Cross town the old fashioned way – by tram!

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Cross town the old fashioned way – by tram!

July 11th, 2008 by Mark A Buckton

In decades past, the city of Tokyo was home to a great many tram lines crisscrossing the city, north to south and east to west.

Today, just one remains – the 1372mm gauge line linking Minowabashi in Taito-ku with Waseda, 12.2 kilometres away in Shinjuku-ku, and be it in the air-conditioned cars of today, or one of the older models with windows slid down that still make the run, there is no more nostalgic way of traversing Tokyo in the summer months.

As it winds its way through the backstreets in eastern Tokyo, the Toden Arakawa Line as it is officially named, or ‘Chin Chin Densha’ as it is nicknamed thanks to the ‘chin chin’ sound of its bell (sounded when it moves out of each station), takes its passengers on a tour of the Tokyo of old so often unseen in the modern concrete jungle.

Many of these streets and houses positioned mere inches from the passing trams have not changed in forty or fifty years. There are even portions of the line that pass that largely escaped the American fire bombing of an already defeated capital, that date back even further.

From start to finish, Minowabashi to Waseda, trams making the journey along the entire* line, pass through 28 stations – the total number 30 including both termini. Many are simple form raised platforms seemingly perched behind an old house but giving admittance to a neighborhood time has forgotten.

The vehicle itself is always a single car, and although they vary in size depending on the run and the time of day, each would be capable of carrying a good forty or so passengers in relative comfort; a number that could well double during the infamous Tokyo ‘crush’ hour – the precise reason it is recommended to make a journey on this link to the past between roughly 9 a.m. and 4.p.m. Any earlier or later, and you run the risk of crowds of outward or homeward bound inhabitants of an oft-forgotten stretch of northern Tokyo deciding descending upon the car in their droves.

Along the line there are surprisingly few major sights which is actually a blessing in disguise; the lack of attractions helping those calling the area home live as they have lived for generations, although the famous Zoshigaya Cemetery (accessed after disembarking at a station of the same name) is the eternal resting place of at least a dozen famous men of old; John Manjiro, Koizumi Yakumo (Lafcadio Hearn) and Natsume Soseki included and serves to pull in a few literary types.