Mists, natural and man-made, so pile upon one another in the Tokyo skies that the view from one of the Shinjuku skyscrapers is not likely, on an average day, to go very far. When it does, one may be surprised at the amount of greenery. Ōsaka is an ashen city by comparison, and even Kyōto, the ancient capital, is wanting in the wide and beautiful parks that are scattered throughout Tokyo. The cemeteries are also wide, verdant, and beautiful. Grave viewing can be a satisfying pastime.

The traditional pattern for viewing the flowers and grasses of the seasons has shown remarkable powers of survival. The famous places of Edo were mostly in the northern and eastern districts, and they are so situated in Tokyo as well. In spite of disasters and crowding, the flatlands and the hills along their immediate fringes are still where the blossom-viewing crowds gather. In this phenomenon may be found, indeed, the only regard in which the old Low City has held its own against the growing cultural hegemony of the High City.

There are famous new places, to be sure, such as the iris gardens of the Meiji Shrine, said to have been designed by the Meiji emperor himself; and such blossoms as the camellia and the chrysanthemum are to be seen everywhere. For the first in the annual procession of important blossoms, the plum, most people go to the Yushima Shrine, near Ueno Park. Ueno Park itself, along with the Sumida embankment, was the most famous place in Edo for cherry blossoms. It remains the most famous of Tokyo as well. Ueno also contains a renowned peony garden. Probably the most famous of peony gardens is at Nishiarai Daishi temple, north of the Ara River. The best-known azalea garden is at the Nezu Shrine, just north of the University of Tokyo. For wisteria one can do no better than the Kameido shrine, in the eastern suburbs until 1932. As beautiful as the iris garden at the Meiji Shrine are those at Horikiri and Mizumoto, in the eastern part of the city. For the lotuses of full summer it is Ueno again. Then come chrysanthemums and autumn foliage, the latter best viewed in the mountains.

The parks of Yokohama are newer than those of Tokyo, but there are fine ones. The most popular, Yamashita, is on land reclaimed from the bay with debris from the 1923 earthquake. The Sankei Garden, some distance south of the city centre, was built and presented to the city by a 19th-century silk merchant. The park once reposed by the bay, but reclamation has put it inland some distance and in some measure lessened its beauty. It contains a collection of fine old buildings moved from elsewhere. The lands between Sakuragi-chō and the harbour were once grim docks and warehouses. Now they are like a field of densely blooming wildflowers, the impression of wildness being carefully cultivated.

Building styles

Tamed nature in parks, gardens, temples, and cemeteries aside, it cannot be said that Tokyo is a beautiful city. Physically, it is among the newest cities in the world: almost nothing is as much as a century old. Disaster helps explain this fact, but it is not the only reason. Traditionally, the Japanese have not built for durability. Buildings are torn down at a rate that would be remarkable in most places and is next to unbelievable in a country that thinks itself strapped for resources. So almost everything is new, and rebuilding seems to result inevitably in something less distinguished than what was replaced. The view from a moderately high window will most commonly look out on several dozens of buildings, all of which are in unimaginative modern styles.

Skyscrapers are a relatively recent phenomenon, dating only from the completion (1968) of the 36-story Kasumigaseki Building just south of the government ministries. Until then, aesthetic and engineering considerations had kept buildings to a maximum of about 10 stories, but there soon blossomed a number of high-rise structures, all purported by their builders to be earthquake-resistant. The largest cluster of skyscrapers rises to the west of Shinjuku station, although Yokohama boasts the tallest building in Japan: the 70-story Landmark Tower, completed in 1993.

Surviving pockets of wooden structures from perhaps the turn of the 20th century, as well as the xylographic art of Edo, tell us that Tokyo must once have been a very pleasing city—in the severe, monochrome manner held by many to be peculiarly Japanese. The pockets will soon go, to be replaced by cheaper, perhaps more comfortable, certainly uglier modern things. The city still contains a scattering of buildings in premodern European styles, including a rather fine Queen Anne building in the Kasumigaseki bureaucratic quarter; but cracker-box modern has been overwhelmingly favoured since World War II. To let these facts prey on one’s mind is to overlook a very important point: that an ugly face can also be a very animated and endearing face.