JR UENO STATION (TOKYO)

Heart of old town beats beneath the tracks

Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Kanji Tada

By Ryuji Yanagisawa

Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Everybody was on the edge of starvation. The station was full of war orphans and homeless people.

It was then, in July 1949, when Yoko Kaneko, 84, opened a tiny diner under the station with her husband, a former career soldier. The narrow diner was barely 30 square meters.

"We had no experience, of course. But there were no jobs, no money. All we had were kids. We worked like mad, from the first train till the last."

The shady underground shopping area held about 70 small shops including a barber, a pharmacy, a cinema and a gay bar. The variety of shops attracted a mix of people--migrant workers, farmers' sons who came to the Tokyo area to work and students on class trips. All ended up shopping there.

Ueno Station was then called "the gateway to the north." Many people came to Tokyo from the Tohoku and Hokuriku regions, and they were the ones who patronized Kaneko's diner.

In 1985, the Tohoku Joetsu Shinkansen opened, and in 1991 it was extended to Tokyo Station. After that came the closure of Platform No. 18, where the trains full of bumpkins coming to work in the factories used to arrive.

The station's role began to change and as it did, so did the people coming to Kaneko's diner.

"We served more businessmen and women. The one thing that remained was the familylike atmosphere." said Teruko Fujii, 61, Kaneko's daughter, who took over the diner after her father died.

People would make themselves at home by taking off their shoes, while Fujii remembered another conversation with a man who complained about his daughter's using her cell phone during meals. "I never knew the name of this man or what he did. It just felt really good to have such an intimate conversation," Fujii said.

Fujii only ran the diner for six years before it closed in November 2002. The station was about to be completely remodeled, and she was forced to move out. She received an offer of substitute land, but declined.

"The diner had to be here at the station," she said. "That was why our customers came by, to feel as if they were home. After the remodeling, the old face vanished, but the station will always have a human touch to it that will bring us back our memories."