This week we traveled to Nagoya, Hiroshima, Himeji, and Kyoto to experience “the other side” of Japan. Our first stop was Nagoya, in which we watched the Sumo game. We learned in the reading about the ambivalent attitude Japanese have about this national sport. On one hand, Sumo is seen as a game that represents the national spirit and was widely promoted in Japanese colonies. It was also regarded as a political tool and was militarized during the war times. On the other hand, while Sumo was gradually accepted and loved by “foreigners”, the Japanese were afraid of losing their dominance of the sports, and gradually limiting the number of foreign wrestlers. The “purity” of Sumo is valued because it is regarded as a Japanese traditional game and wrestlers are regarded as “modern samurais” so that only Japanese males are the most “appropriate” candidate of Sumo wrestlers. I found Sumo game put great emphasize on the ritual parts and resonate many beliefs in Shinto, such as the sacred ring are kept by tossing salt to keep the “purity” of both Sumo and its players.
Sumo
The second day we went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Miyajima. The museum has left a very deep impression to me that I could not calm down for a long time. The museum’s narrative had a powerful impact on establishing the emotional connections of victims and survivors and viewers across the time. The three exhibits I remembered the most in that museum are the diary of a girl who dreamed to become a teacher and defeat the destiny and a drawing from the survivors. In that girl’s diary, she said she must survive with her strong, she cannot accept death because she is destined to go to universities and become a teacher in the future. She made a note on the books she was going to read in preparation of becoming a teacher, and at the beginning, every word of her had shown her undefeatable determination and optimism. But gradually she wrote less and less, usually one or two sentences, all about her feeling sick and tired. From the description, I know that she was suffering from leukemia as a sequela of radiation, but even at that moment she still didn’t write down a single word about death. I can see how she struggled in extreme pain, and page by page, I see her getting weaker and weaker every day till the day she stopped keeping a diary anymore. The description told me that she died a few months later because of leukemia. I felt so helpless staring at her last sentences in the diary. I could imagine if I were her, I definitely don’t have the courage to face the pain of losing families and suffering from an incurable illness. The second exhibit was a drawing from a survivor: An adult crouched down the ground, arched his/her back to protect the child underneath. Two bodies were carbonated, and the survivor recalled only the shape of the body told her there were two bodies. Because it was not a real picture, I would say that I am “lucky” enough not to see the horrifying details of the misery, because I don’t think I can bear that shock psychologically. It was hard for someone living in the peace age to imagine how horrifying the nuclear bomb is, but pictures drawn by individual survivors had dragged me into that scene: although the drawings omitted many bloody details, I can still emotionally feel all their sufferings, scorching my mind in a far less weakened magnitude compare to what they had experienced. The lighting of museum also matched greatly with the overall narratives, from the dark of the war days to the light at the end of exhibition, it seems that us, as visitors, our fate was tied to those individuals in the war, and together we gone through the dark and embraced the light at the end. The museum narrated a “touchable” history, and I believe everyone who stepped out of the museum would appreciate greatly of the peace we have today and sincerely hope that the war would never befall on us again.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
Atomic Bomb Dome, the ruin of original Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall
The third day we head to Himeji Castle, one of the most astonishing ancient architecture I had ever seen. The main keep has six stories and the whole building was mainly supported by two huge wooden pillars from the bottom to top, architecturally, it was a miracle. The castle was designed to be a defense military base, and there are many details designed to enhance the practicability of the castle, for example, the window design to bring wind into the room to dilute smoke of weapons; the little wholes on the wall to made the shooting easier, secret rooms for soldiers to hide when enemy has entered the castle, etc., These design reflected the advanced architectural technologies in ancient Japan, and also symbolized the sheer power of lord in ancient Japan’s political system.
Himeji Castle
On the fourth day, we arrived in Kyoto, and I spent the rest of the week in this beautiful place. Kyoto has a very different atmosphere compared to Tokyo, it preserved many more traditional characteristics of Japan. And almost every tourists' sites are about religions. There are numerous shrines and temples in the city. When I was in Fushimi Inari Shrine this morning, I estimated there should be at least four thousand people in the shrine. There were four or five long lines in front of the main shrine, and at that moment, I was thinking about that deities must be very busy since they have to listen to so many wishes every day for hundreds of thousands of years. The religious culture was seen as a representation of Kyoto's identity as the old capital to contrast to the more "western" and modern new capital Tokyo, it is interesting to see how these two cities define itself differently to reflect the formation of the national identity of Japan after Meiji Restoration.
A moment of tranquility in Fushimi Inari Shrine
In summary, it was a fulfilling week and after traveling to so many places, I have seen the "other side" of Japan and I am glad I had a chance to observe this country at a deeper level.
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