<blockquote>You never know what will happen in Tokyo. Anything can happen.<sup>1</sup></blockquote>When Angela Carter won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1969, the bursary shortly took her to Japan alone. This visit, which later became several years of living, was a much influential experience, shaping her writing and her character.<br><br>Several of the tales in <em>Fireworks</em> (1974) occur against the backdrop of an enigmatic Tokyo, where one heroine finds herself, “always rummaging in the dressing-up box of the heart for suitable appearances to adopt in the city.”<sup>2</sup> Largely autobiographical in tone, we observe depictions of her love affairs in Japan, shortly after the unravelling of her first marriage.<br><br>In Edmund Gordon’s biography, Carter is in awe of Tokyo and its juxtapositions, once describing it as a “breathtakingly vulgar megalopolis”<sup>3</sup> yet relishing its alluring society of abundant beautiful objects and culture; the always-purposeful people existing in an endless, controlled chaos amongst the neon lights. In her wanderings she was often drawn towards Kabukicho, listening to jazz in its coffee shops.<br><br>In <em>The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman</em> (1972) she translates this mystifying experience of surreal contrasts, painting a dreamscape version of Tokyo where streets are free from the oppression of directions and “can go wherever they please.”<sup>4</sup> Much of this is experienced through protagonist Desiderio, who tells us, <blockquote>Nothing in the city was what it seemed-nothing at all!<sup>5</sup></blockquote> Here Carter had indeed found a city that so amply fed her imagination, inspiring some of her most pivotal works.