Poet Mudo Hashimoto (1903-1974) couldn’t be happier living in a “nagaya” (traditional Japanese one-story terraced house) in Tokyo’s blue-collar Tsukishima district.

A haiku he penned went to this effect: “It feels like spring/ Dawn has broken/ Here in this house/ I can already hear neighbors’ footsteps.”

His daughter, Hiroyo Tonooka, 80, recalled fondly: “(My father) was totally and genuinely uninterested in material possessions. Our house was so humble that a family member used to complain that it took only three steps to walk from the front to the back.”

At one time, as many as eight family members lived there. And it also served as the gathering place for Mudo’s haiku friends.

The family patronized a neighborhood “sento” public bathhouse,........

© The Asahi Shimbun