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The bells of old Tokyo : meditations on time and a city / Anna Sherman.

by Sherman, Anna (Anna Katherine), 1970- author.

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New York : Picador, 2019.

Sherman, Anna (Anne Katherine), 1970- -- Homes and haunts -- Japan -- Tokyo.

Tokyo (Japan) -- Social life and customs.

Tokyo (Japan) -- History.

Tokyo (Japan) -- Description and travel.

Japan -- Civilization -- 1945-

9781250206404 hardcover

1250206405 hardcover

337 pages ; 22 cm

First U.S. edition.

The bells of time -- Hibiya -- Nihonbashi : the zero point -- Asakusa : the mythic Kanto Plain -- Akasaka : the invention of Edo -- Mejiro : a failed coup -- Nezu : Tokugawa timepieces -- Ueno : the last shogun -- The Rokumeikan : the Meiji restoration -- Tsukiji : the Japanese empire -- Yokokawa-Honjo : east of the river -- Marunouchi : new origins -- Kitasuna : the firebombs of 1945 -- Shiba Kiridoshi : Tokyo tower -- Daylight savings time : the occupation -- Ichigaya : postwar prosperity -- Shinjuku : Tokyo tomorrow -- Hibiya : the imperial hotel.

"The Bells of Old Tokyo is a remarkable literary debut by Anna Sherman that is an elegant and insightful tour of Tokyo and its residents, as well as a meditation on Japanese culture and society. The book is structured around Anna's search for the eight lost bells that once surrounded the city. These bells marked the city's neighborhoods and kept time for its inhabitants before the introduction of Western-style clocks. The bells are tangible vestiges of a much older Japan--one that believed in time as represented by animals, rather than minutes and hours, a circle rather than a forward line. Similarly, the book moves in and out of time as we are introduced to Tokyo residents past and present: An aristocrat who makes his way through Tokyo's sea of ashes after WWII's firebombs. A shrine priest who remembers Yukio Mishima praying before his infamous death. A scientist who has built the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa house, the family that used to rule Tokyo, reflecting on the destruction of his grandfathers' city ('A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness'). And woven throughout is Anna's deep friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite coffee shop who believes that if you make coffee just right, and allow people the time to enjoy it, they will return to their 'true selves.' The Bells of Old Tokyo marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer as she presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life in the guise of a tour through a city and its people"--

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