Kafu the Scribbler

by Edward Seidensticker

Kafu liked nothing better than to sit backstage at strip shows and he described that world almost always in a nostalgic way. Tokyo was almost completely destroyed in 1923 by the earthquake and then again in 1945, and when it wasn’t being destroyed by bombs or earthquakes it was changing very fast through redevelopment. So it was always a city that was disappearing – or at least changing radically – and he was the great chronicler of what had faded and what was no longer.