aristocracy lined the banks of the river.
Nearby was the Kyobashi district, named for its "capital bridge" (the Chinese character for the kyo in Kyobashi is the same kyo as in Tokyo and Kyoto). Next to the bridge was the first Kabuki theater, built in 1624 by Nakazawa Kanzaburo.
The Nihombashi and Kyobashi areas had, in the early days, been full of theaters and temples, while neighboring Ningyo-cho was famous for its pleasure quarters. By the late Edo period all were moved to the northern outskirts of town by the conservative shogunate. The wealthy downtown merchants then traveled north for their pleasures, and the trip was usually by boat from the Kyobashi bridge.
With the changes that came during the Meiji period, the wealthy merchants moved away from the area to the prestigious residential districts to the south and west. Not as receptive to change as Ginza and Marunouchi, Nihombashi was slow to catch up with the modernism of the new era. But by the end of the Meiji period, the district had come into its own with a series of monumental buildings of an architectural style that blended European classical elements with traditional Japanese. The Bank of Japan opened its new building in 1896, and more banks and government offices followed. The department stores—Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya—expanded and added floors.
Little remains from the early days—a few Edo period shops and some bridges and buildings from the Meiji and Taisho periods. The commercial banks are still there as is the stock exchange. But among the major business districts in Tokyo, Nihombashi retains the greatest sense of history and a quiet dignity.
Tsukiji
Tsukiji is one of Tokyo's more offbeat tourist attractions. At the main fish market for the city, buying and selling starts at about 5:00 A.M. and finishes shortly after noon. An early morning trip to the market for a fresh sushi breakfast is a great way to start off a day of sightseeing in Tokyo.
Until the 1923 earthquake, the fish market was located in the heart of Nihombashi, near the Bank of Japan and Mitsukoshi Department Store. When nearly four hundred people died there during the post-earthquake fires, the market was torn down and rebuilt on its present site.
Tsukiji, formerly the mouth of the Sumida River, was a major Edo period reclamation project, the name meaning "constructed land."
When the country was opened to the West during the Meiji period, Tsukiji was built as a foreign settlement to isolate and protect the citizens and foreigners from each other. The area was never much liked, except by the Christian missionaries who built St. Luke's Hospital and St. Paul University. The Hoterukan Hotel was built nearby, an early attempt at Western architecture with over two hundred rooms. In 1869 the Tokyo government opened the Shibaura pleasure quarter in Tsukiji in an attempt to please the foreign population. The quarter had over two hundred houses with nearly two thousand geisha and courtesans, but the Shibaura was more than most of the prudish foreigners could take. The quarter never prospered and was shut down shortly afterward.
At the end of the nineteenth century when the treaties with foreign powers were revised and autonomy returned to Japan, foreigners were permitted to live where they chose in the city. Most moved from the settlement and the remaining buildings burned down in the earthquake.
Kanda—Jimbocho
It was with dirt from the top of Kanda's Surugadai hill that the marshlands of early Edo were reclaimed. Nearly half of the hill was carried off over the years and by the late Tokugawa era the hill had a large flat plateau on the top.
Kanda means "god's field," the land having originally belonged to Ise Jingu shrine, the oldest in Japan. The area developed as a town for workers and craftsmen; its fruit and vegetable market provisioned the castle. Edo Period gangsters frequented the district and its bath houses, known for their rather tough breed of women.
The Meiji-period haikara liberals and intellectuals found a home here. The Nikoraido Russian Cathedral was an impressive foreign monument for the neighborhood; there were bookstores and the highest concentration of universities in the city.
The district now has the feel of a classic university town. The nearby Jimbocho secondhand book district adds to the general intellectual atmosphere and over sixty percent of Japan's publishers are in the neighborhood. The district also has many sporting goods stores catering to the average student who, once through the "examination hell" that comes before acceptance into university, spends more time drinking, playing sports, or going to mah-jongg parlors than studying.
Also in the Kanda district are a number of restaurants that date from the Edo period, including Tokyo's most famous noodle shop—Yabu Soba.
Ochanomizu—Hongo—Yushima
With Kanda, these areas make up the major students' districts of Tokyo. Always fond of foreign analogies, the Japanese like to call this the city's "Quartier Latin." The district's real name Ochanomizu means "tea water," a reference to the waters of a nearby spring that were used by Tokugawa leyasu for the tea ceremony.
The district's reputation for education dates from the Edo period with the construction of the official Confucian Academy for the shogunate. The Yushima Seido shrine, formerly part of the school, still survives.
Hongo's Tokyo University, popularly known as "Todai," is the most prestigious university in the country. In January and February each year, hundreds of hopeful junior high and high school students make a pilgrimage to the area, walking from Yushima Seido, to Yushima Shrine (dedicated to a famous Heian period scholar) and finally ending up at the gates of "Todai heaven." Complementing the district's overall educational atmosphere is a nearby concentration of love hotels.
Akihabara
The electronics discount district of Tokyo, Akihabara is a good place to go to experience the productiveness of the country. Besides the electrical goods that interest most foreigners, the selection of home appliances built for the Japanese domestic market is also fun to browse through.
The district was formerly the grounds of an Edo period shrine called the Akiba, or "autumn leaf." When the shrine was destroyed in one of Kanda's frequent fires, the lands were cleared as a fire break and became known as the field of Akiba or Akibagahara. The land was later used as a freight depot by the Meiji government, and the name took on its current form.
Korakuen
Korakuen is best known among the Japanese for its baseball stadium, the site of the yearly Japan Series. From 1871 until the end of World War I, the stadium grounds had been occupied by a government munitions factory that was then moved to Kyushu. The stadium was built in 1934 with Babe Ruth invited as the honored guest at the opening ceremony.
The Korakuen Station was torn down and replaced by the "Big Egg" stadium in 1988. Like the Kasumigaseki Building, the "Egg" has become a standard of measurement and comparison for things of overwhelming size—the annual amount of garbage produced by a particular ward will be likened to filling the "Big Egg" three times, or a new development will be a mere half.
The name Korakuen comes from the Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens that date from the early Edo period. One of the most famous and most beautiful in the city, the garden offers a striking contrast to its namesaké stadium and the surrounding amusement park that now dominates the area.
Shinagawa
The original Shinagawa Station, located nearer to the sea than the present one, served the first Japanese rail line that ran from here to Yokohama (Kanagawa Prefecture). The line was later extended to Shimbashi. One of the most striking of Meiji period modernization efforts, the first trains were expensive and used only by the wealthy, government officials, and foreigners. A story is told of how when the Japanese first boarded the trains, they politely removed their shoes on the platform before entering the cars. Upon arrival, the Japanese passengers disembarked, astonished to find that their shoes were not waiting outside the door where they had left them.
Shinagawa had been a major stop on the Edo-period Tokaido route to the south, growing up as a way station with inns and a pleasure quarter that was second only to the famous Yoshiwara. The pleasure quarter declined in the later Meiji period when the station was moved to its current site.
Meiji-period Shinagawa was part