Time Machine: The Ochanomizu School and Father Beaulieu

TOKYO — The school where I taught English in the 1960’s was the Thomas Foreign Language Institute located in Ochanomizu, in the eastern part of the city, far away from the Roppongi/Akasaka area. It was a university town, home to famous institutions like Meiji University, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Kyoritsu Women’s University, Kyoritsu Kouko, a prestigious private school for girls. Juntendo and Ochanomizu Women’s University. The area was famous for its many used book stores, the aisles usually crammed with students, teachers and local company workers alike, standing and reading.

It was also the location of the Domed Holy Resurrection Cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox Church, founded by a Russian archbishop in the 19th century and designed by Joseph Conder.

Ocha-no-mizu literally means “tea water,” after the nearby Kanda River, from which water was extracted to make the shogun's tea during the Edo period. But in 1963, the river was so polluted with raw sewage, assorted industrial chemicals, garbage, sludge, and dead bloated fish, that anyone drinking the water was taking his life in his hands.

The area was accessed by the JR Chuo Line railway and the Marunouchi subway line on opposite sides of the river, the two sides connected by the Hijiri Bridge. The waterway emitted a toxic, sulfurous odor that when combined with the photochemical smog produced by the endless traffic jams made protective face masks de rigueur for commuters and pedestrians in the area.

The Thomas Gaigo Gakuin school, situated in a six-story ferro-concrete structure on busy Suzuran Dori in the Jinbocho area of Ochanomizu, a10-minute walk from Ochanomizu Station, was established by the Dominican Order in Japan in 1958.