Includes bibliographical references.

The bells of time -- Hibiya -- Nihonbashi : the zero point -- Asakusa : the mythic Kantō plain -- Akasaka : the invention of Edo -- Mejiro : a failed coup -- Nezu : Tokugawa timepieces -- Ueno : the last shotgun -- The rokumeikan : the Meiji restoration -- Tsukiji : the Japanese empire -- Yokokawa-Honjo : east of the river -- Marunouchi : new origins -- Kitasuna : the firebombs of 1945 -- Shiba Kiridoshi : Tokyo tower -- Daylight savings time : the occupation -- Ichigaya : postwar prosperity -- Shinjuku : Tokyo tomorrow -- Hibiya : the Imperial Hotel.

In The bells of old Tokyo, Anna Sherman explores Japan and revels in all its wonderful particularity. As a foreigner living in Tokyo, Sherman's account takes pleasure and fascination in the history and culture of a country that can seem startlingly strange to an outsider. Following her search for the lost bells of the city the bells by which its inhabitants kept time before the Jesuits introduced them to clocks to her personal friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, here is Tokyo in its bewildering variety. From the love hotels of Shinjuku to the appalling fire-storms of 1945 (in which many more thousands of people died than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki), from the death of Mishima to the impact of the Tohoku earthquake of 2011.