In many ways my trip to Japan had begun years ago, when I was a little boy in Pakistan. It was a little island near northern China. As I grew up, I discovered Japanese prints, poetry, Zen, and the Samurai. Eventually there came the sad episode which began with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and ended with the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The grand finale, which took place on the deck of the USS Missouri with General Douglas MacArthur witnessing the surrender of what was once a proud nation, was seared in memory.
So when my wife and I boarded the ANA Boeing 777-300, we were bound not only for Japan as it existed today but for the Land of the Rising Sun that had existed for millenia. After a few days in Tokyo, we boarded the bullet train to Kyoto. There was nothing like that in the US.
One day my wife and I did the ‘philosophers walk’ along a creek. An artist was sketching the local scenery. We bought two prints. Later, we rode in a rickshaw. As the ride came to an end, we spotted the newlyweds. They were also riding in a rickshaw and radiating the most precious of smiles. They waved at whoever was looking at them and asked for their pictures to be taken. I had not witnessed such a sense of joy in ages
The shuttle bus to the hotel navigated through some heavy traffic, not unlike what I had seen in Tokyo. At the hotel, I asked the concierge if there were any temples close by. She said: “Nanzen-ji is a ten minute walk.” We did the walk. The temple stood in splendid isolation from the trappings of the 21st century. In the days the followed, we saw temples and more temples, one more serene than the other.
One day my wife and I did the “philosophers walk” along a creek. An artist was sketching the local scenery. We bought two prints.
Later, we rode in a rickshaw. As the ride came to an end, we spotted the newlyweds. They were also riding in a rickshaw, and radiating the most precious of smiles. They waved at whoever was looking at them and asked for their pictures to be taken. I had not witnessed such a sense of abandon in ages.
We also took in a trip to Nara, the imperial capital before Kyoto, and whose temples are hosts to more than a thousand deer. One of them contains a large statue of the Buddha, parts of which date back to the 4th century.
We lucked out when we discovered that a two-hour parade was going to be held in Kyoto. The pageant was imposing. In just two hours, we saw 12 centuries of history on parade. That evening we saw a traditional show at a theater which included, among other features, a puppet show and a geisha show.
As we were nearing the end of our one-week stay in Kyoto, a Japanese-American friend living in the US suggested we bring back with us a wooden Samurai sword set. So we went to a handicraft store that specialisedbp in swords, hoping to find wooden ones. But the store only stocked real swords. The store owner was a man in his forties. He told us that it was not a simple matter to bring real swords into the US. Both Japanese and US authorities had laid out well-established procedures that took weeks to complete. These required that the swords be deregistered as weapons. He said these restrictions had gone into effect after the war. I presumed he meant the Second World War.
I asked him if there was a war museum in town. He said there was one near the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, which was located near the imperial palace. The shrine had been in the news because Prime Minister Abe had broken with precedent and visited it, much to the ire of the US.
He said you can see the Zero fighter there. I told him I had visited Pearl Harbor and seen the damage that fighter had done during the war.
I asked him if he had seen that epic film, Tora, Tora, Tora. He said yes. I was going to ask him if that was an accurate portrayal of history but we jumped ahead to MacArthur.
I asked if there was any memorabilia in Tokyo from the MacArthur era. He asked me where I was from. I said I had lived in the US for four decades but I was a native of Pakistan.
His tone changed as he said that in his five or six years of rule over Japan, MacArthur had changed the culture of the country. Then he went quiet in an odd sort of way. I was not sure what to make of it. Perhaps he was going to sneeze or cough since he had closed his eyes. When they opened, they were blood shot red. I thought he was having an attack of hay fever and stepped back to avoid the inevitable sneeze.
But when my wife tugged at my shirt, I realized the man had tears in his eyes. It was a very difficult moment. I was not sure what to say. Or to figure out what I had said that had elicited this reaction.
Finally, he broke the silence. He said he was named by his mother after her aunt’s son who had been killed in Hiroshima. He also said he lost his uncle during the war. All I could say was that wars solve no problems, they just create new ones.
We were back in Tokyo at the Yasukuni shrine. We had come here ostensibly to see the Zero fighter. But in many ways we had come to see why this place had generated so much controversy. We were disappointed that only portions of the shrine proper were open to visitors. The main assembly hall was only open to Shinto practitioners. Reading the signs, we discovered that the Japanese believe that the souls of the war dead turn into deities.
The shrine contained a war museum and that was open to tourists. In the lobby there was one Zero fighter aircraft, two pieces of artillery, and a train engine. Then you entered the main display areas in which the Japanese version of history was displayed on a room by room basis: Japan helped to liberate India from the British, the US forced Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and the war between Japan and China was triggered by a Chinese attack.
Elsewhere, we had a late evening encounter with a young Japanese man who spoke fluent Urdu. He was directing people into the lobby of a building where one of the top DJ’s in the country was signing autographs. The young man had spent a year in Delhi and his linguistic abilities were truly formidable.
During our first few days in Tokyo, we did a city tour. Among other sights, we saw a replica of the Eiffel Tower, a replica of the statue of liberty, and a replica of a bridge which could easily pass for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The food wherever we ate was remarkable. On another day, we went to see to Mt. Fuji. We had to ride up in a scary gondola to get there but the views were just awesome.
Slowly and steadily, the true Japan shed its modernist, hi-tech garb and revealed its classic beauty and history to us.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, September 15th 2017.