Christopher Ross
Winding Back the Clock
The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Time
By Anna Sherman
Picador 337pp £14.99
Last year the British press reported that UK schools were removing analogue clocks in exam halls because teenage students could not understand them. Apparently they had grown up reliant on digital devices and had lost (or never learned) the skill of reading a clock face. The story turned out to be substantially untrue, but the idea is suggestive. How do we tell the time and what significance, if any, does the perception of time passing have upon our consciousness or sense of identity? In The Bells of Old Tokyo, Anna Sherman, a US-born, Oxford-trained classicist who moved to Tokyo in 2001, claims that ‘Tokyo is one vast timepiece’. Her debut work, the book is a subtle, beautifully written meditation on the transition from the fixed, hierarchical life of old Edo (as Tokyo used to be known) to the anything-goes dynamism of the modern mega-metropolis the city has become. The remnants of the past, its surviving traces – like the hands of an analogue clock face – are still visible and in motion if you know how and where to look.
In the era of the Tokugawa shogunate, time was communicated by the ringing of strategically positioned temple bells. Hours were elastic units of time, not simply equal divisions, and were sometimes longer or shorter, depending on the season or stage of the day. Hours were accorded a sign from the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk
As Apple has grown, one country above all has proved able to supply the skills and capacity it needs: China.
What compromises has Apple made in its pivot east? @carljackmiller investigates.
Carl Miller - Return of the Mac
Carl Miller: Return of the Mac - Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee
literaryreview.co.uk
We are saddened to hear of the death of Edmund White.
We've lifted the paywall on Richard Davenport-Hines's 2014 review of White's Paris memoir.
Richard Davenport-Hines - Scenes from a Literary Life
Richard Davenport-Hines: Scenes from a Literary Life - Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris by Edmund White
literaryreview.co.uk