Day 4: part 5 - Peace Memorial Park

From there, I decided to walk the mile or so to the Peace Memorial Park. It was a very pleasant walk despite the constant rain. At least it wasn't raining as hard as earlier.

Before walking around the park, and seeing the atomic bomb dome, and various monuments, the first location that I found in the park was the Museum. There were two things that I noticed very quickly. One was that the admission price was only 50 yen, which is equivalent to about 50 cents. For such a popular location, I know that they could charge more, but perhaps they want to make it so everyone who wants to can attend. The second thing that I noticed is that throughout Japan, this is where I saw the largest concentration of non-Japanese people. Everywhere I looked there were faces from different parts of the world.

Entering the museum, I knew that I would become emotionally overwhelmed with different descriptions and exhibits that I would see. There were the obvious wall mounted essays describing the lead-up and after-effects of the atomic bombing. However, three really stuck of for me. The first was the photographs of the child named Sadako who died of leukemia about a decade after the bomb, and folded a thousand paper cranes as prayers for her survival. I first encountered her story through a children's book as a school teacher, and seeing photos of her face, and being reminded that she was a real human being (and not simply a children's book character) reminded me of my own mortality.

The second exhibit that astonished me was something that I did not even know existed. Since the atomic bombing, every mayor of Hiroshima has sent letters to leaders around the world condemning them each and every time their country tests nuclear weapons. Being American, and thus exposed to American news media, I figured that these letters would have tapered off in the last couple of decades, except in the case of Iran and North Korea. However, I was shocked to learn that the most recent letter, sent in May 2013 was to Barack Obama. My own ignorance had informed me that there was a nuclear weapons test ban treaty signed by many nations. However, a little research will reveal that it is only a partial ban, and America has consitently been testing such nuclear weapons underground (which is allowed by the treaty). Although I am not one to usually be taken up by politics, something about this made me furious inside. I overheard a girl ask her boyfriend why countries still have nuclear weapons. Practically minded as males sometimes are, he responded that they serve as a deterrrent; if I have nukes, you will not attack me because you will know what is coming. To which she replied in an innocent way that girls sometimes are, "I would rather have no nukes, because then why would anyone attack me?" In my mind, I responded with, "To kill you and steal your stuff."

The last artifact that left an emotional impression on me was the block of concrete from a building upon which the atomic bomb blast left a shadow of the person sitting on a step. Something about the nature of this everlasting imprint of a human being, perhaps unique in human history, made me loose my breath. Some men try to leave an immortal mark on the world with a beautiful painting; some with an eloquent piece of music; others with their ideas or conquests or something else. This man left a shadow on a block of stone as his body was instantly annihilated.

Day 4: part 4 - Museum of Contemporary art, and Manga Library

114, 117, 84 After the feeling of contentment with all in the world overwhelmed me, I marvelled at how the accident of taking the wrong train could lead to an amazing outcome. Maybe I should not rush this trip through Hiroshima as I had originally intended.

There was a sign very near the temple as I left that directed me towards the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art. I had know that this museum was here, but I did not intend to go. Then I reflected on the course of events that led me to the temple, and I remembered how much I loved contemporary art. (In fact, one specific movement in contemporary art is one of the main focuses of my trip to Japan; but more on that later.) So I decided to go 500 meters out of my way towards the art museum, and see what it had to offer.

They had a special exhibition entitled SITE, which focussed on the potential for space and location to contribute, influence, and participate in art. This seemed to fit well with this museum since its permanent collection was focussed on the site and time-space location of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I was elated when I saw a work of art by Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi that would fit right in with the outline to my proposed research, and how it is related to other works of art in Germany that I hope to analyze. (Because it was part of a special exhibit, I could not photograph it, so I included a photo of a totally unrelated sculpture above.)

After leaving the art museum, I saw another sign that pointed towards a manga library about 100 meters in the opposite direction that I had intended to go. It was here, and so was I, so I might as well check it out while I can. It was a small library, about the size of a small public library in a suburban town, but this only lent to its charm. All of its shelves were filled with Japanese comics, and they even had some behind glass that were very old, and rare. There were maybe less than two dozen people inside, each reading whatever they were interested in. One thing that surprised me was that they had a small room devoted to foreign comics, or Japanese comics translated into other languages. What startled me even more about this room is that they had several American comic books like Spiderman and Batman. I felt a connection with this place because in their limited selection of American comics, I found a few issues that I own and enjoyed as a kid.

Day 4: part 3 - Tamonin Temple

As happy accidents go, it so came to pass that where I decided to correct my path to the Peace Memorial Park was right where the Tamonin Buddhist Temple was. Since this wasn't really a detour, and I was already here, I might as well check it out.

While walking around the grounds, taking pictures, and soaking in the atmosphere, I came across a service of a few people led by a Buddhist monk. It was curious because the ritual was being conducted outside, while everyone held their umbrellas. One of the people caught me staring at them, and invited me to join. I am a bit to shy, and did not want to impose upon what was probably an intimate moment for these folk. Then the monk saw me, smiled, and invited me to follow. Again I declined as politely as I could, but instead followed them with my eyes as they made their way into the temple to continue their service. I saw a latecomer run in from the rain, and enter the temple. Seeing this, I then developed the courage to enter the temple and participate see what this was all about.

Most of them were kneeling on a cushion on the ground, but two ladies were sitting on benches. After taking off my shoes, I made my way to the furthest out of the way location I could so as to not bother anyone. I felt like a bad student who doesn't want the teacher to call on them.

Before too long, the monk led them in a chant which they accentuated by rythmically beating on a drum that reminded me of a skull. They kept chanting the same two syllables and beating the drum. And they kept chanting the same two syllables and beating the drum. Still they kept chanting the same two syllables and beating the drum. I was curious about how long this might last. Looking at the clock, I saw that it was 9:30. I decided if this continued for thirty minuts until 10, despite my desire to the contrary, I would quietly leave since there was no telling how long this might last. But then I was reminded of something John Cage said about music (and really, all experience, for that matter.) If you don't like some music after 5 minutes, then listen to it for 15 minutes; if you don't like it after 15 minutes, then listen to it for another 30 minutes; if after 30 minutes you still don't like it, then listen for 60 minutes... After a few minutes, I decided to try to get into this, and participate in the chant and try to loose myself in the experience. This brought a gentle calm over me that I had not felt since arriving in Japan.

Before I give up my mind into a state of nothingness, several thoughts occurred to me. One significant one was about the nature of the music and chanting they were conducting. As I mentioned some time ago, nothing is new under the sun. Yet, in the 1960s, when Eastern culture was really being explored in the West, many of the ideas that serious artist and musicians were expounding were based on Eastern culture, especially Buddhism. After a few minutes of listening to their monotonous and repetitive chanting, all I could think of was that there were many "modern" musical composers who basically stole these Buddhist ideas of music, and composed music in this fashion. It is very simple to make the connection between these Buddhist chants and "trailblazing" composers in the West such as Terry Riley, and later Philip Glass and Steve Reich. To be sure, they made no secret of their Eastern influences; even the Beatles were trying to expand their limitations through excavating Eastern music. What I really love about such explorations and study, however, is that these musical themes, structures, and forms are not exclusively Eastern, but if a student goes back far enough, she will find similarities between these sorts of religious music, and religious music in the West; in fact, many serious composers have turned to medieval Western music after others had already dug so deep in the Eastern wells.

I suppose this brings up an interesting question about the distinction between Eastern cultures, and Western. Many student and scholars seem to want to illustrate that the dominant or most popular expressions define some culture. If that were the case, that would mean that a book or class on American culture might claim that Americans speak English. Clearly English is the dominant language in America, but to make such a claim and focus on English as the dominant language in America is missing something very significant. Clearly many, many languages are spoken in America, but I might make the claim that one of the most imporant features about American culture is in regards to the languages in America that very few people speak, such as Hmong. That there are small pockets and communities of Hmong people in America that speak this language says something very significant about America. That is, if one doesn't know that there are such small ethnic communities scattered around America, a very significant feature (perhaps the most significant feature) of American culture is not understood.

Using the conclusion above, that the cultural features of even the smallest minority are quite significant to the larger culture, I can then conclude something else. (And this is where I will bring it back to my visit to Japan.) Even though Buddhist ideas were clearly more dominant in the East (in places like China and Japan and India), these same ideas were clearly present in the West as well, even as far back as the ancient Greeks through such figures as Heraclitus and Diogenes. Perhaps there is something in the DNA of all people such that all exotic ideas may resonate within us, if we give in for just a moment, and let the opportunity thrive.

If the reader is interested, here are some youtube videos that I snuck in while watching the service from within the temple.

drumming and chanting: (video=1 minute, but they were doing this and nothing else for ten minutes) http://youtu.be/8SxmZ7BvSo8

chanting: (video=1 minute; the were chanting like this for only a few minutes.) http://youtu.be/hzZt6Ld1V3A

musical chanting: (this video is between 3 and 4 minutes long) http://youtu.be/rtHKn2dJPps

Day 4: part 2 - Arriving in Hiroshima

I decided that I would wake up early, take the train to Hiroshima, and then come back in the late afternoon and sleep in Osaka. This would make the next day's journey to Yokohama much more bearable.

I have already remarked more than once that I love the JR Rail Pass. The main reason I did not visit Hiroshima years ago was because the cost was prohibitively high. With the JR Pass, I feel like I'm travelling for free (although I did pay for it weeks ago).

Arriving in Hiroshima around 8:30, the Enlish speaking attendant at the information booth was not yet in for the day. Just as well. I would be able to take a map from the booth and figure out for myself how to get where I wanted to go.

One thing that made this difficult was that it seems that the main public transportation around Hiroshima is not subway, but by streetcar. I don't now why this should intimidate me, but it does. (Perhaps it's because I would actually have to interact with a driver to make sure I was on the correct streetcar; also, I don't want to find myself on the streetcar, and not paying for my trip, as I have done in other foreign locals.) As simple as it was, I couldn't quite make sense of the map, and after wandering around, looking for a subway (and not finding one), I finally deciphered that I was supposed to get on the green streetcar line. I decided to face my fear of streetcars since I ruled out walking due to the fact that it was raining so much, and seemed to have no inclination to stop any time soon. Fine, easy enough. So where do I buy tickets? Seeing the streetcar load up, I asked the driver, and he said I just pay the fare onboard. Ok, like I said, easy enough.

The problem is that there were two different destinations for the green streetcar. Of course, I got on the wrong one. Oh, who cares? It's not like I had anywhere to be, anyway. So after discovering my error (it was soon enough), I disembarked the streetcar, and looked at my map. Based on how long I got to where I was, I determined that Hiroshima is not such a big city at all, and that it would be quite navigable by foot. I would just walk down the street about a mile or so, and then be at the Peace Memorial Park, the main destination for this trip. In fact, despite that there were other interesting locations in Hiroshima that the guide books might have wanted to direct me towards, I really only wanted to be here for a couple of hours to visit the bomb site and museum, and then leave.

Day 4: part 1 - To Hiroshima

One of the things I was most disappointed about regarding my last visit to Japan was that I did not have the opportunity to visit Hiroshima. Even before I was interested in the research that I am currently pursuing, seeing Hiroshima was a life goal for me. In fact, even before I had any interest in Japan whatsoever, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 already had made an impact on me.

One of the authors I really enjoyed during my youth was Kurt Vonnegut. Being an American soldier in Europe during World War II made a significant impact on his writing, as is most famously portrayed in his novel Slaughterhouse 5. However, it is one of his later novels, Hocus Pocus, where he addresses the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

One of the characters of the novel is a Japanese survivor of the bombing, and he retells his experience. The character as a child kneels down under a wall to pick up a ball that his friend had kicked just as the bomb was detonated; when he stood up again, his friend and the whole city had disappeared. I must have been in my late teens or very early twenties when I read this. It was the first time that I could remember crying at words written on the page. At that time, I certainly had no idea that years later I would focus so much of my life on Japan.

Day 3: part 4 - Tomb of Emperor Nintoku

After lunch with my friend, I wondered what I might do with the rest of my day. Osaka is not the classically rich city that Kyoto is, and so there are not many typical sight-seeing locations to visit. One series of spots that has peeked my curiosity since first reading about it in old history books are ancient Kofun tombs.

During the Kofun era, around 1500 years ago and more, old emperors and nobles made tombs for themselves called Kofun (thus the name archeologists and historians have given to the era). Ultimately, they are not much more than burial mounds that might be found in many ancient societies around the world. However, although they lack the technological sophistication that was required to build other ancient stone tombs (such as (in my estimation) the pyramids in Egypt, or even Stonenge), they do illustrate a significant desire in the the Kofun nobility to create architectually interesting monuments. The unique feature that makes these tombs stand out is that they are keyhole shaped. I can't understand why or how this unique shape was arrived at, but I find it interesting becase it is much more than a simple mound that might otherwise be overlooked as some kind of natural occurrence.

To be sure, I might be using the term "architectural" in a very loose way. Afterall, other than the surrounding moat that gives the tombs the keyhole shape, there are no other structures above ground that would distinguish these sights. I can't help but be curious about whant may lie below ground, however. Because these are known to be tombs, and there are so many scattered around the Kansai region of Japan, there must be so many archeologically, historically, and artistically significant artifacts below the ground. However, they are considered sacred spots, and so the government has not allowed very much excavation of these sites. One cannot even step foot on any of these tombs, as each is surrounded by a fence. (Every so often there is a terrible storm that might ravage one of these mounds, and interesting artifacts from these tombs have been found this way.) This is, of course a controversial issue, especially with academics who would love to find out what treasures lie beneath the ground, and what we could learn about this ancient period of Japanese history, of which there are no contemporary written accounts. (Perhaps one reason that the more conservative folk don't want these tombs excavated is because they might lend evidence against what the old myths say about ancient Japan.)

The largest of these tombs is the tomb of Emperor Nintoku, who probably reigned around the year 300. There are many accounts of his good deeds in the ancient history texts, but one of his achievements that I get to discuss in my course is that the oldest written poem in Japanese literature (under some arguments), from the ancient Man'youshu anthology, is classically attributed to him (this attribution may or may not be true). This tomb is also claimed by the Japanese to be the largest ancient tomb anywhere in the world. To make this claim, they consider the length of the longest side. The pyramids in Egypt are 230 meters long, and Nintoku's tomb is 793 meters long, for a total of 464, 000 square meters (115 acres).

However, one drawback of visiting this site is that one cannot really fathom the magnitude of this tomb. Unlike the pyramids in Egypt which rise so high into the air, and thus present their magnitude, even from far away, this tomb lies fairly close to the ground, probably only going up a few stories high at its highest point. All that one can really see is what looks like a park so thick with trees. You will see the moat surrounding the tomb, but to really get the best idea of it, and really grasp the magnificence of it, you would really have to be above it in a helicopter or something. (Viewing the location on Google maps does offer a great view from outer space.) Even the highest nearby buildings do not have a vantage point from which this looks like anything but a preserved park. I didn't go in a helicopter, so I didn't much amazement at this site.

Coupled with the lonliness that I felt after leaving my friend, now I seemed to have wasted the rest of my day visiting an underwhelming sight. However, looking at the map that I received from the information booth the previous day, I could see that there were many such tombs all around this location, at least 20 others that were very close by, and several hundred if I wanted to make a scavenger hunt out of it over many days (I didn't want to do that). Well, I'm here, I figured, so I might as well make the most out of it.

Walking through the park that was across the street, I happened upon one of these smaller tombs, almost without noticing it. Like I metioned above, they barely look like more than small mounds with trees on them. The only thing that made this one stand out was that, indeed, there was a moat around it, and surrounding the keyhole shaped mound there was a fence. But upon further examination, I could really appreciate what I was looking at. Unlike the much larger tomb of Emperor Nintoku, walking around this tomb on the ground I was able to make out the keyhole shape of the structure, and the elevated mound at the head of the keyhole shape. I was amazed, and my spirits were lifted! Again, unlike seeing Nintoku's tomb, here I had the feeling of "Wow, I am actually seeing a Kofun tomb!" It was a curious effect that the smaller, less significant tomb would illicit this response, but not the larger more significant tomb.

Another curious thought that crept across my thinking was why, over the last 1500 years or so, had these tombs not been robbed or vandalized. Certainly that has been the case of many of the great tombs around the world (the pyramids in Egypt, for example.) Furthermore, these tombs do not seem like they were designed to be sufficiently protected against robbers with such motivations. If I had more time here in Japan, I might be willing to run across these shallow moats, through these weak fences, and start digging myself! In fact, seeing these smaller tombs, I could clearly see a spot where the fence was broken, and litter that was scattered across the mound (maybe it was homeless folk, or kids just having fun). It seems like a real life Indiana Jones can really take advantage of the lax security here. (I suppose it would not be Indiana Jones, since he is a good guy who follows the laws and respects artifacts; then I would choose to be one of his antagonists.)

Day 3: part 3 - Meeting an old friend

After rushing through two museums, I jumped on the train towards Osaka Station. I met my friend in a hotel lobby, and we had a nice lunch. We had originally met while she was on a prolonged stay in New York. It feels like it was several years ago, but it must have been after 2008; maybe 2009 or 2010. In any case, it has been a few years.

It is always interesting to see old friends that we may have lost touch with. I experienced this in Los Angeles, where I met an old friend that I hadn't seen for years. He now has two children, a dog, and a house, quite a different life than when I had seen him last. I suppose that we all have changed over the years, but our own change seems so gradual, day by day, even minute by minute, that the overall growth is often missed unless we give ourselves the chance to reflect on this arch of life.

As for myself, I seem to often arrive at the conclusion that my life has somehow gone in a wrong direction, or is not taking advantage of its full potential. But this would only imply that there is a right direction. Even though from a rational standpoint my own cynicism and pessimism would precludes me thinking that way, the thought still appears. But meeting old friends, it typically turns out that there is a mutual admiration for what the other has accomplished with life in just the few years that we have seen each other. Hearing this alternative perspective, I can appreciate my own life that much more.

That's what made it so hard when we separated after lunch. This having been the first time on this trip that I shared more than a few words with someone, it only reminded me of my loneliness once we finished lunch and she left. Perhaps some people are good at travelling on their own, and I wish I was one of those people, but it seems I am not.