Plying the Crafts of Old Japan in Tokyo’s Asakusa

If you’ve got the idea that Tokyo is too Westernized, you’ve missed Asakusa--one of this city’s riverside districts where merchants and craftsmen settled several hundred years ago.

Generations later, neighborhood artisans are still at it--weaving tatami mats, pounding copper, making arrows, fabricating lanterns, dying fabrics, carving wood, roasting rice crackers and molding tea cakes.

Nowhere in Tokyo is the spirit of old Japan more alive than Asakusa. Although most of the tour buses stop briefly in the area to visit Asakusa Kannon, the historic temple to the Buddhist goddess of compassion, the whole neighborhood is worth a day or more of exploration.

It’s easy to time your visit for one of several dozen annual festivals: white heron dances, dragon dances, the courtesan pageant, bonsai festival and even a samba celebration.

Wandering the small streets of Asakusa, a visitor can appreciate the rich diversity of traditional Japanese life by poking through some of the old shops and mingling with the people.

While other tourists ply the slick department stores of uptown Tokyo, you can be browsing for the same exotic treasures sold in Edo times and meet the craftspeople--Tokyo citizens of at least three generations--who are keeping the flame of traditional arts alive.

Consider a tsuba at the swordsman’s emporium (the decorative guard on a samurai sword) that you could use as a belt buckle or pendant.

Authentic Garments

Spend a little time in a shop that for six generations has specialized solely in handmade camellia wood combs. Or buy yourself an authentic festival outfit and knock them out at your next costume party.

Best of all, you can get to Asakusa easily on public transportation, either subway or river boat, and dine in a pleasant Japanese cafe for as little as $5 U.S., less if you settle for sushi from a fast-food vendor.

You can end your day with a long, soothing soak in the pristine hot pools of a public bath house from another era, Akebono-yu, for about $2.

If you want to stay in the neighborhood, there’s the new Western-style Asakusa View Hotel and several ryokan (traditional Japanese inns).

The Kaminarimon Temple Gate is a good place to start your explorations. Just inside, the 1,000-foot lantern-lined promenade that leads to the temple challenges the senses.

Along the walkway, more than 100 stalls offer seaweed, samurai swords, oil paper umbrellas, fans, cutlery, kabuki wigs, kimono underwear, Edo toys--and wind-up rabbits blowing police whistles.

You can hear the thump and clatter as a ningyo-yaki baker turns roasting cakes from iron molds shaped like birds, pagodas and lanterns. In one shop you can buy both pet goods and ivory crafts--a rawhide chew for Fido alongside $500 chopsticks.

Surrounding the temple complex is a network of streets with small shops selling items that will stop conversation at home.

Safflower Lipstick

How about nightingale droppings for a beautiful complexion? For $8 you can buy a packet of them from the shop selling stage makeup and old-fashioned Japanese cosmetics.

At the same spot you can also consider safflower lipstick, sold as a metallic chartreuse cake in a porcelain sake cup.

At Miyamoto’s, on the other side of Asakusa, check out the red lacquer lioness and lion-head masks used for New Year’s dances. Red and white yak hair wigs, 39 inches long, complete the outfit.

It’s a spectacular store, more like a museum, featuring Japanese percussion instruments, festival equipment and a magnificent display of mikose, the portable festival shrines, each one a year’s work requiring seven specialized craftsmen.

Don’t miss the splendid drum museum on the fourth floor, an exhibit of several hundred drums from the proprietor’s private collection.

Perhaps most intriguing to the Western visitor is watching artisans at work producing the items that are uniquely Japanese.

For an introduction, stop in at the new traditional handicrafts center, a modest storefront displaying all the arts produced in that area. Along with familiar examples, you’re sure to stumble across some craft you never knew existed.

For example, the objime , that slender cord that holds the kimono belt in place, is braided from hundreds of delicate hair-thin silk threads. Or kiri-kimekomi, a rare soft wood inlaid with silk and made into handsome boxes.

Japanese Joinery

Each weekend, an artist-in-residence spends an afternoon “on stage” demonstrating his work in the front window. Some of the old masters you’ll meet here have been designated by the government as “living national treasures,” such as Teizo Hashimoto, the last living Tokyo kite maker from Edo times.

On a recent afternoon, carpenter-furniture maker Tadashi Kimura worked on a small mulberry dresser demonstrating the art of Japanese joinery, perfectly interlocking joints without nails. It was more like watching a jeweler with a rare gem, as he worked with tiny pencil-erasure-size planes and other tools he had made.

Continue searching in the neighborhood and you’ll learn more about the exacting standards that some artisans impose on themselves to make their high-quality crafts: the lantern maker who uses water from faraway prefectures to make his incredibly thin, cream-colored paper; the tatami maker who sews fine rush covers onto thick rice-straw mats with invisible stitches, using a needle the size of an ice pick, and the rice cracker baker who uses soy sauce exclusively from a old and secret recipe.

When you’re hungry, one of Asakusa’s most interesting restaurants is Komagata Dojo, where you sit cross-legged before a plank cooking sake-marinated mudfish ( dojo ) and leeks over your own hibachi.

If you still have time, Kappabashi, the kitchenware and restaurant equipment district, is a 10-minute walk away, 200 specialty shops crowded into a few short blocks.

Even on a full stomach, the vast displays of plastic food samples are fascinating. So are the miniature fried eggs and chocolate kisses fashioned into earrings, and ballpoint pens camouflaged as carrots and asparagus.

You’ll see rice paddles the size of oars and pots. And the real fun begins when you get into the traditional wares and try to discover the use of some of the implements.

Sumo Stadium

For the ultimate Asakusa side trip, walk across the river, through Mukojima’s temple district and down to the sumo district near Ryogoku station.

Head for the neighborhood centerpiece, the splendid new sumo stadium, where 300- to 400-pound wrestlers compete in a traditional martial art going back more than 2,000 years.

It’s an experience in fanfare, ceremony, power, spirituality and discipline. Plan for tickets and a visit during tournament times in January, May and September.

The district is fun to visit any time, however. The sumo museum in the stadium is open year round. In the back streets behind the stadium are the sumo stables, where the wrestlers live and train.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll see some of these giants out for a walk. A good lunch stop here is Tomoegata, where you can try some chanko-nabe-- the delicious stew that fortifies these massive bodies.

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To get to Asakusa by subway, ride the Ginza line to the last stop, Asakusa Station. By riverboat, the Tokyo Cruise Ship Co. sails every 40 to 60 minutes between 9:50 a.m. and dusk from Hinode Pier (a 10-minute walk from the JR Hamamatsucho Station) or Hamarikyu Park (a 10-minute walk from the Shimbashi subway station). This delightful 45-minute cruise on the Sumida River passes beneath 11 bridges; it costs about $4.50.

At the Traditional Handicraft Display House (“Taito-Ku Dento Kogei Tenji Kan”), 2-22-12 Asakusa (Hisago Street), Taito-Ku, Tokyo, you can be directed by the curator to an artist’s studio or shop. There you’ll find lanterns ($40 to $500), teapots (from $60), shabu-shabu pots ($750), an aibiki (tiny fold-up seat; about $240), tsuba (from $150); camellia wood combs ($20 to $35), and oil-paper umbrellas ($12 to $40).

Next door at Adachiya, authentic festival costumes cost about $150.

As for accommodations, the deluxe Asakusa View Hotel, with both Japanese and Western-style rooms, is a good choice, especially for fitness-oriented travelers. There is a large indoor/outdoor pool, enormous Japanese bathing facilities with wooden hot tubs, a gymnasium and a staff of skilled shiatsu masseuses.

For joggers, detailed maps define routes around the neighborhood and through nearby riverside parks.

The rates are reasonable, by Tokyo standards: about $100 single and $150 double, plus 20% tax. For more information contact the Asakusa View Hotel, 3-17-1 Nishi-Asakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo, Japan.

Asakusa has several good ryokan. Sadachiyo, near the temple, is about $114 per person, with breakfast and dinner included.

Restaurants include Komagata Dojo, 1-7-12 Komagata, Taito-ku, where the house specialty is dojo (mudfish) for about $10. Tomoegata, 2-17 Ryogoku, Sumida-ku, specializes in chanko-nabe (sumo stew) for about $10.

For more information on travel to Japan, including accommodations and Asakusa festival listings, contact the Japan National Tourist Organization, 624 S. Grand Ave., Suite 2640, Los Angeles 90017, (213) 623-1952.