Las campanas del viejo Tokio

This extraordinary work is an elegant and absorbing tour of Tokyo and its inhabitants. For more than two hundred years, from 1632 to 1854, Japan's rulers restricted contact with foreigners, an isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. During this period, the inhabitants of the city of Edo, later known as Tokyo, relied on their public bells to tell the time. Anna Sherman recounts her search for the bells of Edo, exploring the city of Tokyo and the individual and particular relationship of Japanese culture with time, tradition, memory, transience and history. Through travel and her friendship with the owner of a small and exquisite coffee shop, who elevates the preparation and consumption of coffee to an art form, Sherman follows captivating testimonies: an elderly woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of the Second World War; a scientist builds the world's most accurate clock, a clock that won't lose a second in five billion years. This is a book that tackles like no other the amazing otherness of Japanese culture.