Review

This is a book of recent photographs and explanatory text about Tokyo. Sad fact: since I was last there in 2001, they’ve built a freeway on top of the nihonbashi, the little bridge in Tokyo from which all distances in Japan are measured. The bridge is still there, but it is under the freeway.

Some of the photographs are real gems. In one, a young couple is sitting in a tatami room at a coffee shop overlooking the large pond at Ueno park. Very tranquil and traditional looking. But if you look closer you see that there’s a small flat-screen TV mounted on the wall of the room, showing a news program. I’m over-generalizing, but that one photograph sums up a good deal about modern Japan.

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