Word: tokyo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tokyo the time of the rains had passed and hot and humid summer settled firmly in on the rickety, raucous, jerry-built capital that has sprung up from the ashes and rubble of 1945. Tokyo, Japan's capital since 1868, was before World War II a sort of oriental Washington, D.C. Officially, only a limited number of nightclubs were permitted in the capital, and the sword-swinging prewar Japanese police force saw to it that decorum was the order of the day as well as the night. Now all this has changed. In twelve feverish, prosperous postwar years, Tokyo...
Last week the 8,471,637 inhabitants of Tokyo's 789 square miles* were hurtling to and from their homes and offices in 900 overcrowded tramcars, 860 jammed buses, 14.3 miles of pin-neat subway tunnels, 240,000 autos, and 12,451 desperately driven taxis, popularly known as "kamikazes." To enforce the law in their burgeoning metropolis, Tokyoites have the services of 22,334 policemen (now equipped with nightsticks and U.S.-made .38-cal. revolvers instead of swords). One of the police force's biggest headaches: a spreading rash of crimes of violence by the spiv and Teddy...
Ginza & Gardens. Tokyo's daily vital statistics include 340 births, 128 deaths, 256 weddings, 20 divorces and 6 suicides. Despite the fact that 400 new buildings are going up monthly, Tokyo is still suffering a staggering (400,000) housing shortage. The current price of land along the famed Ginza is $4,160 for four square yards. The prewar regulation limiting the number of nightclubs has long since been forgotten. Tokyo now has 35,000 bars, 2,000 brothels and 73,000 foreign civilian residents (including 10,000 Americans...
Double Life. The postwar impact of the West, and particularly of the U.S., has created a striking duality in the lives of Tokyo's plain people. They wear Western clothes to work, slip into cool kimonos or yukata at home. They drink coffee or eat popsicles at midmorning, have curried rice, raw fish or veal cutlet for lunch, go home to green tea, rice, seaweed, lily bulb, lotus root and bean curd. They go to see Marilyn Monroe at the cinema one night, follow this up (finances permitting) with long excursions to lengthy and painstakingly stylized classic Japanese Kabuki...
...total effect of the U.S. influence has yet to be evaluated. Says one American resident in Tokyo: "They are using us like gunpowder-to blow up the thick walls of old custom." Gunpowder or not, the Western influence, matched by Japan's own singular drive and energy, is giving the country the highest living standard in the Far East. And the living standard in Tokyo is higher than anywhere else in the four main rich and fertile islands of Japan. This, in part, is responsible for Tokyo's spectacular population increase, which now averages about 250,000 annually...