I came to Tokyo for the first time in 2012. Little did I know back then that this initial trip was to spark an intellectual love story when I later made the capital the locus of my PhD research in Japan. I explored Tokyo primarily by foot and bike, and while scaling the quiet backstreets and busy station plazas, I pondered the vivid economic history the city had seen in the postwar era. My doctorate was situating the Japanese economic miracle within Tokyo’s unique urban space, honing in on its small competitive factories and its egalitarian living standards spread–out over a gargantuan mass of low-rise and high-density housing. There are several books that accompanied me on this journey. I put some of them into this Tokyo thread, with a few others to be found on the shelves.