Revision as of 11:00, 14 June 2009

A map showing the approximate location of the old Yamanote (left) and Shitamachi (right)

Etymology

Geography

History

Common perceptions of difference

Housing

Character and social life

Accent

Clothing

In culture and popular culture

Enka

Shitamachi boom

TV/Film

Quotable sources

Japanese social organization By Takie Sugiyama Lebra Edition: 3 Published by University of Hawaii Press, 1992 ISBN 0824814207, 9780824814205 236 pages

p. 6 Distinction comes from Tokugawa period of strip of land. Meaning fuzzy; miyamoto cho not part of the distinction, but became so because of densely packed shops.

Distinction is geographically fuzzy, but remains in class. Samurai have become white collar.

p. 26 Bestor’s chapter:

The distinction between shitamachi and its opposite – yamanote, the nonmerchant areas of Tkoy dominated by white-colar workers is one of the most fundamental social, subcultural, and geographic demarcations in contemporary Tokyo.

p. 55 Lebra’s chapter.

The yamanote-shitamachi dichotomy is far from clear or consistent, partly because the boundary and internal division of urban Tokyo has changed extensively since the initial installation of the 15-ku system in 1878

Japanese adhere to this dichotomy because these designations are strongly symbolic of class divisions more than denotative of geography.

Seidensticker is quoted on p. 56:

When in the 17th century the Tokugawa regime set about building a seat for itself, it granted most of the solid hilly regions to the military aristocracy, and filled I the marshy mouths of the Sumida and Tone rivers, to the east of the castle. The flatlands that resulted became the abode of the merchants and craftsmen who purveyed to the voracious aristocracy and provided its labor. (1983: 8).

Encyclopedia of contemporary Japanese culture By Sandra Buckley Published by Taylor & Francis, 2002 ISBN 0415143446, 9780415143448 634 pages

457: The shitamachi is literally translated as “downtown”, but it was historically an even more specific references to “lowlands” and was coined th “low city” in contrast to the “high city”. These two terms demarcated not only the geographical and topographical spaces of pre-modern and early moden Edo, but also the culturel space of high and low, elite and popular culture. The low city was the domain of the merchants and artisans who serviced the needs of the high city world of aristocratic residences, temples, shrines and official buildings. It was a world of street entrepreneurs, storytellers, peddlers, itinerants and raucous festivals, in start contrast to the austere aesthetic of the samurai elite and the prevailing climate of neo-Confucian propriety, protocols and scholarly aspirations.

458 Popular television dramas, comedy and documentary now rarefy an often idealised notion og the the edokko, with the same intensity and nostalgia afforded an endangered species.

529 (entry on Tokyo)

Yamanote people are said to be distant and cold, if rich and trendy, while shitamachi people are deemed honest, forthright and reliable. This strongly impressionistic view of Tokyo, however…

Kodansha encyclopedia of Japan By Gen Itasaka, Kōdansha Published by Kōdansha, 1983 Item notes: v. 7 Original from the University of Michigan Digitized 6 Sep 2008 ISBN 0870116274, 9780870116278 382 pages

149: yamanote (literally “the foothills”), the districts and the traditions associated historically with the samurai.

150: the shitamachi is a distinctive segment of urban society, distinguishable in terms of geography, historical background, social and cultural traditions, social identity and economic subsistence.

Crafting selves: power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace By Dorinne K. Kondo Edition: illustrated, reprint Published by University of Chicago Press, 1990 ISBN 0226450449, 9780226450445 346 pages

57: In Tokyo itself, the socioeconomic division between small and large firms, blue-collar and white-collar, is projected onto the realm of symbolic space. In the folk wisdom of Tokyo dwellers, the city is divided into roughly two parts. The western half is called Yamanote, the hillside or the foothills, while the eastern part is Shitamachi, literally downtown, for it lies on a plain on the lower ground near the bay. Thought the boundaries are far from clear-cut, this geographical division corresponds to two different cultural images of its residents. Yamanote is the home of the bureaucrat, the professional, the white-collar worker in large, elite firms. It is the mainstream, modern ideal. Shitamachi, on the other hand, conjures up images of the merchant, the artisan, the small family business. A more “traditionally Japanese” ethos is thought to reign here.

59: The dominance of Yamanote culture is evident from the fact that their language is considered standard Japanese; therefore, by definition “making the shitamachi man a speaker of a dialect (RJ Smith 1960, 24). Shitamachi speakers are renowned for their inability to distinguish the syllable hi from shi. They are also supposedly less apt to use the elaborate word forms more characteristic of Yamanote Japanese.

60 Describes shitamachi language as “staccato” and yamanote as “legato”.

61 There are prejudices about differences in food. Shitamachi is takoyaki, okonomiyaki; it’s informal and communal.

64 Perception: Borrowing is communal in Shitamachi, a sign of weakness in Yamanote, where self-sufficiency is the norm.

Title: Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan Author: Joshua Hotaka Roth Publisher: Cornell University Press Date/Time: 2002 Pages: English text 161 pages (Paperback) ISBN: 0-8014-8808-7

127

After a long postwar decline of shitamachi status, the 1980s saw a revalorization of merchant culture tradition. Shitamachi toady is associated with “an ‘authentic’ and distinctly ‘traditional’ way of life, which has slipped away from most urban Japanese” (Bestor 1993).

Although the shitamchi cultural revival has been nostalgically imagined by many members of upwardly mobile middle class, however, there is a very significant blue-collar contingent in addition to the old middle-class shopkeepers, who “view themselves as the true heirs to the rough and tumble lifestyles of pre-modern shitamachi.” (Bestor 1992, 42)

The spaces of the modern city: imaginaries, politics, and everyday life By Gyan Prakash, Kevin Michael Kruse Edition: illustrated Published by Princeton University Press, 2008 ISBN 0691133433, 9780691133430 457 pages

379 It was in this climate of rampant speculation, redevelopment, and wuasi-utopian master plans that new interest emerged in the city’s aprt, as a site of resistance or refuge, or as a reaffirmation that solid bedrock underlay the giddy heights on which Tokyo’s present stood. The 1980s saw a spate of new writing on the city, much of it rooted in walking and street-level observation, which journalists dubbed the “Tokyo Boom”, the “Edo boom”, the “shitamachi boom” and, more generally, the “urban writing boom”.

School to work transition in Japan: an ethnographic study By Kaori Okano Edition: illustrated Published by Multilingual Matters, 1992 ISBN 1853591629, 9781853591624 286 pages

60 This type of communit where an old neighbourhood solidarity is still strong is called shitamachi…The shitamachi inhabitants stayed on in these quarters unless they become wealthy enough to move into the outer suburbs.

Notes

References