One of the myths of modernity is that it constitutes a radical break with the past. The break is supposedly of such an order as to make it possible to see the world as a\u00a0<\/span><\/em>tabula rasa<\/span>, upon which the new can be inscribed without reference to the past \u2013 or, if the past gets in the way, through its obliteration. Modernity is, therefore, always about \u201ccreative destruction.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n \u2014 David Harvey,\u00a0Paris: Capital of Modernity<\/em>[footnote]David Harvey, Paris: Capital of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1.[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n Ginza Bricktown occupies an oversized place in the history of modern Japan, let alone the urban history of Tokyo.\u00a0 The common historical narrative of Bricktown is hard to resist, as it seems so fitting, so instructive, and so perfectly comprehensive: the Ginza Fire of 1872, it goes, fortuitously cleared a perfectly-located\u00a0<\/span>tabula rasa<\/em>\u00a0onto which a Meiji government intent on jumpstarting Japanese modernization constructed a Western-style district for the new capital that would impress foreign powers with Japan\u2019s progress and assist in the revision of the unequal treaties.\u00a0 Just as the Meiji emperor himself was re-dressed in the new clothes of a modern monarch, as it were, the Shogun\u2019s city of Edo would be re-cast with Western built forms as the Emperor\u2019s modern metropolis of Tokyo.\u00a0 And Ginza was ground zero.\u00a0 In this way, Bricktown was a \u201cshowcase\u201d for the new Meiji government, the new Tokyo, and the new Japan \u2013 an attempt to reify in brick and stone the transition between Edo and Tokyo, Tokugawa and Meiji, Japanese modernity and premodernity.[footnote]Henry D. Smith, \u201cTokyo as an Idea: An Exploration of Japanese Urban Thought Until 1945,\u201d Journal of Japanese Studies<\/em> 4:1 (1987): 54-55.[\/footnote]<\/span><\/p>\r\n Part of the allure of this narrative, to be sure, lies in its simplicity and its apparent accuracy.\u00a0 What better way for the Meiji government to demonstrate to watchful Westerners the modernity of Japan than an urban space that looked unmistakably Western?\u00a0 Or the permanence of the new Meiji regime to the people of Japan than a solidly constructed capital city built in foreign architectural forms?\u00a0 Or, for us as educators and scholars of Japan, the intensity and reach of Meiji-era reforms to our students and readers?\u00a0 The evidence is undoubtedly there.\u00a0 The central government quickly intervened after the fire to prohibit reconstruction of traditional buildings and in their place erected Western-style brick buildings designed by a foreign engineer, Thomas J. Waters.\u00a0 Laborers paved streets in the most up-to-date macadam surfaces and laid bricks on the first sidewalks in the city.\u00a0 Trees provided protection from sun, wind, and rain, with gas \u2013 and later electric \u2013 lamps making for a pleasant evening stroll.\u00a0 If all had gone according to plan, Bricktown would have continued to grow, consuming neighborhood after neighborhood as improvements spread to adjacent districts, slowly transforming the built environment of the entire city, just as the Meiji government was then revolutionizing Japan.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_752\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"] Certain progressive leaders in the Meiji government did indeed talk about Ginza Bricktown as a project of modernization.\u00a0 One anecdote relayed by prominent early-20th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>century politician Ozaki Yukio places prominent Meiji figures It\u014d Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru, and Shibusawa Eiichi frequently at \u014ckuma Shigenobu\u2019s compound in Tsukiji, known as the Tsukiji Ry\u014dzanpaku after the legendary bandit hideout of\u00a0<\/span>Water Margin<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(JPN:\u00a0<\/span>Suikoden<\/em>) fame where great people plotted great things.[footnote]Ozaki Yukio, The Autobiography of Ozaki Yukio: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in Japan<\/em>, trans. Fujiko Hara (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 47.[\/footnote]\u00a0 From there, true to its reputation, the group planned many of the radical progressive reforms of the early Meiji government, including Ginza Bricktown.\u00a0 As Inoue Kaoru later recalled, the group had long recognized the strategic location of Ginza and had already envisioned improvements such as street widening in the area even before the fire that sparked the project.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, then, it was Inoue who spearheaded the Meiji Government\u2019s reconstruction efforts, calling Ginza Bricktown nothing less than a \u201cshortcut to civilization and enlightenment.\u201d[footnote]T\u014dky\u014d-shi Shik\u014d, Shigai-hen <\/em>(hereafter\u00a0<\/span>TSS<\/em>), vol. 52, 820-822.\u00a0 The petition can also be found in T\u014dky\u014d-to, ed.,\u00a0<\/span>Ginza Rengagai no Kensetsu<\/em>, 34.<\/span>[\/footnote]<\/p>\r\n Still, it is not to government leaders like Inoue, but to contemporary authors and artists who embraced this narrative and capitalized on it to sell books or woodblock prints that we can attribute the enduring presence and pedagogical power of Ginza Bricktown.\u00a0 It was these contemporary observers, caught up in the \u201cSpirit of 1868\u201d and the enamor of all things new and Western, who popularized the brick district between Shimbashi and Ky\u014dbashi as a small piece of the foreign world right in the middle of Tokyo.\u00a0 Curious readers unable to witness the sights of the new capital themselves could turn instead to Hattori Bush\u014d\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>New Tales of Tokyo Prosperity\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(<\/span>T\u014dky\u014d Shin Hanj\u014dki<\/em>), published between 1874-1876, to experience wondrous developments like Bricktown.\u00a0 \u201cTall two-story buildings tower into the blue sky one after the other as high as mountains\u201d Hattori reported, \u201cwith a grandeur such that it completely imitates Western buildings!\u201d\u00a0 Surely, Inoue would have been proud of a job well done to hear that \u201cThe stone buildings, in other words, are like those of London, the English capital; the streets are like those in Paris, the French capital.\u201d[footnote]Quoted in T\u014dky\u014d-to<\/em>, ed. Ginza Rengagai no Kensetsu, 148.[\/footnote]<\/span><\/p>\r\n Graphic artists like Utagawa Kuniteru II and Utagawa Hiroshige III likewise quickly adopted this view, producing prints depicting Bricktown as a bustling, foreign commercial district that colored popular views of Ginza and have illustrated many a classroom lecture on the Meiji Period ever since.[footnote]A woodblock print of Ginza Bricktown even graced the cover of the most famous English-language history of the city, Edward Seidensticker\u2019s Low City, High City.<\/em> The image was retained when the book was republished in 2010 as Tokyo from Edo to Showa, 1867-1989.[\/footnote]<\/span>\u00a0 The 1874 Kuniteru II triptych in\u00a0<\/span>Figure 1<\/strong>\u00a0is typical.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_751\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"] The eponymous brick buildings line either side of a street bustling with traffic of all kinds and sidewalks thronged with pedestrians, protected from the mayhem only by verdant trees and cherry blossoms.\u00a0 The buildings appear to be uniformly two stories tall and stretch into the distance as continuous rowhouses.\u00a0 Their designs are entirely Western: stone plinths and quoins accent the building foundations and edges, colonnades of the Tuscan order replete with entablature support second story balconies, and the tiled mansard rooftops feature parapets ornamented by lanterns and crenellation. \u00a0The windows appear to be stained glass.\u00a0 Halfway down on the right appears what looks to be a classical pediment.\u00a0 Hiroshige III\u2019s 1874 treatment in\u00a0<\/span>Figure 2<\/strong>\u00a0gives much the same impression, with a more detailed view of a single building and only slightly less chaotic street traffic.[footnote]Hiroshige III was a disciple of the more famous artist Utagawa Hiroshige of The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaid\u014d<\/em> fame.[\/footnote]<\/span><\/p>\r\n The overwhelming feeling we are left with from both of these prints is the bustling prosperity and \u201cmodernity\u201d of the scenes.\u00a0 Both artists crowd their prints with what would have been widely recognized as symbols of advanced material civilization at the time: Western-style buildings, horse carriages, parasols, Western dress, tophats, and rickshaws, an invention of the 1860s.\u00a0 Both present views of urban modernity one might expect to see on Regent Street in London, or maybe on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es and Rue de Rivoli in Paris, just as Hattori Bush\u014d described.<\/p>\r\n Aside from the built forms, more importantly, the artists depict Ginza Bricktown crowded with people.\u00a0 The throngs are not fl\u00e2neurs out for a leisurely stroll.\u00a0 Instead, they are merchants, rickshaw pullers, carriage drivers, luggage porters, geisha, school children, long-distance travelers, soldiers, and Chinese tourists \u2013 a cross-section of all classes of society in Ginza not to kill time but to productively contribute to and witness the commercial vibrancy of the district.\u00a0 In other words, they are a visual representation of \u201call classes, high and low\u201d uniting to enjoy the mobility, prosperity, and material benefits of \u201ccivilization and enlightenment\u201d promised by the Meiji Restoration.\u00a0 The \u201cmixing of high and low\u201d was a common theme for Kuniteru II, who revisited this egalitarian sentiment in another triptych from the same year, titled \u201cScene of the unending traffic and mixing of high and low, male and female, young and old crossing Asakusa Bridge\u201d [Figure 3]<\/strong>.\u00a0 These scenes are given added political significance in the context of the Charter Oath of 1868, which called for the tearing asunder of \u201cevil customs\u201d of the past, such as the Tokugawa ascriptive class system, travel and occupational restrictions, and sumptuary laws. \u00a0In this way, depictions of a thriving Bricktown swarmed with commoners of all classes enjoying the benefits of reform were both a radical political statement and a suggestion of widespread popular support for not only Bricktown, but for the Meiji project as a whole.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_753\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"] With all this in mind, it is tempting at first glance to uncritically accept the easy narrative of Ginza portrayed in the prints, that of Bricktown as the spatial analogue of Meiji modernization or as the tangible manifestation of a Meiji success story.\u00a0 We seemingly have a group of perspicacious, enlightened Meiji government leaders united in their desire to protect and improve Japanese material civilization who benevolently bestowed a pre-fabricated modernity onto the people of Tokyo from the top down.\u00a0 In response, the people, we are to presume, welcomed this gift with open arms, fully embracing the benefits of modernization, the Meiji reforms, and the Meiji government by extension, and worked together with the state, moreover, to advance national goals.\u00a0 Yet, as any architect or urban planner will lament about best laid plans, even the best laid historical narratives often fall apart as they move from drafting to implementation.\u00a0 That is to say, the narrative of Ginza Bricktown is a myth, as imagined as the artistic depictions that inspired it and for so long have sustained its existence.<\/p>\r\n By all indications, the literary and graphic representations of Ginza Bricktown as the wellspring of modernity in Tokyo were more imagined than verisimilar.\u00a0 The photographs in\u00a0<\/span>Figures 4<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>5<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>offer more accurate glimpses of Bricktown, circa 1875. Comparing images shows that, for starters, the buildings themselves were not nearly as uniform in design, or always as Western, as the prints suggest.\u00a0 And they certainly were not always rowhouses, nor even always brick.\u00a0 In fact, Waters, hired two years prior in 1870 as Surveyor-General of Tokyo, had merely drafted guidelines for brickmaking and blueprints for constructing brick buildings as tall as three stories to be erected by the central government.\u00a0 While buildings fronting the main\u00a0street were required to be built in brick, landowners privately financing their own housing reconstruction had final say over the final design and arrangement of the building, either as a stand-alone\u00a0<\/span>machiya\u00a0<\/span><\/em>or as a\u00a0<\/span>ren\u2019ya\u00a0<\/em>rowhouse.\u00a0 On backstreets, moreover, owners were free to use any building type they preferred, including traditional plastered\u00a0<\/span>doz\u014d-zukuri\u00a0<\/span><\/em>warehouse style, provided that it was fireproof.\u00a0 Some owners preferred stucco plaster on their exterior walls, others left the exteriors in naked brick.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_214\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"] Many alterations can be attributed to Japanese craftsmen and laborers tasked with constructing unfamiliar structures reaching into their toolkits for more customary forms and practices.\u00a0 When decorating buildings with ornamentation, for example, builders relied on traditional features and flourishes, as seen in many contemporary examples of giy\u014df\u016b<\/em>\u00a0\u201cpseudo-Western\u201d architecture (For more, see essay by Kanaya Masataka<\/a>).\u00a0 For this reason, brick building roofs were tiled in the same tiles as traditional ones, stuccoed exteriors took on the appearance of traditional plaster construction, and visitors were more likely to see a\u00a0karahafu<\/em> curved pediment over prominent entrances than a classical triangular Greek one.\u00a0 Similarly, engineers unaccustomed to sidewalks or roadside fixtures placed trees and some lampposts directly in the roadbed where they would not obstruct the large numbers of anticipated pedestrians.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n But where are all the people?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Figure 6<\/strong>\u00a0offers a vision of Bricktown architecture that perhaps best fits the imagined visages in the woodblock prints.\u00a0 Colonnaded arcades fronting Western-style rowhouses continue as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 But even here, the storefronts are denoted by Japanese-style signage and pediments.\u00a0 The ghostly figure on the sidewalk, furthermore, is the first sign of life seen in the Bricktown images.\u00a0 While the blurring betrays the long exposure time needed for the early photographic technology, the presence of the figure in this image makes the desertion of Bricktown in Figures 4 and 5 all the more striking.\u00a0 For sure, it was possible to capture people in period photographs (<\/span>see Allen Hockley\u2019s essay<\/a>).\u00a0 But nowhere do we see the throngs of commoners, \u201call classes, high and low\u201d united in flocking to Bricktown.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_216\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1024\"] An only slightly more lively urban scene appears in\u00a0<\/span>Figure 7<\/strong>, a hand-painted glass lantern slide depicting the district circa 1895. \u00a0Taken from atop the Hattori Clock Tower at the heart of Bricktown, the camera\u2019s eye casts northwards towards Ginza 3-ch\u014dme and 4-ch\u014dme along Ginza Main Street.\u00a0 Now more than twenty years since the early termination of the reconstruction efforts, Ginza exhibits a mixture of Western and Japanese architectural styles and ornamental elements.\u00a0 Two buildings on the right (eastern) side of the street illustrate the wide spectrum of styles seen in Ginza at the time.\u00a0 First, on the right edge of the image, note the Ky\u014dya Clock Company Ginza clock tower, itself a frequent object of woodblock prints depicting the prosperity and bustle of Bricktown. \u00a0In addition to the defining clock tower, the building exhibits a number of Western features.\u00a0 The exterior walls are plainly rusticated brick; the rooftop parapets are accented by crenelated ornament.\u00a0 Yet, just a couple doors down the street, the Iwaya Sh\u014dkai tobacco store spans three signboard-dominated storefronts that bear little resemblance to the colonnaded rowhouses of Figure 6.\u00a0 Styles in the backstreet areas are even more mixed and confused.\u00a0 Still, the only signs of life are a few rickshaw pullers, a few horse-trolleys, a few pedestrians, and two laborers engaged in what appears to be filling potholes or perhaps sweeping up horse manure from the street.<\/span><\/p>\r\n Aside from the retention of traditional building types in Ginza and the absence of people in the images, there are more significant reasons to question the common historical narrative of Bricktown.\u00a0 As we might glean from the images of an almost entirely empty district, Bricktown was not a success.\u00a0 Put simply, the local officials and residents of Ginza were none too pleased about central government intrusion into their neighborhood.\u00a0 Indeed, in their fervor to construct brick buildings, Meiji government officials \u014ckuma Shigenobu, Inoue Kaoru, and Shibusawa Eiichi (all in the Finance Ministry) had overruled the opposition of Tokyo Governor Yuri Kimimasa, who had lost his own home in the fire and had argued for the distribution of donated relief funds to aid those who lost property in the fire rather than for financing construction of new brick buildings.\u00a0 The central government had then expropriated lands necessary to widen streets, had condemned traditional buildings that survived the fire, had torn down temporary shelters survivors erected on their burned out properties, and had even evicted area residents, removing them to nearby government-owned land to make way for construction crews.[footnote]According to an order dated 1874.4.19, local residents who had no other place to go during construction were authorized to temporarily relocate to Public Works Ministry land in Kobikich\u014d. See National Archives of Japan, \u201cFuka Kobikich\u014d moto Tetsud\u014d Kyoku y\u014dchi nokorite Ky\u014dbashi inan j\u016bkyonin itenchi to nasu<\/em>.\u201d Call#: honkan-2A-009.00.tai00336100.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0At one point, the central government even threatened \u201cstrict punishment\u201d for anybody who publicly defamed the project by \u201crecklessly ridicul[ing] the new construction regulations, and spread[ing] groundless rumors to incite the people.\u201d[footnote]TSS vol. 54, 817.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0These are not the actions of a benevolent, enlightened government that has the best interest of the people in mind.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_221\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"] The heavy-handed actions taken by the Meiji government to intervene in the urban space of Tokyo incited tenacious resistance from local residents.\u00a0 Lacking representation in the central government or involvement in the planning process, the residents of Ginza resisted the imposition of Bricktown by whatever means they could.\u00a0 With nowhere else to go for shelter, residents inevitably ignored the injunction on housing reconstruction in the burnt districts and erected temporary dwellings that forced the authorities to repeatedly issue pleas, warnings, and threats to vacate such structures before they were torn down.\u00a0 District residents also vocalized their opposition to the project by publicly criticizing the proposed buildings and spreading rumors demeaning the project.\u00a0 Facing the prospect of losing popular support, officials invoked imperial loyalty, admonishing residents to \u201creverently and humbly respect the imperial government\u2019s wishes and carry them out with absolutely no misunderstandings.\u201d[footnote]TSS, vol. 54, 817-818.[\/footnote]<\/span><\/p>\r\n In the end, area residents exercised the strongest political statement they could to resist Ginza Bricktown: they voted with their feet and simply refused to move into the new brick buildings.\u00a0 A report from 1872, for example, gave the status of 324 planned buildings: future tenants had been secured for only 84 of the buildings under construction while the other 49 would sit empty after completion; the remaining 191 buildings would be built when ready irrespective of whether they had tenants waiting or not.[footnote]TSS, vol. 54, 885.[\/footnote]\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0In this way, Ginza Bricktown served as an outlet for popular frustrations with the new government as the residents of Ginza voiced their opposition to not only Bricktown, but also to the autocratic Meiji regime in general.\u00a0 Facing staunch opposition from both local officials and residents, the Meiji government was left with little choice other than to withdraw central government support, cancelling plans to expand brick construction beyond Ginza in 1873, just one year after the project started with such high hopes.<\/p>\r\n So, what should we as educators and scholars of Japanese history make of Ginza Bricktown and the narrative myths that surround it?\u00a0 For sure, Ginza is now a thriving commercial district that draws millions of visitors every year to its many high-end retail shops.\u00a0 But we should be careful to resist too haphazardly drawing a straight line between Bricktown as planned and the current Ginza.\u00a0 After decades of adaptations and retrofitting by local residents, what was left of Bricktown by 1923 was completely destroyed by the Great Kant\u014d Earthquake and the ensuing fires that devastated the city.\u00a0 Prior to that, Ginza was home not to name-brand retailers, but to newspapers and publishers that fostered the People\u2019s Rights Movement (Jiy\u016b Minken Und\u014d<\/em>) in the 1880s.\u00a0 It was not until later in the 1910-20s that Ginza overtook Nihombashi as the retail center of Tokyo, with the first subway line in the capital bringing crowds of shoppers when it opened in 1927.\u00a0 All the while, Ginza only thrived because local residents modified the their surroundings to more suit their needs for housing and retail space.<\/p>\r\n But none of this is meant to detract from the myth of Ginza Bricktown. Indeed, we must by no means disregard Bricktown as a failure, nor too quickly dismantle its place among the narratives of Meiji modernization. For each of the challenges to the myth of Bricktown cataloged above only reinforces its power. Myths are useful. They are created for a purpose. If modernity is a myth, David Harvey notes, it is a myth created in order to differentiate the new from what came before. Certainly the many continuities traversing the supposed fissure between \u201cmodernity\u201d and what-came-before call into question the idea of a radical break. In saying that modernity is a myth, however, Harvey\u2019s point is not that modernity is meaningless. Instead, \u201cIf modernity exists as a meaningful term,\u201d he writes, \u201cit signals some decisive moments of creation destruction.\u201d[footnote]Harvey, Paris, 1.[\/footnote] In other words, for modernity to be meaningful, there must be radical human-made transformations to existing social organizations and built forms that gouge the putative chasm isolating the modern from the premodern. In this sense, Ginza Bricktown \u2014 a project that demolished the antiquated built forms of the premodern city and in their place constructed the streetscapes of the new modern capital\u2014 was above all an attempt to reify in brick and stone the transition between Edo and Tokyo, Tokugawa and Meiji, premodern and modern Japan. It is, in the end, the very myths of Ginza Bricktown that makes it such a powerful symbol of Japanese modernity.<\/p>\r\n If we are looking for a success story in Ginza Bricktown we find it not in a narrative of triumphant top-down modernization or even one of victorious bottom-up resistance against an overbearing state.\u00a0 Rather, it is somewhere more in the middle, a story of urban change as a process of government authorities, business leaders, and local residents working in concert to shape the built environment in response to changing conditions and demands.\u00a0 The lesson of Bricktown for urban planners was that any attempt to unilaterally impose meaning onto the space of the city was bound to spark opposition from local residents.\u00a0 Only actors at all levels of society working together could successfully produce lasting and meaningful urban reform.\u00a0 The lesson for us as historians is that the same was true of Japanese modernization during the Meiji Period.<\/p>","rendered":" Tristan R. Grunow<\/strong> | University of British Columbia<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of the myths of modernity is that it constitutes a radical break with the past. The break is supposedly of such an order as to make it possible to see the world as a\u00a0<\/span><\/em>tabula rasa<\/span>, upon which the new can be inscribed without reference to the past \u2013 or, if the past gets in the way, through its obliteration. Modernity is, therefore, always about \u201ccreative destruction.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014 David Harvey,\u00a0Paris: Capital of Modernity<\/em>[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ginza Bricktown occupies an oversized place in the history of modern Japan, let alone the urban history of Tokyo.\u00a0 The common historical narrative of Bricktown is hard to resist, as it seems so fitting, so instructive, and so perfectly comprehensive: the Ginza Fire of 1872, it goes, fortuitously cleared a perfectly-located\u00a0<\/span>tabula rasa<\/em>\u00a0onto which a Meiji government intent on jumpstarting Japanese modernization constructed a Western-style district for the new capital that would impress foreign powers with Japan\u2019s progress and assist in the revision of the unequal treaties.\u00a0 Just as the Meiji emperor himself was re-dressed in the new clothes of a modern monarch, as it were, the Shogun\u2019s city of Edo would be re-cast with Western built forms as the Emperor\u2019s modern metropolis of Tokyo.\u00a0 And Ginza was ground zero.\u00a0 In this way, Bricktown was a \u201cshowcase\u201d for the new Meiji government, the new Tokyo, and the new Japan \u2013 an attempt to reify in brick and stone the transition between Edo and Tokyo, Tokugawa and Meiji, Japanese modernity and premodernity.[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Part of the allure of this narrative, to be sure, lies in its simplicity and its apparent accuracy.\u00a0 What better way for the Meiji government to demonstrate to watchful Westerners the modernity of Japan than an urban space that looked unmistakably Western?\u00a0 Or the permanence of the new Meiji regime to the people of Japan than a solidly constructed capital city built in foreign architectural forms?\u00a0 Or, for us as educators and scholars of Japan, the intensity and reach of Meiji-era reforms to our students and readers?\u00a0 The evidence is undoubtedly there.\u00a0 The central government quickly intervened after the fire to prohibit reconstruction of traditional buildings and in their place erected Western-style brick buildings designed by a foreign engineer, Thomas J. Waters.\u00a0 Laborers paved streets in the most up-to-date macadam surfaces and laid bricks on the first sidewalks in the city.\u00a0 Trees provided protection from sun, wind, and rain, with gas \u2013 and later electric \u2013 lamps making for a pleasant evening stroll.\u00a0 If all had gone according to plan, Bricktown would have continued to grow, consuming neighborhood after neighborhood as improvements spread to adjacent districts, slowly transforming the built environment of the entire city, just as the Meiji government was then revolutionizing Japan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Certain progressive leaders in the Meiji government did indeed talk about Ginza Bricktown as a project of modernization.\u00a0 One anecdote relayed by prominent early-20th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>century politician Ozaki Yukio places prominent Meiji figures It\u014d Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru, and Shibusawa Eiichi frequently at \u014ckuma Shigenobu\u2019s compound in Tsukiji, known as the Tsukiji Ry\u014dzanpaku after the legendary bandit hideout of\u00a0<\/span>Water Margin<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(JPN:\u00a0<\/span>Suikoden<\/em>) fame where great people plotted great things.[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 From there, true to its reputation, the group planned many of the radical progressive reforms of the early Meiji government, including Ginza Bricktown.\u00a0 As Inoue Kaoru later recalled, the group had long recognized the strategic location of Ginza and had already envisioned improvements such as street widening in the area even before the fire that sparked the project.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, then, it was Inoue who spearheaded the Meiji Government\u2019s reconstruction efforts, calling Ginza Bricktown nothing less than a \u201cshortcut to civilization and enlightenment.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Still, it is not to government leaders like Inoue, but to contemporary authors and artists who embraced this narrative and capitalized on it to sell books or woodblock prints that we can attribute the enduring presence and pedagogical power of Ginza Bricktown.\u00a0 It was these contemporary observers, caught up in the \u201cSpirit of 1868\u201d and the enamor of all things new and Western, who popularized the brick district between Shimbashi and Ky\u014dbashi as a small piece of the foreign world right in the middle of Tokyo.\u00a0 Curious readers unable to witness the sights of the new capital themselves could turn instead to Hattori Bush\u014d\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>New Tales of Tokyo Prosperity\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(<\/span>T\u014dky\u014d Shin Hanj\u014dki<\/em>), published between 1874-1876, to experience wondrous developments like Bricktown.\u00a0 \u201cTall two-story buildings tower into the blue sky one after the other as high as mountains\u201d Hattori reported, \u201cwith a grandeur such that it completely imitates Western buildings!\u201d\u00a0 Surely, Inoue would have been proud of a job well done to hear that \u201cThe stone buildings, in other words, are like those of London, the English capital; the streets are like those in Paris, the French capital.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Graphic artists like Utagawa Kuniteru II and Utagawa Hiroshige III likewise quickly adopted this view, producing prints depicting Bricktown as a bustling, foreign commercial district that colored popular views of Ginza and have illustrated many a classroom lecture on the Meiji Period ever since.[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0 The 1874 Kuniteru II triptych in\u00a0<\/span>Figure 1<\/strong>\u00a0is typical.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The eponymous brick buildings line either side of a street bustling with traffic of all kinds and sidewalks thronged with pedestrians, protected from the mayhem only by verdant trees and cherry blossoms.\u00a0 The buildings appear to be uniformly two stories tall and stretch into the distance as continuous rowhouses.\u00a0 Their designs are entirely Western: stone plinths and quoins accent the building foundations and edges, colonnades of the Tuscan order replete with entablature support second story balconies, and the tiled mansard rooftops feature parapets ornamented by lanterns and crenellation. \u00a0The windows appear to be stained glass.\u00a0 Halfway down on the right appears what looks to be a classical pediment.\u00a0 Hiroshige III\u2019s 1874 treatment in\u00a0<\/span>Figure 2<\/strong>\u00a0gives much the same impression, with a more detailed view of a single building and only slightly less chaotic street traffic.[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The overwhelming feeling we are left with from both of these prints is the bustling prosperity and \u201cmodernity\u201d of the scenes.\u00a0 Both artists crowd their prints with what would have been widely recognized as symbols of advanced material civilization at the time: Western-style buildings, horse carriages, parasols, Western dress, tophats, and rickshaws, an invention of the 1860s.\u00a0 Both present views of urban modernity one might expect to see on Regent Street in London, or maybe on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es and Rue de Rivoli in Paris, just as Hattori Bush\u014d described.<\/p>\n Aside from the built forms, more importantly, the artists depict Ginza Bricktown crowded with people.\u00a0 The throngs are not fl\u00e2neurs out for a leisurely stroll.\u00a0 Instead, they are merchants, rickshaw pullers, carriage drivers, luggage porters, geisha, school children, long-distance travelers, soldiers, and Chinese tourists \u2013 a cross-section of all classes of society in Ginza not to kill time but to productively contribute to and witness the commercial vibrancy of the district.\u00a0 In other words, they are a visual representation of \u201call classes, high and low\u201d uniting to enjoy the mobility, prosperity, and material benefits of \u201ccivilization and enlightenment\u201d promised by the Meiji Restoration.\u00a0 The \u201cmixing of high and low\u201d was a common theme for Kuniteru II, who revisited this egalitarian sentiment in another triptych from the same year, titled \u201cScene of the unending traffic and mixing of high and low, male and female, young and old crossing Asakusa Bridge\u201d [Figure 3]<\/strong>.\u00a0 These scenes are given added political significance in the context of the Charter Oath of 1868, which called for the tearing asunder of \u201cevil customs\u201d of the past, such as the Tokugawa ascriptive class system, travel and occupational restrictions, and sumptuary laws. \u00a0In this way, depictions of a thriving Bricktown swarmed with commoners of all classes enjoying the benefits of reform were both a radical political statement and a suggestion of widespread popular support for not only Bricktown, but for the Meiji project as a whole.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With all this in mind, it is tempting at first glance to uncritically accept the easy narrative of Ginza portrayed in the prints, that of Bricktown as the spatial analogue of Meiji modernization or as the tangible manifestation of a Meiji success story.\u00a0 We seemingly have a group of perspicacious, enlightened Meiji government leaders united in their desire to protect and improve Japanese material civilization who benevolently bestowed a pre-fabricated modernity onto the people of Tokyo from the top down.\u00a0 In response, the people, we are to presume, welcomed this gift with open arms, fully embracing the benefits of modernization, the Meiji reforms, and the Meiji government by extension, and worked together with the state, moreover, to advance national goals.\u00a0 Yet, as any architect or urban planner will lament about best laid plans, even the best laid historical narratives often fall apart as they move from drafting to implementation.\u00a0 That is to say, the narrative of Ginza Bricktown is a myth, as imagined as the artistic depictions that inspired it and for so long have sustained its existence.<\/p>\n By all indications, the literary and graphic representations of Ginza Bricktown as the wellspring of modernity in Tokyo were more imagined than verisimilar.\u00a0 The photographs in\u00a0<\/span>Figures 4<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>5<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>offer more accurate glimpses of Bricktown, circa 1875. Comparing images shows that, for starters, the buildings themselves were not nearly as uniform in design, or always as Western, as the prints suggest.\u00a0 And they certainly were not always rowhouses, nor even always brick.\u00a0 In fact, Waters, hired two years prior in 1870 as Surveyor-General of Tokyo, had merely drafted guidelines for brickmaking and blueprints for constructing brick buildings as tall as three stories to be erected by the central government.\u00a0 While buildings fronting the main\u00a0street were required to be built in brick, landowners privately financing their own housing reconstruction had final say over the final design and arrangement of the building, either as a stand-alone\u00a0<\/span>machiya\u00a0<\/span><\/em>or as a\u00a0<\/span>ren\u2019ya\u00a0<\/em>rowhouse.\u00a0 On backstreets, moreover, owners were free to use any building type they preferred, including traditional plastered\u00a0<\/span>doz\u014d-zukuri\u00a0<\/span><\/em>warehouse style, provided that it was fireproof.\u00a0 Some owners preferred stucco plaster on their exterior walls, others left the exteriors in naked brick.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many alterations can be attributed to Japanese craftsmen and laborers tasked with constructing unfamiliar structures reaching into their toolkits for more customary forms and practices.\u00a0 When decorating buildings with ornamentation, for example, builders relied on traditional features and flourishes, as seen in many contemporary examples of giy\u014df\u016b<\/em>\u00a0\u201cpseudo-Western\u201d architecture (For more, see essay by Kanaya Masataka<\/a>).\u00a0 For this reason, brick building roofs were tiled in the same tiles as traditional ones, stuccoed exteriors took on the appearance of traditional plaster construction, and visitors were more likely to see a\u00a0karahafu<\/em> curved pediment over prominent entrances than a classical triangular Greek one.\u00a0 Similarly, engineers unaccustomed to sidewalks or roadside fixtures placed trees and some lampposts directly in the roadbed where they would not obstruct the large numbers of anticipated pedestrians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But where are all the people?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Figure 6<\/strong>\u00a0offers a vision of Bricktown architecture that perhaps best fits the imagined visages in the woodblock prints.\u00a0 Colonnaded arcades fronting Western-style rowhouses continue as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 But even here, the storefronts are denoted by Japanese-style signage and pediments.\u00a0 The ghostly figure on the sidewalk, furthermore, is the first sign of life seen in the Bricktown images.\u00a0 While the blurring betrays the long exposure time needed for the early photographic technology, the presence of the figure in this image makes the desertion of Bricktown in Figures 4 and 5 all the more striking.\u00a0 For sure, it was possible to capture people in period photographs (<\/span>see Allen Hockley\u2019s essay<\/a>).\u00a0 But nowhere do we see the throngs of commoners, \u201call classes, high and low\u201d united in flocking to Bricktown.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n An only slightly more lively urban scene appears in\u00a0<\/span>Figure 7<\/strong>, a hand-painted glass lantern slide depicting the district circa 1895. \u00a0Taken from atop the Hattori Clock Tower at the heart of Bricktown, the camera\u2019s eye casts northwards towards Ginza 3-ch\u014dme and 4-ch\u014dme along Ginza Main Street.\u00a0 Now more than twenty years since the early termination of the reconstruction efforts, Ginza exhibits a mixture of Western and Japanese architectural styles and ornamental elements.\u00a0 Two buildings on the right (eastern) side of the street illustrate the wide spectrum of styles seen in Ginza at the time.\u00a0 First, on the right edge of the image, note the Ky\u014dya Clock Company Ginza clock tower, itself a frequent object of woodblock prints depicting the prosperity and bustle of Bricktown. \u00a0In addition to the defining clock tower, the building exhibits a number of Western features.\u00a0 The exterior walls are plainly rusticated brick; the rooftop parapets are accented by crenelated ornament.\u00a0 Yet, just a couple doors down the street, the Iwaya Sh\u014dkai tobacco store spans three signboard-dominated storefronts that bear little resemblance to the colonnaded rowhouses of Figure 6.\u00a0 Styles in the backstreet areas are even more mixed and confused.\u00a0 Still, the only signs of life are a few rickshaw pullers, a few horse-trolleys, a few pedestrians, and two laborers engaged in what appears to be filling potholes or perhaps sweeping up horse manure from the street.<\/span><\/p>\n Aside from the retention of traditional building types in Ginza and the absence of people in the images, there are more significant reasons to question the common historical narrative of Bricktown.\u00a0 As we might glean from the images of an almost entirely empty district, Bricktown was not a success.\u00a0 Put simply, the local officials and residents of Ginza were none too pleased about central government intrusion into their neighborhood.\u00a0 Indeed, in their fervor to construct brick buildings, Meiji government officials \u014ckuma Shigenobu, Inoue Kaoru, and Shibusawa Eiichi (all in the Finance Ministry) had overruled the opposition of Tokyo Governor Yuri Kimimasa, who had lost his own home in the fire and had argued for the distribution of donated relief funds to aid those who lost property in the fire rather than for financing construction of new brick buildings.\u00a0 The central government had then expropriated lands necessary to widen streets, had condemned traditional buildings that survived the fire, had torn down temporary shelters survivors erected on their burned out properties, and had even evicted area residents, removing them to nearby government-owned land to make way for construction crews.[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0At one point, the central government even threatened \u201cstrict punishment\u201d for anybody who publicly defamed the project by \u201crecklessly ridicul[ing] the new construction regulations, and spread[ing] groundless rumors to incite the people.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0These are not the actions of a benevolent, enlightened government that has the best interest of the people in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The heavy-handed actions taken by the Meiji government to intervene in the urban space of Tokyo incited tenacious resistance from local residents.\u00a0 Lacking representation in the central government or involvement in the planning process, the residents of Ginza resisted the imposition of Bricktown by whatever means they could.\u00a0 With nowhere else to go for shelter, residents inevitably ignored the injunction on housing reconstruction in the burnt districts and erected temporary dwellings that forced the authorities to repeatedly issue pleas, warnings, and threats to vacate such structures before they were torn down.\u00a0 District residents also vocalized their opposition to the project by publicly criticizing the proposed buildings and spreading rumors demeaning the project.\u00a0 Facing the prospect of losing popular support, officials invoked imperial loyalty, admonishing residents to \u201creverently and humbly respect the imperial government\u2019s wishes and carry them out with absolutely no misunderstandings.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n In the end, area residents exercised the strongest political statement they could to resist Ginza Bricktown: they voted with their feet and simply refused to move into the new brick buildings.\u00a0 A report from 1872, for example, gave the status of 324 planned buildings: future tenants had been secured for only 84 of the buildings under construction while the other 49 would sit empty after completion; the remaining 191 buildings would be built when ready irrespective of whether they had tenants waiting or not.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/meijiat150\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/445\/2018\/09\/Rooftop-View-of-City-e1526483871949-768x534.jpg\")
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\r\n\r\n<\/a> Figure 1.<\/strong> Kuniteru II, \u201cScene of the Thriving Merchants in Brick Houses and the Blossoming of Peoples of All Classes between Ky\u014dbashi and Shimbashi.\u201d Source: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Asian Rare-6 no.L3:9.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 2.<\/strong> Hiroshige III, \u201cFamous Places in Tokyo: Brick Merchant Houses on Ginza Main Street.\u201d Source: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Asian Rare-6 no.L3:7.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 3.<\/strong> Kuniteru II, \u201cScene of the unending traffic and mixing of high and low, male and female, young and old crossing Asakusa Bridge.\u201d Source: University of British Columbia. Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Asian Rare-6 no.L3:7. Asian Rare-6 no.L3:8.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 4<\/strong>. \u201cGinza.\u201d Source: Kenchiku Gakkai<\/em>, ed., Meiji Taish\u014d Kenchiku Shashin Sh\u016bran<\/em>, 15.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_215\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"]<\/a> Figure 5<\/strong>. \u201cGinza.\u201d Source: Kenchiku Gakkai<\/em>, ed., Meiji Taish\u014d Kenchiku Shashin Sh\u016bran<\/em>, 16.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/a> Figure 6<\/strong>. \u201cGinza.\u201d Source: Kenchiku Gakkai<\/em>, ed., Meiji Taish\u014d Kenchiku Shashin Sh\u016bran<\/em>, 17.[\/caption]\r\n<\/a> Figure 7.<\/strong> \u201cRooftop view of city.\u201d Source: Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, James Davidson collection, a03334.[\/caption]\r\nGinza Bricktown and the Myth of Meiji Modernization<\/h1>\n
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