Everything About Nomigawa: The Story of Tokyo's Forgotten Class B River

2019/11/19

The scenery of Tokyo changes drastically. The Dojunkai Apartments, which I spent my late twenties photographing, have all disappeared. I find myself telling young people things like, "There used to be a public bathhouse here," and when they ask, "When was that?" I let it slip that it was "about twenty-some years ago." While it's natural once you're over sixty, to them, it's a past they couldn't possibly remember—in other words, a story that belongs to history.

The "Nomigawa" featured in this book is a Class B river that flows through Tokyo's Setagaya, Meguro, and Ota wards. It ran through the neighborhoods where I spent my childhood until my mid-twenties, such as Kugahara, Okusawa, and Todoroki. Along with my memories of that time, I explored the history and transitions of this river through old maps and literature, and walked from its source to its mouth, spanning over thirty years. Phrases like "There used to be... here," "Something like this appeared," or "This doesn't match my memory at all" come up frequently. The Nomigawa itself has transformed from a ditch-smelling sewage river into a pseudo-river flowing with colorless, transparent, highly treated water.

Shortly after I started elementary school, on a day of heavy rain, a classmate muttered, "Oh, the Nomigawa is overflowing. I can't go home today." In the past, the Nomigawa frequently flooded and was a river that "swallowed" (nomu) houses. One theory for the etymology of "Dodobashi" on the Nomigawa, in the direction he was looking, is that the Senzoku tributary flowing into the Nomigawa was a waterfall that roared "dodo-dodo..." The "Shinpen Musashi Fudoki Ko" from the Bunsei era of the Edo period also hints at flooding near the confluence, stating, "When there is long rain... water disasters cannot be avoided." The episode from that rainy day is within the span of my own life, yet it seems it is already part of history. The Ebara and Kugahara plateaus on both banks of the Nomigawa are part of the Musashino Loam layer from around the Würm glaciation, and one can observe differences in topography in the tributaries and culverts on both sides. Furthermore, the Nomigawa is a trace of the repeated course changes made by the Tama River, which once flowed into the Arakawa river system, before settling into its current route. These are all stories from prehistoric times.

The rapidly changing scenery of Tokyo is perhaps like surface moss from the perspective of the Musashino Plateau, and the humans living temporarily in the gaps of that moss might be like mold. As one such human, this book was written not by Pascal's "thinking reed," but by a "history-telling mold."

Everything About Nomigawa: The Story of Tokyo's Forgotten Class B River

Yu Kondo

Sairyusha

188 pages, 2,700 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.