Yanaka Cemetery

This guide to Yanaka Cemetery in Tokyo opens before dawn on July 6, 1957, when fire tore through the tallest wooden pagoda in eastern Japan, and works back through the pagoda's earlier history since 1644 and the two bodies searchers found among the ashes. It follows the seamstress and her older, married lover, and the scorched sewing thimble investigators used to piece together who they were. The cherry-lined avenue and the last shogun's family enclosure sit nearby, unchanged since long before that fire.