Skip to content

Tokyo · 2016

2016 Tokyo 2

Thousands of city lights twinkle across Tokyo's sprawling skyline, seen from a high observation window at night.
A menu board lists unusual grilled offal cuts such as pork trachea, beef heart and pork uterus. A comic-style poster on a subway pillar warns riders to press the emergency stop button, showing a shouting man beside a red button. A Japanese palace gatehouse with white walls and a dark roof stands beyond a grassy moat bank lined with pines. From inside a coach on an elevated expressway, a white truck drives beneath a green direction sign toward glass skyscrapers. A scramble crossing with zebra stripes in every direction lies before traditional Japanese shopfronts. A broad gravel path runs through trees toward a large red temple gate, with visitors strolling toward the entrance. A wooden rack stacked with decorated sake barrels stands before a shrine in Kamakura. A traditional Kamakura shrine pavilion with a curved tiled roof and red pillars in a wooded courtyard. A large vermilion gate stands at the top of a wide stone staircase surrounded by greenery and visitors. White ceremonial sake barrels wrapped in straw and painted with Japanese calligraphy are stacked on wooden shelves. A grand wooden hall with an ornate dark tiled roof faces a courtyard where visitors browse stalls and signboards. A weathered stone komainu guardian dog sits beside stone temple steps in front of a red wooden fence in Kamakura. From a hillside, a temple hall with a dark hipped roof sits in a courtyard ringed by trees. Vermilion-lacquered shrine buildings and a covered wooden corridor surround a pavilion decorated with a golden floral painting. Visitors stand before a red-painted temple hall and a wooden offering box. Looking down from a temple, a sweeping view shows tiled rooftops, dark pines and a distant street with a red torii gate. A quiet garden pond mirrors bare winter trees beneath a red wooden bridge railing. A Kamakura garden with a reflective pond, wooden bridge and a railed building behind trees. A dark moss-covered boulder rests on a stone base amid ferns in a shaded park garden. A dark wooden shrine gate with a curved roof stands at the end of a stone path, approached by a lone visitor. A square stone basin filled with water has bamboo spouts and brass ladles for visitors to purify themselves. A gravel path runs beside a still pond and stone bridge, with a red footbridge among bare trees in a Kamakura park. A gnarled tree with exposed roots stands beside a small pond edged with stones in a Kamakura park. A wide paved approach path climbs stone steps toward a dark wooden temple gate flanked by dense green trees. A white plum tree in full blossom stands beside a stone lantern and a white wall in a garden. A calm pond mirrors bare trees and a small shrine, with a row of paper lanterns on the bank. A two-story Japanese apartment with white balcony railings sits beside a parking lot holding a white car. A quiet Kamakura residential lane beside a two-story apartment building with balconies and bicycles. A traditional wooden Japanese house with a lattice fence and trellis fronts a quiet residential lane. The dark wooden upper story and roof of an old Japanese house are seen from below, with windows, pipes and an antenna. A dark wood-siding two-story house stands beside a white pergola bearing a round floral sign in Kamakura. Looking over a wooden fence into a calm Kamakura garden with traditional tiled-roof houses and a clothes drying rack. A narrow lane runs between a grey brick house and a wooden fence in a quiet Kamakura residential neighborhood. A quiet residential lane in Kamakura holds a parked silver minivan beside a slatted fence and stone wall. A two-story wooden Japanese house with a balcony sits behind a dark fence beside a narrow lane. A quiet narrow Kamakura lane runs past houses, fences and a parked bicycle beneath overhead power lines. A traditional wooden Japanese house is glimpsed through large gnarled pine trees in Kamakura. Two pedestrians walking along a narrow Kamakura lane lined with a dark wooden fence and tiled-roof houses. Rows of carved stone gravestones and wooden memorial tablets fill a Kamakura cemetery at dusk. Rows of weathered stone monuments and wooden memorial tablets fill a quiet Japanese cemetery in warm afternoon light. White houses and small apartment buildings line a Kamakura street with a convex mirror and a bicycle sign. A black fence borders a quiet Kamakura street with houses, bare trees and criss-crossing power lines under a dusk sky. A pole sign warns of tsunamis and marks the ground height as seven meters above sea level in Kamakura. A gravel garden in Kamakura holds a tall stone lantern and monument ringed by rocks, pines and old houses. A traditional temple hall with a tiled roof and a stone lantern stand in a quiet courtyard. A small red temple hall, reached by wooden stairs, stands beside a prayer rope and red banners. A stone purification basin with a bronze dragon spout sits under a wooden canopy hung with a sacred rope. A large bronze incense burner beside a box of incense sticks and a vertical sign in a Kamakura temple courtyard. A weathered temple hall rises behind a manicured pine tree and trimmed hedge in winter. A weathered granite stone lantern stands among rocks and grass in a Japanese garden, shaded by pine branches. A weathered shop with a rusted roof stands at a street corner by signs for a shrine and a clinic. White signs with green arrows point to Hongakuji Temple, Myohonji Temple and Kamakura Station at a Kamakura crossroads. A narrow canal runs between white houses and a hedge-lined fence, with a small footbridge visible in the distance. Two pedestrians walk away down a Kamakura street past a tall stone monument, a no-parking sign and houses. A classic green Mini Cooper is parked in a narrow driveway beside a stone wall and a backpack. A quiet Kamakura street shows a large stone monument, vending machines, utility poles and a woman crossing the road. A traditional two-story Japanese house with a tiled roof sits behind a grey concrete block wall. A white two-story house with a stone wall and hedge at a quiet residential corner in Kamakura at dusk. A tall stone tablet and wooden pillars stand by a quiet residential lane in Kamakura. A wooden signboard at Myohonji Temple in Kamakura describes the temple's history in Japanese and English text. A beige house with a blue tile roof sits behind a lush garden and a pollarded tree along a quiet lane. A traditional temple gate with a curved tiled roof stands beside a utility pole and criss-crossing power lines under a dusk sky. A weathered wooden gate is framed by leafy shrubs and a tree bearing bright orange fruit hanging over the entrance. A white mini-van with decorative stickers parks under a curved silver carport beside a tan apartment building. A citrus tree laden with round orange fruit grows beside a house and a utility pole. Pink and white camellias bloom beside a weathered wooden wall, with branches heavy with yellow citrus fruit. Worshippers stand before a wooden Shinto shrine hall with white prayer streamers and red banners. A Kamakura shrine courtyard with a sacred rock, red banners, a stone lantern and a wooden hall. A massive stone torii gate hung with a sacred rope and flags marks the entrance to a Kamakura shrine. A carved stone water basin with bamboo spouts and wooden ladles sits under a covered pavilion at a Japanese shrine. An old Kamakura lane between wooden houses holds rows of potted plants, crates and a leaning ladder. Behind a stone retaining wall, traditional tiled-roof houses and a wooden shed sit beside a small stream in a Kamakura neighborhood. A weathered two-story wooden house with a rusty corrugated roof and a railed balcony stands beside a white modern house. In a Kamakura cemetery, a person tends a grave near a hollow old tree and racks of ceramic urns. At dusk, red lights and barriers warn at a railway crossing between houses and utility poles. A grey house with a rooftop balcony and metal stairway stands beside a Kamakura road lined with election posters. A silver hatchback is parked beside low traditional wooden houses on a quiet Kamakura street at dusk. A two-story Kamakura house with a rooftop terrace, spiral staircase and metal railings on a street corner. A quiet suburban street lined with power lines, houses, and stone walls stretches into the evening. A green and white sign painted on the ground in Kamakura marks the direction of the tsunami evacuation route. At dusk, a shuttered shop house faces a crosswalk while pedestrians in coats walk down the Kamakura street. From a white bridge railing, a calm canal reflects a soft dusk sky with a distant road bridge and silhouetted power lines. A concrete canal with a small footbridge flows between houses at dusk beneath a pale violet sky. A wooden restaurant table is set with bowls of rice, sushi and a meat bowl while two diners eat with chopsticks. Crowds gather beneath a wall of neon billboards at the Shibuya crossing at night. Shibuya crossing blazes at night under towering neon billboards and video screens while a crowd of people crosses. Crowds surge through Shibuya crossing beneath a skyline of neon billboards and lit screens. A neon-lit Shibuya street at night with large billboards, cars and taxis on a busy Tokyo avenue.
Journal Notes

General

The second day in Japan was the day of the old capital. It began in Tokyo with a coach on the elevated expressway and a first view of the Imperial Palace across its moat, continued southwards to Kamakura on the coast of Sagami Bay, and ended after dark at the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. Kamakura is a small city by Japanese standards, with about 173,000 inhabitants in an area of less than forty square kilometres, which gives it one of the higher population densities of the region, and it is one of the main tourist destinations of the Kanto region.

The road south leaves the plain and enters the hills, and the change is abrupt. Tokyo is flat and grey and endless; Kamakura is green and enclosed, a town of temples and lanes between wooded ridges and the sea. It was the seat of Japan’s first military government and it has been a place of pilgrimage and leisure ever since, first for the townspeople of Edo, then for the railway excursion and eventually for the modern day visitor.

The plan of the day was simple: the shrine and the temples in the morning, the streets and the shops in the middle of the day, the sea in the afternoon, and the return to Tokyo for the evening. The weather was fine and warm, the town was busy with school groups in uniform, and the sake bottles left as offerings at the temple steps gave the day its colour.

The evening belonged to Shibuya. The scramble crossing beside Shibuya Station, where the pedestrian phases of several streets run at once, was laid out in 1973 and is regularly described as the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world, with as many as three thousand people crossing in a single green light. Around it are the screens, the shops and the crowds that have made the place an image of Tokyo in its own right.

History

Kamakura was the capital of Japan for a century and a half without ever being called that. In 1185, after the Genpei War between the Taira and the Minamoto, the warrior Minamoto no Yoritomo established his military government at Kamakura, and the shogunate he founded ruled the country from there until 1333. It was the first military government in Japanese history, and its peculiarity was that it left the emperor and the imperial court in Kyoto in place as a figurehead while the real power sat in a small seaside town four hundred kilometres to the east.

The institution lasted a hundred and thirty five years and produced nine shoguns, though for much of that time the real authority lay with the regents of the Hojo family, sixteen of whom held office in succession. In 1221 the retired emperor Go-Toba attempted to overthrow the shogunate in the Jokyu War and failed, which settled the question of where power lay for another century. Kamakura was governed as a warrior city, and the Buddhist temples that remain, with their great halls and their ranks of stone monuments, were the spiritual and political architecture of that government.

The Great Buddha belongs to this period. The bronze statue of Amida at the Kotoku-in temple, thirteen and a third metres high including its base and weighing about ninety three tonnes, was cast around 1252, during the Kamakura period, and it is one of the most famous images in Japan and a designated National Treasure. It replaced an earlier wooden figure, itself a replacement, whose hall had been destroyed by a storm; the bronze image was funded by a noblewoman and a priest and cast by one of the leading founders of the day, and the statue is hollow, so that visitors can walk inside it.

Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, the shrine that was the religious centre of the warrior city, was laid out at the end of a straight approach more than a kilometre and a half long that runs down to the sea at Yuigahama, and it served as both a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple until the separation of the two religions was ordered in 1868. The present buildings are a twentieth century reconstruction, the shrine having been rebuilt after the war, and it remains the most important Shinto shrine in Kamakura.

Edo Castle, seen from the expressway on the way out of Tokyo, belongs to the other end of Japanese history. It was built in 1457, became the headquarters of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603, and grew into the largest fortress in the country, with a perimeter of about sixteen kilometres, thirty eight gates at its greatest extent and ramparts almost twenty metres high behind walls of twelve, all of it surrounded by concentric moats. It is the Imperial Palace today, and the white gatehouse among the pines above the water is one of the few pieces of the old castle that a visitor sees without entering the palace grounds.

Geology

The geology of the day begins with the plain and ends with the sea. Tokyo stands on the Kanto Plain, the largest plain in Japan, a basin of river gravel, sand, silt and clay about 17,000 square kilometres in extent, with hills of older Tertiary rock standing out of the alluvium. Kamakura sits at the southern edge of that region, where the plain meets the hills of the Miura Peninsula and the water of Sagami Bay, and it is a natural fortress: ridges on three sides, the sea on the fourth, and only a few passes through the hills.

Sagami Bay is a deep indentation on the Pacific coast of central Honshu, between the Miura and Izu peninsulas and about forty kilometres south west of Tokyo. Its greatest depth is around 1,500 metres, and the water is unusual: the Oyashio, the cold current from the north, reaches into the bay, so that sub arctic organisms live alongside warm water species and the bay has an exceptionally rich marine fauna for its latitude. The climate of Kamakura, mild in winter and green all year, is a product of that sea.

The bay is also where the plates meet. The Philippine Sea plate is being subducted beneath the island arc along the Sagami Trough, which runs across the sea floor at the entrance to the bay, and this boundary produced the great earthquake of 1 September 1923, whose epicentre lay about a hundred kilometres south west of Tokyo. Kamakura suffered significant losses of its historical and cultural assets in that earthquake, and the region has been the subject of seismological study ever since, because a trench of this kind accumulates strain and releases it in events of magnitude eight.

Water has shaped the town in slower ways as well. During the Jomon period, several thousand years ago, the sea stood higher than it does now, and all of the flat land in Kamakura as far inland as Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, and beyond it to the east, lay under water. The oldest pottery fragments found in the area come from hillside settlements of that period, and it was only as the sea receded in the Yayoi period that the plain of the town emerged and farming replaced hunting and fishing. The modern coastline is a recent arrangement of a much older shoreline.

The sea has also taken things away. The tsunami that followed the Nankai earthquake of 20 September 1498 washed away the last building that housed the Great Buddha, and the statue has stood in the open air ever since, which is why it is seen today against the sky rather than inside a temple hall. A tsunami warning sign stands among the houses of the town, and it is not a decoration: the coast of Sagami Bay has a documented history of these waves, and the engineering of the seaside districts is designed around them.

Things to See

The day opened in Tokyo after dark, with the city spread out and lit below the hotel window, and with the ordinary surprises of the Japanese street: a restaurant menu covered in characters and prices with no picture to help, and a warren of underground passages beside a station, lined with signs and shops, which is how one changes lines in this city without ever coming to the surface.

The first proper sight of the old capital was the Imperial Palace, seen from the coach as it came onto the expressway. A moat with water the colour of stone, a long white wall, a gatehouse with a dark tiled roof and two storeys, pines leaning over one corner, and the towers of the modern city standing behind it: the two Tokyos, the shogun’s and the salaryman’s, in a single view.

Then Kamakura, and the streets first. Streets with wooden shopfronts, awnings and bicycles, a crossing where the traffic waits for a crowd of schoolchildren in dark uniforms, and lanes that climb between gardens towards the temples. The temple grounds themselves were the heart of the day: broad gravel paths between the trees, stone lanterns, a hall with its roof curving upwards at the corners, and at its steps the offering of sake bottles, dozens of them, white and brown, arranged in rows by people who had come to ask for something or to give thanks for it.

The shrine was larger and more formal. Tsurugaoka Hachimangu has its great approach, its stairway and its vermilion buildings, and it was busy with visitors but not crowded, the way a place of worship is busy on a fine morning. Among the trees there were figures and monuments, a graveyard on the hillside with its ranks of stone pillars, and a park where a flowering tree stood above a pond.

The Great Buddha was the sight that justified the journey. It stands in the open air, thirteen metres of bronze on a stone base, green black with age and with traces of the old gilding still visible near the ears, and it is hollow: visitors walk inside the statue, through a narrow doorway in its back, where the seams of the casting are visible on the inner walls. That the hall which once covered it was swept away by a tsunami in 1498, and that nobody has rebuilt it since, is the kind of fact that changes the way one looks at the statue: it is a piece of medieval engineering that has been standing in the weather for five hundred years.

The town gave the day its other pleasures: a restaurant with low tables and a bowl of noodles, a street of souvenir shops, a coastal road with the beach and the surf beyond it, and the warning sign about tsunamis standing in a quiet residential street, which is the sort of thing that one notices more on a coast with this history than on a holiday beach. By evening the coach was back in Tokyo, and the last stop was Shibuya, where the crossing runs on its diagonal phase and three thousand people move at once in every direction, past the screens and the shop windows, under the lights.

References

  1. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Kamakura. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamakura
  2. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Kamakura shogunate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamakura%20shogunate
  3. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Kōtoku-in. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dtoku-in
  4. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Tsurugaoka Hachimangū. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsurugaoka%20Hachimang%C5%AB
  5. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Sagami Bay. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagami%20Bay
  6. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Tokyo. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo
  7. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Shibuya Crossing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibuya%20Crossing
  8. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Shibuya. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibuya
  9. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Edo Castle. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo%20Castle
  10. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Tokyo Skytree. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo%20Skytree
  11. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Kantō Plain. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant%C5%8D%20Plain
  12. Wikipedia contributors (2026). 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923%20Great%20Kant%C5%8D%20earthquake
  13. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Japanese cuisine. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese%20cuisine
  14. (ohne Angabe) (2010) THIRD PERIOD. FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE KAMAKURA SHOGUNATE TO THE END OF THE TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE (FEUDAL PERIOD). A History of Japan. 58-125. doi.org/10.4324/9780203845073-8
  15. TOISHI K. (1965) Radiography of the Great Buddha at Kamakura. Studies in Conservation. 10. 47-52. doi.org/10.1179/sic.1965.009
  16. SEKINO M. (1965) Restoration of the Great Buddha Statue at Kamakura. Studies in Conservation. 10. 39-46. doi.org/10.1179/sic.1965.008
  17. Jimura T. (2021) Industrial heritage in Japan. Cultural Heritage and Tourism in Japan. 129-150. doi.org/10.4324/9780429019173-7
  18. NARUSE Y. (1963) Quaternary Volcanic Ashes in the Kanto Region. The Quaternary Research (Daiyonki-Kenkyu). 3. 94-109. doi.org/10.4116/jaqua.3.94