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Junichirou Tanizaki, "Diary of Crazy Old People"

Junichirou Tanizaki states in his "Crazy Epileptic Diary" as a passage from the diary of Norisuke Uki (77 years old), as follows (converts the original katakana to Kana).


"...Who's business has made Tokyo such a shallow turbulent city, everyone who calls it a rural man, a peasant up, a politician who does not know the taste of old Tokyo? Isn't it all the people who threw the beautiful rivers of Nihonbashi, Armor Bridge, Tsukijibashi, and Yanagibashi? Isn't it a species of people who don't know that there was a time when white fish were swimming in the Sumida River? It doesn't matter where you're buried when you die, but I don't like being buried in a land that has lost any connection to you today's unpleasant Tokyo. ・At any point, Kyoto is the safest. ・... If you get a rabbit buried in horn Kyoto, people from Tokyo will come to play all the time. "Oh, my grandfather's grave is here," he stood by and turned his hand on a incense stick. (19-139)


 This is, of course, Tanizaki died at the age of 79 on July 30, 1965, and was buried in Kagaya Honen-in, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto City.


 The "Crazy Old People's Diary" was published in Chuo Koron from November 1961 to May 1962, and was published by Chuokoron-Sha in May 1962. At the time of publication, Nihonbashi should not have been covered by highways yet. At that time, the pollution of the river was the worst, and the Sumida River Fireworks Festival was suspended from 1961 (1961) to 1977 (1977) due to odor damage caused by water pollution.

  As mentioned in this blog, Takeshi Kaiko described the situation in the vicinity of Nihonbashi just before the 1964 Olympics in "Zubari Tokyo" as described.

Takeshi Kaiko "Zubari Tokyo" by CAM | Chuo-ku Tourism Association correspondent blog (chuo-kanko.or.jp)

 Junichirou Tanizaki's book published in 1962, although the water pollution of the Sumida River is lamented, it does not mention the destruction of the landscape due to the installation of expressways.    Since Junichirou Tanizaki was alive until July 1965, you may have known in the last years that Nihonbashi was covered by expressways, but did you actually see that scene?


 Junichirou Tanizaki, who wrote, "Hometown is ruined by a rural samurai and has no remnants of the old Edo," and in his later years, if he saw the real scenery of Nihonbashi covered with a highway, he would have been saddled.