Since dragonfruit and I only recently met, I decided to get to know it better. To my surprise, dragonfruit comes from a cactus, the genus Hylocereus. The fruit is cultivated in the tropics around the world, and I am not sure why I have not come across it before. In Japan, the fruit is grown in Okinawa.
Hylocereus is one of several cacti genera that are known as “night blooming,” such as in night-blooming cereus or queen of the night. The plant and fruit are also known as pitaya, and apparently several types are cultivated. We commonly see tuna (the fruit of prickly pear cactus) in our markets, but not pitaya.
Tokyo Fruit StoreName the grocers in your area. In mine there are Whole Foods (run by a Austin libertarian), HEB, Kroger, Randalls, and a handful of shops with names such as Pic & Pac. HEB bailed Galveston after the hurricane, and we will see how long the others hang on. Whole Foods is no closer to the island than Houston, since they cater to a clientèle not exactly characteristic of Galveston. Funny, but in Austin we shop at Wheatsville Coop and Fresh Plus, both in Austin when Whole Foods began and both who have remained true to “local” food. I wouldn’t be caught dead in Whole Foods (sorry, John, politics do matter).
Japan is awash in neighborhood shops and restaurants. I know we hear about the conglomerates (Sony, Honda, Toshiba), but most Japanese shop for basics at the corner store. In the past there were dozens of corner shops in Galveston. In fact, a book has been published on the variety of neighborhood grocery stores and shops that once proliferated here on the island. For the most part, they are gone. Why support a local merchant, a neighbor, when you can buy cheap merchandise at a chain store owned by an off-islander? For all of the pride our local “born on the islanders” take in their origins (women often wear a BOI pendant), this pride does not extend to supporting local businesses. Dragon Fruit
At the end of our Japan trip we shopped in Cassady’s neighborhood. There are countless tiny cafe and stores there, and I wanted to see a dragonfruit. We had dragonfruit for breakfast in Kyoto (white meat with minuscule black seeds), and I am certain that I had never seen the fruit before. Within minutes I had located a local shop with crates of the fruit, packed with shoppers preparing for the weekend. Fruit bowl with dragon fruit
Yes, I agree that Americans have the constitutional right to be obese, ignorant, bigoted, and uninsured. I have no doubt that this is precisely what the founders had in mind. But for those who want a choice, who do appreciate local foods and farmers as an important part of their lives, the choices are limited. In Austin it is easy, in Galveston impossible. Where would you rather live?
Shinkansen in Utsunomiya Station
Our trip is at its end.
We arrived in Austin last night. Today has been one of jet lag and travel recovery misery. Jet lag is part of the yin-yang of international travel. The enjoyment of spending time with your granddaughter is balanced by the pain you suffer once home.
Our last Shinkansen ride brought us back to Tokyo, this time to Ueno station. UT (the University of Tokyo) is located near there, in the Meguro District. Cassady’s apartment is nearby as well. We stayed in a roykan within walking distance of her, and on Saturday we visited the Komaba campus where she will be studying the next two years. UT has five major campuses, with Komaba housing Arts and Sciences.
Saturday evening we met Cassady’s friends, Lee Taniguchi and his wife, Kaoru, for a departure dinner. Lee grew up in Harlingen (Texas), and his family remains in the Valley. He attended the University of Texas, and we shared stories of Austin and his time here. Of course I wanted to know how the Taniguchi family came to live in South Texas, and how he eventually settled in Tokyo.
Let me digress (or veer off) for a moment. I am a Texan, and as one I grew up in the Jim Crow South. I remember the bill boards along the highway that said “Impeach Earl Warren” (who, for those younger, led the Supreme Court in the Brown vs Board of Education case that integrated schools). The Supreme Court issued its “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” ruling in 1954, but opponents were able to drag out implementation for my entire educational career (assuming that I accept that it is complete today).
Here is an example. In 1968, my senior year in high school, a high-school teacher in Sugarland (the town memorialized in Leadbelly’s Midnight Special), Henry Keith Sterzing, had been relieved of his duties by the John Foster Dulles High School board members. His crime? In response to a question from a student about the marriage of Dean Rusk’s daughter to a black man, the teacher stated that he saw nothing wrong with interracial marriage. They fired him.
In the Houston downtown library, purportedly a bastion of free thought and learning, you were greeted by a water fountain near the front door. The fountain had been placed by the Daughters of the Confederacy, and dedicated to those who served the Gray. My mother taught at St. Vincent’s, where Dick Dowling, the Confederate hero of the Battle of Sabine Pass, is buried. One of Galveston’s mayors had operated one of the largest slave markets along the Gulf coast before the Civil War.
While attending the University of Houston, Lee Otis Johnson became one of the liberal causes. Lee Otis had given a marijuana cigarette to a Houston undercover cop, and had received a thirty-year prison sentence for his crime. When Governor Preston Smith visited the campus, students greeted him with chants of “Free Lee Otis, Free Lee Otis.” When asked afterward what he thought of the display, Smith said that he could not understand why students were chanting about refried beans (frijoles, frijoles).
The Texas travel industry tagline is “Texas – it’s a whole other country.” Does Texas believe itself to be a foreign country? No, but the remaining 49 states rightfully do.
Because of the civil rights movement, and liberal parents, I suppose that I had a more balanced perspective of the plight of African-Americans than most white Texans. But the La Raza movement would come later, and by the time I could focus on other minorities (as though Texas ever has) I matriculated. Cassady and Virginia at Todai
This is a very circuitous way of saying that I knew nothing about the Japanese in Texas, or in America, for that matter. I knew that a few Japanese had settled near Houston as farmers, and my mother had taught children of one of those families, the Kobayashis. But otherwise I am certain that I did not meet anyone of Japanese ancestry until I graduated from high school. My school administrators felt no need to educate us about ethnic groups we would have little contact with. Interestingly, I do not remember any classes that discussed Viet Nam’s history or plight either, and we had (and have) plenty of contact with them.
Like the downplaying of Japanese militarism in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and my criticisms of that selective telling of history, I can equally criticize my own education and its gaps. At dinner Lee had mentioned that his great uncle had settled in Harlingen after the war. Lee said that he had been interned in Crystal City, and had recruited other Japanese families to join him in Texas. I decided to use Lee as an excuse to fill one of the many holes in my cheesecloth education. I knew of German prisoner-of-war camps in Texas, since one had been situated near my grandmother’s home in Mineral Wells. But I knew nothing of Japanese internment camps here.
What I have now learned is that there were three internment camps in Texas – Seagoville, Kenedy, and Crystal City. The camp in Crystal City had been built, at least initially, for those of Japanese ancestry. Crystal City was the location of the largest internment camp administered by the INS and Department of Justice. At its peak there were over 3000 people interned in Crystal City. There were Japanese-American citizens interned there, as well as those of Japanese ancestry brought there from throughout Latin America (such as over 700 from Peru).
How did this fundamental failure of civil rights and the protections of the constitution transpire in my home state? Until talking to Lee I had no idea that the government had established one of the internment camps here, not to mention three. Then I came on this quote from the Texas Handbook:
The official reasons for the deportations were to secure the Western Hemisphere from internal sabotage and to provide bartering pawns for exchange of American citizens captured by Japan. However, the Axis nationals were often deported arbitrarily as a result of racial prejudice and because they provided economic competition for the other Latin Americans, not because they were a security threat.
The Texas legislature in 1921 passed an alien land law that prohibited foreign-born Japanese from purchasing or leasing additional farmland. Racial prejudice? Economic competition? Now, I can relate to those forces. This is the Texas of my youth.
Lee’s great-uncle, Isamu Taniguchi, was one of the California Japanese interned in the Crystal City camp. Born circa 1902, he immigrated to Stockdale (CA) in 1915. There be began a business in bonsai plants and crops. He married his childhood sweetheart in Japan, the only time in his life that he returned.
During WW II, they were interned (along with 120,000 other Japanese-Americans). Isamu was interned at Crystal City. After the war, he remained in Texas, raising cotton, crops, and flowers in the Rio Grande Valley. He retired to Austin in 1967 to be near his son, Alan, Lee’s cousin. By the way, Alan is an architect that has served as Dean of The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and Director of Rice University’s School of Architecture.
According to the on-line accounts:
Out of gratitude for his sons’ education at the University of Texas at Austin, Taniguchi offered to create a Japanese garden for the City of Austin. The city parks department let Taniguchi have three acres of land in Zilker Botanical Garden. With no more than one assistant at a time, Taniguchi worked as a volunteer for 18 months to create the gardens. All plants and material were donated from local nurseries. The gardens feature a series of ponds that spell “Austin” when viewed from the air, a 12-foot waterfall, a teahouse, a Half Moon bridge, a lotus pond with a miniature island, and extensive Japanese landscaping.
This is the origin of the Taniguchi garden? He created the garden out of “gratitude for his sons’ educations at UT?” After being locked up and denied all civil liberties?
My grandchildren are perfect. They are the ideal blend the two cultures. They are seamlessly bilingual and bicultural. They are, in my mind, the personification of Jefferson’s ideal for our democracy.
But Jefferson never could bring himself to free his slaves. He chose to live in two conflicting worlds, one of idealistic democracy and the other of pragmatic (and, yes, evil) prejudice. I firmly believe in the former, but I have lived in the latter. I know prejudice. I know hated, envy, and mindless fury. I know that these forces lie quietly under America’s skin until allowed to surface. And, since the election of an African-American president, they have been stirred once again. In America, you just can’t keep a good hate down.
Now, at the end of this almost three week trip, I return to America to feel the brutal irrationality of this hatred. In contrast, before we returned to Tokyo we spent one night in Utsunomiya. Cassady’s grandparents live there, and we wanted to see them during the trip. They are wonderfully gracious hosts, and Mrs. Yokoyama had prepared a scrumptious meal (with vegetarian croquettes) for dinner. We sat around the kotatsu as a family, sharing funny stories. We laughed at jokes, and loved each other’s company.
This is my trip. When reduced to common people, to common interests, getting along is difficult enough. But at the national or global level, these interactions are dictated by the additional interests of business, power, imposition, and greed. I can only hope that my grandchildren’s generation, those who were raised without racist water fountains, will carry humanity forward. They have my confidence and my prayers. Virginia, Cassady, Ted, Kaoru, and Lee at dinner in Tokyo
View of Nara and the Ikoma mountains beyond the Yamato Plain
Although I have traveled extensively in Japan, I do not profess to have deep insight into the culture or the people. As a westerner (and a Texan, for God’s sake), Asia is blithely enigmatic.
There are certainly cultures in the world that strive to remain apart. The Japanese, for all of their western trappings, do not have to work hard to remain distinguishable. The radical differences in language are, in part, responsible. Although English is commonly seen in Japan, most of it is related to the perplexing English tag lines, slogans, and non sequiturs that Japanese marketing whizzes concoct. Otherwise, Japan is for the Japanese.
Of course we feel welcome. But with a Japanese family we are at a decided advantage. Otherwise Japan is a test for someone who does not speak the language or have entre to the culture.
For example, we are staying in a roykan near our granddaughter’s apartment in Ueno. We walked downstairs for breakfast this morning, and I spent several minutes at the front desk trying to explain that the one-size-fits-all slippers do not fit a size-14 foot from Texas. No matter, the rules are the rules, and they insisted that I shoe-horn a size 6 on before being fed. I ate my breakfast wearing slippers that barely fit my big toes.
The train system in Japan is a marvel, but it does take some time to master scheduling, ticketing, and such. This trip we purchased (as usual) JR rail passes for our time here in country. We also bought the green car pass for a premium, which allows you to reserve a seat in the first-class “green” cars. To our dismay, we learned (and I do not remember this from past trips) that only certain trains are available to rail pass holders. The Nozomi line, for example, is restricted (even though there were many occasions when the line would have worked best for us). We were told that since the JR rail pass represents a significant discount (of course, depending on how many times you use it during your stay), JR is justified in limiting where and when you can travel.
My impression is that while the Japanese love to travel the world, they would be just as happy if the world did not travel to Japan. The domestic travel market here is enormous, and, to be blunt, they do not need international leisure travelers to keep their hotels full. In this entire 2 ½ week trip, traveling from Okinawa to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and Tokyo in peak travel season (cherry blossom time), we have not seen more than 50 foreign travelers.
The two places where we did see a few foreigners were Kyoto and Nara. Anyone with an interest in Japanese history and culture knows about these two adjacent cities, with their extensive museums, shrines, art, and cuisine. The two are among the most recognized Japanese cultural centers. Virginia and I had visited Kyoto first many years ago, yet this would be our first trip to Nara. Cassady, who is beginning her third year as an art history major at Tokyo University (Todai), took particular interest in these two cultural icons. Of course, it did not hurt that Kyoto is among the shopping meccas in Japan as well.
In contrast, I would rather be tortured than to shop. One of the reasons I love the internet is that it allows me to avoid entering stores. Thank you, UPS, just place my package by the front door.
While Virginia and Cassady spent their first day in Kyoto scouring the shops, I spent my first day lounging around our wonderful roykan, Mume. There is an exceedingly funny phrase that my granddaughter uses to describe my method of travel. In Japan a person like me is a “mypasu” guy, one who operates at their own pace. I now remind Cassady and Virginia several times a day that I am a “mypasu” fellow, and to please not ask me to join them shopping ever again. We can always meet for dinner.
Let me share a few more Japanese phrases that I learned from Cassady. The Japanese are exceedingly sharp students of and commenters on their fellow citizens. I suspect in part this comes from living in such close quarters. For example, the Takahashis have been the neighbors of Cassady’s grandparents for nearly 50 years in Utsunomiya. You get to know people fairly well in that time.
We spent our one evening in Utsunomiya with family around the kotatsu gathering a collection of phrases. For example, I learned that a man under his wife’s control is called “shiri ni shikareru,” a man who is a woman’s cushion (in the US, hen-pecked). A couple consisting of a large woman and a small man is called a “nomi no fufu,” a flea couple. A person who follows around someone who is popular (such as at school) is “kingyo no fun,” dung following the goldfish. Funny people, these Japanese.
At times the humor is at your own expense. During dinner one evening I noticed that I had forgotten to zip my fly (this is what happens when one turns 60). Cassady quipped “shakai no mado ga aiteru,” that my window to society is open. Chuckle, chuckle.
Sakura in Kyoto
When we first arrived in Kyoto the cherry blossoms were beginning to swell. Two days later, after a couple of toasty afternoons, the cherries burst into bloom. I spent our last morning in the Gion district near our roykan photographing the sakura, as well as the maiko in their traditional costumes.
What we had not counted on were the hordes of Japanese enjoying the warm spring break weather in Kyoto as well. Therefore I looked forward to a more unobtrusive respite in the roykan in Nara, although the accommodations at Mume could not have been nicer. There we would be staying outside of the city in a roykan, Mikasa, adjacent to the Nara Keon.
The weather gods favored our Nara visit. Our one day walking down the Wakakusa-yama trail to the Nara temples (officially the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara) reminded me of Pennsylvania in the spring. The trail bisects some of the oldest and most monumental forest (the Kasugayama Primeval Forest) that I have seen in Japan, with immense spruce, oak, and pine. Blink your eyes and you would think that you were back on the Longfellow trail among the hemlock and white pine.
As we walked the trail I noticed the first slight signs of spring. Fiddleheads were beginning to emerge, and the wood violets were sprinkled about in first bloom. The uguisu (Japanese bush-warbler) were tuning up, and the magnolias tinted the landscape in white and rose.
Japan’s first permanent capital was established in the year 710 at Heijo, the city now known as Nara. As we reached the extensive temple and monument grounds above the city we decided to start by visiting Kasuga Taisha, the Kasuga grand shrine. This shrine houses a dazzling collection of lanterns: some gilded, some greened with a copper patina, hundreds carved from oiya stone. As Cassady and Virginia wandered down toward Todai-ji, I stayed behind to photograph a few of the lanterns and smaller shrines and temples above the Daibutsuden (the Buddha’s Temple).
As I wandered down from Wakakusa-yama, I came on another of the temples, the Nigatsu-do. Around the outside of this grand hall were wood cuts and paintings of eclectic variety and design. The porch of the hall offered a splendid view of the temples and monuments below, as well as the Ikoma mountains beyond the Yamato Plain. “Each spring there is a water-drawing ceremony at the Nigatsudo Hall has lasted for more than 1,200 years without a single break. The “Water-drawing Ceremony” is formally called the “Shunie.” It is a Buddhist memorial service intended to pray for world peace and a good harvest for all through the repenting of one’s sins.”
The crowds in the upper reaches of Nara were sparse, but by the time I arrived at Todai-ji people were snaking through the main gate like one of the serpents slain by the Bosatsu inside. There are a number of buildings within the Tadai-ji site, but the main attraction is the Daibutsuden. This is the largest wood building extant in the world. The structure holds the Daibutsu, the bronze Buddah that dates to 752. The Daibutsu is around 15 meters high, and the head and neck were cast in the mid-700s as a single piece! There are several bosatsu that accompany the Daibutsu, including two carved figures of impressive stature and complexity.
Religion is one of those confusing, enigmatic issues in Japan (like train schedules and dinner attire). My impression is that most Japanese practice religion-lite. The saying in Japan is that you are born a Shinto and then die a Buddhist (there are virtually no Shinto cemeteries). But I also believe that this casual approach to religion is also a reflection of Shinto traditions. In Shinto, once the official religion of Japan, there is no absolute right or wrong. Shintos believe that people are inherently good, and that evil in the world is due to mal spirits. Working along with humans are the kami, a variety of gods and forces (such as wind, waves, mountains). Neither Buddhism nor Shintoism demands that a follower formally practice, so there is a low-key aspect to religion here that I, to be honest, admire.
Osaka basho
Where one does enjoy the formality of Shinto ritual is in sumo. There are six Grand Sumo Tournaments (honbasho) each year, with the one in Osaka occurring in March. After Nara we continued on our journey to Osaka to attend one day of the basho. I confess; I am absolutely crazed about sumo. There is something about the tradition (the origins date back perhaps 2000 years), the formality of the match before and after, and the violent brevity of the match itself. While the preparations may take 10 to 15 minutes, the actual match itself may only last seconds. Each move has a name and tradition, each preparatory move has a name and tradition (such as hand clapping, leg lifting, and salt throwing), and each piece of clothing (brief as it may be) has a name and tradition.
Like baseball, sumo must be seen in person. Old men in the crowd yell in support of their favorite rikishi. The crowds swell at the entrance to the hall as the rikishi march in, with girls shrieking with glee as they would if seeing a rock star. The basho lasts most of the day, and many come to see the entire set of matches.
I drifted away from our seats and down near the dohyo to photograph the bouts. As I have studied the photographs I again recognize elegance, beauty, and athleticism in what appears to Americans to be near-naked fat guys in a brawl.
Yes, the rikishi are enormous, but there are shockingly agile as well. The first blow of each bout, the tachi-ai, shakes the walls with its force. Rikishi are pushed, shoved, bounced, and forced around the ring as though they were weightless, often resulting in one of the fighters being ejected from the ring itself. In the midst of this violence (and it is a violent sport) stands the referee, the goyji, in his fantastic Shinto wardrobe. The simple pointing of his glistening fan, the gunbai, confirms the winner.
We were joined by a friend, Asaka Shinagawa, who works for the Osaka tourism department. Asaka will be coming to Austin in April, and we were put in touch by a mutual friend, Rebecca Burgman. Neither Cassady nor Asaka had ever attended a basho in person, and yet both are big sumo fans. We arrived early and stayed until the last match (between the yokozuna, Hakuho, and a rikishi from Estonia, Baruto). FYI, Baruto lost only one match this basho, and will be promoted to ozeki, only one level below yokozuna. Please enjoy the photos, although I do know that fat men battling each other wearing thongs may take some getting used to.
The name is synonymous with the A-Bomb. The two are interlocked, interchangeable, forever connected by the one ghastly day.
On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 am, the atomic war age began. Since that moment there has not been a day that “nuclear” (even when mispronounced) wasn’t perched on the lips of the world. I would carve up human time into BB (before the bomb), and AB (after the bomb). We are living in the year 65 AB.
Those who lived in Hiroshima those 65 years ago would have preferred that another city (or best, none at all) had received the “First to be A-Bombed” honor. But Hiroshima met the U.S military criteria (had not been previously bombed, few known US prisoners of war, significant military industry, clear weather on the day of the bombing) and the Enola Gay successfully completed her mission. One B-29, one bomb, and within minutes over 100,000 Hiroshima residents were dead or dying.
There were other bombings in WW II with a higher loss of life – the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, for example. In the six weeks after Japan conquered Nanking as many as 300,000 men, women, and children were butchered. The Battle of Okinawa resulted in around 240,000 deaths, more than half of them civilians. The Battle of Stalingrad may have cost as many as 1 million lives. WW II is when the human race perfected the mass slaughter of soldiers and civilians. WW II brought mass killing into the industrial age.
But the atomic bomb, Little Boy, forever defines the killing in Hiroshima as singular. After that moment the world knew that no one could hide, no one could be safe. Within two years the Soviets would have the bomb, and the race to hell would begin.
We visited where it all started – the epicenter in Hiroshima. The US military had designated the t-shaped Aioi Bridge as the target, and the bomb detonated around 1500 feet above that spot. Virtually nothing remained of the city or its inhabitants below, and what did survive the initial blast soon burned in the massive conflagration. People would continue to die of radiation-related illnesses for decades.
One of the buildings that still remains is the Genbaku or A-Bomb Dome. Everyone in the building died instantly, but the dome miraculously survived the direst blast from above. The dome has been renovated at least twice to keep it in its immediate post-bombing condition. The dome, to this day, is Hiroshima’s connection between the death of the past and the life of the future. The Genbaku also serves the world as the symbol of the atomic war age.
The triangular stretch of land that ends at the Aioi Bridge, completely leveled by the A-Bomb, has been designated as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. We walked across the Motoyasu Bridge and made our way toward the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
The carefully manicured and landscaped park bears no resemblance to its condition after the bombing. Little remains of the detritus from that time. However, the museum itself does house an impressive collection of artifacts, photographs, and first-hand accounts of that moment. We spent at least two hours in the museum, and easily could have doubled the time without seeing it all.
As in Nagasaki, the museum in Hiroshima invests most of its resources in telling the story of the A-Bomb – its development, its developers, its use. What Hiroshima does not do (nor does Nagasaki) is provide a broad context within which the A-Bombing might be better understood.
Here is an example. Only in a back corner did I find any mention of the Japanese atrocities in Nanking. There I found a poster from that era showing the residents of Hiroshima celebrating the fall of Nanking. At the bottom right corner of the exhibit are these words – “In Nanking, however, Chinese people were being massacred by the Japanese Army.”
Next, though, is this information in brackets, as in an afterthought:
[Reports of the number killed vary depending on the area and the times studied. Some estimates are in the tens of thousands, while others put the figure well over 100,000. In China, the most common estimate is 300,000.]
What the exhibit and museum fail to mention is that the low-ball figure is the one most often quoted by ultra-nationalists in Japan who, like Holocaust deniers, would like for Nanking to fade into obscurity. For that reason China voted at the UN against World Heritage status for Hiroshima, and the US abstained.
I do believe that the sins of the fathers shall not be visited on their sons. But I also believe that the truth will set you free (I apologize for two hackneyed adages in a row). The Hiroshima museum is a wonderful exhibit, but its failing to provide an objective perspective of the bombing diminishes its value. You will find fact here, but not enough to lead you to the truth.
Please, I am not trying to underplay the tragedy of Hiroshima. But how do you ensure that such devastation does not happen again if you do not understand why Hiroshima happened in the first place? You cannot fully understand Gettysburg without first acknowledging the sins of slavery. You cannot fully grasp the Mideast today without acknowledging the sins of the colonial powers after WW I. You cannot fully comprehend the bombing of Hiroshima without clearly acknowledging the Rape of Nanking.
I am not pointing fingers. All of the responsible parties have departed this life. But selective interpretation is dishonest interpretation, and does not aid the viewer and visitor in coming to a better understanding of the past and how it might guide the future.
Interpretation, to be honest, must at times be impolitic. Interpretation, at times, must take risks. Interpretation is a quest, a trip with no end, with no final destination. Interpretation is endlessly turning over rocks, hoping to find a scrap or shard underneath that might fit into the jig-saw puzzle of the past.
Interpretation is not an exact science, for our work, our investigation, is never complete. The questions and disputes are never settled. Interpretation is impressionistic, offering enough information, enough color, to allow a viewer to discern the essence (if not the detail) of the subject. I left Hiroshima still wanting to see more of the color of the tragedy of the war and less of the fact of that one moment in time.
