Richard's blog

Lots of new photos, three new batches in fact: Kyoto, Yasukuni Shrine, and Random August and Septmber Shtuff.

Last weekend, I went on my first mini-holiday during my time in Japan, down to the ancient city of Kyoto. The contrast with Tokyo is intense. Tokyo is a city ruthlessly stripped of the pre-modern — an efficient, modern city achieved despite a garbled urban structure. It’s a wonderful city but there is little by way of “sights” to assuage the lens of the tourists camera. Kyoto, on the other hand, retains large numbers of significant old structures that remind of Japan’s history, and provide excellent film fodder. World Heritage sites abound, old timber temples, centuries-old rock gardens, pagodas, shrines, it’s all here. It’s inefficient (the bus network drove me to distraction), the tourist information is woeful, and the entry fees stack up, but for a dose of pure Old Japan, it must be nearly unrivalled.

Anyway, the best way to see what I did is to look at the photo dump here. I admit that I could have edited this selection more fiercely but frankly I couldn’t be bothered.

Another thing I did recently was visit the controversial Yasakuni Shrine. It is controversial because the temple is officially the spiritual home of anyone who has ever fought and died in the name of the Emperor of Japan. No exceptions are made to this rule, so more than a dozen Class A war criminals are enshrined. There was considerable political tension between Japan and its neighbours regarding the issue of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s planned visit to the Shrine a few weeks ago. The visit never occurred, possibly because of the election that was quickly called in relation to the postal privatisation reforms.

The Shrine itself is not the most prepossessing structure, but the enormous torii on the promenade are quite imposing. I took a photograph of a white dove on top of one of these. (I tend to agree with the Lonely Planet guide that these white doves have been planted here as a political message, they really don’t exist anywhere else in Tokyo.) The museum is also interesting for its elaborations of Japan’s war history, I shall have to read some textbooks to see whether the Japanese view concurs with anyone else’s. (***NEW***, Sun 25.09.05, this article from The Age is very interesting.) One of the more moving displays in the museum was panels of small black-and-white photographs of people who are enshrined at Yasukuni; this, more than anything, brings home the personal toll of war and reminds of its waste.

Lastly, some really random doggerel photos that I think are mildly interesting. Enjoy!