Tokyo Rising by Edward G. Seidensticker

The City Since the Great Earthquake

A concise, vividly written history that traces Tokyo’s transformation from the devastation of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake through wartime destruction and postwar reconstruction to its modern metropolitan identity, combining archival research, architectural observation and on-the-ground vignettes to show how disaster, politics, culture and everyday life shaped the city’s urban landscape and social character.