A spectacle swaying in a sea of crowds: Asakusa's freak show and urban shadows (Taisho to early Showa periods)

A spectacle swaying in a sea of crowds: Asakusa's freak show and urban shadows (Taisho to early Showa periods)

From the Taisho era (1912-1926) to the early Showa era (1926-1989), Asakusa was a pulsating center of popular culture. The high sound of a band of musicians, mixed with the footsteps of geta (wooden clogs) and the call of the crowd, created such a din and noise that conversations were not possible even before noon. If you go around to the back of the street, whorehouses disguised as wine shops line the alleyways, creating a crossroads of desire and curiosity. While the world shunned them as obscene, for young people they were an entrance to the unknown, a passageway to test the norms of the city.

This hustle and bustle made the "front" and "back" of the city into one continuous landscape. Behind the glamor of the front street, sake breweries and private whorehouses functioned half-recognized and half-approved, and the heat of Asakusa was always flowing, day and night. Young people who entered Asakusa with only their belongings were forced to reevaluate their own standards of propriety and immorality. The bustle of Asakusa was not merely the sound of merriment, but the very buzz of a modern mass society on the rise.

However, the Great Kanto Earthquake quickly changed the terrain. The symbolic 12th floor of the building collapsed, and the brothels of Chizukamachi burned to the ground. The post-quake reconstruction of the imperial capital saw the construction of new wide streets to serve as firebreaks, the introduction of noncombustible buildings, and the development of parks and plazas, and Asakusa was reorganized according to the logic of compartmentalization and flow lines. While the progress of reconstruction brought improvements in safety, hygiene, and urban functions, the chaos and enthusiasm of the pre-disaster period receded into the background as "memories," and the forms of entertainment gradually transformed into permanent movie theaters, reviews, and small theaters.

At the same time, the abolition of prostitution movement, which advocated the liberation of prostitutes and the protection of women, gained momentum in the Taisho era, and criticism of the public prostitution system was on the agenda of social movements and government administration. The police and the health administration tightened their control through a double net of supervision and medical checkups, and the well-known sake breweries in the alleyways became targets of surveillance in the name of "sanitation" and "public morals. The conflict between enjoyment and labor, consent and exploitation, and freedom and regulation in Asakusa reflects the contradictions of modern Japan.

Still, the hustle and bustle of Asakusa will not disappear easily. Post-revival theater districts and reviews carry on the excitement of the freak shows of the past in other forms, and the flow of people ruminate on old memories deep in their hearts while learning new lines of flow. A small conversation in an alley, a half-lit naked light bulb, a caller's crooning. These fragments remain as the temperature of life spilling through the mesh of the system, and they immediately rise to the surface at the mention of the name Asakusa.

Asakusa was a device of modernization and at the same time a crucible of discord. Even though the straight line of reconstruction plans and the ethics of the abolition of prostitution movement echoed through the streets, the sea of crowds continued to surge with a mixture of bodies and voices, desire and shame, and labor and solace. This is why the heat of the city, which changes its shape with the times but does not disappear, evokes memories of both the expectations and anxieties that we have about the city.