (Smith, 1979). Shitamachi mer-
ticular approach to modernisation and a chants themselves found their approach to
particular view of modernity as Western. The commerce, with its spatial links and physical
symbols of Western urbanism were laid on environment, localised and marginalised. At
the already-existing townscape. The site of the same time, the spreading urban space
the shogun’s castle was chosen for the called Shitamachi became the primary loca-
new imperial palace which, unlike the once- tion for clusters of the urban poor—rickshaw
towering castle buildings, would be invisible pullers, rubbish pickers and, increasingly, the
behind a canopy of trees. On the south and huge army of workers operating the ma-
west sides of this “empty centre”, as Roland chines in Shitamachi’s factories. In later
Barthes (1983, p. 30) once memorably de- years, Shitamachi became home for day
scribed it, were located the new govern- labourers and for so many of those who
mental institutions of the modernising animated the small industrial sector of
Japanese state. It was therefore on the sites Japan’s dual economy.
where the compounds of the powerful mili- The move out of Shitamachi—in many
tary retainers of the shogun had stood that cases across the city to Yamanote and the
the Diet, government ministries and military fast-expanding west of the city—was greatly
headquarters were built. On a larger scale hastened and expanded by the Great Kantô
altogether, grand plans were drafted by Prus- Earthquake of 1923. This was a de ning
sian advisers (but never executed) for the moment in the modern history of the city.
construction of a Western-style imperial But even without the earthquake and ensuing
capital (Fujimori, 1982). The state lacked re, people would have moved in large num-
suf cient funds. Over ensuing decades, the bers out of Shitamachi. Shitamachi was seen
concept and instruments of Western-style as the urban setting for the old social order—
(chie y German) urban planning were intro- old ways of doing business, old forms of
duced, including a system of land-use zones. entertainment, all of them marginal to the
Isoda Kôichi, a literary critic who has written plot being written by Japan’s new élite.
perceptively and polemically about the city,
argues that the new zones served only to
Shitamachi Marginalised
accelerate the marginalisation of Shitamachi,
much of which was painted an industrial blue Shitamachi the physical space has lost most
on the new land-use map of 1925 (Isoda, of its distinctiveness in the modern city and it
1975, p. 14). has been expanded, diffused and dispersed
The slow appropriation of space has been into suburban areas. But even as it has lost
driven by the state and by capital, in Tokyo signi cance as an identi able piece of the
as elsewhere. Shitamachi became increas- urban terrain, it has gained meaning as a
ingly marginal to the interests of the state. It mental point of reference. Shitamachi has
also became marginal to the operations of been internalised, divorced from the physical
capital. New forms of business and business world and positioned within the mind. It
institutions—corporations, along with stock has also become a rallying-point for collec-
and commodity exchanges—were sited in the tive celebration. Shitamachi is celebrated in
old centre of the city, in and around Nihon- crafts products and foods, books and lms,
bashi, precisely the area that was the centre festivals and river cruises: celebrated tire-
of Shitamachi. Not far south of Nihonbashi, lessly in endless different ways. But before
a district called Ginza was rebuilt in brick and above all this, it has been marginalised
after a destructive re and became a vastly and, precisely because it has been mar-
popular evening entertainment district for the ginalised, it can now be comfortably inter-

nalised and celebrated. Shitamachi has been eign (there has to be somewhere ‘traditional’
marginalised as physical space within the to take foreign guests), but the streets around
city. It has become the back of the city, a are devoid of animation and remain rela-
backwater, less prosperous, out of the urban tively poor, while years of recession have
mainstream. The Tokyo that dazzles the rest reinforced the area’s association with the
of Japan and sometimes the world beyond is ubiquitous homeless of contemporary Japan
the centre and west of the city. Shitamachi and their cardboard-box shelters.
has been marginalised in this generalised Like Asakusa, Shitamachi has been mar-
sense, but it has been marginalised too in a ginalised for having been tainted. The odour
more speci c sense, through association with of depravity hung over Shitamachi from the
old forms of cultural, social and commercial time that urban poverty was rst identi ed
activity and with poverty, pollution and so- and given spatial de nition in the Meiji era.
cial outcasts. It accumulated there in succeeding decades,
The process of marginalisation through as- as years of industrialisation created a class of
sociation is nowhere better seen than in As- urban marginals, families living in the social
akusa. Asakusa was rst of all a temple to interstices making a living on the scrap-
the bodhisattva Kannon on the outskirts of heaps of industry. The creation of new mar-
Edo, a hugely popular site of pilgrimage and kets while Europe was distracted by the First
touristic recreation whose grounds were World War and the later militarisation of
lled with tea shops and booths of every Japan’s industrial infrastructure helped to
description. Its ambivalent status, outside the bolster urban industry and ameliorate condi-
direct jurisdiction of the shogunate, was rein- tions for industrial workers. While economic
forced by its position just city-side of Yoshi- growth in post-war Japan was always
wara, the of cially ‘sanctioned’ brothel suf ciently vigorous to ensure that poverty
district. In Meiji and Taishô era Tokyo, As- was not widespread, inner-city Shitamachi
akusa continued to ourish, as centre both included (as it still does) some of the coun-
for popular traditional entertainments such as try’s more crowded and uncomfortable
story-telling but also as rst home in Tokyo places. In the Sanya area north of Asakusa
of cinema and other newly imported Western live thousands of day labourers and many
entertainments. The Asakusa temple, how- others by now too old or in rm to put in a
ever, stood close to newly forming pockets day’s work on a construction site. The asso-
of poverty and areas of industry and ciations of the north-east of inner-city Tokyo
ramshackle urban-edge housing. Nearby with the former outcasts of Japanese society
were the districts of the leather-workers and have been slow to dissipate.
other social outcasts. New measures in the A further overwhelming association of
Meiji era had ended outcaste status but had Shitamachi in the imagination of the city’s
done little to diminish discrimination. Be- inhabitants has long been with the click-
yond the temple was the increasingly seedy clack of mechanical presses and the clutter,
red-light district. Meanwhile, in the centre of grease, dirt and noise of a myriad of back-
the city, Ginza’s appeal lay in the insistence street factories, many of them so small they
of its international and European points of operate from the front room of the family
social and cultural reference. Ginza stood for home, their products shipped down the road
international sophistication and the present on the back of a bicycle to a slightly larger
and future, Asakusa for localism and the plant for further processing before being
past. Asakusa’s decline since then has been a moved on again (Kondo, 1990). This is what
constant factor. Successive attempts to rein Japanese is called a gomi-gomi shita
generate the area in recent decades have met machi, a ‘messy-messy’ town, and it charac-
with only very limited success (Waley, 1992, terises the economic, social and physical
p. 254). The temple continues to be fre- landscape of much of modern Shitamachi, in
quented by tourists, both Japanese and for- particular Sumida and Arakawa wards. In a

1544 PAUL WALEY
survey undertaken by the geographer Ya- said, the urban reincarnations of the people
maga Seiji and published in 1979, one of the and the society that most Japanese believe
rst mental associations that his respondents their parents or grandparents left behind
had when asked about Shitamachi was that of them for ever when they moved into the city.
messy streets (Yamaga, 1979, p. 74). Others The spaces of this Shitamachi of the mem-
were with human feelings (ninjô), Edokko ory, this internalised Shitamachi, are above
(the children of Edo), summer festivals and all those of the backstreet (roji), for as Shita-
popular spirit (‘popular’ in the sense of machi expanded outwards, away from central
‘plebeian’, shominteki in Japanese). areas of the city, it has receded inwards,
There is an ambivalence in this list of towards the neighbourhood and the com-
associations, as if to say that even in a messy munity, the family and memories of child-
town with backstreet factories, people have hood. The participants at a conference
warmth and emotions and the world of fes- organised in 1985 by the Mainichi newspa-
tivity continues. Once the process of mar- per re ected in their comments this view of
ginalisation had run its course, it was no Shitamachi. One of the conference themes
longer necessary to look down on Shitamachi was ‘The Shitamachi of Backstreets, the Shi-
as backward-looking and provincial, dirty tamachi of Riverside’. In his introduction to
and poor. Japan had grown prosperous by the this discussion, Kawazoe Noboru, an archi-
late 1970s. There was no longer a need to tectural historian who has written copiously
banish the memories of poverty, dirt, noise on the city, contended that the alley is at the
and disease. They could be assimilated and centre of Shitamachi, with its neighbourly
reassessed. exchanges “three doors up and two doors
down” (Mainichi, 1986, p. 30). A similar
view of Shitamachi was expressed at the
Shitamachi Internalised
conference by an economist, Takahara
People are more comfortable with their past Sumiko: “Shitamachi is where the workplace
nowadays. They no longer try to exclude it and the home survive together as one”
from their spatial imaginings. They nurture (Mainichi, 1986, p. 80).
the idea of Shitamachi, a place that no longer The backstreet is social space if nothing
exists today—it could be said—because it else. It is the memory of a space in which
corresponds to almost anywhere redolent of children played, at a time when television
the past, when people were poorer but life was only just beginning to make inroads into
was in some ineffable way lived better. Anal- people’s homes, and of the occasional piece
ogous situations exist with memories of the of vacant land, the harappa, which children
East End of London or indeed the hutong of made their own. It is the recollection of the
Beijing as depicted in various Chinese tele- old corner shop, the dagashiya, selling cheap
vision soap operas. Shitamachi belongs to the sweets, cards and marbles for games, and a
internalised spaces of memory and intimacy, gelatinous pancake called monjayaki, fried
family spaces of domesticity and neighbour- on a hot plate. It is a more feminine space
hood spaces of community. than the gung-ho world of the Edokko, even
The connotations of the social, the spatial in the aforementioned backstreet factories,
and the temporal overlap. Shitamachi, in this where the woman of the household is ac-
sense, has become a series of memories of countant, treasurer, holder of the purse
customs, objects, spaces, relationships. Shita- strings. Many features of this backstreet
machi represents for many the idea of an world have disappeared today. Indeed, Shita-
imaginary hometown, a furusato, where peo- machi itself, it might be said, has ceased to
ple are kinder, if rougher in their ways exist today, except in attenuated form and in
(Robertson, 1998). They live closer together the memory.
and share more of their belongings, and they This reading of Shitamachi as temps passé
are dreadful gossips. They are, it might be is nely illustrated in the Tora-san lms.

This, the longest-running lm series any- ing enterprises ourish (or at least exist in
where, has now come to an end as a result of numbers).
the death of its lead actor who had become
one of the most prominent national symbols
Shitamachi Celebrated
of the post-war era. The series stars a warm-
hearted bachelor who hawks his wares at It is an interesting irony that, even as Shita-
various festivals around the country. He in- machi has expanded outwards and seeped
variably falls in love but is rejected and inwards, the historical Shitamachi in central
returns to his sister’s shop in Shitamachi. east Tokyo has been reinvented and cel-
The signi cance of the lm series is gener- ebrated as never before. The city has redis-
ally acknowledged to lie in the hankering of covered its history, which has been used to
its audience for a way of life that no longer win Tokyo a place in the galaxy of world
exists (Pons, 1988, p. 173). The lm is set in cities and to add zeros onto property prices.
Shibamata, on the far eastern border of The form of this celebration has been
Tokyo. Only latterly, and mainly as a result shaped in no small part by the various waves
of the lm series, has this recently urbanised of demolition and reconstruction that have
area been considered to be part of Shitamachi hit the historical Shitamachi even harder than
(Satô, 1988). Here, Shitamachi stands as a they have other parts of urban Japan. Earth-
locational metaphor for memories of better quake and air raids led not only to the de-
times and a better way of living. Although it struction of most of Shitamachi but also to its
is an immediately recognisable location on remapping with new roads, new bridges, new
the outskirts of the city, Tora-san’s base is an parks. Much of what was not destroyed in the
idealised community that could have existed disasters has been demolished through urban
anywhere but in fact would have been found development. So in terms of physical re-
nowhere. In the words of the in uential critic minders of the past—monuments, old build-
Kawamoto Saburô, ings and the like—very little remains. The
celebration of Shitamachi revolves therefore
Downtown [sic] Tokyo has been, for much
less around heritage in the form of a built
of this century, an area known for its
environment and more around products and
pleasant atmosphere. Indeed Shibamata,
commodities, the representation of images in
Tora-san’s hometown, has been much like
the media, and customs and practices.
a small town, a town within the city, the
In the 1980s, Tokyo, the city that had once
river forming the picturesque backdrop for
been considered the ugly duckling of the
the life of the community … Little by lit-
world’s major urban centres, was repackaged
tle, it became harder to nd that small
as an exciting global metropolis, post-
town within the city, that quiet spot by the
modern in its lack of conceptual structure but
river … Indeed, the heart of the Tora-san
at the same time evolving outside the
lms is, in essence, nostalgia. Each lm is
paradigm of Western urbanism. The periodic
reminiscent of a simpler time, an era that
demolition of so many of its constituent parts
has passed (Kawamoto, 1996, p. 21).
was taken to re ect a lack of corporeality, a
If Shitamachi no longer represents a readily vaporous quality, a uidity and a transience
identi able physical space in the city, its that could be related back to its history (Wa-
transformation into social space has carried it ley, 1999). Tokyo was, in other words, the
far and wide. Shitamachi today exists beyond stage for a post-modern celebration of the
Shitamachi. It can be no matter which urban pre-modern. The vertiginous rise in property
area in Tokyo, Osaka or any other Japanese prices of the second half of the 1980s, from
city, so long as it is a neighbourhood with a which the Japanese economy had yet to re-
strong feeling of community, small densely cover well over 10 years later, was engi-
packed houses, a shopping street and the air neered by those corporate interests which
of a place where small retail and manufactur- stood to make money through urban develop-

1546 PAUL WALEY
ment (Machimura, 1992; Noguchi, 1994). modernisation. For these people, both local
Ideological support was marshalled through residents and members of the diaspora, Shi-
campaigns both to establish an international tamachi is the contemporary manifestation of
image for the city and to reinvent the city’s a phenomenon (place and way of life) rooted
past. In the words of Carol Gluck (1998, in the historical city. It is the spirit of Edo,
p. 280), “Edo-the-city became a prime site of given life through ‘Edo pastimes’—kabuki
cultural nostalgia”. theatre, geisha and the shamisen, and the
Shitamachi has been made to play a cen- like. Some of the celebrations occur on the
tral role in the jamboree of events that cel- streets, where the boisterous summer festi-
ebrated the city of Tokyo-as-Edo. Traditional vals of Shitamachi, now largely stripped of
products, commodities, maps, books, memo- interference from gangster groups, have en-
rabilia of all sorts are dressed up in the joyed renewed popularity for several
insignia of Shitamachi and sold in its shops. decades.
Traditional patterns and motifs dating back The value of Tokyo’s waterways has been
to the shogun’s city are ubiquitous guaran- reassessed. Much play has been made of the
tors of authenticity. Shitamachi products are city’s aqueous past, of the quayside markets
sold in shops and restaurants throughout the and the waterways congested with boats car-
city. The imprimatur is delivered by a num- rying goods and passengers into and out of
ber of museums celebrating Shitamachi in the city, and over to the other bank (Suzuki,
particular and the city’s history in general. 1978; Jinnai, 1985). Above all, the Sumida
Principal among these is the Edo– Tokyo Mu- river has been reclaimed as a central asset
seum, a controversial building whose size within the city. This symbol par excellence
alone embodies the in ated claims it makes both of Shitamachi and of the city itself was
about the city’s history. once a lively site of festivity, opened in the
Shitamachi is celebrated in the media too, fth month of each year for pleasure-going
if in less intense fashion today than in the craft with a rework display and then full all
overheated years of rampant property specu- summer of boats large and small gently rock-
lation. Books are the main vehicle for this ing up and down in the river breezes. Much
exercise in nostalgia. They cover every con- later, the Sumida became a dirty industrial
ceivable angle. Many are memoirs; others are channel, a transition conveyed in a gazetteer
descriptions of place and customs. A number published in 1967:
of newspapers and community sheets are
published within the general compass of Shi- The Bokusui [an elegant sobriquet for the
tamachi. Amongst these is the Shitamachi river] is the spiritual home of the people of
taimusu (Times), a monthly broadsheet con- all Shitamachi … From the time … of [the
taining a mixture of soft news and features poet] Ariwara no Narihira … to the pre-
on Shitamachi residents, with a focus on sent day, when the ef uent of modern
crafts producers and small industrial manu- industry has turned the waters a muddy
facturers. black … the Bokusui has moved forward
Shitamachi is also celebrated as a set of alongside the lives of the Shitamachi
practices and customs, among people masses (Waley, 1991, p. 270).
grouped together in clubs, societies and asso-
ciations that keep traditions going and play Today, the waters of the Sumida are (rela-
out a drama of place-based association. tively) clean once again and inhabited by
Clinging onto a historicist de nition of Shita- various sh. Old customs have been revived
machi, they rejoice in its traditions and take and pleasure boats are hired out at festival
part in its entertainments and, in so doing, times and throughout the summer to party-
they embody a low-level resistance against goers. A pedestrian bridge has been built
the cultural symbols and spatial metaphors of over the river, and the embankment along the
the country’s path of Westernisation and river is as full at cherry blossom time as it

can ever have been. The river lives again mony of a particular approach to modernis-
within the city. ation and a particular view of modernity as
Shitamachi is celebrated as never before, Western.
but for the main part this is a commodi ed The period of potential equilibrium be-
Shitamachi, which can be bought wrapped up tween the centre east and the centre west of
in little presents or tasted for an evening at a the city came to an end with the earthquake
restaurant. It is of course possible even to of 1923 and the diaspora of the older Shita-
buy a piece of Shitamachi property— machi merchant class from Nihonbashi and
although gentri cation, however de ned, re- those areas around it. Shitamachi was pushed
mains a marginal pursuit in Tokyo. out of the old centre and spread eastwards to
include the increasingly industrial areas on
the east bank of the Sumida, until it became
Shitamachi, Muted Reactions to a Shifting
a sort of marginal territory, peripheral Japan
Geography
nudging up against its centre. Shitamachi
Never mind the speed of its subsequent re- became poverty and the grime of smokestack
habilitation, the marginalisation of Shita- industry. The Japanese state had played its
machi was a long drawn out process, one that spatial hand with great success.
relates back even today (perhaps one should The association of Shitamachi with a de-
say, all the more so today) to the status of funct regime, one whose spaces had largely
Edo as capital of the Tokugawa shogunate been appropriated, left little room for resist-
and the place of Shitamachi as commercial ance. There were one or two former shogunal
and cultural heart of the city. The Edokko, of cials who satirised the provincial manners
emblematic inhabitant of the city, was both of the country’s new leaders. They were
man-about-town and rebel. He was either followed a little later by a number of writers,
bathing in the culture of the city and making poets and essayists who well understood the
money out of the shogunal of cials and the signi cance of the change in the balance of
city’s samurai sojourners or he was cocking urban power. Writers like Mori Ôgai and
a snook at the pretentious ways of the mili- Kôda Rohan adopted ambivalent positions,
tary classes and disporting himself on the critical of the government for its failure to
kabuki stage with exaggerated displays of address the human impact of urban and na-
bravado. Either way, the merchants and arti- tional change, but their in uence was limited
sans (as well as the larger mass of townspeo- (Schulz, 2002). Just occasionally, an old Edo
ple beneath them) were an essential part of custom was revived or a plea for preservation
the system but not part of the dominant was heard, but there was never a movement
power-holding class. The imperial authorities or campaign, only resignation at the in-
of the Meiji era inherited the social forces evitability of change punctuated by the odd
and spatial structures of the Tokugawa. The appeal for a different type of change (Waley,
new industrial and business strata grew out 1994). For many writers, urban space formed
of the military classes. They settled in the an important metaphor. Best known of these
Yamanote hills of the centre west of the city, is Nagai Kafû, but there were others before
once predominantly the site of the com- and after who, like him, lamented and
pounds and houses of feudal lords and their elegised and in so doing added to a volumin-
samurai retainers. Yamanote, this topograph- ous topographical literature on the city
ical rallying cry for a new way of life, stood (Hutchinson, 2001). Theirs, however, was an
increasingly in opposition to Shitamachi, élite-level response to Shitamachi’s mar-
which was thus cast into the past as space of ginalisation. This was not going to provoke
manners and customs of an era and a struc- discontent or incite unrest. However reluc-
ture of power that had disappeared. Urban tantly, it implied an acceptance of the
space in Tokyo had become a central element changes in Japanese society and its urban
in the successful quest for ideological hege- fabric in Tokyo.

1548 PAUL WALEY
A further reaction to this shifting geogra- pier, a more feminine space of community as
phy of the city has come more recently from against the masculine world of corporate life.
town planners and local government It is a part of the memory, a place absorbed
of cials, some of whom have sought to resist into the mind and applied anywhere one
or at least de ect the prevalent picture of wants it to be or nowhere it all. It is a space
Shitamachi as space of historical community. of the imagination. It is also the space of
We read in an of cial booklet on industry in times passed, of a pre-modernity that has
Sumida Ward (1989, p. 14) that been rediscovered in post-modern days and
of a modernising capital city’s industrial
Recently, there has been a sudden surge in
backyard.
interest in ‘Shitamachi’ and an appreciable
increase in visitors coming to walk around,
among them foreigners. However, many of
these visitors have an image of Shitamachi References
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Urban Studies, Vol. 39, No.

9, 1533– 1550, 2002

Moving the Margins of Tokyo

Shitamachi, the Shifting Terrain

0042-098 0 Print/1360-063 X On-line/02/091533-18 Ó 2002 The Editors of Urban Studies

the focus of activity westwards (Sutcliffe, follows an asterisked note appended in

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Figure 1. Edo, early to mid 19th century.

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Figure 2. Tokyo, approximately 1910.

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Figure 3. Tokyo, showing different readings of Shitamachi, 1950s to 1970s.

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