Walking down the Sotobori Boulevard from Suidobashi to Ochanomizu, you will see a little "mountain." There are brick-built stairs and densely leafed trees. When looking up from the road, it seems that the ground there is elevated quite high, and makes you feel as if it was a village shrine. The entrance is modernly designed, and the structure makes you want to see the inside. The letters "Bunkyo Ward: Motomachi Park" and "Opening date: Jan. 25, Showa 5" are standing out on the two signboards, which seem to have been put up quite recently. There is a fountain in front of the entrance that may have once worked. Going up the stairs that go to the right and left and looking up from the landing, there is a cascade made up of straight lines and columns. Turning toward the direction of Sotobori Boulevard at the large landing, you'd see a wisteria trellis. There are cross-shaped windows opening on the foundation of handrails that would be used when looking down the street. The whole structure is made of concrete and scrubbed walls, and the tasteful atmosphere is quite indescribable. It's the kind of design I like. Going up all the way to the top of the stairs by the cascade, there is a field of bare ground. At the doorway on the east side across the field, there are no stairs; it is at the ground level. If absentminded, you might feel as if you were caught in some kind of trick. Hongo is located at the end of the Musashino plateau and is a town with a lot of slopes. The stairs in the park have been built along the lay of the land, and so it is elevated parallel to the slope by the side.

Motomachi Park

The number of people in the park is few. If you look carefully you may realize that there are people who live in this park sleeping in a corner. Perhaps because of that there is no children playing. Even though there are such things as a sandbox and a slide in the field, it is deserted. It's only the cats that are noticeable. Although all of them are napping. Even when I go about a meter away from them, they still don't move a bit. I try saying aloud "Doing nothing but taking a nap, and walking about TokyoÉ. It's not bad to live like a cat." I then try to make a loud sound by releasing the camera shutter. Still they don't move. I guess that nobody does something to frighten them normally. That's why they are so unguarded. How enviable.

Hongo elementary school is next to the park. Over the tall fence I can see a small courtyard surrounded by a U-shaped school building. As I went out to see the main gate of the building, I thought that those modest circular columns were striking. Since some parts of the windows at the back did not have metal sashes, the building itself might be quite old.

Here, something has come to my head with the key words of "Showa 5" and "Adjacent to an elementary school." That is that the Motomachi Park might be one of the small parks made as part of the "Teito Reconstruction Work" after the Great Kanto Earthquake. Needless to say Tokyo had been reduced to ashes by the Great Earthquake but the parks, public squares, and rivers became fire belt in checking the spread of the flames, and the parks were often used as shelters for victims. That was how the importance of parks have been recognized, and a park construction was included in the project. Turning over the pages of data, I found that there was "Motomachi Park, Motomachi 1, Hongo Ward, 900 tsubo" written on one of the lists submitted to the minister of internal affairs by the governor of Tokyo. There were fifty-two small parks built by the city of Tokyo, and I was able to ascertain that the Motomachi Park was among them.

These fifty-two parks were often called "school parks" as they were adjacent to elementary schools. I heard that a park and school were divided only by a small fence which were easily climbed over, so that the park could be used as an extension of the schoolyard, or it could serve as a community center when opened to the pubic. What an advanced plan it was. I was quite impressed. Yet, if there is such concept of those days still existing, there wouldn't be a tall fence to divide the park and school. But I heard that reforms were started around 1955 and the parks and schools were separated. A tall fence and strict door guarded by a security agency is completely different from the idea of those days. Recently there is an increasing number of people calling for closer relations between the schools and local society. Depending on it changes, there is a possibility that the fence will be lowered once again in the future. What's certain is that, even though if the fence stays as high as it is, cats can freely go in and out anyway. As I said before, it wouldn't be bad to be a cat.

Reference books: Tokyo no toshi keikaku (City plan of Tokyo) by Akira Koshizumi, Iwanami Shinsho. Tokyo kouen shiwa (History of parks in Tokyo) by Yasuhiko Maejima, Tokyo Park Association

Translated by Maiko Noda