Seeing the Kanda River

Abstract

Research Article| November 01 2022 Seeing the Kanda River James Farrer James Farrer James Farrer is a professor of sociology at Sophia University in Tokyo. His research focuses on the contact zones of global cities, including ethnographic studies of sexuality, nightlife, expatriate communities, and urban food cultures. His current projects investigate community foodways in Tokyo and the global spread of Japanese restaurant cuisine. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2022) 22 (4): 49–53. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2022.22.4.49 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James Farrer; Seeing the Kanda River. Gastronomica 1 November 2022; 22 (4): 49–53. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2022.22.4.49 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search When we first moved to Tokyo in 1998, my wife and I rented a studio apartment next to the Kanda River. I knew nothing about the role of this river in Tokyo’s urbanization, its usefulness in military defense, its romanticized image in popular culture, or even where it started and ended. I certainly did not think of the river as a providential source of drinking water. It just made me sad. It was, in my eyes, an eyesore, along with the exposed electric wires, gray-tiled apartment buildings, and treeless roadways that often made me wonder, “How did this ancient city of 37 million become so ugly?” Discounting my obvious symptoms of first-year Tokyo culture shock, the Kanda River near my apartment was indeed a bare concrete ditch, with steep canalized walls channeling a thin, seemingly lifeless beige stream far below street level, inaccessible to life around it. It reminded me... You do not currently have access to this content.