Tokyo Rising: The City Since the Great Earthquake

The Great Earthquake of 1923 left much of Tokyo desolate. Shitamachi, the Low City, heart of Tokyo's cultural life for centuries, was a smoking ruin--hundreds of blocks of wooden dwellings, teahouses, and entertainment quarters gone forever. Yet Tokyo was a city that would not die. Here, in his brilliant sequel to "Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake," Edward Seidensticker carries the story of this irrepressible metropolis forward to the present, showing it rising not only from the disaster of the earthquake but a second time, from the still more serious catastrophe of 1945, to become a city in which skyscrapers stand in the midst of neighborhoods jammed full of little bars and "soaplands," baseball is the national sport, one can spend $500 on a meal, the best subway system in the world is matched by the worst traffic jams, and only a multimillionaire can afford to buy a house. Exciting, horrifying, utterly distinctive, modern Tokyo comes to life in "Tokyo Rising" as never before.