So following on from the busy weekend I had with Morgan and Mountain climbing, I had a big excitement coming up - the arrival of my mum for two weeks to Tokyo! Because in my current situation as a research student, I wasn't terribly busy, and so she made a fairly spontaneous decision to come visit!
I arrived at Haneda airport at around 7.30 in the morning on a Monday, expecting the trains to have been super packed with commuters, but I was reminded by their relative emptiness that the Japanese are night owls as a general rule, and so my 6.45-7.30 train voyage was pretty clear. Reuniting with mum we planned the mission to Shibuya and her AirBnB, which was fairly straight forward, and then we went about exploring Shibuya, both to stretch her legs, and also to get her acquainted with the area.
Walking through the shops and getting in amongst the hustle and bustle was fairly uneventful, until we came across a fabric and kimono shop. I had been given a kimono by host family last time I was in Japan, with the intent that it be given to my grandmother to be cut up and turned into something new. It says something about how beautiful the kimono is that my grandmother has not been able to bring herself to cut the kimono up, six years on! Seeing this Kimono shop, as well as the things kimono could be turned into, was both an opportunity for Mum to get a kimono herself (perhaps for conversion into something), but also to get evidence for grandma that indeed old kimono get repurposed. I thought I was in for one helluva translation exercise (fabric and such like was nothing I ever really bothered to learn in Japanese), but we were surprised by the shopkeeper who had a very good grasp of English! Before long, mum was trying on various second hand, silk kimono, and obi (belts), and was given such a good discount she walked out in no time with a full get up! We both concluded that was quite a successful first day!
The second day we decided we'd go to some park or garden, as mum hadn't seen a whole lot of that over the past few days. I decided the park around Meiji Jingu shrine, where I'd taken Morgan and Matt the week before, would be a good one, both because the park itself is very nice, but also it is one train stop away, meaning it would be a nice way to introduce Mum to the train system.
We had a good time wandering the gardens, including the extra part Matt, Morgan and I missed the first time, which was a favoured place of the Meiji Empress. Mum had been worried she would miss the Koyo Autumnal leaves by the time she got there, but thanks to climate change there were still plenty around to see, and these were brilliantly exhibited at Meiji Jingu. The shrine itself had been fully renovated in its frontage, meaning the scaffolding that was everywhere the week before had been taken down, giving us full views of the shrine.
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| This tree was planted in the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s, with the little tags cataloging its growth |
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| In the gardens we were greeted by a very curious little bird |
After the wandering through Meiji Jingu, we took the opportunity to wander through Harajuku. As it was a Monday, there weren't the same crowds normally associated with weekends, meaning we could gently amble down the street. Being in Harajuku I felt it entirely necessary to show Mum the CookieTime store, being a NZ brand and all, and as well as that, Mum wanted to visit a cat cafe, for which Harajuku, and Japan generally, is quite famous.
We found one that had exclusively Bengal cats, which was a big drawcard as neither of us had ever seen one in the flesh. Walking up some steps, we came into a very humid and warm room with trees and foliage dotted around, with jungle sounds playing from some obscured speaker system. People were lying and sitting on the ground, and in their laps were smoochy cats! Looking around there were cats in all sorts of places, some chasing, some being chased, others sleeping in the trees, and others standing sentinel. We paid the fee and sat down, with Mum almost instantly attracting the attention of one cat which spent a long time pawing her, getting comfortable. I on the other hand seemed to be actively repelling them, with the cats having little to no interest in me. Eventually one of the cats, which was being bullied by another, came over to me and sat in my lap, after which it was joined by another.
All in all it was a fun experience, particularly if you are a cat person (which I confess to not being especially), but Mum particularly enjoyed it - and for me they did make quite nice photographic subjects!
We meandered up the street to head back home for the day, seeing a woman advertising an owl cafe, with the obligatory owl accompanying her (something for the next visit maybe!), as well as some of the Harajuku staples, crepes, crazy clothing, and people dressed in kimono!
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| Finally making a feline friend! |
Another day of our adventure took us to the Metropolitan Art Museum to see an exhibition on Van Gogh, and then one on Post-Realist artworks. The Van Gogh exhibition doesn't allow photography, but as with the first time I visited, it was very cool to see up close works by such a famous artist. The Realism exhibition was incredible for other reasons though, as it featured some hyper realistic paintings, as well as some that took crazy scenes but depicted them in a superbly realistic-but-not way.
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Making the most of the reflective ball at the entrance is almost a requirement when I'm there
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Following on from the art and culture at the museums, another day we visited a place I had wanted to go to for a long time, but only with another foreigner - Yasukuni Shrine. Yasukuni is a very politically sensitive place in Japan for other Asians, such that Japanese Prime Ministers think very long and hard about visiting for fear of provoking anger from the Chinese and Koreans, and the Emperor has ceased going entirely. Yasukuni was established in the Meiji Restoration as a place for the spirits of those who died in the service of the Empire to reside in. Accordingly, any Japanese soldier or person involved in the war effort during World War II will have their spirit enshrined there. For ordinary soldiers this is no trouble, but the fact that there are several Class A war criminals regarded as having their spirits there means the Chinese and Koreans in particular believe it goes directly against the suffering they experienced at the hands of the Japanese, particularly in issues of the Nanking Massacre and the Korean Comfort Women.
Visiting the shrine we noticed a higher police presence than other places had, and there was an active ban of photos within the final gates of the shrine - though nothing could stop people taking photos through the gate into the shrine itself, which was a bit odd (welcome to Japan)
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| The first gate to Yasukuni - made of metal unlike most others |
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| The long walk down to the start of the shrine complex |
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| The inner gate after which no photos maybe taken |
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| The massive gates to the main complex, designed to make people look tiny compared to the might of Empire |
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| The residence of over 2 million Japanese spirits, including some Class A War Crims (looking at you, Tojo) |
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| A photo that 'may' have been taken from inside the final gate (cannot confirm or deny) |
After paying our respects (as much as one can with war criminals), we headed towards the museum at the shrine. This was of interest to me, as the museum not only contains a lot of war-era toys that aren't found in other war museums (being those of the then enemy), but also because it has a lot of revisionist history, painting the Nanking Massacre as an 'Incident', and giving a narrative of the Pacific War being one where Japan was trying to liberate Asia from Western colonialism (by colonising it itself, so it would seem...)
Most of the museum doesn't allow photos, but the places that do have a lot of 'toys' - A Zero type fighter plane, an Ohka flying bomb, Suisen Dive Bomber, Type 99 Tank, and a Japanese suicide submarine, among other things. For a New Zealander, perhaps the most poignant thing was a locomotive in the main lobby, that was used on the Thai-Burma Railroad. This railroad was built by the Japanese using slave labour from both the local populations, but also prisoners of war, mostly British, Dutch, Australian and New Zealand. The Japanese weren't exactly known for their humanity towards prisoners, and so a lot of people died during the construction of this railway. With the revisionist nature of the museum however, most emphasis was placed on how important the railway was for logistics, and how stretches of it are still used today by Thailand and Burma/Myanmar - with no mention of the slave labour that I could see.
Despite the history behind the objects within the museum, I still found the tank, planes, guns and so on very cool and impressive to look at, so I was like a kid in a candy shop for some parts of it.
Of course the museum did have poignancy from a Japanese perspective as well, with profiles given of ordinary people who died in the war, both Japanese soldiers as well as civilians who helped in the war effort. With a room filled with thousands of faces, you could see how ordinary many of them were, pushing themselves to become kamikaze pilots to (unsuccessfully as it turns out) defend their homeland from invasion. One of the profiles was of Baron Nishi, who represented Japan in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics in equestrian, who was shown in Clint Eastwood's film,
Letters from Iwo Jima. He died as a commander of the Japanese forces on Iwo Jima in the twilight months of the Pacific War. Seeing the ordinary profiles of Japanese soldiers was very interesting, as it's not something we look at from our side of the conflict. Similarly, outside the museum is a shrine to the war widows and families who lost their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, which had various tributes laid at its feet. There were similar shrines to the dogs and horses used in the war, as well as a large one to the 'Special Attack Unit' members (Kamikaze) soldiers who gave their lives flying planes, operating submarines or inside explosive rocket powered gliders.
Interestingly to me though, as a law graduate was a shrine to a person who was obviously not Japanese.
This shrine was for the Judge Radhabinod Pal, the only member of the 11 Judge bench at the War Crimes Tribunal for Japan after the War who dissented to impose a Class A sentence upon the accused, and disagreeing that Japan had waged a war of aggression in the Pacific. He is revered by Japanese nationalists who cherry pick his opinion, and use it as evidence of Japan as having done little wrong in the Pacific War. Next to the shrine was an information booth which had an English language section, describing his courage and scholarly erudition in his dissent, as well as saying that his views are slowly becoming accepted internationally (the legal scholar and WWII history fan in me snorted at this)
All in all the first few days of Mum's visit were very good ones, with plenty of adventures, starting off what was to be a very busy fortnight!
There's plenty more material from this, so keep posted for some blogs in the near future!
Tata for now!
Troy/Toroi
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