Monday, May 15, 2017

An English Lady from the Skies

The crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 brought a swift end to the era of the airship, behemoths of skies and floating bomb platforms of the First World War. Withdrawn from service almost immediately following the disaster was one such craft that operated as a mail carrier between Europe and South America known as The Graf Zeppelin, call sign LZ 127 which in the late summer of 1929 held the distinction of being the first air transport to circumnavigate the globe, including a five day stopover in Japan.

Japan's fascination with powered flight began nearly two decades earlier when, in December 1910, Yoshitoshi Tokugawa (a grand nephew of the last shogun) flew from the parade grounds of Yoyogi, in central Tokyo. As reparation for activities during WWI, Japan was subsequently awarded an airship hanger from Germany which was promptly located at the Kasumigaura Naval Air Field some seventy five kilometres northwest of Tokyo, part of the fledgeling Japanese Imperial Navy Aeronautical Centre.

Following a transit of Tokyo and Yokohama, it was here that the Graf Zeppelin was moored during their stay bringing some well earned relief and warmth, following the flight over Siberia, to its passengers and crew. And onboard, despatched by William Randolph Hearst's media empire, was the English Lady Grace Marguerite Hay-Drummond-Hay who, as a result of her travels (and with the possible exception of Gulliver), holds the distinction of being the first tourist in Japan to arrive by air.


The Graf Zeppelin flies over Tokyo, August 19, 1929


 

Friday, May 5, 2017

"The" Ginza - Part 1

Interestingly this random "the" actually appears twice in Japan. There is "the Ginza" in Tokyo, today the height of cosmopolitan retail, and "the Gion" in Kyoto, the traditional street of geisha and teahouses (and tourists). But Japanese is a notoriously vague language and doesn't actually posses a definitive article so why do we sometimes impose one in English? Indeed, in Japanese the name is sometimes reverse engineered through katakana (the alphabet reserved for western words) as "za Ginza", a confirmation, if needed, that the origins are English, rather than Japanese.

The etymology of the name itself relates to the government's silver mint (Ginza literally translates as "Silver Chair") which was located in the area until 1800 when the shogunate became tired of the endemic corruption and moved it to Nihonbashi where they could keep a closer eye on back door activities. The name stuck though and the area was a veritable rabbit warren of kabuki theatres, river boat wharfs and kimono stores until in 1872, it was razed by catastrophic fire. And now it began to take a very different shape. An Irishman, by the name of Thomas James Waters, cleared the streets and created the new and distinct European coffee house experience of Brick Town.

English speaking foreigners were just beginning to appear around this time in Japan as the country opened it's doors to the world and it was during this period that it seems to have acquired the "the". Reference to it can be found as far back as 1908 in The New York Times when it was reported that "Admirally Sperry was mobbed by crowds wanting to shake his hand in the Ginza". And then again  in the Chicago Tribune where somewhat more ominously the front page reported "today's target is the Ginza" in January 1945. And so the Ginza's epithet arose as a result of its position as a unique European experience in the heart of the capital city of the land of the rising sun. Somewhere to meet and discuss the events of the day. "The" place to be seen.


Tuesday, May 2, 2017

The Rise of the Concrete Castle

Japan, as with many countries, has a treasure chest of castles criss-crossing the nation. Ornate in execution, the typical style that springs to the western mind is based on the Azuchi-Momoyama design, with Azuchi Castle itself being the original blue print overlooking Kyoto on the shores of Lake Biwa. Today however, the vast majority of structures derive from concrete poured largely in advance of the 1964 Olympics (Osaka Castle even boasting a useful glass elevator following a 1990's refit) with three notable exceptions of Himeji, Kumamoto and Matsumoto castles. And Kumamoto is pushing it a little with a central keep from the 1960's as well.

The decline and fall of the castle network across the country came largely as a result of, but not necessarily during, the Boshin (civil) War of 1868/69. Osaka Castle was razed to the ground as the Imperial forces made it clear that there was a new kid in town (the emperor being only sixteen at the time) but the majority of what remained were intact. These castles though were seen as a symbol of the era when Japan was ruled by the Shogun and his daimyo lords. Not wanting obvious reminders of the past, people simply dismantled them for their timber and iron.

Today, many of the recreations are spectacular to visit and house museums that provide an interesting guide to feudal life in Japan. The restored Tsuruga Castle in Fukushima Prefecture with its deep moats and ten meter thick battlement holds the distinction of hosting the last mainland battles of the civil war before the bakafu forces withdrew to Hokkaido for their heroic, though somewhat doomed, last stand. But one castle, that of Hiroshima, suffered a unique fate in history, being the only one to be destroyed by an atomic bomb. Less than a mile from the epicentre, deep inside, lay the military communication rooms which on that day were staffed by high-school girls, the men being somewhat pre-occupied at the time. And when they sent a radio message saying the city had been destroyed in a single blast, the government in Tokyo simply didn't believe them.