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question and wrote the second book, because the first volume, good though it is, told a very incomplete tale. Low City, High City concentrates on the Low City, Shitamachi or the old part of the city that was originally built on swampy lowlands and into which were crowded the commoners when Japan was ruled by the samurai. "Commoner culture" may have been a contradiction in terms to the samurai and their culture, yet it grew and grew and attracted avid attention even from the samurai in the feudal period. The lure of commoner culture remained in the Low City and continues today to beckon to many observers. Kabuki plays, haiku poetry, "pictures of the floating world" or ukiyoe, and the entertainers of the nightlife districts are just some of the legacies of the Low City which provoked Seidensticker's eulogy. He also takes up the high culture of the samurai, Zen Buddhism, tea ceremony and gardens, but his first love is clearly the culture of the Low City.
He takes his tale up to 1923 when the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed most of Tokyo and Yokohama, especially the part of the city which he lovingly portrays. The 'quake struck on September 1, at noon when cooking fires were burning throughout the city. Fire soon raged over the crowded Low City, killing an estimated 100,000 people in Tokyo and Yokohama. Although the Low City sprang back to life (Tokyo folklore had it that a business which could not reopen on the third day after a fire was one which would have failed soon anyway due to its owner's mis-management even if the fire had not occurred), for Seidensticker, and for many literary figures like Nagai Kafu and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro whom he quotes heavily, the old city and its culture failed to spring back, already having been changed by the new currents and culture flowing in from the West. Now, its physical base was destroyed as well.
Fortunately Seidensticker did not leave his subject on such a negative note. He took up his own challenge to deal with the 'many exciting things [that] have occurred in the six decades since the earthquake.' The second volume is increasingly different from the first volume not, however, in terms of its excellence or the tender care it gives to its subject but, rather, it deals with the High City, the portion of the city which stretches far to the west and north of the Low City and in which the samurai class once lived, but which now houses the middle-class society that pervades Japan. Although the influences of the Low City are not absent in the new High City, the atmosphere changes dramatically as one goes up the low hills. The austerity and severe-mindedness of the samurai class spreads through
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question and wrote the second book, because the first volume, good though it is, told a very incomplete tale. Low Cuty, High City concentrates on the Low City, Shitamachi or the old part of the city that was originally built on swampy lowlands and into which were crowded the commoners when Japan was ruled by the samurai. "Commoner culture" may have been a contradiction in terms to the samurai and their culture, yet it grew and giew and attracted avid attention even from the samurai in the feudal period. The lure of commoner culture remained in the Low City and continues today to beckon to many observes. Kabuki plays, haiku poetry, "pictures of the floating world" or ukiyoe, and the entertainers of the nightlife districts are just some of the legacies of the Low City which provoked Seidensticker's eulogy. He also takes up the high culture of the samurai, Zen Buddhism, tea ceremony and gardens, but his first love is clearly the culture of the Low City.
He takes his tale up to 1923 when the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed most of Tokyo and Yokohama, especially the part of the city which he lovingly portrays. The 'quake struck on September 1, at noon when cooking fires were burning throughout the city Fire soon raged over the crowded Low City, killing an estimated 100,000 people in Tokyo and Yokohama ' Although the Low City sprang back to life (Tokyo folklore had it that a business which could not reopen on the thud day after a fire was one which would have failed soon anyway due to its owner's mis-management even if the fire had not occurred), for Seidensticker, and for many literary figures like Nagai Kafu and Tanızaki Jun'ichiro whom he quotes heavily, the old city and its culture failed to spring back, already having been changed by the new currents and culture flowing in from the West. Now, its physical base was destroyed as well.
Fortunately Seidensticker did not leave his subject on such a negative note. He took up his own challenge to deal with the 'many exciting things [that] have occurred in the six decades since the earthquake.' The second volume is increasingly different from the first volume not, however, in terms of its excellence or the tender care it gives to its subject but, rather, it deals with the High City, the portion of the city which stretches far to the west and north of the Low City and in which the samurai class once lived, but which now houses the middle-class society that pervades Japan Although the influences of the Low City are not absent in the new High City, the atmosphere changes dramatically as one goes up the low hills. The austerity and severe mindedness of the samurai class spreads through
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