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Congratulations! That’s an amazing success for a “mere” seven month research. Reaching such an extensive analysis could often take years, not months. Love all the new information!

Dear, these days I’ve been in Tokyo a couple of weeks for business.
I took the chance to try to make one of my biggest dreams come true: following my uncle.

He passed when I was a kid (30 years ago) and everything I know about him living here are a restaurant name (closed 15 years ago) and a picture of him touching a stone.

I discover that stone being one of the love stones at jishu jinja shrine, near Kiyomizudera temple. I wanted to visit there but with no luck, as the site is under construction at the moment.

The picture showing this stone that has a wood tablet with something written on it. Recent pictures I found online shows “恋占いの石” (Koiuranainoishi – Love fortune-telling stone).

But from my uncle’s picture I can see that the tablet has been renewed and the last kanji (hope I spell it good) seems different from the recent one. I’m not totally sure since the picture I have is slightly cut at the bottom.

Do you think you can help me?

Thanks,
Maurizio

Great article on rajio taiso. I must have missed this one but found the link on Hiroko’s blog. We had many opportunities (and obligations) to enjoy rajio taiso growing up in Yokohama but I didn’t know all the history of it.
I have my 5 year old grandson with me this weekend and it inspired me to look up one on YouTube for kids.
We found a pokeman one which we both did together.
I love that you have the sheet music for it.
I’m going to send it to my son so he can do a version on the marimba.

A tea field near Toji!!! Sadly, that part of Kyoto is not so pretty these days. Surrounded by major roads and local office buildings. I used to drop my wife off to work everyday across from Toji. At least Toji and the pagoda still stand representing old Kyoto.

With the current destruction of Hibiya Park and upcoming destruction of Jingu Gaien, the pattern of unashamed conversion into built-up places of entertainment to satisfy worldly desires at the expense of natural beauty seems to continue through the centuries.

Hello Kjeld,
I have very much enjoyed reading your fascinating articles on the komori. I have looked at a number of photographs of Komori by T. Enami and noticed that they are not studio shots and maybe not all posed. This must mean he took them with some sort of portable camera, I would guess? I’m used to seeing 19th century Japanese photographs that are all posed studio shots. You don’t know what sort of camera he was using do you? Thank you, Melinda

The current Shinsaibashi river bridge still exists….sort of. For the international Expo in the 1970’s Osaka added highways and other city improvements. The Shinsaibashi river was drained, dug out and an underground shopping center was put in (crysta nagahori shopping). The remains of the bridge were kept and put in concrete as part of the road. So people still cross the street and walk over the bridge.

I live by the Marukogawa river in Futakotamagawa. The lady across the street knows the history of the whole neighborhood and informed me that the original family who lived here were kimono dyers. They used to wash the kimono fabric in the Marukogawa. Now the river is a walled by concrete but when my neighbor was young it was a natural river which often overflowed its banks.

I still don’t know much about Yokoyama Matsusaburo’s works, so it was more or less a guess. Following Terry Bennett’s “Photography in Japan” I assumed that this specific “framed” caption might be Yokoyama’s, but from what I’ve seen there are 2 or 3 different styles of said caption and I’m not sure all of them were used by his studio.

It seems the photo at the top of the page is a copy with erased caption that might have been from Yokoyama Matsusaburō’s atelier. See the reference photo