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| ]''This article is about the geographical area called Yamanote. For the ] (JR East) commuter line, see ].'' | |||
| ] | |||
| The traditional name for the affluent, upper-class areas of ] west of the Imperial Palace, especially ]-ku and ]-ku.<ref name="Kōjien Japanese dictionary">] Japanese dictionary</ref><ref name="ja.wikipedia.org">, Japanese Misplaced Pages</ref>. The area's name, which in Japanese means ''an elevated ground or plateau''<ref name="Kōjien Japanese dictionary"/> comes from the fact that it lies on the slopes of the ], a relief that from inner Honshu goes down towards the sea, ending after ] and the ]<ref>, Japanese Misplaced Pages</ref>. Both the ] and ] (or ]) take their name from the region because they cross it <ref name="ja.wikipedia.org"/>. | |||
| = Etymology = | |||
| ==History of the term Yamanote== | |||
| = Geography = | |||
| By their very nature, the two terms Shitamachi and Yamanote should be explained together. From the beginning of its existence, Tokyo (the former ]) has been culturally and economically divided in two parts: the plebeian {{nihongo|]|]: 下町 (したまち) |Shita machi}}, literally ''low town'' or ''low city'' located next to the ], and the aristocratic {{nihongo|]|]: 山の手 (やまのて) |Yama no te}} located on the hills of the Musashino Plateau.<ref></ref> Although neither of the two was ever an official name, both stuck and are still in some use. Both words are used with the same meaning in other parts of the country too. The term Yamanote is also used for example in Hokkaido, Oita and Osaka<ref name="ja.wikipedia.org"/>. The term Yamanote has a connotation of classiness, whereas Shitamachi has one of liveliness and human warmth<ref name="Kōjien Japanese dictionary"/>. | |||
| ==The Yamanote Today== | |||
| = History = | |||
| Because the terms are centuries-old, their meaning and the physical they define have changed several times. In an interview with magazine ], noted translator and Shitamachi scholar ] claims that nowadays the dividing line between today's equivalents of Shitamachi and Yamanote goes from Ginza to ], and he prefers to call the two "north" and "south" because the old names are not longer appropriate. He claims that a century ago Shitamachi's ] and ] were the center of Tokyo insofar as shopping and entertainment were concerned. Today, those centers are in ], ], ] and ].<ref>, Metropolis Magazine</ref>. | |||
| ==References== | |||
| = Common perceptions of difference = | |||
| <references/> | |||
| ==Housing== | |||
| ==Character and social life== | |||
| ==Accent== | |||
| ==Clothing== | |||
| ] | |||
| = In culture and popular culture = | |||
| ] | |||
| == Enka == | |||
| ] | |||
| == Shitamachi boom == | |||
| ==TV/Film== | |||
| <br /> | |||
| = 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/> | |||
| ==References== | |||
| * | |||
Revision as of 01:34, 15 June 2009
This article is about the geographical area called Yamanote. For the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) commuter line, see Yamanote Line.
The traditional name for the affluent, upper-class areas of Tokyo west of the Imperial Palace, especially Bunkyō-ku and Shinjuku-ku.. The area's name, which in Japanese means an elevated ground or plateau comes from the fact that it lies on the slopes of the Musashino Plateau, a relief that from inner Honshu goes down towards the sea, ending after Edo Castle and the Imperial Palace. Both the Yamanote Line and Yamate Dōri (or Kampachi) take their name from the region because they cross it .
History of the term Yamanote
By their very nature, the two terms Shitamachi and Yamanote should be explained together. From the beginning of its existence, Tokyo (the former Edo) has been culturally and economically divided in two parts: the plebeian Shitamachi (Japanese: 下町 (したまち), Shita machi), literally low town or low city located next to the Sumida River, and the aristocratic Yamanote (Japanese: 山の手 (やまのて), Yama no te) located on the hills of the Musashino Plateau. Although neither of the two was ever an official name, both stuck and are still in some use. Both words are used with the same meaning in other parts of the country too. The term Yamanote is also used for example in Hokkaido, Oita and Osaka. The term Yamanote has a connotation of classiness, whereas Shitamachi has one of liveliness and human warmth.
The Yamanote Today
Because the terms are centuries-old, their meaning and the physical they define have changed several times. In an interview with magazine Metropolis, noted translator and Shitamachi scholar Edward Seidensticker claims that nowadays the dividing line between today's equivalents of Shitamachi and Yamanote goes from Ginza to Shinjuku, and he prefers to call the two "north" and "south" because the old names are not longer appropriate. He claims that a century ago Shitamachi's Ginza and Nihonbashi were the center of Tokyo insofar as shopping and entertainment were concerned. Today, those centers are in Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Shibuya and Shinagawa..
References
- ^ Kōjien Japanese dictionary
- ^ 山の手, Japanese Misplaced Pages
- 武蔵野台地, Japanese Misplaced Pages
- Edward Seidensticker: Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake: how the shogun's ancient capital became a great modern city, 1867-1923
- Tokyo Feature Story: Edward Seidensticker, Metropolis Magazine