Read Your Way Through Tokyo

Read Your Way Around the World is a series exploring the globe through books.

When I travel, I always find myself wondering about the people who live in the cities that I visit. So I make sure to take along in my suitcase a few novels written by authors from wherever it is I’m going. I start reading as soon as I know my departure date, and keep reading throughout my stay, remaining immersed in those novels even after I’ve returned home.

The people I actually met and the people from the novels, the scenery I actually saw and the scenery from the books: Most of the time, these things do not overlap while on my trip. I can keep a sense of them as being distinct. But once I’m back home, when I revisit the books after my trip, curiously, little by little, aspects from fiction that were distinct while I was traveling begin to converge with what I actually saw and heard on my journey. It is as if the strata of the land’s history and the people who lived there have emerged through the pages of the novels.

The novels and poetry included here serve as an introduction to various inhabitants depicted in Tokyo’s literature over the course of 400 years — from the 17th century, when Tokyo was still called Edo, to the present day. I hope these Tokyoites will reveal to you the many layers of the city and its past.

What might set the tone for my journey? Are there Japanese travelogues?

Matsuo Basho was born in the mid-17th century and spent his life as a wandering poet. Many of his journeys are collected in various travelogues, but “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” (also translated as “The Narrow Road to the Interior”), written toward the end of his life, remains beloved in Japan and has been translated into many languages.

The book is the record of a five-month, 1,500-mile journey on foot, which started in Edo and wound its way throughout the vast northern territories of the Tohoku and Hokuriku regions. Setting out from Senju, on the banks of the Sumida River, in present-day Sumida-ku, Basho composed this haiku: Departing spring, birds cry out, tears in the eyes of fishes.

In that era, travel could be hazardous. The poem connotes a scene in which even the birds and the fishes mourn the passing of spring, which is compounded by Basho’s lament that he doesn’t know whether he will die on this journey. Whenever I myself leave on a trip, I cannot help but think of this verse.