033 TOKYO 2O25 – dérive VI, my YaNeSen
Nezu + Yanaka, Sendagi - my first anchorage in Tokyo
_ _ _ this piece was posted in the night 9-10 March 2025, exactly on the 80th anniversary of infamous fire-bombing of Tokyo which took more than 100.000 lives; that night only by chance, the wind blowing from an unexpected direction has saved (the quality of) Tokyo that this post is about . . . some of the old Tokyo still lives in its precincts of Nezu, Yanaka and Sendagi
_ _ _ Nezu was my first Tokyo. The day before yesterday we went to the place where I lived in the period 2006–08, during my professorship at the University of Tokyo, Centre for Sustainable Urban Regeneration. With neighbouring Yanaka and Sendagi, Nezu forms YaNeSen, a precinct famous for uniquely preserved spaces and ways of life which have fortuitously survived the 1945 conflagration. Now, stepping out from Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line at Nezu Station our dérive started, a superficial survey in a well-known territory of my first neighbourhood in Tokyo. As expected, one can see far more continuity than change here. Much seems to be same yet (as you would, by now, expect urbophilia to add) – everything has changed.
_ _ _ Nezu, low rise, wooden, high density, as all the ill-fated precincts charred in 1945 used to be . . . Nezu stays to remember and to remind, amidst typical, dense low-rise high density urban fabric of Tokyo . . . my old apartment, 2-8-11 Nezu Bunkyo-ku is still there, as is the bike stand where I used to lift and park my blue mamachari . . . nothing seems to have changed . . . a hospice and kura restaurant across the roji . . . a flashback of discussions with Kuma-san, on wood, on kura, on udon from Ōsaka, on sake and aubergine from Kyoto, on our intended conference . . .
_ _ _ the street (with no name, of course) . . . a hundred or so meters further was a sento, which treasured scents of the original Nezu . . . I vividly remember the sound of geta in one rainy evening, as my old neighbour was going to relax there . . . in the meantime, the sento has succumbed, becoming a café but, in comparison with so many treasures of that kind lost, this old building has been finely restored and requalified . . . and then . . . roji, the modesty and stubbornness, resilience and pride of living in these historic lanes and buildings, uncompromisingly chosen over the comfort which one would now expect . . .
_ _ _ Nezu was the place where my first serious research of urbanities of Tokyo has started . . . Yanaka and Sendagi were nothing but natural spatial extensions, which provided additional diversity within a well-defined historic and very resilient urban paradigm . . .
. . . all that lead to clear definitions, to theoretical position founded on an essayistic sensibility (starting from Adorno), on practices of observation (inspired by Perec), as encapsulated in propositions like these (from presentation slides; apologies for those viewing it on their iPhones):
. . . and in formulation of brave questions and intellectual flights (inspired by Barthes and his ruminations, including those on Tokyo itself in The Empire of Signs, and by many more) . . .
_ _ _ there, my learnings about this culture and its spatial projections have started, resulting in my first book about Japan – Another Tokyo (University of Tokyo, 2008), to which some excellent young researchers have contributed their chapters:
_ _ _ true resilience of YaNeSen makes it possible to (as in Tokyo dérive III) start this post with my 2021 essay Tokyo Lived: Nezu, Yanaka, Sendagi, YaNeSen, as published in a+u infraordinary Tokyo, the Right to the City . . . pp. 24-25), again adding only a few bold highlights. > > >
“After several longer visits and stays in Japan, my first true immersion in Tokyo started with living in Nezu (2006-8). A slender volume of Another Tokyo lists elements for my early definition of urbanity of that precinct of Tokyo. The list included the ubiquitous smallness which expresses and envelops places and practices of everyday life; dominant low-rise high-density urban fabric; fine-grained mix; extensive use of bicycles; reliance on public transport; wood as building material; keen attention to architectural detailing; nuances of local and culture-specific use; presence of productive landscapes within the urban; rich variety of urban micro-greenery. Some of those qualities are relevant across the metropolis, making them candidates for an (impossible) definition of Tokyo DNA’ . . .
Located in close proximity of the universities of Tokyo and Fine Arts, Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi (YaNeSen) constitute one of the precincts of Tokyo which, having felicitously survived American fire-bombings in 1945, still treasures some of the pre-modern atmosphere of Edo. I have noted how (Another Tokyo, 2008):
‘with only little exaggeration, one could claim that in Nezu and Yanaka small is everything, and everywhere. Once we pass the typical hard edge of urban blocks, go by concrete, tall (usually not well designed, ceramic-clad) highrise buildings which flank the borders of the main streets, we enter another world, an entirely other Tokyo. We enter roji, the narrow alleys framed by tiny buildings, we encounter the fine-scale detailing, miniscule urbane gestures that hint, rather than impose, the very specific urbanity of that place. Small pots with plants, for instance, which are present all around Nezu and Yanaka mark the sensitive, nebulous boundaries between the often overlapping private, not-so-private, not-so-public, and public realms. The sense of intimacy in Nezu and Yanaka is overwhelming. It sets the tone for experiencing those environments, while functional mix makes sure that, regardless how private some of those spaces might be, they do not forbid interaction. Some of the roji are dominated by commercial use. Some are purely residential, but never strictly closed. With their (again small!) gestures, those spaces suggest appropriate modes of behaviour - for the locals and for the visitors alike. The grain and the rhythm of urban fabric in Nezu and Yanaka possess an ability to slow down the movement, to scale the outsider to their own measure, to offer both moments of excitement and flows of everydayness (often as an attraction). The physical and the behavioural, thus, merge into a distinct atmosphere and create a reality which is very human, tactile, able to stir nostalgia’.
(Now I notice how in 2006 I already referred to nuances of ‘private, not-so-private, not-so-public, and public realms’, intuiting some important difference, but still using the term ‘public’ freely).
I have lived and worked in and around Nezu for almost two years, observing, sensing, exploring, analysing (then, exploring all over again) – and living! – that dense plurality, complex practices of coexistence, simultaneity and changes in the ways of life which generate the renowned sense of YaNeSen. Even to a visitor, an authenticity of minute, truly infraordinary spaces is palpable there. YaNeSen differentiates itself from hundreds of machi, ‘towns’ or “villages” which constitute Tokyo. But, with all of its rooted richness, it also remains a true projection of the broadest socio-cultural realities of Japan, its various modes of self-production, codes, times and rhythms of being in the world, being - there. In all of its local uniqueness, YaNeSen, is recognisably, and fuzzily – Tokyo. We have already discussed what that puzzling common quality could be about. While impossible to pin down, we can navigate around it, getting closer to comprehension of what we all seem to love there.
To that, I will contribute only one personal insight, a single memorable moment, a flash of familiarity with a particular roji – when I entered it for the first time. That narrow, mossy and quiet space triggered a very concrete, long forgotten memory from my early childhood, from a beautiful town thousands of kilometres away (Radović, 2008). The stone and sharp shadows of my faraway lane looked entirely different from this space which I have entered in Tokyo, but in this roji was something foundational, something that my body knew intimately. My own madeleine. A kind of particularity which touches the very nerve of being human, an experience of the core around which cultures spin their precious fabric of local authenticities. Such experiences enable the deepest of entries, opening the possibility of sensation of undercurrents in the ways we all are (Jullien, 2015). Experiences are always singular and, as such, subjective (Radović, 2014). Vécu is always that of a concrete person, in concrete place, in the exact moment of time. But, being human is essentially ‘being singular plural’ (Nancy, 2000). Such meaningful sensations can be experienced together and shared. They generate (a sense of) community, both the communitas as “an exceptional collective experience”, and the community as ‘an area of common living’ (Turner, in Stavrides, 2016; my italics). Having experienced the interconnectedness of universal and local in that tiniest of roji in Yanaka, to me the quiet, infraordinary Tokyo remains the spatial projection of modesty, Tokyo longing for a sense of community, for a village.
The key lesson I took from Nezu all the way to this issue of a+u is that, if the right to the city exists in Tokyo, it gets exercised at the scales of infraordinary. The stubborn practices of low-rise high-density fabric led me to the subtitle Another Tokyo as ‘Places and Practices of Urban Resistance’ and to the title of one of the follow-up papers on YaNeSen – ‘The Greatness of Small’.” > > >
_ _ _ all that still rings true
_ _ _ below: fresh snapshots from Nezu, Yanaka and Sendagi, long with a word or two
. .. another variation on a theme of polite gestures . . . “please keep distance” . . .
. . . not everything has to be traditional (but, the scale does!)
. . . in Japan, political elections are never far away (I love how they pronounce word election, confusing “L” and “R”)
. . . it definitely will rain again
. . . galleries
. . . transgressions but, “please keep distance” . . .
. . . not everything is perfect, far form that
. . . roadworks, installations . . . engineers, talking to each other
AND now, for those of you who have survived all of the above . . . we will cross Shinobazu Dori, to enter
. . . Nezu Jinja, one of the most beautiful Shinto Shrines of Tokyo
_ _ _ while leaving Nezu, my first Tokyo, my first Tokyo love, a thought . . . I could live in that same Nezu again . . . be happy and unhappy as I used to be there . . . because it feels the same . . . gentrified it is, even more than before, but there is an air of modesty, even gentrification happens in a sense that I can accept . . . YaNeSen is . . . a sensibility, it communicates certain qualities which I like and feel there
CUT!
. . . three bums from Nezu . . .
CUT!
. . . and . . . on my path to and from Todai Hongo Campus a detail, which I always liked – a fence and a tree, coexistence
D.
9.10.25, 23:07