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Summary: Hundreds of subjects, one neighborhood
Comment: Neighborhood Tokyo is now one of my favorite books. I've only taken one cultural anthropology class and the study of modern anthropology has always fascinated me, yet my knowledge of it is limited and I'm turned off by books written for fellow anthropologists. An author like Bestor is then exactly what I've been looking for. That's not to say he writes below his level of intelligence or simplifies his study. Bestor uses terminology not meant for the layman, and a basic knowledge of Japan itself is almost required to really understand the book.
But it's the way that Bestor writes that really makes Neighborhood Tokyo for everyone. I can guarantee you that not one page you will find dull or irrelevant to the topic. The best way to describe it is as a non-fiction book that follows the unspoken guidelines of successful fiction. He manages to develop Miyamoto-chan's residence like main characters in a novel, and even throws in foreshadowing and plot-twists where he can.
Bestor's main purpose is to give outsiders, layman and anthropologists both, a better idea of the life of urban Tokyo's populace, and to dispose of stereotypes associated with them. Having lived in the neighborhood of his study for three years, he is able to give us a far more personal look at an extremely complex society that no other study could have. It's impossible to even touch upon a single subject that he covers, for it would inevitably give a small impression of something that is connected with every other subject in the book.
If you can't guess, I'm having trouble even describing the book properly in a general sense.
All I can really say to get my point across is that you must read this book. There isn't anyone that I would not recommend this book to, and plenty to whom I would highly recommend it. If you are interested in history, World War II, anthropology, Japan, modern society, food, small business, traffic problems, the environment, the 80's, religion, politics, anime, or have a few days of free time and nothing else to do, this book is a requirement for you.
In fact, I'm expecting a book report about it on my desk by next Tuesday.
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A must for anyone interested in downtown Tokyo
Comment: Neighborhood Tokyo is one of only a handful of books in English that offers a realistic and insightful portrait of the lives of ordinary people in this vibrant global metropolis. It provides an intimate and well-grounded account of the daily life of a particular neighborhood located near the heart of the city. Yet, in addressing issues that apply to numerous other downtown neighborhoods, it gives us a sense of the organization and dynamics of daily life throughout much of central Tokyo. The book is based on the dissertation research of Theodore Bestor, currently Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, who spent more than two years in the 1980s in gMiyamoto-chōh (a pseudonym). Although his fieldwork was conducted before Japanfs bubble economy burst in 1990, the main thrust of the book is still relevant to an understanding of life in Tokyo today. Bestorfs work challenges the common view that Tokyo, unlike Western cities, is at its core a jumble of gurban villagesh in which communities are patterned after the shitamachi (glow city,h or downtown) of Early Modern, pre-industrial Japan. Shitamachi and the townsman way of life, both now and then, is said to be more colorful, boisterous and down to earth, and to have stronger communal ties than newer and more bourgeois sections of the city. The continuity between the shitamachi of today and yesterday is a source of great pride for many Tokyoites.
Bestor argues that this popular view is too simplistic. He asserts that social patterns in present day shitamachi are not so much romantic remnants from a pre-industrial and semi-fedualistic age as they are the products of an ongoing urbanization which began with Japanfs industrialization. Places like Miyamoto-chō were not even part of Tokyo in the Edo period, while many of the traditional areas of Edofs shitamachi, like Nihonbashi and Kyōbashi, are now sparsely populated sections of the Central Business District. The so-called traditional urban life thought to have been carried over from the past in isolation from the rest of modern Japan in fact derives from the interaction between neighborhood and city government, as well as from responses to gnationwide currents of political, economic, and social changeh (4). Chōkai (neighborhood associations), for example, which are instrumental to the closely knit shitamachi life, were formed to deal with rapid population turnover and gthe evils thought to be inherent in the new urban industrial ageh (69).
Why then do so many people believe that certain neighborhoods like Miyamoto-chō resemble the shitamachi of pre-industrial Edo in their customs, values, sense of community, and social structure? Bestor answers that over the years people have manipulated ideas about the past in order to push agendas of social control and distinction. By linking the present to a venerable past, i.e., by representing their neighborhoods as the inheritors of shitamachi traditions, the old middle class of chōnin (artisans and shopkeepers) can maintain a certain pride and autonomy vis-à-vis the city government and the new (and higher status) middle class of white collar salaried workers. Bestor calls this manipulation of ideas about the past, gtraditionalismh (10, 258).
Neighborhood Tokyo is a mainstay in courses about Tokyo and continues to be highly regarded by scholars of Japan. The relative absence of a female perspective has been viewed by some to be a short-coming. This is a fair critique as it raises the question of whose daily life this book portrays. This is not to say that Bestorfs analysis is invalid, however, for much of his analysis of traditionalism and the relationship of the neighborhood to broader political, economic, and social forces involves women as well as men. Nonetheless, a Tokyo neighborhood study that focuses on women is still an open topic for research!
One would also like to know more about the discursive construction of the old middle class as the gbearers of a great tradition,h and why it is not just the old middle class itself that romanticizes shitamachi life, but those in the new middle class who do so as well (witness the great popularity of the Tora san series). How did Edo chōnin culture gain so much value in the first place? Was it due mainly to novelists and other artists who channeled a romanticized shitamachi life to the general populace? Perhaps this is something that is already well-known to historians of Japan and scholars of Japanese literature, but it would have been helpful to the non-specialist to include an explanation. Finally, in emphasizing sharp breaks in historical development (e.g., 1920s urbanization, WW II, and the arrival of new people and new institutions) Bestor may leave the reader with the impression that there has been no continuity at all.
Neighborhood Tokyo is significant in the discourse on Japan not only because little had been written from an anthropological perspective about urban Japan at the time of its publication, but also because it illustrates class differences in Japanese society. It thus flies in the face of ubiquitous claims of a relatively classless Japan. It is also an excellent and early example of efforts within anthropology to bring more of a historical and political economic perspective to sociocultural analysis, as well as of efforts in research design to get beyond older notions of bounded field sites. More broadly, Bestorfs book contributes to our understanding of modernization and sociocultural change. Bestor shows how the cultural and social differences we encounter in other countries are not simply differences that extend back into the hazy past of the pre-modern era, but are to a significant degree the products of the modern era itself.
This book is a must for anybody interested in Tokyofs shitamachi or urban Japan in general. Though it is a scholarly text written mainly for an academic audience, thanks to Bestorfs lucid and lively prose style, it is also a very readable and entertaining account filled with many colorful and humorous vignettes.
