KIBA PARK

"Heading home across the Eitai Bridge was unbearably painful. I felt as though I’d rather die, like Saito Ryoku, that poet who was born of Meiji yet yearned for Edo. Alas, I have to go home eventually. Such is my fate.

Across the river, over the canals, and up the hills I go, into the shadowy forests of Okubo"

– Song of Fukagawa, 1908

1654 | The Great Fire of Meireki & The Origins of Fukagawa/Kiba

In the late 16th century, a man named Fukagawa Hachiroemon moved from Osaka to Edo. His mission? Infill an area of the bay, just east of the mouth of the Sumida River. The new land took the name of its architect: Fukagawa. In 1654, a terrible fire engulfed much of the city. Officials blamed the center city’s lumberyards for fueling the flames in dense neighborhoods like Kanda and Nihonbashi. So, the lumberyards were ordered to relocate across the Sumida.

The city’s 15 lumber wholesalers worked together to turn a slice of Fukagawa into the new center of Edo’s lumber industry. They dug canals and built embankments thus connecting the new lumberyards to the city’s waterways. The area was imaginatively named Kiba, or “lumberyard.” Of course, in the 1700s, every structure in Tokyo was made of wood – homes, businesses, schools, bridges. So, Kiba’s lumberyards brought massive amounts of money into Fukagawa.

Fukagawa flourished into one of the city’s major cultural centers. Fukagawa’s canals, bridges, lumberyards, and streetlife attracted printmakers like Hokusai and Hiroshige. The lumberyards gave rise to a new art form. To move lumber through the canals, workers had to use their feet and a long axe to bind individual logs into rafts. This was called kakunori, or “log riding.” Workers began choreographing kakunori dances to music, and performing at festivals. They still do today.

1872 | Industrialization

The late 19th century marked a major turning point for the lumber yards. With the establishment of the Meiji government in 1868, Japan began an ambitious industrialization campaign. Fukagawa’s canals made it an ideal spot for building factories. In 1872, the country's first cement factory opened in Fukagawa. After centuries of monopoly, the lumberyards had a challenger setting-up shop right on their doorstep. Spinning mills and silk factories set up shop shortly thereafter.

Even so, Fukagawa maintained the atmosphere of the old city better than the rapidly changing neighborhoods west of the Sumida. In his 1908 essay “Song of Fukagawa,” Nagai Kafu finds himself walking its streets at sunset. He was living west of the Sumida River at the time, and reluctant to go home:

Heading home across the Eitai Bridge was unbearably painful. I felt as though I’d rather die, like Saito Ryoku, that poet who was born of Meiji yet yearned for Edo. Alas, I have to go home eventually. Such is my fate. Across the river, over the canals, and up the hills I go, into the shadowy forests of Okubo.

1923 & 1945 | Destruction & Rebirth

In 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed much of Fukagawa, including the lumberyards. But Kiba rebuilt, and doubled in size thanks to the post-earthquake building boom. There were new challenges, though. Lumber imports from the United States and the south Pacific undercut domestic producers. The post-1923 lumberyards abandoned kakunori and other traditional practices in favor of western methods.

Big industry thrived in Fukagawa, but the artisans and merchants had no choice but to leave. They fled for the High City, which suffered far less damage thanks to its lower density and hilly landscape. Fukagawa never quite recovered from this exodus. With so many of its people either dead or displaced, and much of its urban heritage destroyed, Fukagawa became a very different place. To quote Seidensticker: “the sites were there, but denuded, stripped of history and culture.”

The firebombing of the Low City on March 10, 1945 more or less erased it from the map, killing over 100,000 in a matter of hours. Between February 1944 and June 1945, Fukagawa’s population shrunk by 40%.

After the war, the lumberyards rebuilt again. Thanks to the postwar economic boom, they quickly outgrew the original boundaries of Kiba. Land subsidence became an issue. On top of that, further infill projects around the turn of the century had hampered Kiba’s access to Tokyo Bay.

1971 | "New" Kiba

So, in 1971, the lumberyards moved to a new artificial island, at the mouth of the Arakawa River. Yet again, they gave the island a very imaginative name: Shin Kiba, which means “New Kiba.” The city spent years acquiring the old lumberyards for conversion into a public park. Finally, in 1992, Tokyo opened Kiba Park.

The park is divided into 3 zones: north, central, and south. The North Zone is home to the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art and an open athletic space. The Central Zone, bordered by the Sendaibori River and Kasaibashi Avenue, has a riverside. The South Zone is home to a vast green space, a horticulture education center, and a small pond for kakunori performances. The three zones are connected by a huge concrete bridge, which looms over the horizon.