THE STREETS OF TOKYO.
The area and population of Tokyo—Impression of greater
populousness—Street improvements—Narrow streets—Shops and
sidewalks—Road-making—Dusty roads—Lamps and street
repairs—Drainage—Street-names—House-numbers—Incongruities.
The area of Tokyo is not so great as is generally supposed. The people
of Yedo used to say that their city was ten miles square; but the
extreme length, from north-east to south-west, of Tokyo which does
not differ materially in its limits from the old city, is no more
than eight miles. The actual area is only 18,482 acres, or nearly
twenty-nine square miles. The population fell with the decline of the
feudal government and was under a million in the early days of the new
regime. The registered population returned to one million in 1884. The
municipal census which was taken for the first time on the first of
October, 1908, gave the settled population as 1,622,856, composed
of 872,550 males and 750,306 females, and the number of families
as 377,493. This took no account of the floating population which
probably exceeds a hundred thousand; there is also a large population,
not less than a quarter of a million, which the rise of rents and the
facilities of electric-tramway communication have sent outside the
administrative limits of the municipality; it forms, properly-speaking,
a part of the population of the city.
Tokyo is therefore a great city; but the stranger who visits its
streets for the first time usually gets an impression of an even
greater populousness. For the streets are always in the evening
teeming with young children; they are not gutter-snipes, but children
of respectable parents, small tradesmen or private persons of slender
means, who let them run about on the public road rather than romp in
their narrow dwellings. But it is not the children alone who
think they have a greater right of way over the roads than the public:
for on summer evenings especially, men and women turn out of doors
and walk about or sit on benches outside their houses. Shops are
completely open and reveal the rooms within, so that whole families
may be seen from the streets; and as most houses are of only one or
two stories, people live for the most part on the ground-floor. Even
in private residences of some pretensions, the thin wooden walls allow
voices to be easily heard on warm days when the rooms are kept open.
So that from the people he sees crowding the houses and the noises he
hears on all sides, the stranger is often deceived into giving the
city credit for a larger population than it actually possesses.
[Illustration: A STREET IN YEDO. (FROM A PICTURE BY SETTAN, 1778–1843).]
The streets themselves are worth notice. If the foreigner who comes to
Japan expects to see in such a great capital the asphalt carriageway
and paved sidewalk of his native country, he will be sadly
disappointed, for Tokyo, with all its multitudinous thoroughfares,
cannot boast even the boulevards and avenues of a European provincial
town. In spite of the efforts of the Tokyo municipality, the streets
are still narrow. Their total length is about six hundred miles, with
a width ranging from one yard to fifty, the average being nine yards.
It was decided twenty years ago to widen some three hundred miles of
these roads, giving the largest a width of forty yards for carriageway
with a footway on either side of six yards, and the smallest a
carriageway of twelve yards and a footway one yard wide. The work
is to be accomplished in ninety years. Improvements to this end are
slowly going on. The fact is that the City Fathers missed a great
opportunity in the early years of the new regime when, upon the
desertion of the residences of the daimyo and other feudatories after
the fall of the Shogunate, land could have been purchased for a song,
for it went begging in the heart of the city at less than thirty yen
an acre. Those who were wise enough to buy it have made big fortunes,
for the same land now sells for a hundred thousand yen or more per
acre. Now, however, the municipality cannot command sufficient funds
to purchase the land needed for improvements along the streets
proposed, but buys it up only when it is absolutely necessary to
relieve the congestion of traffic; and elsewhere it waits
patiently until a fire burns down the streets and clears the
required space for it as, in that case, it will not have to give any
compensation for the removal of the houses.
In the old days, the narrowness of the streets did not interfere with
such traffic as was then carried on. The daimyo and others of high
rank rode in palanquins, and officials went about on horseback; but
the rest of the world walked. The citizens were not allowed to make
use of other legs than their own. Those who had to go about much put
on cheap straw sandals, which were thrown away at the end of their
journey, so that they did not give a thought to the width or the state
of the road as they had in any case to wash their feet afterwards;
while others, of the common people, were, if they met a daimyo’s
procession, thrust to the wall or oftener into the ditch, and they too
cared as little for the width of the thoroughfare. And when a samurai
met another in a narrow lane, it was by no means rare, if their
sword-scabbards touched in passing, for an altercation to arise and
be followed by bloodshed; but as brawls were in their way, they did
not trouble themselves about the widening of the road. Pedestrians,
moreover, could always pick their way in any street, and if they saw
coming towards them a daimyo’s retinue or a company of swash-bucklers,
they usually turned into a side-street. To the happy horsemen and
palanquin-riders the size of a street was a matter of absolute
indifference, for if those on shanks’ mare got in their way, it was
their lookout. But luckily for these walkers there was little else for
them to dodge, for vehicles were comparatively few. The only objects
on wheels were handcarts and waggons drawn by horses or oxen. These
waggons came from the country with bags of rice, fuel, and other
necessaries, and were used, not for their speed which was a snail’s
pace, but for their carrying power.
In these latter days, however, things have materially changed. Men
to-day would be put to the blush by the hale old survivors of those
pedestrian times, for they have gone to the other extreme. The
conveniences of the jinrikisha, or two-wheeled vehicles drawn by men,
and latterly of electric tramways have sapped all energy out of them,
and we hear little nowadays of walking feats. There were in 1900
forty-six thousand jinrikisha in Tokyo; but the electric cars, which
began to run a few years later, are driving them out of the city, for
they are now less than one-half of that number. Still, the pedestrian
has need to keep a good lookout on the road, for where, in the absence
of footways, men, women, children, vehicles, and horses move about in
an inextricable jumble, it is a matter for wonder that accidents are
not more frequent. Besides the jinrikisha and electric cars, there are
thousands of handcarts, some drawn by coolies and carrying objects of
every description from household articles to stones for road-making
and trees for gardens, and others drawn by milkmen with their
milk-cans, by apprentices with their masters’ wares, by pedlars with
various assortments to attract the housewife’s eye, or by farm-boys
with vegetables fresh from the field. There are but a thousand waggons
drawn by horses or oxen in Tokyo; but as there are twice as many more
in the surrounding country, they are very much in evidence in the
city since they make their presence unpleasantly obtrusive in narrow
streets. These waggons, however, move slowly and give one time to get
out of their way. In this respect they are better to meet than the
carriages which drive on indifferent to the width of the road; in
narrow streets the latter are preceded by grooms who hustle all
loiterers out of the way. They are only less eagerly shunned than the
motor-cars and the files of handcarts which move leisurely along with
pink flags marked “ammunition” from the Imperial arsenal.
But the Ishmael of the streets of Tokyo was until lately the bicycle.
A few years ago there were six thousand of these machines in the city;
they were patronised by shop-apprentices who, with large bundles on
their backs, scorched through crowded streets careless of accidents
to themselves or others. These apprentices were therefore in the
policeman’s black books; nor did the jinrikisha-man look upon them
with any favour, for he regarded bicycling as an innovation intended
to defraud him of his fares. But his hostility against the bicycle
melted away when he was confronted by the electric car which has
proved itself the most formidable of his foes. The bicycle, too, has
suffered an eclipse; for apprentices and others of its patrons
find it more expensive to keep it in repair than to travel by the car
at the cost of a penny per trip. The motor-car also made its debut a
few years back and the dust it raises and the smell of petrol it leaves
in its track have brought upon it the anathema of all pedestrians; and
though the police regulations prohibit a motor-car from traversing
streets less than twelve yards wide, it runs merrily through lanes and
small side-streets. It sometimes charges into shops and makes havoc
among their merchandise. The pranks it plays in the hands of unskilful
chauffeurs are not likely to lessen its unpopularity.
What with carriages, jinrikisha, waggons, handcarts, and bicycles
jostling one another and men, women, and children threading their way
through the labyrinth or fleeing before motor or electric cars, the
more frequented streets of Tokyo present a confused mass of traffic;
but in respect of actual numbers they are really less crowded than
western streets of similar importance. The busy appearance is mostly
due to the absence of sidewalks, and the bustle is increased by the
wayfarers having to run to and fro to get out of the way of the
vehicles. In streets provided with sidewalks one would expect less
confusion; but as a matter of fact, people are so used to walking
among vehicles of all sorts that they prefer sauntering on the
carriageway to quietly pacing the sidewalks; and it is no uncommon
experience to meet a company walking abreast in the middle of the road
and dodging carriages while the sidewalks are almost deserted.
[Illustration: A SHOP IN TOKYO.]
Sidewalks are not likely to gain in popularity until improvements are
made in the arrangements of shops. There are no streets in Tokyo which
are known as fashionable afternoon resorts, because the shops are so
constructed that one cannot stop before them without being accosted by
the squatting salesmen. Only in a few main streets are there regular
rows of shops with show-windows against which one could press one’s
nose to look at the wares exhibited or peer beyond at the shop-girls
at the counter; but then business is not done in Japan over the
counter, nor do shop-girls hide their charms behind a window, for the
shops are open to the street and the show-girls, or “signboard-girls”
as we call them, squat at the edge visible to all passers-by and
are as distinctive a feature of the shop as the signboard itself. The
goods are exhibited on the floor in glass cases or in piles, a custom
which is not commendable when pastry or confectionery is on sale, for
standing as it does on the south-eastern end of the great plain of
Musashino, Tokyo is a very windy city, and the thick clouds of fine
dust raised by the wind on fair days cover every article exposed and
penetrate through the joints of glass cases, so that in Tokyo a man
who is fond of confectionery must expect to eat his pound of dirt not
within a lifetime, but often in a few weeks. If one stops for a moment
to look at the wares, he is bidden at once to sit on the floor and
examine other articles which would be brought out for his inspection,
whereupon he has either to accept the invitation or move on. One
seldom cares therefore to loiter in the street. The only shops that
are often crowded by loiterers are the booksellers’ and cheap-picture
dealers’.
But even more unpleasant than the narrowness of the streets is the
state in which many of them are to be found. In a few streets the
roadway has been dug up and pyramidal stones have been laid on the bed
with the points up; they are then covered with earth and broken stone
and finished with a top-dressing of gravel. They are not, however,
rolled as steam-rollers have only lately made their appearance in
Tokyo; sometimes small stone-rollers, about two feet in diameter, are
drawn over the metal by a dozen coolies, but the work is inefficient
as the pressure of such toy rollers is too slight to make any sensible
impression. For the most part, therefore, newly-made roads are left to
be levelled with the beetle-crushers of the long-suffering public.
The municipality finds it the cheapest way. This is bad enough on the
gravelled road, but the tortures it inflicts on men and beasts of
burden, to say nothing of the rapid wear and tear of vehicles, are
indescribable when the thoroughfare is repaired in the orthodox style.
Whenever the road wants mending, cartloads of pebbles are, according
to this method, brought from the beds of the rivers in the
neighbourhood of Tokyo and scattered over the highway. They are laid
evenly, but not levelled or rolled. The public press them down as they
walk with their clogs, sandals, or boots; immediately any part is
embedded in the soil, that path alone is used till it is beaten
flat, so that one often sees a narrow path meandering in a wide
stone-covered road, along which all traffic is carried on and the rest
of the road is practically unused. When this path is beaten in and
becomes hollow, more cartloads of pebbles are thrown upon it and
the public recommence their patient task of road-levelling. But
fortunately for them, they are materially aided in this benevolent
work by the solstitial rains, which when they come down in torrents,
soon bury the stones in the clayey soil, and for the nonce the people
walk over it rejoicing until the municipality sets them a new task; or
the rains have done their work but too well and the poor pedestrians
find themselves wading through quagmire.
Indeed, quagmire is what we find in many streets after rain; for the
supply of rubble is necessarily limited as it comes mostly from the
rivers in and about the city, and consequently a majority of roads are
left uncared for. These, after a heavy rain, are covered with a thick
coating of mud, which when the sun has dried it, leaves behind deep
ruts, making the roads more unpleasant to walk on than when covered
with pebbles. In midsummer when the ridges of these ruts have been
pulverised and blown in all directions so that one appears to be
walking on sand, the roads are watered twice or more every day. The
watering is done on high roads by coolies with small hand-drays out of
which water is sprinkled spasmodically, and as the men stop from time
to time to take breath, there are on many spots pools of water in
which one can soil one’s footgear as effectually as on the rainiest
day. But worse still is the watering done by private persons on the
part of the road facing their dwellings. These merely ladle the water
from their pails and sprinkle it in splashes, leaving in the middle of
the street puddles for children to make mud-cakes in. In short, the
great objection to the way in which the streets are watered in Tokyo
is that it is too much for laying the dust, but not enough for
flushing the roadway.
The pedestrian has therefore to be very careful in selecting the part
of the road to walk on in both wet and fine weather. This is not very
difficult in the daytime; but at night, especially when there is no
moon, the task is hard to accomplish with success; for rarely are
street lamps set up at the public expense, and in most streets the
inhabitants have lamps for their own convenience over their front
doors or gates; but the light of these lamps is very meagre as they
are naturally not intended to guide the stray wayfarer over the road.
But even these are of some service in streets of shops where the front
doors are ranged pretty closely together; in roads, however, where
there are only private houses, the gates being far apart, the lights
are also at some distance from each other and the passenger has mostly
to trust to his luck to keep himself clean. That luck, however,
deserts him at times, for the repairs which the roads seem to undergo
in every part of the city are astonishingly frequent. It is not the
mere mending that is the cause of the trouble, but the constant
pulling up of the roads for laying or repairing gas-pipes,
water-pipes, and what not that so often brings one to an _impasse_.
As, moreover, the authorities work independently of one another, a
road which has been dug up for one purpose and filled in again, may be
pulled up for another. Matters are not likely to improve in the near
future, for before long the telegraph and telephone authorities must
have a hand in digging up the road; at present the wires are overhead,
but the poles are already overweighted and cannot be loaded much more
without serious danger to traffic. Electric-light wires are equally
menacing; and the situation is only aggravated where the electric cars
run through crowded streets of the business quarters.
The wretched state of the roads after rain is undoubtedly due to
imperfect drainage. The cross-section of the roads has little or no
curvature or gradient, and the gutters, where they have been made, do
not drain off and are only receptacles for muddy stagnant water. They
are occasionally cleaned by heaping the mire on the roadside. And
yet, curious to state, in spite of these insanitary methods, the rate
of mortality in Tokyo is not so high as might be expected. It varies
from twenty to twenty-five per thousand on the registered population
and therefore must be less when the floating population is taken into
account. It shows that Tokyo is not an unhealthy city, and when the
municipality has carried out the plan it has made for a drainage
system, the Japanese capital will probably compare favourably with
most other great cities of the world.
There is one peculiarity about the streets of Tokyo which deserves
mention, that is, the way they are named. Of course every thoroughfare
has a name given to it; but it differs from streets in other countries
in that name being the designation, not of the thoroughfare itself,
but of the section or piece of land through which it runs. Thus, two
or more thoroughfares which run through the same section are known by
the same name; in a large section there may be a dozen streets running
in all directions and bearing the same name. When a road runs on
the boundary of two sections, the opposite sides would be known by
different names, and a man walking in the middle of such a road would
be perambulating two streets at one and the same time. Some of the
larger sections, if regularly built, are divided on the main road
into subsections by streets crossing them; but irregular streets are
arbitrarily subdivided so that it is often very hard to find one’s
way through them. As many sections are full of tortuous streets with
turnings and alleys, the numbering of houses in a section is often
complicated, and one seldom knows where the numbers begin or end.
Frequently consecutive numbers are to be found in entirely different
directions and in hunting up a number, one has to traverse the length
and breadth of the section before one comes upon it.
The numbering of houses is further complicated by the fact that the
same number is given often to dozens, and sometimes to hundreds, of
houses. The explanation is that the numbering first took place while
the great daimyo’s mansions were still standing; and when they were
pulled down and cut up into smaller lots, these lots retained the same
numbers. There are in Tokyo at least two of these great estates which
have been divided into nearly a thousand house-lots. It is indeed hard
to see how these houses could be renumbered, because in that case
every division of an estate would necessitate the renumbering of the
whole street, which, in a city like Tokyo where the sizes of houses
are constantly changing, would be simply intolerable. Besides these
divisions of mansions, we must take into account the frequency of
fires. Changes take place not seldom after a fire in the number
of houses in a street, and it would of course be impracticable to
renumber the whole street whenever a portion of it is burnt down.
Sometimes an additional designation, usually a second set of numbers,
is given to a group of houses with the same street-number; but fancy
names, such as are common in the suburbs of London, are hardly ever
given to dwelling-houses. It may therefore be imagined that it is no
light task to look up a friend in an unfamiliar quarter.
The stranger, then, who visits the streets of Tokyo will find much to
arouse his curiosity in the open, windowless shops, the jinrikisha,
the native dresses of men and women, the throngs of hawkers, and the
ceaseless din of traffic; and at the same time, as he comes to Japan
usually in search of the quaint and _bizarre_, he will perhaps be
disappointed when he sees the countless overhead wires, the electric
trams, omnibuses, and bicycles, European clothes of all shades and
descriptions, and other encroachments of western civilisation, which
he had hoped to leave behind him and which somewhat shock his artistic
sense in their new surroundings. But these inæsthetic innovations
he must put up with, for they are typical of the present stage of
Japanese civilisation, and nowhere else are they more marked than in
Tokyo. The herculean task Japan has set herself leaves her little
leisure to consider its artistic effects; she is too much in earnest
to waste a thought on the awkward cut of the habiliments she is
donning; and only when she has so adapted herself as to fit them
exactly, will she turn her attention to their frills and trimmings.