ABSTRACT
The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (Asakusa kurenaidan), written by Kawabara Yasunari (1899–1972), is a playful yet complex novel that captures a time and place in Tokyo lost through the ravages of natural disasters, war, and historical change. Originally serialized in the Asahi daily newspaper in 1929 and 1930, the story vividly presents the decadent atmosphere of Asakusa, the city's most popular entertainment district, where beggars and teenage prostitutes mixed with revue dancers and famous authors. By 1930, Asakusa had become the centre of modern mass culture, while still retaining the mystique of old Edo, or Tokyo before the mid-nineteenth century. Asakusa included Japan's first movie theatre, the Denkikan, built in 1903, Japan's first dance revue, the Casino Follies, which opened in 1929, and tall buildings housing restaurants and even elevators, including the Twelve Stories (1893) and the Subway Tower (1929). During the economic recessions of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Asakusa was also the place where increasing numbers of homeless people sought shelter. In The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, which combines fiction and non-fiction and prioritizes atmosphere over plot, a group of young – mostly female – delinquents guide the narrator through Asakusa and show him their way of life and introduce him to – or provide him with – the chance to observe the various people who populate this neighbourhood. In one of the most plot-driven sections of this otherwise episodic and impressionistic book, one of the gang leaders avenges her sister by kissing the man who hurt her, her mouth laced with arsenic, on a borrowed boat. Kawabata created unorthodox literary techniques predicated on both the Japanese literary tradition and current popular culture, to capture the raw energy of Asakusa. As a result, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa was perceived by 1930s authors and critics as a new form of realism that conveys the sensory perceptions of the dynamic city and exposes, in a forceful but lighthearted way, the darker aspects of urban modernity.
