18 October 1958 Tokyo is a hodge-podge capital, its rhythm hovering between the antique and the honky-tonk

At the bottom of the escalator in the big Tokio [sic] department stores two girls usually stand in attendance, one at each side. They wear uniforms like air hostesses, and between them there passes a constant and fairly ordinary stream of shoppers, tweed-skirted or Macintoshed, rich with packages and babies. The duty of those two girls is this: all day long, in dignified unison, they must offer obeisance to the passing customers, bowing low and stiffly from the waist, up and down, up and down, their tiny Porcelain faces impassive but respectful, like neat blue puppets bobbing against a backcloth, in a world of Warlords and cherry blossom.

In many another capital city, from Lima to Katmandu, such a situation would offer one of those contrasts of period or custom so dear to the travel writer (the best-flogged horse in the whole stable of travel imagery is the Sheikh and Cadillac piebald). In Tokio, however, it provides no such easy symbolism, for this seems to be a city sui generis.

Related: 'The Lost Metropolis': 1930s Tokyo street life – in pictures