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Little Pink Books
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17954 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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5 / 1990 |
4,370 Words |
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John Whittier Treat
John Whittier Treat teaches Japanese literature at the
University of Washington. He is the author of several works on
atomic-bomb literature, including Pools of Water, Pillars of
Fire: The Literature of Ibuse Masuji (University of Washington
Press, 1988). |
TUGUMI
Banana Yoshimoto
Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1990
The tourist who visits Tokyo - whether Japanese or foreign - is nowadays apt to forsake the older sights of Ginza or Asakusa for a newer neighborhood of the city, one less known for its shrines and temples than it is for its ready-to-wear sales and sidewalk cafes with such improvable Japanese names as "Vienna 'B' Haus." The neighborhood is called Harajuku, a name which once referred to a rural (hara) road stop (juku) for Edo Period officials headed for Nihombashi, the former center of the capital.
Today it is itself the final destination of distant travelers, reached by taking the city's Yamanote circle line to a deceptively modest, Tudor-style train station which, when exited, deposits the visitor at the head of a broad, magnificently tree-lined boulevard. To stroll the quarter-mile or so of this boulevard is to view an eclectic jumble of prewar, postwar, and now postmodern buildings housing high-end fashion emporiums as conservative as Paul Stuart and Hanae Mori, and as cutting-edge as Comme des Garcons and Obscure Desire of Bourgeoisie. At the same time, one finds informal tent cities squeezed between the sleek minimalist boutiques, Japanese versions of the? Turkish bazaar, where long-haired hippies hoarsely hawk such low-end accessories as "Dartmouth University" T-shirts and Sister Boy make-up kits. Rio has its Carnival, and New York has its Fifth Avenue - what Tokyo has is something akin to both but, typically, all its own.
One of the first impressions an American tourist might have of
... (1999 of 25180 Characters)
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