A CORNER OF TOKIO.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 August 1924, Page 8

A CORNER OF TOKIO.

THE VIELAHE IN THE VALLEY. Although so much of Tokio has suffered violence from the West- and from below, there are still corners of the city that- have escaped the influence of and of earthquakes (write 45 the London Times Tokio correspondent) . They are in some degree the counterpart here of The Temple or Staple Inn in London. They lie, many of almost in the heart of the city; but the haste of the impatient streets flows round, and not over, them and the harsh voices of competing activities do not invade their detachment or penetrate their peace. They are discovered by the stranger, as years ago one discovered the riverside sanctuary in the capital of the other island empire, by the simple process of turning for . the first time down a narrow and uninviting lane. Curiosity, here as there, has its rewards, as faith has its failles, and happily there is still much land unpossessed of those who march by the guide-book. Battalions may gaze upon the blossoms in Ueno Park or journey, in special trains to look upon -the Diabutsu at Kamakura; but that will only mean that the tiny shrine of foxes on the top of a remote hill in Azabu-ku lias so many more times escaped becoming a public show. And so it is with the village in the valley whither from Hibiya tram-stop a rikiska man will take you, if you can tell him the name of it, for threequarters of a yen or, if it happens to be raining, for a yen and a little more. It isn’t really a. village, but it is actually in a valley; a dream within a nightmare, and the poet who is parodied in that phrase would have sung of it if he had seen it.

The valley itself is shaped like the bowl of an enormous spoon. At the broad end there is a wide belt of trees, which serve as a barrier against the envy of the various traliic beyond. These, trees have lately been in blossom. At its pointed end the valley is very deep and its sides are almost sheer, iso. that a pebble dropped from an upper balcony will fall on a roof below. Tiny houses are crowded together on the floor of the valley, the narrowest of paths running a zigzag course among them. Perched here and there in groups and singly on the green walls of this enclosure there are other dwellings, and from the windows of the topmost of them a spectator looking down may see what has the characteristics of a toy town fashioned by some skilled craftsman for the child of incomparably wealthy parents. But the little figures moving about are real. The man with the wooden boxes hung from a pole across his shoulders is selling real fish to people who will cook and eat it. The wailing call ot the pedlar of fermented beans comes from human lips, and unless the wind is blowing towards the distant cherry trees the clack-clack of the wooden clogs oh the flag-stone* will keep time with the quick steps of the school-bound children, and cut through the subdued chatter which a mother, hanging the morning wash on bamboo poles to dry. exchanges* over her shoulder with the baby tied to her back.

In the early evening, when the paper shutters are drawn to and dwellings that have been • since early morniiTg open to the daylight are closed against the eyes of strangers, yellow natches of light and the grey silhouette* of the cottages make an irregular pattern of squares and oblongs in two tones. The village becomes more enticing then Perhaps artificial light is the oTdy substitute that has positive qualities. Darkness streams into the valley, fills and overflows it. One by one the cottage lanterns fade away, as if this using tide of .night had extinguished them. A single lamp burns on as if it were above the highest wave of the flood. But, in fact, it can boast no immunity. It happens to mark .the window of a Philistine who is a spectator of these things and of his Japanese neighbours who have put up their heavy wooden shutters with the deepening of the darkness, just as thev and then 1 forbears have done for years untold It is true that they have discarded lamps and caudles for municipal electric light, but that does not mean that they have forfeited their ideas about living.