The Bells of Old Tokyo: Meditations on Time and a City

ISBN: 1250206421

Author: Sherman, Anna

Condition: Used

An elegant and absorbing tour of Tokyo and its residentsFrom 1632 until 1854, Japans rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns city.An exploration of Tokyo becomes a meditation not just on time, but on history, memory, and impermanence. Through Shermans journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo follows haunting voices through the labyrinth that is the Japanese capital: an old woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of World War II. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa shogunal house reflects on the destruction of his grandfathers city: A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness.The Bells of Old Tokyo marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer who presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life in the guise of a tour through a city and its people.