Tokyo Raw 2007

Tokyo Raw 2007

Like many mega cities, Tokyo is a city of great contrasts. [Music] Every city has its rich. [Music] It’s working class and it’s homeless. The West likes to think of Tokyo as a modern macopouloolis, shiny, commercial, affluent. The US media and the film Lost in Translation depict the affluent side of Tokyo, the side you want to learn about. But the isolation Japan experienced as a small island until Commodore Matthew Perry opened trade in 1853 had farreaching consequences. Japan is an insular society with many levels of social status. Foreigners are not especially welcome and can never really assimilate. The birth rate has fallen at an alarming rate. The elderly make up an increasingly large percentage of the population. Companies have difficulty filling jobs. Cities like Hamamatsu have large Brazilian populations who work in the factories in a subculture that is torn between continents. But Japan is loathed to accept large-scale immigration to fill jobs. [Music] [Music] The working class of Tokyo, the Shidamachi, have endured a great deal since the beginning of the 20th century. [Music] Only in 1925 were males over the age of 25 allowed to vote. Women could not vote until 1945. The great KTO earthquake of 1923 killed 140,000 people, primarily in the postquake fires that raged through the city. Brick and stone buildings collapsed in the initial quake and houses built of wood quickly burned. Most of the business and residential areas of the city were destroyed. The city rebuilt only to be subjected during World War II to Allied firebombing which primarily destroyed the lives and neighborhoods of the people. Because of these events and other earthquakes in the 18th and 17th centuries, few old buildings survive in Tokyo.

I was going through old hard drives and surprised to find this, it is the start of a documentary I never finished. It was completed March 18, 2008, which means I took the footage during my November 2007 trip to Tokyo.

The narration is slow, the footage mixed, but this is a time capsule to 2007-2008. I may be uploading it now but it sat untouched since March 18, 2008.

Let me know what you think. I plan to do more like this as well as another music video like Tokyo 2009.
Tokyo Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvoHUy1WOL4&list=PLrBy1sKihJDpiY114M0Mp1478gV-gVyEA