An elegant and absorbing tour of Tokyo, its past, and its people from "a profoundly evocative writer" ( The Wall Street Journal).
Longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize
From 1632 until 1854, Japan's rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns' city.
An exploration of Tokyo becomes a meditation not just on time, but on history, memory, and impermanence. Through Sherman's journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art form, The Bells of Old Tokyo follows haunting voices through the labyrinth that is the Japanese capital: An old woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of World War II. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa shogunal house reflects on the destruction of his grandfathers' city: "A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness."
The Bells of Old Tokyo is "a meditative exploration of time and change . . . Tokyo's past, although often physically erased by fires or constant demolition and construction in a nation that prizes change and modernization—is movingly excavated and evoked in this unusual book" ( The Wall Street Journal).
"[A] spiritual memoir, which weaves between personal storytelling . . . and oral and mythical histories of the old neighborhoods of Tokyo. . . . The bells were not always easy to find, but Sherman was determined, and she successfully brings into focus their elusive stories, which point to an appealing past in a city that has moved rapidly into the future." — Kirkus Reviews
"An elegant series of musings, a beautifully written evocation of a place and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of time itself." — Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"A beautiful debut of creative nonfiction." — Library Journal (starred review)
"A special book . . . a masterpiece." — The Spectator (UK)