To learn about the history of Tokyo since the Meiji era, especially Chuo-ku (Nihonbashi-ku and Kyobashi-ku), I think that Saiden Stecker's "Tokyo Shitamachi Yamanote (LOW CITY, HIGH CITY)" and "Starting Tokyo (TOKYO RISING)" are good literature (In English, both are combined and published in "Tokyo from Edo to Showa 1867 Paper" is a book. "I like it" is not just a tasteless and dry history book, but a book full of clear subjects and love for the authors of Edo and Tokyo.
In particular, "Tokyo Shimomachi Yamanote" is a book filled with Saiden Stecker's love for "Shitamachi" (mainly Nihonbashi Ward and Former Kyobashi Ward). Only the authors who translated the works of The Tale of Genji and Tanizaki in English have a deep and concise description that is far beyond ordinary Japanese. Regarding the previous work, the author himself stated as follows in the brush of "Standing Tokyo".
＞(The previous book) It was a kind of honka to the flow of downtown, which used to be the center of Edo culture, eventually ceased to be the center in any sense. (03)
The book is elegiac, its emphasis on the part of the city which was ceasing to be any sort of center at all.
And in the previous book, it is as follows.
＞Of course, the death of the old one is deeply intertwined with the emergence of the new one, and is not so clearly separated. However, the fate that the tradition of Edo followed is solely related to downtown, so things that are not related to downtown must naturally appear in this book. ・... I guess the history of Tokyo can distinguish between what happened because it was the capital and what it experienced as a city. And what I wanted to write was the history that Tokyo had gone through as a town. （07）
The departure of the old and the emergence of the new are inextricably entwined, of course. Yet, because the story of what happened to Edo is so much the story of the Low City, matters in which it was not interested do not figure much. ・・・・・
A distinction may be made between what occurred in the city because it was the capital, and what occurred because it was a city.
