Ridgeline subscribers —

I’m on the Tōkaidō again, the road connecting Kyoto and Tokyo that I walked back in May (and walked previously in November 2020), with my buddy John. We’re driving it (GASP — the heresy! Don’t worry — he walked the whole thing forty-three years ago, I’ve walked it twice; driving it is actually proving to be interesting (collapsed spacetime) and strangely exhausting (sitting most of the day)) and doing little, relaxed, pop-ins to various spots that can be difficult to enjoy slowly when you’re knocking out 40+ kilometers of walking a day (like I was in May). Yesterday we hung out at Basho’s grave in Otsu for a little while. Today, the honjin at Tsuchiyama (with a tour given by the 14th generation Tsuchiyama-san himself). We saw a toilet that had been peed in by Emperor Meiji on his 16th birthday. And got to kneel with reverence upon his raised two-mat platform for sitting and sleeping — his jyōdan-no-ma. All exciting stuff.

I imagine many of you rightfully feel battered by politics. I’ve been racking my brain over the last few days about how to “respond.” Jason Kottke puts it perfectly: “… for my own sanity, I need to get back to work here or I will scroll myself into dust. I have no idea if what I’ll be posting is what you’re looking for, but it’s what I’ve got.” There is a whole lotta beauty in this complicated, often very very very stupid world of ours, and I’m going to continue to point to it. So let’s get pointing.

Onward: Shōwa. Those Shōwa vibes. You had Meiji at the end of the 19th century, then Taisho, and then Shōwa. Shōwa ran from December 25, 1926 – January 7, 1989. I wrote about Shōwa in Kissa by Kissa, and kissa themselves are probably the preeminent remaining avatars of the era. (“Snacks,” and “Jazz kissa” are also up there, but are both arguably sub-ish-genres of the more general kissa.) Lots of early Shōwa stuff was burned during WWII. A bunch was made in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s. Shōwa “peaked” in the early ‘80s. At least kissaten did, numerically. And so those shops and venues that remain today are very much not long for this world. Probably close to 80% of all Shōwa-era kissas have closed? And in the next ten years, the rest will shutter. Remaining owners are far beyond retirement age. A handful — fewer than one-in-a-thousand? — of shops will find someone to carry on proprietorship (sometimes a daughter or son, sometimes a neighbor), but if you want to see Shōwa as it was — soft-and-wooden, tinkly-classical-music, coffee-ticket, sofa-isu vibrations — you gotta go now and get your pizza toast on with a side of burnt coffee.

Where should you go, though? That’s a good question. And thankfully Roni Xu & W. David Marx have provided the definitive English answer in their just-released book: Shōwa Guide Tokyo. In their words:

Shōwa Guide Tokyo is the culmination of a years-long attempt to catalog the city’s establishments dating from Shōwa Period (1926-1989) — a formative period when Japan absorbed Western influences but hadn’t quite mastered the details. This hybridization resulted in what is now an extremely unique Japanese culture of yōshoku diners, woody kissaten cafes, nostalgic cake shops, and red brick cocktail bars. The book covers hundreds of Shōwa Period spots in Tokyo, as well as some of the best across the country from warm Kyushu to freezing Hokkaido.

This is a work of love. This is Train Man level stuff. Roni and David have ingested more Shōwa grub than Ozu drank sake. I took this gorgeous 320-page volume into the bath with me the other night and read through most of it in a bout of extreme self-care; many of the shops they mentioned I knew, I had visited, I adored, but many were new to me. I’ve now got a list of stuff to explore in a city I love. (And a few cities beyond.)

If you’re visiting Tokyo and want to get away from the scramble, if you don’t want to ride those go-carts from hell, if you don’t want to cram yourself into Sky Tree with a million selfie-sticks, if you don’t want to jostle your way through the backstreets of Shin Ōkubo to buy fancy makeup, then consider picking up this book and finding a few spots that speak to you. They’ll probably be in neighborhoods you’ve never been. Tokyo Shōwa Guide book covers western-style restaurants (a Shōwa staple), mid-century bars, shops of other mid-century miscellany, and, of course, kissaten. You could build entire months-long culinary itineraries off this book. (Although, I wouldn’t recommend it if you value health; Shōwa food is yummy, but best consumed once in a while.)

The rub — you have to go now. Shops are shuttering. We never did manage to find someone to take over this kissa I mentioned a few months back. Shōwa Guide Tokyo even has a graveyard of places that closed while producing the book. Of the two-dozen or so jazz kissa I went to last summer on my BASIE!BOP!JAMAICA! tour, already three owners have dropped dead. So if you’re going to go, go while the going’s possible.

This is a great guide book made by people who care, for travelers and anarchist gourmands who care. And if there’s anything we need more in the world (as we’ve always needed it, and will continue to need), it’s work like this — work from the heart with a touch of madness. So thank you Roni and David for producing such a thing, for putting in the shoe-leather reporting, for sacrificing your arteries and livers, for compiling, editing, refining, hiring great designers (Ian Lynam did the cover), and seeing it through to production. Making a physical thing and shipping it around the world is one of the hardest of hard creative acts to pull off. And here you are, doing just that, with perfect mid-century style.

More soon,
C