Time Bell Tower Audio Guide

Time Bell Tower: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Time Bell Tower

   Welcome to the heart of Kawagoe, in Saitama Prefecture, where a wooden bell tower has been telling the town what time it is for centuries. This is the Time Bell Tower, known in Japanese as Toki no Kane, and it is widely considered the symbol of the city. It stands in the old merchant quarter, the Kurazukuri Zone, named for its rows of heavy storehouses built in the style called kurazukuri. If you are walking from Hon-Kawagoe Station, count on about 15 minutes on foot. From Kawagoe Station it is around 25 minutes. The tower sits in the Saiwaicho neighborhood. In this guide we will follow the tower through its fires and rebuildings, listen to the bell that still sounds across the old town, and place it in the story of Kawagoe, the town nicknamed Little Edo. The focus is on the history and the soundscape. The tower's own shape and details are yours to take in with your eyes as you look up at it.

2. 02

   Four Towers and a Great Fire at Time Bell Tower

   The tower you see today is not the first. It is the fourth generation, and it exists because fire kept returning to Kawagoe. The present structure dates to 1894, one year after the Great Fire of Kawagoe, which swept through the town in 1893. Rebuilding the tower so soon after the disaster tells you how much it mattered to the townspeople. The very first tower is harder to pin down. Nobody knows the precise date it was built, but the usual telling places it between 1627 and 1634, in the Kan'ei era of the Edo period, on the orders of Sakai Tadakatsu, the lord of Kawagoe Domain. Another account gives a wider window, between 1624 and 1644. Either way, it was the early decades of the seventeenth century, when Kawagoe's lords were shaping the castle town. Then comes a story about the bell itself. According to a topography called Kawagoe Somen, in 1704 a new lord took over the domain: Akimoto Takatomo, formerly lord of Yamura, in what is now Tsuru City in Yamanashi Prefecture. He brought with him a bell that had been used in the castle town of Yamura, and carried it to Kawagoe.

3. 03

   The Voice of Time Bell Tower

   What makes this tower special is that it is not only to be looked at. It is to be heard. In the old days, the bell was rung by hand at set times, giving the whole town a shared clock long before everyone carried one in their pocket. Today the ringing is done mechanically, four times a day: at 6 a.m., at noon, at 3 p.m., and at 6 p.m. If your visit lines up with one of those hours, stop and listen. The sound drifts over the old rooftops, and the town has long treated it as part of its everyday life. That sound has earned national recognition. In 1996, the Environmental Agency, the predecessor of today's Ministry of the Environment, selected it as one of the One Hundred Soundscapes of Japan, a list meant to preserve the country's cherished sounds. Before that, in 1958, Kawagoe City designated the tower a tangible cultural asset. A bell tower honored for what it looks like is common. One honored for how it sounds is rarer.

4. 04

   Little Edo Around Time Bell Tower

   To understand why this tower matters, look at the town around it. Kawagoe became a domain under Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1590, and it grew under Matsudaira Nobutsuna, who expanded Kawagoe Castle and the castle town. He developed the Shingashi River and built the Kawagoe Kaido road, tying Kawagoe closely to Edo, the city we now call Tokyo. Through those links, Edo's culture, scholarship and performing arts flourished here, and the town earned the nickname Little Edo. Kawagoe was also a thriving merchant town and an important commercial hub for Edo. Merchants built clay-walled storehouses called kura, in a style distinctive to the Edo period, and many of those buildings still line the streets near the tower. That is why the tower is seen as a landmark of the whole Kurazukuri Zone. The neighborhood rewards wandering on foot. The warehouse district, the sweet-treat shops of Candy Alley and Kitain Temple all lie within about a twenty-minute walk of one another. Kawagoe is famous for its sweet potatoes, so you may find them as chips, ice cream or even beer. A sweet potato treat makes a good companion to the sound of the bell.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off from Time Bell Tower

   As you linger here, notice how many layers sit on this one small spot: lords who ordered a bell to be rung, a bell carried from another castle town, a fire that took the old tower, and a townspeople's tower raised again in 1894. All of it still keeps time over the same streets. Here is something to try before you move on. Look along the lanes and see how the tower rises above the roofs of the old storehouses. Then wait for the next hour on the bell's schedule and let the sound do the rest of the storytelling. If you are visiting in October, remember that Kawagoe holds its festival on the third Saturday and Sunday of the month, and that it was designated an intangible cultural heritage in 2016. The town's story is far from finished, and the streets beyond the tower have plenty more to show you.