06.04.06

Tokyo, Japan, and culture

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:58 pm by anthonytobin

I am at a kiosk at Narita airport, with 5 hours to go, I hope, before the flight leaves.  Tokyo has been the amazing smorgasbord of sensory images I expected it to be.  I can’t wait to go through the 5 hours of video footage and almost 2 gigs of fotos I took….

The culture is so traditional, with so many rules that an American can only imagine.  East and West, new and old clash in ways I have not seen in other parts of the world.  I hope to explore this in the next film.

I stayed on the East side of Tokyo, an area shunned by the Japanese.  My Japanese friends tried to convince me to stay in another part of town.  But the 2200 yen/night ( about 20 dollars) price made it possible to explore the city and get some interesting cd’s, and, most important, glean insight into an older, less affluent Japan.  I loved walking around at 6-8 AM as people went to work, seeing the energy, taking photos and video, and finding a part of Japan that most American’s do not see.

This is just south and to the right of Minami Senju Station, an area known as “Kozukappara” that in the Edo period (1660-1868) was used for 200,000 executions of prisoners. This Buddha was placed in 1721 to give the final ministrations to the condemned, who did not see a priest before they were beheaded. The Buddha and the cemetery watch over the souls of the many dead.

The area was considered unclean since it was also used to slaughter and cure animal meat and hides for the upper class. Also the northeast, this portion of Tokyo, was considered in the Edo period to bring in the evils and bad omens of the city. After the firebombs of WWII the government sent the poor and destitute to the area and it maintained a stigma. It also has crematoriums, a huge gas plant, sewage treatment, and tanneries. Flophouses for day laborers developed in the 50-’s-60’s and now are being transformed into backpack hostels. They are advertised on the internet as cheap hotels.

Which is why I stayed there in the first place.

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