Chuo-ku Tourism Association correspondent blog

 

　Junichirou Tanizaki wrote in the Diary for the Elderly, as a passage from the diary of Ukirisuke as follows. (Convert the original katakana to kana)

 

・・・ Who's job that made Tokyo today such a shallow turbulent city was all the people who called the countryside, a peasant, and a politician who did not know the goodness of Tokyo in the past. Isn't it? I guess everyone is the one who caught up in that beautiful river of Nihonbashi, Armor Bridge, Tsukijibashi, and Yanagibashi. Isn't it a kind of guy who doesn't know that there was an era when white fish swam on the Sumida River? If you die, you don't have to be buried somewhere, but I don't want to be buried in a land that has lost any connection to yourself. ・... Kyoto is the safest in any way. ・... If you get a rabbit buried in the corner Kyoto, people from Tokyo will come to play all the time. "Oh, this is the grave of the old man," he stood by the street and turned to one of incense stick. （19-139）

 

　This is, of course, Tanizaki's own feelings, but Tanizaki died at the age of 79 on July 30, 1965, and was buried at Kagaya Honenin, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto.

 

　Since the diary of the old man was published in the magazine "Chuo Koron" from the month of 1966 to the May of 1962 issue, Nihonbashi should not have been covered by expressways yet. The above is lamenting the water pollution of the river, but it does not describe the destruction of the landscape.

 

 Nihonbashi in 1933 (Chuo-ku Tourism Association, the moving town)

 

Nihonbashi from Edogawa in 1957 (Chuo-ku Tourism Association, moving town) 

 

 

 Current Nihonbashi and Nihonbashi River (taken on October 18, 2015)