We loved our trip to Japan, and had a wonderful time exploring its culture, history and geography. But like Prof. Macfarlane (remember him?) we felt that we had merely managed to skim the surface of the country, and that that we could spend a lifetime trying to truly understand it. We discussed this in Hiroshima, with someone who had lived there for twenty years, and he confirmed that feeling at home in Japan is a very elusive thing for a foreigner.
That shouldn’t put anyone off, however, so I thought I would offer some of our insights, in no particular order, aimed at the potential traveller to Japan.
1. Travel at least once on the Shinkansen. It is a wonderfully relaxing way to get from A to B. The Japan Rail Pass is a bargain, and if you intend to move around on your holiday, it’s essential.
2. Be prepared for some surprising experiences when you go to the loo. In hotels and restaurants, you will often find an all-singing and all-dancing loo with switches for various types of warming or cooling bidet-style water jets, and music or birdsong to accompany your actions. Like this:
3. Don’t worry if you are vegetarian. We imagined that we would struggle, but certainly in the cities there are loads of ethnic restaurants that are fine for veggies, especially Italian. And of course, in Hiroshima, there’s the possibility of a vegetarian okonomiyaki. One possibility we had considered before travelling was to eat at the temples, where you can sometimes get vegan food from the kitchen. Once in Japan, we found that the temples are now quite chic destinations for foodies, and that the kitchens are not open to the public that often, and the prices are sky-high.
4. Try to use some Japanese, even if it’s only “Hello” and “Thank you.” The people will really appreciate that you made some kind of effort. English isn’t spoken that widely, but we found that in the cities at least, most people had some basic English vocabulary.
5. Bow. On greeting people, and leaving them, or when some sort of transaction is going on, like a shop purchase or a hotel check-in, bow. It becomes a habit, and it’s a little acknowledgement of the more formal way of doing things in Japan.
6. Be prepared to be ordered about, very gently, by people you come across. Japan’s economic culture encourages long-term employment security above short-term economic gain, so people are employed in functions which would not be seen as necessary in England. For example, we often saw a smartly uniformed man or woman at the entrance to multi-storey car parks. Their job was to usher in the cars as they approached, and to hold up pedestrians who were crossing in front. Another instance was in hotels, where, rather than allowing the customer to approach the reception desk on their own, a group of employees would intercept you, and direct you to the right counter. A similar process obtained at the Japan Rail office at the airport, as I mentioned. This is related to their love of paperwork and bureaucracy. You will get receipts for everything.
7. Use the Metro to travel around Tokyo. Tickets are cheap, the network is extensive, and if you avoid the obvious rush hours, the trains don’t get too crowded. We never saw anything like this:
8. It’s not as expensive as you might think. Because the Japanese economy has been stagnating for so long, prices are actually pretty reasonable from an English perspective. We paid no more for food and services than we would pay at home – maybe London prices in Tokyo, but nothing ridiculously expensive.
9. It’s safe. People can walk around late at night without fear. Street crime is very rare. Obviously, it’s sensible to take precautions, but we never felt the edginess that you get in British cities at night.
10. It’s clean. Litter and rubbish are not tolerated. I’ve never come across city streets so free of detritus anywhere I’ve travelled.
These Japan posts have, I hope, been of interest to my reader, but they’ve also helped me to process the experience, and to relive some great moments. We have very fond memories of our trip.
Our last day in Japan was a drizzly, overcast one in Tokyo. We had pretty much avoided rain the whole time we were there, so we couldn’t complain. We set out to see some more of the capital, thinking that indoors might be best. When we were planning the trip, we had thought about visiting the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, but discovered that to gain access, you needed to visit on particular days, having booked tickets in person for timed entrance, and we just couldn’t manage it. Nevertheless, we could visit the grounds, which are huge, but first we looked at the rather splendid Tokyo railway station, with its redbrick façade, apparently modelled on Amsterdam’s. Each corner had a spacious entrance hall, with an art nouveau look:
Tourist in the rain
Across the way from the station was the shopping mall called Kitte (Japanese for postage stamp) which is housed in the old central post office building, a striking 1930s edifice, to which has now been added a huge tower to house all those trendy boutiques and restaurants. We went in to find some shelter and sustenance.
We decided that we had to at least experience the Imperial Palace compound, so, bravely ignoring the rain, we headed for the gardens. It was really wet, but still impressive to see this bit of old imperial Japan, fortified by massive walls and a huge moat, in the middle of this exclusive part of the city.
We resolved to go in search of culture to get us out of the rain, and went out of the north-west corner of the imperial grounds (having collected a token on entrance, and given it up on exit) to find the National Museum of Modern Art. We found that one of the major exhibitions was of an artist I’d never heard of, shamefully, despite the fact that he was a modernist operating in Paris in the twenties. He was Tsuguharu (Leonard) Foujita, and what a fascinating man he turned out to be. He knew many of the big names of the avant-garde, such as Modigliani and Picasso, had a chaotic personal life, and was more commercially successful than many of his contemporaries, mainly because he painted lots of cats.
Foujita, Self Portrait with cat. Image: irinaraquel on Flickr
Unexpectedly, he was also a war artist, and the exhibition contained some enormous canvases of battle scenes, some gruesomely realistic – the Japanese government required what they termed “war campaign documentary painting” from its artists, and Foujita supplied it. You can see some of his war work here. After that sobering experience, we walked around the corner to the Crafts annex of the museum, where we saw some brilliant examples of contemporary pottery. This small gallery was built around the same time as the station, and is again a very European-looking red brick building, originally the home of the imperial guards. The gallery’s website gave another reminder of the war:
The Headquarters of the Imperial Guards was also the setting of an event of great historical importance. In the late night and early morning of August 14 and 15, 1945, a group of Army officers plotted to prevent the broadcast of the Emperor’s statement to the nation announcing Japan’s surrender, ending World War II, scheduled for noon on August 15. They murdered Lieutenant General Mori of the Imperial Guards Division and issued an order in his name to seize the recording of the Emperor’s statement and thus prevent the war from coming to an end. That attempted coup d’etat occurred in the Imperial Guards’ headquarters, making the building the site of one of the most critical incidents in the modern history of Japan.
We enjoyed the work of Kuriki Tatsusuke, whose pots were decorative rather than functional, often featuring bands of clay woven around a central form. It was a pleasant and peaceful way to end our soggy trudge around this part of Tokyo. We had an early start for the journey home, so we went back to our hotel, and began to try to understand what we had experienced.
We returned to Tokyo for the last few days of our holiday, and determined to see as much as possible. On our first afternoon, we walked up to the Rappongi Hills complex, a huge high-end shopping mall with restaurants, cinemas and a convention centre. It wasn’t much different from those you will see anywhere, though we were very impressed by the bookshop, which had quite a lot of English language material, and some intriguing Japanese items too, including a specialist book brush, which we bought for the home collection. Who’d have thought that the Japanese equivalent of GQ would be called after a German romantic poet and philosopher? It is, though:
As a sharp-eyed former colleague pointed out, the cover star here is none other than footballer Hidetoshi Nakata, who once improbably spent a season playing for Bolton Wanderers. The complex has, of course, an extensive garden area, and we went there to escape the hustle and bustle of some sort of product launch that was going on in the main building. The contrast of the greenery of the gardens and the glass and steel of the complex was startling.
As we walked around town, other odd conjunctions could be seen. Even in the most fashionable part of Tokyo, you might still see very modest, traditional places cheek-by-jowl with huge statement buildings designed to show off corporate power.
Our hotel, in the south western part of downtown Tokyo, was a few minutes’ walk from the Hiro-O subway station, which gave us access to the quick and efficient transport system. The following day, we wanted to see the some more of the capital, so we bought a cheap day ticket and headed out early, making our first stop at the Hama-Rikyu gardens in Shiodome, a peaceful green enclave in the midst of the corporate towers. The garden dates from the seventeenth century, when it was built as a retreat for the shogun and his family. There’s an island teahouse, and lots of flora and fauna. It’s a very pleasant way to start the day, but our main purpose in visiting was because it’s the starting point for the Sumida River trip.
Hama-Rikyu
Hama-Rikyu teahouse
Hama-Rikyu
The river trip takes you north to Asakusa, passing under many bridges, and giving a flavour of the city from an unusual standpoint. The landmark building at Asakusa is the Asahi brewery building, designed by Philippe Starck, which dominates the view when you arrive at the jetty. It’s meant, apparently to look like a beer glass, to complement the beer mug-shaped building to the left, and the peculiar golden top is supposed to be the froth. For reasons that will be obvious, the locals refer to it as the “poo building” and the topping as “the golden turd.”
Asahi building
One of the attractions for us in this part of the world was the Senso-ji temple, Tokyo’s oldest, founded in 645, and dedicated to Kannon, the goddess of mercy. Unlike other temples we had visited, this was not a peaceful backwater, but a bustling and very crowded area, approached through the Kaminarimon (Thunder Gate) and then via a long bazaar-like market, the Nakamise, packed with stalls selling souvenirs, traditional crafts, and food. We didn’t fancy Octopus Ball, so hurried on to the temple itself.
Nakamise
Local delicacy…
Some smoke rising from the incense burner
It wasn’t a very spiritual experience, but it was quite a sight to see so many people crowding the temple precincts. One unusual sight was the crowd around the big incense burner in front of the temple. People waft the smoke over them to protect against illness. We sampled the atmosphere for a while and then moved on, taking some time to look at the hundreds of stalls in the covered arcades of the Nakamise.
Our next stop was Ueno Park, originally yet another temple complex, but now home to several of the city’s galleries and museums. Perhaps the most notable for us was the Le Corbusier-designed National Museum of Western Art, outside which stand a series of sculptures by Rodin, including a version of The Thinker, and his massive, and massively impressive, Gate of Hell.
Rodin’s Gate of Hell
We fancied somewhere quiet after this, so we hopped on a local train to visit the Yanaka district. This area survived the earthquake of 1923, and was not bombed during the war, so retains an old-fashioned feel. The Japanese call this area shitamachi, meaning literally “low city.” There’s a big cemetery there, complete with a lovely temple containing a large bronze seventeenth-century Buddha. We strolled around the cemetery, made friends with a cat, and encountered the Buddha.
Tenno-ji temple
Yanaka’s shopping streets diverted us for a while, and we finally gave in to the temptation to buy a souvenir in one of the many shops selling pottery.
In Yanaka
We felt that we had seen a lot this day, so we headed off to the subway for the trip back to our hotel, where some delicious tempura vegetables were in the offing.
William Boyd keeps producing engaging, literate fiction, peopled with believable characters who have interesting stories. I was first aware of him in the early eighties, when I enjoyed his debut novel A Good Man in Africa. This blackly humorous tale of diplomatic disaster in a fictional African republic led to comparisons with Evelyn Waugh, and that was about right: Boyd had that same rather cynically comic detached voice. Since then, he has produced a series of memorable fictions, particularly his two big century-spanning epics, The New Confessions and Any Human Heart, both of which bear comparison with Anthony Burgess’s masterpiece, Earthly Powers. He has developed a particular line in espionage fiction, too, not only through being selected to write a James Bond novel by the Fleming estate, but through his own original work too. Restlesswas about the lifelong consequences of involvement in the world of cold-war espionage, a theme also entertainingly explored in Jeremy Duns’s Paul Dark series. Somehow, Waiting for Sunrise, Boyd’s 2012 novel, set immediately before and during the First World War had passed me by, so I was pleased to find a copy at the excellent Chorlton bookshop the other day.
Waiting for Sunrise opens and closes with an anonymous second-person observation of the central character, Lysander Rief, as he goes about his business. This technique places the reader as an observer / voyeur and makes Rief a performer, which is apt: he’s an actor, and will become a secret agent in time. As in Boyd’s other historical fictions, real people intermingle with the fictional, though this is kept to minimum here. Since we begin in Vienna in 1913, with Rief seeking psychological help for an embarrassing condition, Boyd must have been tempted to enrol his protagonist on Freud’s roster of damaged psyches, but he avoids that, using an English disciple, Dr Bensimon, instead. In the doctor’s waiting room, Rief encounters Hettie Bull, an impulsive and passionate young artist, to whom he is immediately attracted. The consequences of that meeting will shape Rief’s future, and plunge him into the dangerous world of international espionage. The narrative, apart from those two passages at the beginning and end, is divided between a third person narrator focalised through Rief, and Rief’s own observations, written down in the journal of his thoughts that he advised to keep by Dr Bensimon. The chapters are very brief, for the most part, and given descriptive headings in, I suppose, a deliberately archaic style. The plot advances quickly, as Rief’s love-life leads him into a situation where he is obliged to show his ingenuity in order to escape potential imprisonment in Vienna. Once free, he is doing his duty as a soldier at the outbreak of war, when the call comes to undertake a mission which will expose a mole at the heart of the British war machine. This central section of the plot, which takes place in Geneva, shows Rief as a resourceful and intelligent agent, whose astute appreciation of potential trouble keeps him one step ahead of the game.
But this is far more than a routine historical thriller. The characters and locations are fully realised, with an attention to detail that enables the reader to immerse themselves in pre-war Vienna or wartime Geneva. Boyd uses factual data well for his own narrative means: a Zeppelin raid on London, which hit the Lyceum theatre, for instance, is employed as a way of developing two plot lines, one about the personal life of Rief, and one concerning his suspicions about his mission. I think John Walsh, in his review of the novel in the Independent, hits the nail on the head: “He whizzes the story along…but lingers over evocations of people and buildings, so we feel we know their texture even as the plot gallops along.”
In genre fiction –and this is far more than a genre piece– a common failing is to make characters mere servants of the plot, forgettable and two-dimensional. The reverse is true here, from Rief, who has an actorly self-regard that manifests itself at inopportune moments, to his tough explorer uncle, who is unexpectedly and tenderly gay (did you know that ‘musical’ was an Edwardian code word for gay?) to Wolfram, the Slovene hussar with whom Rief shares lodgings, and whose technique for avoiding suspicion in a grubby regimental case of petty thievery gives Rief an insight much later in the narrative. And indeed, it is noticeable how, even in passages that seem to be local colour or background, details are embedded that will later prove significant. One lovely motif was the incidental snatches of Rief’s poetry from his notebook, which start in sub-Edward Thomas mode, and develop into a voice not unlike Eliot’s in The Waste Land.
So, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Boyd holds the reader’s attention through a complex plot, where often the reader’s, and Rief’s first impressions turn out to be wrong, and evokes the world of a century ago with verve and panache. Brilliant.
View towards the western mountains from our friends’ apartment
We said goodbye to Kanazawa, and headed back to Tokyo, where we changed to the suburban train to Fussa, where our friends were living. Fussa is a fairly ordinary place, a city of about 60,000 people west of Tokyo, but with a huge American air force base. And by ‘huge’, I mean really big – about a third of the city. It is, in effect, a small American town in itself, with schools, shopping mall, cinema, sports facilities and all the other conveniences of life in the USA. Our friends, who live outside the base, say some of the military families there never leave the confines.
Fussa is really part of the metropolitan sprawl of Tokyo. As you travel the fifty minutes or so from the capital, you don’t see that much countryside. I suppose it’s not unlike the metroland around London – commuter territory for those who work in the centre.
The presence of the air force base means that there are quite a few US-style diners in town, but you don’t need to go far to find an authentic Japanese environment. It’s a quiet, unassuming sort of place, but a good base for exploring. We had already visited Mount Fuji from here, and we decided to get some more value out of our Japan Rail pass to make a day trip to Kamakura, a seaside town south of Tokyo that was once, in medieval times, the national capital.
On arrival at Kamakura, we hopped on the local streetcar Enoden service, which winds back and forth along the coast, allowing visitors to explore the numerous temples and shrines that are dotted around.
Waiting for the Enoden streetcar at Hase
The old fashioned electric streetcar was a great way to get about, as the day pass allows you to jump on and off whenever you like. We stopped first at Yuigahama, to have a stroll on the beach, where we were pretty much the only people there, except for a young woman who had decided to serenade the sea with her trumpet.
In the far distance, Mount Fuji was just visible on this clear, bright, November morning:
We moved on to our next stop, Hase, where we walked up the hill to the Great Buddha. This is an enormous bronze statue that was cast in 1252, and has remained standing, through earthquakes and fires, whilst the temples built to house it have perished. It’s a popular spot for Japanese and foreign tourists.
Back in Kamakura, we took a local bus out to the Hokokuji temple, which is remarkable for its bamboo grove. A little path takes you around the temple and into the cool and quiet of the bamboo, and you can also admire the gravel gardens, very like the ones we saw on the Philosopher’s path in Kyoto. In an area we couldn’t access, some caves contained a little army of figurines.
We caught the bus back into central Kamakura, and had time for a stroll around the streets before setting off back to Fussa. This was a lovely, quiet day, supported by the brilliantly efficient Japanese railway system. Kamakura felt very different to the bustle of the big cities we had visited: peaceful, relaxed, with a sandy beach looking out over Sagami Bay. It was just what we needed to prepare for the last few days of the trip, which were going to be back in Tokyo.
I’m trying to keep this space for book reviews, cultural matters and travel. I thought I would try Medium for musings on other topics. My first post there is now online. Next here will be the latest instalment of the Japanologue.
I
Kanazawa railway station is quite something. After the Shinkansen glided in, coming to a stop at precisely the correct second, we were soon able to see its bold modern design, dominated by the Tsuzumi-mon gate, shaped like the traditional Japanese drums, but also, we thought, reminiscent of a temple gateway.
The main interest in the city is all to the east of the station. Our hotel was a few steps to the west, so we were well placed each day to walk through the lively station precinct and the Tsuzumi-mon gate to commence our sight-seeing.
This place had all the main essentials covered.
Kanazawa, in the northern central mainland of Japan, is worth a visit because of its historical interest. It has not been subject to the kind of modernisation enforced on other cities after war or natural disaster, so it preserves more widely than elsewhere the buildings and the culture of the past. We found the main sites within easy walking distance of the centre, and set off first to explore the famous Kenrokuen Garden via a stroll through the impressive grounds of Kanazawa Castle, of which more later.
Kenrokuen is a major tourist attraction, so the advice is to get there early. It opens at eight, and we were there not long after. Despite some rain, the first we had encountered in Japan, there were a good many people around first thing. Kenrokuen, which was originally the private garden of the feudal ruling family – which is why it adjoins the castle – is huge, varied and beautiful, with something to catch the interest at every turn. According to Japan Guide, “Kenrokuen literally means ‘Garden of the Six Sublimities’, referring to spaciousness, seclusion, artificiality, antiquity, abundant water and broad views, which according to Chinese landscape theory are the six essential attributes that make up a perfect garden.” Even through a rather persistent drizzle, it was difficult not to be impressed by the trees, the plants, the fountains, the lake… Here’s the obligatory Brit in raingear shot:
Really, though, nothing could dampen our enthusiasm for this place. We wondered around for quite a long time, at the end of which the promised hordes had indeed appeared, and it was getting quite crowded. We were glad we’d made it an early start. You can see literally thousands of photos of the garden taken in better weather here, so I won’t post many of our rainy shots. Here are some items of interest, though:
This fountain, which looks quite modest, is claimed to be Japan’s oldest.
This stone tablet contains a haiku by Basho, which goes
Aka aka to
Hiwa tsure naku mo
Aki no kazu
or something like “How brightly the sun shines, turning its back to the autumn wind.” Again, it’s a rather modest monument, but is much revered as it commemorates Basho’s visit in 1689 on the narrow road to the deep north.
The gardeners were out in force, in outfits that hadn’t changed much in three hundred years.
We left, slightly damp, but very content with what we’d experienced, as the rain stopped.
The castle, which was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1881, has been partially, and painstakingly, rebuilt, using the same techniques and materials as in the original. It was the first fortified building we had encountered in Japan, and it was clear that it presented a formidable obstacle to potential enemy forces.
Climbing up on the ramparts gave us a view of the city and showed how dominant the castle must have been when it was built in the late sixteenth century by the local feudal lords.
I especially loved the huge wooden gates that guard the entrances. They don’t supply these at B&Q:
II
Exploring the main city, we chanced upon a coffee shop run by an American, from Seattle, and his Japanese wife. Sol was a really friendly and welcoming guy, who happily chatted about Kanazawa and recommended some sights and places to eat. Close to his shop lies the Omi-cho market, an extraordinary place crammed with stalls selling all kinds of food, but especially seafood. The creatures laid out for the shopper’s delectation didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen in a fishmonger’s, and while we enjoyed the lively bustle of the place, we moved on quickly.
We headed out on foot to the former Samurai district, Nagamichi, to stroll around the various well-preserved houses from the Edo period. The narrow streets are defined by earthen walls, the construction of which was apparently a privilege only afforded to Samurai. The narrow lanes, which intersect with the Onosho canal, the oldest of Kanazawa’s fifty canals, are perfect for a leisurely wander, with each former residence of a warrior clan just a few steps from the last.
No smoking, even on the streets in Kanazawa.
The residences were well-preserved, and beautifully presented.
The interiors were minimalist, with an emphasis on the rituals of domestic life:
The exteriors were simple, too, understated, yet demonstrating the status that the Samurai would have had compared to the ordinary people. These are substantial dwellings.
III
We wanted to look again at the area around Kenrokuen in better weather, so the following day we headed for the Seisonkaku Villa, which adjoins the garden.
This villa, built in 1863 by the local lord for his mother, was yet another exquisite architectural gem. It’s one of the finest of the Samurai dwellings in the city, and has historical displays of interest, but the main attraction really is just to experience the calm elegance of the interior, and the views of the garden in its autumn glory.
We walked down the hill back into town, where we had planned to visit the museum of contemporary art, which is a striking modernist building. When we arrived, it was really crowded (it was weekend) and as there were no exhibitions that really appealed, we decided to leave it, and make the most of the sunshine.
Unexpectedly, we came across a lovely little museum dedicated to Noh Theatre. On the ground floor, a Noh stage is laid out, and they encourage visitors to try on a Noh costume, and practise some classic gestures. Here’s a goddess I happen to know:
After that interlude, we enjoyed some browsing in a very high-class craft shop attached to the museum, and walked to a quiet area where we could see the D.T. Suzuki Museum. Suzuki was an important Buddhist philosopher, and this memorial to him is a beautifully calm spot for contemplation.
I’m not reading the profound insights of Prof. Suzuki there, by the way: I’m working out the best route back to the castle.
We walked along the castle wall until we came to the Oyama shrine, built in 1599, and a curious mix of architectural styles. Bits of the shrine originated elsewhere, and the gate was originally designed as the portal to the castle. It’s an impressive, sprawling place now, with some startling statuary:
IV
Sol advised us to visit the Higashi Chaya district in the evening, when the street lanterns gave this area a pleasantly welcoming atmosphere. This area is where the geishas would entertain in the teahouses. It dates from 1820, and outside Tokyo and Kyoto is the largest of these pleasure districts in Japan. It’s been well preserved and is now a magnet for tourists, particularly those wanting an atmospheric crepuscular stroll.
We arrived in the late afternoon, when it was still light, and did a circuit. The teahouses still function, and are supplemented by places selling souvenirs and gifts.
Later, when dusk arrived, the area felt quite different, and it was worth a second circuit to experience the area in the lamplight.
We had the obligatory encounter with a cat:
After a while, we sought out Huni, the restaurant recommended to us by Sol at the coffee shop. He had described the location well, and he needed to, because from the outside, as he’d said, it looked just like a private house, and was off the beaten track. We could see a kitchen through a window, and when we entered, it became clear that the kitchen opened into the dining area, where a couple of tables were waiting, as well as some seats at the counter which marked off the kitchen. We sat at the counter and had a great chat with the owner, who spoke excellent English, and who was happy to rustle up a delicious vegetarian meal for us.
Afterwards, we walked around the quiet residential streets, and came across a curious little shrine, featuring more figurines in knitted outfits.
Even the car park next to our hotel had a guardian in a little hut:
All in all, a lovely evening. We arrived back at our top floor room which gave us a panoramic view of the city.
Kanazawa was a delight, full of unexpected pleasures. The following day we were travelling on the Shinkansen again, back to Tokyo.
Taxis in Japan, we found, were beautifully clean, retro-sixties style monuments to kitsch, replete with head-rest doilies and cute seat covers. For our day trip from Kyoto to Hiroshima, we needed an early start, and our helpful host arranged a taxi. Our man was waiting as we emerged five minutes before the appointed time from the apartment. He was dressed in an immaculate uniform, complete with white gloves, and drove us smoothly to the station, dropping us off at the Shinkansen entrance. No agonising about the tip, of course, because in Japan you don’t tip.
We could go for a day’s outing to Hiroshima because, even though it’s about 225 miles away, the bullet train would take us there in less than two hours. We planned a further visit that day, so on arrival at Hiroshima, we took another train and a short ferry trip to the island of Miyajima We could see the Itukushima, a floating shrine, guarded by the Torii gate from the boat.
On arrival, a short stroll through streets where deer roamed freely took us to the remarkably orange floating shrine.
The shrine, which dates originally from the sixth century, though nothing from that era survives, is a World Heritage Site, and deservedly so. Its broad wooden platforms, supported by pillars, stand in the sea, and it’s thought that the original intention was to worship the island spirits. Even though we visited alongside lots of other people, and the inevitable school party, it was a peaceful, enlightening experience.
We moved on to look at some of the other shrines and monuments that are thickly dotted about the island. We didn’t have the opportunity to linger, as we only had a couple of hours, but it was enough to get the flavour of this unique place. Having climbed a short distance up Mount Misen, we arrived at the Daisho-in temple, where we were greeted by five hundred heads with little knitted hats:
Stoke City fans, possibly.
A couple of encounters with some scary guardians, more tame deer, and then time to say sayonara to this wonderful place.
We took the ferry and train back to Hiroshima, and headed out on a tram to the Peace Park. After the beauty of Miyajima, this was a sombre reminder of the other side of human nature. The first thing we saw was the famous “A-bomb dome”, the shell of a building very close to the epicentre of the explosion. It is a striking and effective monument, and reminded us of the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, which has a similar purpose.
We spent the afternoon walking around the park, looking at the various monuments. We were particularly struck by the Children’s Monument, inspired by the story of Sasaki Sadako. On the day we were there, lots of schoolchildren took turns in singing and performing poems dedicated to peace. It was touching to see and hear.
We found that being English attracted attention from the kids. They wanted to practise, and many had worksheets to fill in, where they wrote down the answers to simple questions they asked us: what do you like about Japan? and so on. We were quite the celebrities for a while. Here’s me with some of my army of adoring fans:
The Peace Museum at Hiroshima is a must-see. The displays are heartbreaking, documenting in relentless detail the horrific effects of the bomb. We spent an hour or so there, until we were to meet up with a friend of a friend, with whom we were to see the main part of the city.
Hiroshima now is a modern, bustling city, with hardly anything pre-1945 standing. We did see the Bank of Japan, that survived largely intact, but nothing else. Big broad streets, some of them covered, made up most of the commercial district, but we weren’t there to shop. We were on our way to eat Okonomiyaki… Our new friend has lived in Hiroshima for twenty years, and is a regular at the place he was taking us to. The dish is the local specialty, and, luckily for us vegetarians, is infinitely adaptable. A nondescript modern building – the Okonomimura – houses dozens of competing okonomiyaki establishments, all laid out in the same way: an L-shaped hot plate, behind which the cook stands, and in front of which you sit. Each of the stalls had room for maybe 10 – 15 customers. We went to the Hirochan, which is operated by a very friendly and obliging husband-and-wife team, who were happy to make a veggie special for us. The cook starts with a pool of batter on the hot plate, adds vegetables and other ingredients, noodles, sauces, turns it and flattens it until all is cooked, and then cuts it with a sharp spatula-like tool into smaller chunks. We ate with one of these straight off the griddle, though you can have it served on plates. Accompanied by an ice-cold beer, this was absolutely delicious. We had a wonder through the streets afterwards, noting that, at the end of October, there were many Hallowe’en displays, so clearly that aspect of American culture has become a thing in Japan. We took a tram back to the station, and arrived back in Kyoto late that night. Next: Kanazawa.
To the John Rylands library to see Marina Warner (does the Dame come before or after the Professor?) give her lecture Oracular Narrative: Timing and Truth Telling. This was a very pleasant event, with a drinks reception beforehand, and then the lecture itself in the historic reading room of the grand neo-Gothic building:
The lecture, accompanied by some striking visuals in a slide show, had clearly grown out of Dame Marina’s recent work on fairy tale, particularly the Thousand and One Nights. She made the point that prophecy, in its widest sense, dominates discourse: markets deal in futures, reporters and experts speculate on what happens next, rather than accounting for what has happened, and so on. She linked this to the presence of prophecy in art and literature, in a very wide-ranging talk that took in Shakespeare (particularly The Winter’s Tale), the carvings of Amiens cathedral, the Mabinogion, Kafka, Judith and Holofernes, and the Qalendars’ tales in the Arabian Nights, among many other topics.
As well as exploring the role of “what will be” in these texts and artefacts, she looked at how that tradition manifests itself in contemporary world literature. The novels she chose were by writers who had been considered for the International Booker Prize, whose panel she chaired last year. All, shamefully, were new to me – more titles for the TBR pile. Mabanckou’s Memoirs of a Porcupine sounded intriguing, maybe an African Rushdie; Ibrahim al-Koni’ s Gold Dust deals with universal themes in a desert setting; Gamal al-Ghitani’s Zayni Barakatuses the fictional biography of a historical figure to make political points about recent Egyptian politics; Radwa Ashour’s Siraaj is an Arabic take on sub-Daharan African geopolitics; and the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai’s novel The Melancholy of Resistance seems like an extraordinary tour-de-force from Dame Marina’s description on the Man Booker prize site.
So, much food for thought, expressed in clear and crisp sentences that engaged the listener without attempting to baffle with jargon. Marina Warner is a genuine public intellectual. We need more like her. (Image of Marina Warner: Dan Welldon)
Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, enchants the visitor at every turn. And it’s not just the temples and shrines. The modern buildings, too, command attention, none more so than the railway station, which we saw quite a bit of in our travels. It’s a massive glass-fronted edifice in the centre of the city, and you can travel to a rooftop garden via the escalators to take in the view – though only through glass panels, which reflect when you take a photo of course. Still, spectacular:
We set out to see some of the major sights on our second day in Kyoto, and on another bright and sunny morning, we walked south from the station the few blocks to began with the Toji temple, which dates from the eighth century, but what strikes the visitor immediately is the pagoda, the tallest in Japan, and one that has been cunningly built to survive earthquakes. The current structure is over three hundred years old, and is built to last.
We walked north of the station to seek out the Hongan-ji Temples. These massive complexes date back in parts to the sixteenth century, and remain very important sites for Japanese Buddhism. The first, Nishi Hongan-ji, has all sorts of treasures, including what’s thought to be the oldest Noh stage in Japan. The scale of the buildings was impressive, as was the air of quiet dedication about the place. All was calm and serene as we strolled around the grounds, and glimpsed inside the halls where some people were at prayer.
The Higashi temple was undergoing refurbishment, so we caught the bus back up to the Gion district, where we embarked on a walk around eastern Gion and Higashiyama. This district is very distinctive, almost a separate enclave, which has retained its traditional character. The paved streets are narrow, and quite touristy now, but the district is packed with architectural and cultural interest. We took the walk recommended in the guide book, which involved a steep trek up the hill to the Kiyomizu temple and then a stroll around the packed streets. The temple area was thronged with people, and we made the decision not to join the crowds, but to head for the little streets. It was the season for school trips, and everywhere we saw very well-organised groups of kids, all sporting distinctive caps to mark them out. Here’s a group joining the masses at the Kiyomizu temple:
Apparently, the Kiyomizu temple, founded in 778, is one of those places that every Japanese will visit at least once. Most of them seemed to be there that day! Back on the streets, it was not unusual to see people in traditional dress, often, we were told, hired for the occasion, so that the wearers could promenade around the area:
The streets are full of shops selling handicrafts to tourists, both foreign and Japanese. They are of very high quality, and priced appropriately. We just window-shopped. After another walk up the hill we arrived at the Kodai-ji Temple, next to which was, rather incongruously, the main coach park for the district. There is an impressive bell:
It was getting towards dusk by now, so we went out by the startlingly colourful Yasaka shrine and on to the bustling streets of fashionable Gion, where fashionistas and politicians mix.
That was enough for the day, especially since we had an early start the next morning. We really loved Kyoto, but we would be leaving it for our flying visit to Hiroshima on the Shinkansen the next day.
