Tokyo - Capital of Cool. Rob Goss
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armor.
Tradition, though important, can be tinkered with, especially when it comes to fashion. In this case, zori sandals meet platforms.
Decorative hagoita at the annual Hagoita-Ichi fair by Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa. A hagoita is a flat wooden racket used for playing the traditional New Year’s game hanetsuki, although ones like these are used as good luck charms.
A ukiyo-e (woodblock print) depicting an Edo-era kabuki actor.
You can still see rickshaws in Asakusa, although only as a tourist attraction nowadays.
Dolls on a souvenir stall.
With Tokugawa rule ended by the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Edo went through a series of dramatic changes. When the 17-year-old Meiji Emperor moved from Kyoto to briefly take up residence in Edo Castle (it burnt down in 1873 and the site is now home to the current Imperial Palace), he renamed Edo the “eastern capital”, Tokyo. The Meiji Government also set about modernizing Japan. With help of foreign expertise previously kept out of the country by Edo-era isolation policy, Japan developed its railways and industries. From the 1880s onward, much of central Tokyo also underwent a Western-style facelift, European architects and later their Japanese students erecting brick buildings. Horse-drawn carriages replaced rickshaws. Gas street lights appeared. The Meiji Emperor even took to wearing Western clothing. Tokugawa’s former power base had become the modern mega city of its day.
A statue of the legendary 14th-century samurai Kusunoki Masahige near the Imperial Palace.
A glimpse of old Edo courtesy of the master ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige.
Performing the tea ceremony. Sado or Chado, as it is most commonly known in Japanese, is still a popular and very well-respected pastime.
Decorative saké barrels (kazaridaru) at Meiji Jingu Shrine. Although the ones on display are always empty, shrines often use saké in parts of their rituals.
TOKYO’S COLORFUL FESTIVALS
Year round, Tokyo’s calendar is marked by festivals of all shapes and guises, from local street fairs to ancient parades and from midsummer fireworks displays to seasonal flower festivals, a collection of matsuri (festivals) woven into the fabric of Tokyo life.
Dancing in the streets at one of Tokyo’s numerous summer festivals.
In early spring, the focus of the city’s festivities is the fleeting wave of cherry blossom (sakura) that arrives in Tokyo in late March and early April as it sweeps northeast over Japan, with it signaling the start of hanami (cherry blossom viewing) parties and picnics in parks and alongside river banks all over the city. In Ueno Park, hanami manifests itself in thousands of saké- and beer-fueled parties on a sea of blue tarpaulin picnic sheets under delicate pink blossoms, while in other places the viewing is a more peaceful, contemplative affair, the lawns of Shinjuku Gyoen and a row boat on the picturesque Chidorigafuchi moat by the Imperial Palace being two of the most attractive and tranquil viewing spots in Tokyo.
As spring begins to warm with the approach of early summer, the first of Tokyo’s grand festivals begin. Taking place in odd-numbered years, the Kanda Matsuri in mid-May features processions of men in Edo-era costumes, bearers of mikoshi (portable shrines) and priests on horseback, while a week or so later the Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa attracts almost two million onlookers who come to watch hollering teams of bearers bounce highly decorative mikoshi through the teeming streets in honor of the 7th-century founders of Asakusa’s Senso-ji Temple and take in the parades of floats and food stalls.
The procession of samurai at the Tosho-gu Grand Spring Festival.
Picnicking under spring cherry blossoms. A favorite annual event in Japan, hanami (blossom viewing parties) take place all over Tokyo when the sakura is in bloom.
Paper lanterns at temple and shrine festivals can look mystical but often just bear the names of people who have given donations.
When the heat and humidity of summer arrives in July and August, matsuri madness reaches its peak. Illuminating Tokyo’s eastern skies on the final Saturday of July, the Sumidagawa Hanabi Taikai is the largest of dozens of summer hanabi taikai (fireworks displays) that take place in Tokyo, in this case with 20,000 rockets painting a rainbow of colors above the Sumida River. Despite the often oppressive heat, outdoor dance events are popular too, especially August’s Koenji Awa Odori (a modern-day offshoot of the centuries-old Awa Odori folk dance festival held in Tokushima Prefecture), which sees 12,000 dancers split into hundreds of colorfully dressed male and female troupes take to the sun-baked streets of Koenji to perform Awa folk dances to up-tempo rhythms and a pulsating mix of drums, flutes and traditional stringed instruments.
Processions in historic dress are a feature of many major shrine festivals.
Fireworks displays (hanabi taikai) are a summer institution all over the country, including Tokyo. For a major event like the Sumida River Fireworks in late July, somewhere in the region of half a million onlookers head to the banks of the Sumida to watch some 20,000 rockets being set off.
In Autumn, the number of matsuri taking place in Tokyo begins to drop off from the summer peak, although major traditional parades and displays of horseback archery take place in both Kamakura and Nikko as part of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine’s and Toshogu Shrine’s seasonal celebrations, each offering a window on important periods in Japan’s feudal past and a chance to enjoy some of the traditions that accompany almost every Japanese festival—the aromas and flavors of the street food, the colorful silk kimono or cotton yukata that accent the crowds, the simple fair games for children.
It is very common to get dressed up for Shichi-go-san (lit. seven, five, three), a rite-of-passage