Miracle Of Modern Tokyo

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 106, 7 May 1938, Page 17 (Supplement)

Miracle Of Modern Tokyo

8y... Marc T. Greene

THE modern city of Tokyo, ■wholly constructed since the disastrous earthquake and fire of September, 1923, epitomises, both materially and spiritually, modern Japan itself. It fills you ■with amazement, as you regard it for the first time, in the enduring solidity as well as the contemporary Western character of its construction. And as a symbol of Japanese determination to keep step with the Occident in all regards it is equally striking. Having landed from your ship at Yokohama, you take a fast electric train for the 20-mile ran to the capital. Although, that does not include the port and its suburbs, the entire intervening area is so thickly settled that there is nothing to indicate where Yokohama ends and Tokyo commences. It is all practically the same thing, and constitutes the litrjie?t community in the world in point,of area and :he third largest in population.

The Heart of Tokyo City

The huge Tokyo Central Railway Station is in the heart of the newlyconstructed town. You alight from the electric train, pass through tunnels and out to the waiting rooms, then to the street and the station plaza, and you look upon a modern Western city, huge office buildings and more under construction, everything of steel and concrete. You eee motor omnibuses by the ocore, but few rickshaws. That vehicle, in which a human being becomes a. beast of burden and which is a disgrace to tho white man beeauee a white man invented it, is, happily, about extinct :n Japan except when a world-cruising liner appears in Yokohama. Then a hundred of them turn up from somewhere and gather at the pier-head, since it Is well understood that the tourist does not consider his Oriental visit complete unless he sits in a vehicle lo bo drawn along by a man taking the place of a horse. Mark the construction of yonder office building, ten storeys high "and half a large block in extent. Note the strength, i the reinforcement of the steel frame. You never saw anything like that in the West. It is a veritable network of steel, a kind of interlacing of double strength uprights and girders. It is guaranteed to resist any earthquake. But only a test will decide that, and Japan hopes there will never be another like the unforgettable one of 1923. In any case modern Tokyo is probably the" most solidly-constructed city in the world. In the neighbourhood of the Central Station are the great commercial houses of Japan, the Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo. Asana and Yasiuia banking, meri cantilo anil steamship interests, the buildings of the world-girdling Nippon Yusen Kaisya, Yamoshita, Kokusai and i Kawasaki Kuiseii Kaisha shipping con- ; cerns, offices of the Government railways, posts, telegraphs and so forth, as I well as of great exporting firms and I manufacturers.

It is a curious commentary on the character of modern Japan that industrial magnates and industrial new-rich have practically ousted the old aristo-

rraoy in control of Japanese internal whose name was changed to "Tokyo," economy. All but the Mitsubishi and waning "Eastern Capital," and all"the Shibusawa interests are in the hands of - , , 7 , , ~, r, , ~ families that have always been traders, feudal lords «rt»"tted to the Emperor, in some cases trader;? in a very humble That was really the beginning of the fashion, no more than half a century stupendous city that is the world's third ago. Only a few of those descended from l ar gest to-day. It is hard to credit, as the upper levels of the Sumarai, or , ~ , „, , , . , retainers of feudal lords of the regard the modern Tokyo. (And note, Shogunate era, class are left in modern P ****„ * hI ' B J. S * he correct spelling, Japan's industrial aristocracy. The not ., > . Tt ? e hard *° Relieve that heart and essence of their aristoci.icy a Clty }' ke A th ™ 5 f practically only 70 consists of the heads of a few gn-at old And vet Japan itself has had family holding companies and of these m ° re to do !" th , the West tban S^ 1 "" heads" at least two. Yasmla and Asana. ally s ?PP osed - So far as foreign trade came up from peddlers. went Jt was really open to ro Feans for 200 years before Perry. Trade was Twenty Japanese, among whom are with the Dutch then and under hard the directors of these companies, have and humiliating conditions. The resian income of 300,000 dollars a year or dent traders were allotted a stockaded more. But of 14.000,000 families in all concession at Nagasaki and not permitted Japan only 50,000 have incomes of as to leave it. Rare historical records in much as 3000 dollars a year. And as Dutch tell of the requirement that the significant of the small means of the Europeans must not only approach great mase of Japanese you find upon representatives of the Mikado on their investigation that there are less than hands and knees, but at times were com--10.000 privately-owned automobiles in pelled to trample on their national flag the entire count) y, though there are and upon the Christian Cross. "At cer--12.),000 others, mostly taxicabs, which tain intervals," the historian goes on. are cheaper and more numerous in "women of a low type were sent°to visit Japanese cities than in any others in the the Dutch traders." That continued for world. 200 years, and perhaps history does not It was only 85 years that the record a ™ ore appalling example of what American, Pefry, arrived in Japan and men wlll do for money'■persuaded', the reicrning Shojrun to n . liKikc a treaty without the Mikado's 'OTtngUeSe consent. Marvellous what Japan has And Jesuits become since then, a material progress such, considering the many obstacles, as But long before, in the middle of the history docs not parallel. Even after sixteenth century, the Japanese had had the Perry treaty there was much trouble contact with Europeans when a Portuhecause the Mikado at once proceeded gueee ship was wrecked on the coast to siir up an opposition which became near Kamakura. Jesuit missionaries so menacing to foreigners that a com- soon followed, and there was a nationbiliod fleet of American. British, French wide persecution and massacre of Chrisand Dutch bombarded and reduced tians in 1580. Soon after that drastic Satsuma, the Shogunate capital. The anti-foreign edicts evicted all the Porresult of this was the fall of the Sho- tuguese and Spanish, and Japan was punate, or rule of feudal lords with the closed to Europeans until half a century Emperor as a figurehead, which had later when, under the humiliating condfoiidured for nearly SOD years, and the tions aforesaid, Dutch traders were perMeiji imperial restoration, in 18(58. At mitted to settle under close scrutiny at that time the capital first came to Yeddo Nagasaki.

A magic wand seems to haxe been waved over Japan since then. But the transformation is due to agencies far removed from limbic. It is due to the determination of the -Japanese to be a world-Power rivalling any of the West, and to their conviction that that can be achieved only by becoming proficient in Western methods and acquainted with Western customs. >in order that the struggle with that West—economic if not physical —may l>e carried on with Western weapon-. To make Japnn groat, that is the one outstanding objective, an objective that justifies, indeed that honours, any methods. And voti see, as you contemplate this modern Tokyo, what progress, has been made, because Tokyo is a symbol of Japane ■■ material achievement. And yet wa.'-c a few blocks along the streets leading from the station until you come to a broad avenue, tree-lined and stately. On one fide are modern buildings, hotels, clubs, the opera house, L;;; restaurants; nn the other, the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace. Yonder is the palace, all that you can see of it. a galile here and there peeping from the heavy foliage. High, and unscalable walls, ever watched, line the sides of the moat opposite the avenue, and the water is wide and deep. There, then, ehoek by jowl with the modern Japan, is the greatest of all symbols of the ancient, the fortified feudal home of *he heaven-descended, upon which the Japanese, look with reverence and devotion. Xor are the Emperor and his abode less sacred to-day than In the past. For here, close at hand, is an eight-storey building, its lower floors Tokyo's most pretentious restaurant to-day, its upper untenanted. It was built for a modern hotel, of which Tokyo js sadly in need. But presently a strange oversight was discovered and the hotel idea had to be abandoned. The upper floors were higher than the roof of the Imperial Palace, and -nests would have looked down upon that, ri thing as unthinkable to-day as a thui-and years atro!