By Donald Richie

In 1947 there was only one subway line in Tokyo, compared with the 13 now operating, but its glorious terminus was Asakusa (pronounced Asak'sa), then Japan's place to play—to Tokyo what Times Square is to New York. This major entertainment district was described in a popular song of the day: "Asakusa is a human market/ Asakusa is Tokyo's heart." Asakusa was a whole community of shows and shops, bars and brothels, with everything for sale—in particular, matters of the heart.

One spring day that year, I had hesitatingly stepped into the Ginza subway station, Asakusa-bound. Hesitatingly because the subway was off-limits to members of the Allied Occupation of Japan. There were still signs like NO FRATERNIZATION WITH THE INDIGENOUS PERSONNEL. Since I was an occupier, an alert MP could have had me sent back to Ohio for good. Once in the subway, however—once I had burrowed into the then pervading smell of old clothes and pickled radish—there were no MPs.

	FROM OUR ARCHIVES No Nero; New Tokyo "Sadly six years ago the present 'Son of Heaven,' athletic, scholarly Emperor Hirohito, stood on the ramparts of Tokyo's Imperial Palace and saw a third of the city burning..." Apr. 07, 1930 First "Worriedly harkening to an unaccustomed roar, certain brave citizens of Tokyo patronized the first subway to be opened in the Far East..." Jan. 09, 1928 Archive links are premium content

And none in Asakusa either, though just about everything there was off-limits. I could wander at will, the only foreigner in the place, a covert occupier among the oblivious occupied, a single person gloriously lost in the pleasure palaces of the devastated city. There was the Rokku, a solid street of motion-picture theaters, the first of which, the Denkikan, had opened in 1903. And the promenade along the Sumida River where pretty girls with open parasols stared. And the Nakamise, that long row of roofed shops stretching from the Kaminari (Thunder) Gate, with its guardian deities and its enormous lantern, all the way to Senso-ji, the Asakusa Kannon temple. At least, it would have reached there had the temple not been destroyed during the appalling U.S. incendiary raids of March 9 and 10, 1945. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people were killed in the bombings, and some two-fifths of the city razed, including most of Asakusa.

Yet now, less than two years later, the enterprise, the sheer vitality, of the place overflowed. There was the smell of fresh-cut wood, and the lemon yellow flash of new lumber as buildings went up. And all the people to patronize them. Hundreds, strolling along the lanes of Asakusa, picking over the merchandise, loafing on the corners. All of them out on a weekday for a good time, all dressed up (the single good kimono, the white shirt and tie) or down (work clothes, army uniforms, farming garb); everyone out of fashion because they were still dressed for wartime and it was now well into peace. And everyone was smiling—there was possibility, prospects, the worst was over.

Lots of new buildings, lots of new stores and booths, lots of new entertainment. The shooting galleries were back, whores were evident, and the World's Fattest Lady had returned. The famous merry-go-round ("Japan's Largest") was back, too, though the Casino Folies, next door, where the "opera" had been, was still a burned-out lot. There were lots of such lots, places where something had been, the holes not yet filled in. Buildings grouped around the gashes stood awkwardly. The crater left by the Casino Folies was large. This had been the home of the Asakusa Opera, beloved by many, including the writers Yasunari Kawabata and Kafu Nagai, and remembered for its truncated Rigoletto, where La Donna é Mobile became a local hit even though, with no tenor being available, the Duke was played by a soprano. Usually, however, the fare was more varied. There were Charlie Chaplin imitators, comedy skits, and an all-girl dancing troupe, the popularity of which was occasioned, said the resident comedian Enoken, by the completely false rumor that the girls dropped their drawers during Friday matinees. Nagai remembered (in Edward Seidensticker's translation) what it was like backstage at the Asakusa Opera. "The powerful flesh of the arms and legs ... called to mind the earthen hallway of a florist's shop, where a litter of torn-off petal and withering leaves is left unswept and trampled into shapelessness."

Continued...