I discovered three extremely rare, unidentified, and unknown photos of Jūnisō from the 1860s. Read the story about this extraordinary find.
This visual chronology uses rare images to show how Nishi-Shinjuku’s Jūnisō Pond changed between the 1860s and 1960s. Maps display the viewpoints.
Tank production at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1944. The Japanese militarism of the 1930s and 1940s initially benefited geisha districts like Jūnisō’s. But in the end it blasted most into oblivion.
Shinjuku in the early 1920s. A railway and population explosion turned it into a thriving modern city. Jūnisō, no longer rural and remote, now became a geisha district, delighting some, enraging others.
An extremely rare photo of Jūnisō Pond in 1905 (Meiji 38). Teahouses and restaurants already crowd the pond’s banks and its natural beauty is no longer the main attraction.
A painting of Jūnisō Pond as it looked during the 1890s, the period when modernization first reached the area. This article introduces revealing first-hand accounts of these, seemingly innocent, early changes.