September 16th: A Trip to Nagasaki; Day 2 - Sightseeing in Nagasaki

Our first destination was at the site of the twenty-six catholic martyrs who were crucified on a hill in Nagasaki 410 years ago after Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler of Japan, outlawed Christianity and closed Japan to the outside world.


When Japan began to open up again in the middle of the 19th century the ban on Christianity was lifted. It transpired that for the intervening three centuries a form of Christianity had been secretly preserved by communities of "hidden Christians" without priests or books.

We were to encounter evidence of that Christian heritage at various points during our holiday in Nagasaki prefecture, including at our fourth stop on today's busy itinerary.

Just over the road from the memorial site is the Church of the Twenty Six Japanese Martyrs is notable for its concrete structure and pair of outlandish towers.

A few minutes walk from the martyrs hill you come to some steps that lead up to our second destination, a temple called Fukusai-ji. The temple building is designed to resemble a huge turtle. On the back of the turtle there is an 18m-tall statue of Kannon-sama, Goddess of Mercy. You can see her peeping over the roof of the house at the top of the steps that H&E had climbed ahead of me on our stroll to the temple.

The original temple was built in 1628 and destroyed by the A-bomb in 1945. It was rebuilt in 1979. Inside you will find the longest example of Foucault's pendulum in Japan, and the third longest in the world. Foucault's pendulum was made famous by Umberto Eco's novel, Il Pendolo di Foucault. I bought the first Italian edition while living in Imola in 1988-89. Back in England in the summer of '89 I thought it prudent to purchase "The Complete Guide to Foucault's Pendulum" and took both books, along with the first Folio Society edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire with me when I moved to Rome that autumn. I read Gibbon, but Il Pendolo di Foucault and its English language guide langished unread on my book shelf and currently lie neglected in a box in mother's attic; reading Il Pendolo di Foucault in Italian has become one of my "back burner projects"! Perhaps now that I have seen the eponymous device in action I might perhaps make a point of reading the book.

Mind you, I didn't think we would be able to see the pendulum in action as the wire was motionless when we first saw it inside the temple. The wire is suspended from the top of the inside of the hollow Kannon statue down through the main temple building and into the basement, where the bob swings over a compass plate. We found the basement steps and went down but the door was locked, so that seemed to be that. However, when we came back up we were greeted by the woman who runs the temple.

"Herro! Key! You take!"

So back down we went with the lady right behind us. She promptly took the key back off me and opened up the basement, jabbering away all the time in a mixture of Japanese and Japlish-inspired pidgin English which was all part of a practised patter. She took a hook off the wall and used it to set the pendulum in motion.

Foucault's pendulum in full swing

Fixed to the compass plate by two metal arms that extend from the cente there is a metal contraption that looks like a metal comb which has been bent into a quarter circle, with its teeth pointing upwards. The "comb" swivels round so that you can line it up with the pendulum swing. The rotation of the earth gradually causes the axis of the pendulum swing to shift and the needle on the bottom of the bog eventually strikes the first tooth of the comb, knocking it over with a metallic "tock" - for the teeth are attached to the base of the comb by hinges. Gradually the pendulum shifts around and knocks each of the teeth down one by one.

That, at least, is the idea. However, when the pendulum appeared somewhat tardy in getting around to knocking over the first pin our guide said that perhaps she had not set it up properly because of her poor eyesite brought on by her advancing years (or "rougan" as the Japanese call it). She then gave the pin a nudge with her finger, knocking it over before the pendulum had got to it; that meant that there would be an even greater interval before the pendulum could shift far enough to knock the second pin down... We never did see the pendulum knock a pin down because we were ushered out of the basement and back upstairs for a guided tour of the temple. We had no choice in this matter.

"Hey!-You!-Look here!... Chinese furniture! All Chinese furniture... You think only decoration... No!" We were now standing in front of an elaborate Chinese furnishing of doubtful function and antiquity. Suddenly the old girl pulled a large decorative knob and opened a "secret draw"

"Hey!-Open door! Here Japanese soldier thousands dead ashes!"

"Open door! Here atom bomb dead ashes!"

We were force-marched outside and had to bash the peace bell with a log suspended before it on a couple of chains - but we couldn't bash it any-old-how; the bashing thereof was accompanied by strict enjoinders as to where to place our feet and what posture to adopt. Next we had to splash some water over a statue and then inspect the carp pool. The old bird gave Little E some fish pellets to throw at the fish, and headed off with another couple of tourists to demonstrate the debilitating effect of "rougan" on the smooth running of Foucault's pendulum.

We moved on to our third destination, Glover Garden, on Minamiyamate hill and offering a fine view of Nagasaki harbor. Our arrival at the former Mitsubishi second dock house presented Little E with a second chance to feed carp in a single morning!

The former Mitsubishi second dock house, Minamiyamate, Nagasaki.

The view of Nagasaki harber from the upper balcony of the former Mitsubishi second dock house.

The wife and daughter indulged in a bit of dressing up in period costume. Then we headed down the hill to the house that Glover built - the first wooden house built in western style in Japan.

Glover was a British trader, a sort of 19th century merchant adventurer who set up shop in Nagasaki in 1859, founded what was to become Mitsubishi, helped to establish Kirin beer brewery, introduced steam trains and mechanized coal mines to Japan and ran guns for the enemies of the Tokugawa shogunate. He commissioned warships for the new Meiji government, but had gone bankrupt by the time it came to power in 1868. However, he was awarded a consolation prize, that of being the first foreign devil to receive Japan's Order of the Rising Sun. It must have been a fine time to have come to Japan; a combination of immense potential for business development at a time when both people and countryside were unspoilt by the effects of... er, full development of immense business potential...

Just down the road from Glover Garden was our fourth destination, Oura Church, the oldest church in Japan and the only western-style building in Japan to be designated a "national treasure". The facade of the church faces in the direction of the hill on which the twenty-six martyrs were crucified. It was to the priest of this Oura Church that the "hidden Christians" made themselves known in 1865. Many of the hidden Christians returned to the Roman fold, but others chose to keep alive the traditions, or corruptions, that had grown up in the intervening centuries during which time the faithful had handed down the faith by word of mouth without books or priests.

Once the missals had been destroyed both words and dogmas began to decline from their original purity, and, according to Miyazaki Kentaro,

"although the faith followed by the underground Christians had the outward appearances of Christianity, the vital content and spirit of the religion evolved into something entirely different."

We moved on to our fifth destination, "Spectacles Bridge", so called because the double arches of the bridge and their reflection in the river are said to look like a pair of spectacles. Didn't look much like it to me, probably because the water level was too low.

Spectacles Bridge.

David Hurley
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September 15th: A Trip to Nagasaki; Day 1 - Peace Park

How sensible of us was it, we wondered, to have chosen Nagasaki for our late summer holiday, right in the middle of the typhoon season. Nagasaki is famous for its rain and Kyushu, the island on which Nagasaki is located, is often hit by typhoons in September as they head up from the South Pacific. Just a few days before our trip we heard that a typhoon was indeed brewing and it looked as if we would be rushed headlong into the eye of the storm...

However, we pressed ahead and when we arrived in Nagasaki, the sky was overcast but there was no sign of an immanent typhoon, so after a lunch stop at which one of our holiday objectives was achieved - namely, to eat Nagasaki Champon (see pic, above) - we set off by tram for our second objective: Nagasaki Peace Park in Urakami Valley, the northern district of Nagasaki that was hit by the second atom bomb on August 9th, 1945.

Seventy percent of the victims of the bomb were women, children and senior citizens. Some refugees from the atom bombing of Hiroshima on the 6th August arrived in Nagasaki just in time to be bombed again. So it goes.

It was hot work walking through the park on a humid late summer's day with the cloud cover gradually breaking up. The park stretches up the valley floor with grassy expanses framed by trees and tree-lined walks that lead to the hypocentre, which is marked by an austere black three-sided granite column. Nearby are part of the remains of Urakami Cathedral. The cathedral itself is located a few hundred yards from the hypocentre. It was totally destroyed, and some of its remains were moved to the immediate vicinity of the hypocentre.



From the hypocentre we climbed the steps up to the highest part of the park. At the southern end of the plateau there is a fountain that commemorates the terrible thirst which many felt on that day.

From there an avenue flanked by sculptures donated from various countries led the eye, and the legs, northwards towards the chief monument of the park. Notable among the works on either side of the path was the "Monument of People's Friendship" from that most people-friendly of ex-nations, the no-longer actually-existing German Democratic Republic, famous for its friendliness towards its own people (unless they wanted to leave or go on strike or set up political parties and so forth)...


Fountain at the south end of the avenue at Peace Park, Nagasaki (above). Monument of People's Friendship (right).

A plaque attached to the base of the fountain is a quotation from one survivor's testimony: "I was thirsty beyond endurance. There was something oily on the surface of the water, but I wanted water so badly that I drank it just as it was."

The avenue leads to one of the finest modern statues in Japan, the powerful 10-metre-tall Peace Statue created by sculptor Seibou Kitamura.

Peace Statue, by Seibou Kitamura

The statue's right hand points to the threat of nuclear weapons while the left hand extends in a gesture of peace. The mild face, which one Japanese visitor observed was "like a foreigner's face" (although to me it appeared characteristic of a certain type of Japanese face), apparently symbolises "divine grace" while its eyes are closed in prayer for the repose of the bomb victims' souls. The folded right leg and extended left leg signify both passive and active aspects of peace-making. The black marble vault beneath the statue contains the names of the Nagasaki a-bomb victims and those who died of a-bomb related causes in subsequent years.

By now we were in need of some refreshment and there just so happened to be a tourist shop selling lots of natty trinkets as well as various flavours of ice-cream and various sorts of liquid refreshment, and complete with some trestle tables and sun brollies outside. I ought not to omit mention of the Hello Kitty dispensing machines that Little E was keen to try. She was well pleased with her "Mari-chan" pussy cat rattle. So it goes. Life goes on. The cool beer was very good. While we were relaxing there a group of young couples strolled by a couple of times and the slogan on one lad's t-shirt happened to catch my eye:

NO
WEAL
WITHOUT
WOE

Next we visited Urakami Cathedral, which was totally destroyed by the a-bomb and eventually rebuilt in the red-brick Romanesque style of the original. Set up outside the church are several statues from the original church that survived the bombing, though not without surface damage - the statues are covered with what we supposed were scorch marks and a patina of lighter coloured blotches.

On our way back towards the tram stop we were caught in a sudden downpour and sought shelter beneath a shop awning until a kind taxi-driver turned his car around and came back to pick us up.

It stopped raining just a few minutes later, but still, it was pleasant to sit in air-conditioned comfort while the driver gave Mrs H the lowdown on Nagasaki until we arrived at our final destination of the day, Nagasaki Hotel Seifu, perched at the top of one of the hills that dominates Nagasaki harbour.

The window of our room afforded us a fine view of Nagasaki harbour, and so did the balcony of the outdoor spa down on the third floor.

Nagasaki at Night, viewed from the window of Room 1001, Hotel Seifu.

David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
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White Light/Black Rain - A-Bomb Survivors Speak

Steven Okazaki's film White Light/Black Rain: the Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could well be the most gruelling documentary I have ever had to sit through.

I attended the August 5th screening of the film (in English) at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Halfway through the screening and the sheer unplumbable depths of suffering that the survivors had gone through... no, are still going through every day of their lives, seemed to billow out of the screen like ectoplasm and suffocate the whole audience. The tension and discomfort was palpable. I doubt there are many who could watch every single second without flinching or averting their eyes. I certainly averted mine at that point in the film where the disfigured pulp around the eye socket of one poor wretch of a survivor is pulled back with some ghastly medical instrument.

Steven Okazaki has done both the victims of the atomic bombings and the modern world a great service by enabling a handful of survivors to convey to us something from the heart of the horror of what was inflicted upon them. Such is the strength and merit of this film that even for seasoned gaijin who live in Hiroshima and who have been to the museum, read the books, seen the documentaries and heard survivors' stories from our older students White Light/Black Rain retains all of its power to shock, revolt and induce pity as if we had never heard of Hiroshima before.

The reason for that, I think, is that the guts of the film consists of the survivors' testimonies. Steven Okazaki did not get in their way with his own political agenda. In an interview over on Twitch Okazaki explains:

"I have a problem with films about Hiroshima and Nagasaki—not that I particularly disagree with anyone—but, if I know everything’s going to be tailored, if everything I see is going to be in service to just telling us that war’s bad and bombs kill people, but not present us with a film experience, to get a sense of what happened, to get a sense of what people went through and to feel it, my feeling is it doesn’t really matter what the message is if it’s boring. My job is to tell the story and try to tell it in an interesting way so people will watch it."

The film opens with some interviews of young Tokyoites, none of whom seems to know what had happened in August 1945. "I'm no good at history," says one girl. "An earthquake?" volunteers another. However, it was pointed out to me that had they been asked "What happened in the twentieth Year of the Showa Era?" - the twentieth year of Emperor Hirohito's inglorious reign - then they might have recognised the date and responded appropriately:

"Ah so desu ne. The war ended not necessarily to Japan's advantage."

If the young be ignorant the government and people have been complicit. What emerges from the testimonies of the survivors is a story of discrimination and prejudice at the hands of the authorities and local communities. There is a feeling that the government is simply waiting for them to die. It is telling that NONE of the survivors who spoke in the film lives in Hiroshima today.

What then of the American voices in the film? Again, Steven Okazaki let them speak for themselves without forcing them to attempt to justify what they had been a party to. The most forthright of the speakers was the navigator of the Enola Gay, Theodor "Dutch" van Kirk, who has consistently defended the bombing; but it is worth mentioning that his most telling comment comes towards the end of the documentary when he affirms that anybody who had seen the bomb would not (as some "jerks" who have not do) idly advocate its use in America's petty wars around the globe.

Not the most horrifying or painful, but certainly the most squirmily uncomfortable moment was footage from This Is Your Life in which the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, Captain Robert Lewis meets the Revd. Kiyoshi Tanimoto from Hiroshima and his family who had been in Hiroshima on 6th August. The upbeat pace of the show clashes with the awkwardness of the situation. Yet, I have just discovered, the encounter had a profound effect upon one of the participants, Koko Tanimoto-Kondo.

There is much else to say, but much of it has been said elsewhere already and this blog entry has taken me far longer to write than any other; that is partly due to the severity and magnitude of the subject and partly because every time I seek out a name or a fact I end up riveted to the computer screen reading and reading deep into the night.

If you have the opportunity, make the effort to see the film. In the meantime here are some more links:

White Light/Black Rain - Background to the making of the film.

Time is Standing Still: White Light Black Rain - A good review complete with survivors' paintings.

Time Magazine - Theodore "Dutch" J. van Kirk

The Mushrooming Cloud - America in Denail about the Bomb.

You Tube - Steven Okazaki Interview

You Tube - White Light/Black Rain excerpts


David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
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