How many prisons do we need?

  

I remember learning on my publishing travels that once upon a time the budget of the excellent California State University system exceeded that of the state prison system. However, as tough on crime policies became popular the budget for imprisonment exceeded (and still exceeds) that for education.

 

Another anecdote. A professor I called on at a Mississippi Delta Community College introduced me to her husband, a photography teacher in the art department. He showed me a portfolio of photographs taken in the local state prison: he photographed inmates on admission and on release. Since Mississippi had the death penalty his second photograph of a prisoner sometimes included those about to die. The photographer told me that the prison once provided basic education for the prisoners. However, a Mississippi legislator discovered that the education of a prisoner cots more than the education of a student in a state high school. He proposed to eliminate this disparity by removing funding for education programmes in state prisons. He cannot have been successful, since the state’s prisons do provide education programmes, but I imagine that the legislator may have attracted popular support.

 

My British friends will already know that there is much controversy here about a government policy to release a substantial number of prisoners before their planned release date. The reason is that our prisons are almost full and may soon be unable to admit any further prisoners. Our government that tells us that its finances are very constrained, but nevertheless reassures us that the problem will be resolved by building more prisons at considerable expense. I am no criminologist, but I am not sure that I value a government by its ability to build prisons.

 

A couple of weeks ago Jan and I returned from a short trip to Manchester by train. At Oxford a man boarded the train and began to address the passengers in a loud voice. He asked whether anybody had any cocaine; or did anybody want one of his cookies (he walked up and down the carriage offering them). He informed us that he had been in jail for five weeks, convicted of a second offence of driving while banned from doing so, and that he hadn’t had a cigarette or a drink in five weeks. He also entertained us with some football chants: “Who are yer? Who are yer? Up the Seagulls [Brighton & Hove Albion], fuck the Palace [Crystal Palace].” He was in a hurry to get home to his wife and thought he might get a taxi to Brighton where he lives. He was not short of cash because he had gone from prison to a Wetherspoon’s pub (for my non-British friends, popularly known simply as Spoons), where he had clearly made up for his five weeks without a drink, and had also won a lot of money on a slot machine – hence his ability to pay for a taxi from Reading to Brighton. He would have left prison with a standard £76 maintenance grant and a rail ticket to Brighton, so he must have invested his subsistence in drinks and the slot machine. As the train arrived at Reading station (where we changed trains) he informed us that “Old Bill” was waiting for him. As we left the train, we saw him in conversation with three or four police officers who were checking his papers.

 

In short, this man had occupied a scarce prison space for five weeks, and upon his release had headed straight for the pub, become very drunk, and was possibly detained by the police within a few hours of his release. His driving offence may have been very dangerous and required punishment, but I wonder whether five weeks of imprisonment (cost c.£6,000) and of police officers detaining him at Reading Station was a sensible use of scarce resources. He disturbed the quiet of our journey, but harmed nobody except perhaps himself.

Me and my MP

 Dear friends,

 We live in distressing times. I sent the following letter to my Mp this afternoon:

 

Mr Jack Rankin MP

House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

 

9 August 2026

 

Dear Mr Rankin,

 

Your colleague Helen Whateley has just convinced me that I cannot in good conscience vote for any candidate representing the Conservative party.

 

My Saturday paper quoted Ms Whateley as stating the following:

 

“Making Britain your home should be earned by working, paying tax and integrating. It should not come with a free ride on the benefits system. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world.

 

Labour has lost control of immigration and lost control of the welfare bill, and it is British families picking up the bill and sitting on waiting lists. The next Conservative government will make foreign nationals ineligible for social housing. Nearly 230,000 homes could go to British families.”

 

Perhaps you will tell me that Ms Whateley has been misquoted. However, on the assumption that she has been accurately quoted, I write to point out that this asinine farrago of prejudice and misrepresentation appalls me.

 

First, Ms Whateley implies that all foreign nationals who live in social housing came to Britain for a “free ride,” implying that they do not work, pay tax or integrate. How can she possibly know that this is true of at a minimum 230,000 people (assuming that only one householder per home holds a foreign passport) and perhaps as many as 460,000 (if there are two such householders in each home)? Is there any evidence that a significant proportion of these fellow human beings do not work, pay tax or integrate? I doubt it. Would you be encouraged to integrate if the government were to evict you from your home simply because you were not born in Britain?

 

The members of our communities who live in social housing might include retired couples or people in active employment who have taught our children, nursed us when we were unwell, cared for our elderly neighbours, whose children are in our schools, who are our neighbours perhaps attended the events that I help to organize in Sunninghill Library, or participated in activities in Cordes Hall. Would that constitute a failure to integrate.

 

Do you, as my elected representative, know how Ms Whateley will identify those she intends to evict from homes they may have occupied for a long time? If those who determine that a family should be evicted make a mistake (remember the Windrush scandal), will a candidate for eviction be allowed to appeal? And once evicted, if these unfortunate victims of Ms Whateley’s racism fail to find a home they can afford, will she ensure that local authorities have sufficient funds to house them, as they are legally required to do so? In this event, exactly how has Ms Whateley’s policy saved the taxpayer any money at all? Indeed, perhaps the cost will be higher because a private landlord will charge a high rent.

 

Persecution of people simply for being workers in a country of which they are not citizens, is a very personal matter for my wife and me, since we have two immigrant sons, one in Mexico and one in Japan. They earn salaries and are seeking to benefit their host countries with their talents. They both have access to the public health system in the country in which they live. Are they really personally responsible for any waiting lists in Mexico or Japan, and if waiting lists do exist should they be punished for the failure of the respective governments to manage an adequate health system?

 

Closer to home, we have a friend of many years, a Muslim lady who worked alongside my wife in a university library, and who has continued to work in her “retirement years” while I live idly on my pensions. She was educated in her own country but in the British curriculum, speaks excellent English, volunteered during the Covid pandemic, is a friend of Kew Gardens, and a valued friend. Please tell me how I can advise her to integrate? She might well be the target of one of Ms Whateley’s evictions.

 

I hope you will excuse me, if I trouble you concerning one more vacuous statement, in this case something said by your leader Ms Badenoch. Many years ago (when the Poll Tax was so controversial that even Conservative Party members travelled to London to join protests), a Conservative canvasser for council elections called at my home. When I told her that I could not vote for the Conservative candidates, she said words to the effect: “Why not, it’ only bout emptying the bins.” I thought that this betrayed a profound ignorance of the duties of a borough councillor, but she was only a canvasser not the leader of the Conservative Party. However, I understand that Ms Badenoch justified her selection of a former Neo-Nazi for a council seat on the grounds that he would be concerned only with “parking, sorting out bins.” I know that you were once a councillor for RBWM, so I can assume that your knowledge of the functions of a council is superior to that of your leader. Perhaps you can explain this to her when you next see her.

 

I am sorry to interrupt your summer holidays with this matter. I wish you and your family a relaxing summer.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Ian Jacobs

 

Twinned toilets in the new capital of the North

Jan came out of the ladies' toilet in the reception area of Luther King House with an interesting observation: it was twinned with a toilet in Honduras. A photo on the wall showed her that the Honduran toilet was a small corrugated metal shack. The twinned toilet had been selected by the students of Luther King House.

 

We were visiting Manchester to meet a friend who Jan met at university in Pamplona in the 1970s, and who was attending a course in Manchester. One of her last names is Roca, a name that will be familiar to any of you who have visited Spain. Roca, a firm founded by her engineer father with his two brothers, makes just about all the bathroom and toilet fittings in Spain (originally, they also made tiles, but decided that it was better to dominate one industry rather than compete with others in tile manufacture). The three brothers divided the labour of setting up the business: one took a job in a factory France where bathroom fittings were superior to those in Spain to study manufacturing techniques; another was in charge of marketing and distribution; and our friend’s father designed the products.

 

Our friend is the eldest of eleven children. She grew up in a home in Barcelona where her father designed four sets of literas, bunk beds: four sets of three beds to accommodate eleven children. The family was profoundly Catholic; several of the sons are now priests. Our friend is a numeraria of Opus Dei, a Catholic order. Numerarias are celibate women who devote their lives to God.

 

Our friend was staying in Coniston Hall, a female only student residence managed by a Christian educational trust. A short walk from the hall is the Elizabeth Gaskell House, the home of the 19^th-century novelist and her husband William Gaskell, assistant Unitarian minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, who she married in 1832. William was also Chair for thirty years of the Portico Library. The library summarizes its history thus:

 

“The Portico Library was established by 400 founding subscribers in 1806, during Manchester’s emergence as ‘the first modern city’. Early readers and associates included word-famous authors, future Prime Ministers, leading scientists, and educators. Built with wealth derived from the Industrial Revolution, British empire-building, and colonial expansion, the Library amassed a collection that reflects the innovations, but also the exclusions and inequities of its time.

 

The Library’s early members—all men until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870—included people of various political positions, from Radical and Liberal abolitionists and anti-poverty campaigners to exploitative factory owners and textile traders. Many members were non-conformists and several wrote influential books, such as our first Secretary Peter Mark Roget, who wrote the first English thesaurus, and founder of atomic theory, John Dalton. Celebrated Manchester author Elizabeth Gaskell used the Library while her husband William acted as its longest-serving Chair.”

 

I can heartily recommend a visit to the Gaskell House. Although there are a limited number of exhibits that belonged to the Gaskells, the house has been carefully furnished to give visitors a vivid impression of the house in Gaskell’s time. Similarly, the garden (much reduced in size from the Gaskells’ Garden) has been planted based on scanty evidence gleaned from Gaskell’s letters and novels. Where possible, varieties from Gaskell’s time have been planted. The volunteers are uniformly enthusiastic and well-informed. The Gaskells were much involved in education and social causes in Manchester. In addition to his preaching duties, William provided education to some of the city’s poorest children, and (he spoke German) taught the city’s German workers English. The Gaskells taught poor children from a local school Sunday school lessons in their home.

 

The Gaskell House.

 

 

Their home was also functioned as a salon welcoming those involved in the arts, intellectual life and social issues. Charles Halle, founder of the famous Halle orchestra taught their daughters piano, and two daughters trained as painters. Charlotte Brontë visited the house and Charles Dickens was Elizabeth’s editor – some of her novels were published in the journal Household Words, edited by Dickens. Apparently, she was not very good with deadlines and exasperated Dickens.

 

The Gaskell House drawing room.

 

 

The volunteer in the dining room, which also functioned as a study where Elizabeth wrote her novels, told us the touching story of Elizabeth’s death. She was a great traveller and travelled to Europe several times with her daughters (her passport for a tour of Italy is displayed in the Drawing Room).  A few paintings by her daughters suggest that they had the full Grand Tour experience. William, on the other hand, showed no interest in foreign parts and limited his excursions to walks in the Lake District, Peak District and Scotland.

 

William evidently had no desire to be anywhere other than Manchester. Nevertheless, Elizabeth plotted a surprise. She evidently had enough accumulated wealth to buy a house in Hampshire for their retirement. She arranged this in secret with one of her sons-in-law (since by law she could not own property). She travelled with him to Hampshire where the contract was signed; there she had a heart attack and died. William never moved to Hampshire and the house was eventually sold.

 

Our lodgings, Luther King House, originated with the Baptist Theological Institution, founded in 1871. In 1964 Manchester Baptist College and Rawdon College of Bradford merged to form the Northern Baptist College. The original Victorian building was replaced with a very 1960s brick building. In 1984 the college was renamed Luther King House to provide an inclusive training base for Baptist, United Reformed, Methodist, and Unitarian traditions, alongside providing accommodations and conference facilities. It grants MA and PhD degrees through Durham University. Its facilities include 50+ simple bedrooms, an important theological library, a peaceful cloister and a chapel.  The warm welcome of its staff makes up for what it lacks in boutique luxury. Frequent yellow Bee buses take visitors to the universities and city centre.

 

Luther King House cloister.

 

 

Birchfields Park and Platt Fields Park are a few minutes’ walk from Luther King House. Platt Fields is a large park with an historic house (Platt Hall), a lake, a cycle hub, a community orchard, a market garden and a Shakespearean Garden, which alas we lacked time to find. Also nearby are the many restaurants on Wilmslow Road (Indian, Turkish, Middle Eastern, a Mexican grill and so on) and numerous jewellers selling elaborate gold jewelry. We had dinner in a Palestinian restaurant, decorated with a neon-lit 3-D model of the Dome of the Rock at the far end and a prayer room. Famously of various ethnicities were playing with their children in Birchfields Park and strolling to dinner on Wilmslow Road. This is the Britain that our far right parties would rather had never existed.

 

Our new Prime Minister held his first meetings in the No.10 of the North in Manchester today (24 July), the day after we left, so he was, alas, unable to meet us. Had he done so we would have given his city the thumbs up.

90 Years Ago

  

This morning the BBC Radio 4 programme, Sunday, devoted its edition entirely to the 90^th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. If you can find it on BBC Sounds or elsewhere, I heartily recommend it.

 

The British historian Sir Paul Preston related an incident of which Jan and I were entirely unaware, the evacuation of Málaga in 1937. The people of Málaga fled East from the city as the Nationalist forces threatened to overwhelm is Republican defenders. The fleeing civilians were bombed and strafed by German and Italian aircraft and fired at by Nationalist naval vessels. This atrocity, I discover, is known as the Desbandá (a word that implies a disorderly panicked flight from danger).

 

Preston referred to a book, Behind the Battle, by T. C. Worsley, a British volunteer ambulance driver who had gone to Spain with the poet Stephen Spender to assist the Republican cause. I found a Spanish translation of extracts from Worsley’s account in a chapter of an exhibition catalogue written by Preston. Here is my translation of a few extracts back into English:

 

“The refugees continued to fill the road and the further we advanced the worse their conditions. Some wore rubber sandals, but most had wrapped their feet in rags, some were barefoot and almost all were bleeding. […] We had travelled 120 kilometres ahead of a desperate multitude, dying of hunger and exhaustion and the river of human beings gave no sign of diminishing. Bethune [Norman Bethune a Canadian volunteer who had organized a blood bank] said: “Ten thousand, no; thirty thousand; forty thousand. Poor devils, we can only imagine their suffering.” […] Then they heard the buzzing of the bombers. The kerbside, rocks and the beach filled with refugees, who crouched face down in any hollow, pressing themselves against the ground. Children, lying flat, raised their eyes to the skies, their hands over their ears or curled into a ball to protect their necks, the most vulnerable point. Everywhere groups of people sought shelter; mothers close to exhaustion protected their children with their own bodies, pressing them into any recess or depression in the ground, pressing themselves flat on the stony ground while the planes roared ever closer. Bethune said: “These poor people have suffered other bombardments and know all too well what they should do.”

 

Worsley and Bethune decided to open the ambulance doors to provide shelter for children:

 

“Instantly we became the centre of a fevered mass of people who shouted, prayed and begged us at the sight of this miraculous apparition. The scene seemed unreal, with the vociferous faces of women who held their naked babies above their heads, imploring, weeping and sobbing with gratitude or disappointment.”

 

Preston quoted this passage on the radio:

 

The women’s eyes were full of puss and mucus, their faces stained with tears, dust and anguish. The babies that they held mostly had a small garment and their legs and buttocks, which were uncovered, were a mass of sores and infections. […] The lorry was full, crowded almost to the point of suffocation, and the people below were still surrounding us, begging  and begging: “It’s not for me, comrade, it’s not for me that I ask. But take the child, save my child.”, “Holy Mary, save the little one”, “Mother of God, don’t leave my child behind”.

 

Imagine Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan. TODAY.

Who belongs?

  

Some time between January and April 2027 I will put in a brief appearance on PBS. No, I am not about to become a TV celebrity; my appearance will be only by way of a credit on a programme called Finding your Roots, hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates. PBS describes the programme thus:

“For more than a decade, renowned Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has helped to expand America’s sense of itself, stimulating a national conversation about identity with humor, wisdom, and compassion. Professor Gates has explored the ancestry of dozens of influential people from diverse backgrounds, taking millions of viewers deep into the past to reveal the connections that bind us all.”

 

A researcher contacted me after consulting my book Indigenous Culture and Change in Guerrero, Mexico. She was investigating a priest called Alonso Gómez de Castañeda who in 1595 applied to be appointed comisario (a local investigating official) of the Inquisition in Sultepec, a mining town southwest of Mexico City. Gómez de Castañeda had been married to Juana Cerezo de Vicuña, who had died aged 50, leaving Alonso with an unspecified number of children. The widowed Alonso then became a priest and sought suitable employment.

 

In order to determine whether there was any impediment to appointing Alonso, the Inquisitors ordered that his genealogy be examined to discover whether in his parents, grandparents, his wife’s parents and grandparents were “Old Christians, pure and of clean blood, without lineage, stain of descent from Moors, Jews, converts or any other recently converted sect, and as such they have been regarded, held and commonly reputed, and such is the public voice and fame, and common opinion, and there has been no fame or rumor to the contrary … [and that] none of them have been punished or condemned by the Holy Office of the Inquisition.” After what seems to have been a fairly perfunctory examination, Alonso was duly appointed comisario of Sultepec, where one of his duties would have been to hunt out Jews, “Lutherans” (Protestants) and any other heretics he might come across.

 

The records of Inquisition trials tell us that Jews were particularly harshly punished, often sentenced to death. “Lutherans” tended to be let off more lightly with a good few years in the galleons and perhaps a few hundred lashes. As you read the lengthy transcripts of the trials of some of the unfortunates rooted out by the likes of Alonso Gómez de Castañeda, one cannot help reflecting on the sheer waste of time and resources devoted to hunting down people whose crime was to be different.

 

About the same time as I was contacted by the PBS researcher, a publishing friend, Stephen Lustig sent me a link to an article written by his brother Robin, who has just published a book, And the Cello Came Too: A Story of Survival, about his father Fritz, a non-observant Jew who arrived in Southampton as a refugee in April 1939.

 

As Robin comments, Fritz was “An unaccompanied male of fighting age, seeking asylum and hoping for a chance of a better life. Sound familiar? He was the sort of undesirable alien referred to by a London magistrate, and quoted approvingly in the Daily Mail, in 1938: “The way stateless Jews and Germans are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage … Then, as now, the outrage was unwarranted. In the years leading up to the second world war, between 70,000 and 80,000 Jewish refugees were allowed into the UK. But up to 10 times as many were refused entry. Among them was my maternal grandmother, who was shot by a Nazi execution squad in 1941.”

 

Fritz was interned on the xenophobic orders of Winston Churchill to “collar the lot [German refugees].” However, he volunteered for service in the British Army, initially in an army orchestra, then in a military intelligence unit eavesdropping on the bugged conversations of German prisoners of war. While listening for secrets Fritz met his wife Susan, who worked in the same unit.

 

Fritz’s contribution to his adopted nation would not qualify him as truly British as far as today’s ethno-nationalists are concerned since for them “Britain is a people defined by indigenous British ancestry and Christian faith.” Nor would my friend Stephen or his brother meet their criteria.

 

Jan and I feel the current treatment of fellow humans who have come to our country because we invited them to work here in jobs some of our fellow Britons do not want to take, or in search of refuge and a better, safer life, is inexcusably intolerant, racist and unjustified. This applies not just to thugs who circulate the addresses of people who happen not to look like them so that they can drive them from their homes. A number of political parties, including the ruling Labour Party, of which I am a member, espouse policies and rhetoric that portray immigrants as breakers of the rules and a threat, ignoring the contributions they make to our society.

 

We feel it particularly personally because two of our sons are also immigrants. Chris, arrived in Mexico some seven years ago, initially with a work visa, then with a permanent resident’s card. He has contributed to Mexico working for a charity for disabled children, and now at a botanic garden.

 

John works for a Japanese company in Tokyo, bringing his expertise in international relations to a small Japanese business. He is also currently working exceptionally hard teaching a class of 49 students at Kanagawa University in Yokohama a course about Britain’s exit from empire.

 

Neither Chris nor John would pass the Do they look like one of us? Test. Nor would Chris’s partner, who teaches English in a secondary school. But, at least in our opinion, they make Mexico and Japan better places. Long may they do so.

Antidotes to Modernity

  

We accompanied David on a shopping expedition in Sunshine City. Wikipedia tells us that this is:

 

“a building complex located in … Ikebukuro ... It consists of four buildings: the 240-meter Sunshine 60 skyscraper, which includes corporate offices and restaurants; the Prince Hotel; the World Import Mart; and the Bunka Kaikan building. The complex sits on land once occupied by Sugamo Prison.”

 

A children's area in Sunshine City.

 

David remarked that Sunshine City is itself a sort of prison for consumers: as long as you are inside this vast complex you will see no sunshine. From our fleeting experience we learned that, apart from great numbers of shops and restaurants, the City provides: an aquarium on the 7ths, 8^th, 9^th floors and the rooftop (presumably an enormous weight of water in an earthquake zone, as one is reminded by a sign directing you to the Disaster Control Centre). The planetarium is on the roof of another building. The complex also has a theatre, an Ancient Orient Museum, Sky Circus (an observation deck), a conference room, two exhibition halls and a bus terminal.  

Shopping in Sunshie City.

 Perhaps the very acme of Sunshine City consumption are the Namja Gyoza Stadium (Chinese dumplings) and Fukubukuro Dessert Yokocho (Dessert Alley).

 

Next, Jan and I headed to an antidote to Sunshine City, the Tokyo shop of Inden Ya. This family-owned business was founded in 1582 to produce deer leather decorated with lacquer. In the late 16^th century, the techniques that produced a light, strong and durable leather from deer skin were transmitted from India via the Namban trade. The very name of the company tells us of this history: Inden means “India” and ya “from.”

 

Yusichi Uehara, Inden Ya’s founder, started his business in the mountainous Koshu region just over 100km west of Tokyo. The region was known for its Japanese lacquer work and had easy access to deerskin (although I was told by one of the staff in the shop that the deerskin nowadays comes from North America). Uehara’s genius was to marry Japanese lacquer work with Indian deerskin techniques. In the Sengoku Period (1467-1590) samurai decorated their armour with lacquered deerskin, and in the Edo Period (1603-1867) chic drawstring pouches, tobacco holders, coin purses and other accessories of lacquered deer leather demonstrated fashionable good taste.

 

The lacquer technique used by Inden Ya reminded us of a visit to a cotton-printing studio in Ochiai last year: lengths of cotton were decorated by hand by applying stencils and one or more coloured dyes to the cloth. Similarly, the deer leather artisan applies lacquer designs with stencils.

 

Stencilled lacquer is not the only technique used. Inden Ya informs us that: “The fusube coloring technique entails mounting deerskin on a cylindrical frame and smoking it over burning straw to impart a sparrow-wing-brown finish. This started out as a hide tanning technique, and by the Nara Period (710–94) it had evolved into a leather-dyeing technique.”

 

Another technique is sarasa: "Chintz cotton printing" in English. The name derives “from similarly-named textiles originally brought to Japan in the 16th century through trade with Europeans. Using this technique, colors are applied one at a time in overlapping fashion using stencils, resulting in harmonious combinations of vibrant hues.”

 

The techniques used by the company are passed down through the generations by the head of the household, who upon inheriting the position changes his (perhaps her?) name to that of the founder.

 

We examined a variety of patterns. My eye was caught by the tombo (dragonfly) motif. The dragonfly is known in Japan as the “victorious insect” and symbolizes courage and strength in battle.

Tombo pattern.

 

The kozakura pattern incorporates cherry blossom, and was one of the motifs used to decorate samurai armour. Cherry blossom had been appreciated since the Heian Period (794-1185); from the 12^th to the 16^th centuries cherry blossoms became emblematic of the warrior’s mentality; In the Edo period the motif was widely used on kimonos and in craft products.

Kozakura patters,

 

Seigaiha is a design that originate in Persia and reached Japan via China and the Silk Road during the Asuka Period (592-710). Seigaiha means “blue ocean waves”, a name derived from a piece of traditional court music whose performers wore clothes with this pattern.

Seigaiha pattern.

 

And, of course, there has to be a Fuji pattern, takane (“high peak”). Fuji has several homonyms. One means “undying” or “eternal,” implying good luck in battle and therefore popular for weapons and jackets worn over armour. Another conveys “singular” or “peerless,” connoting unparalleled beauty and is therefore used on wedding kimonos.

Takane pattern.

 

We encountered another traditional craft, bamboo fencing, when we took a seat in Yakana cemetery for a rest from the hubbub and heat of Tokyo. A notice in English informs the visitor who chooses not to rush past to the shopping mecca of Yanaka Ginza that bamboo fencing is first documented in picture scrolls of the Heian and Kamakura (1185-1333) periods. The use of bamboo expanded in the Edo period when bamboo fences marked the boundaries of ordinary and tea-ceremony gardens. The notice observes that “There is a great variety of bamboo fences. In any given type there are subvarieties, and different kinds may be combined into one fence.”

 

Thirteen types are displayed either side of the road through the cemetery of fencing, each with a helpful notice to explain its characteristics. For example, the name of Garyu-Gaki fencing refers to its similarity to a dragon’s back.

Garyu-Gaki.

 

The names of some fence types immortalize their inventors. For example, master craftsman Hon’ami Koetsu (1558-1637) is immortalized almost half a millennium after his death by Koetsu-Gaki. His fence is characterized by “a round beading at the top wound with split bamboo thinly and [sic] center panel of criss-crossed bamboo tied in black hemp.”

Koetsu-Gaki.

 

Teppo-Gaki is a particularly ingenious fence type. Round bamboos are assembled alternately to both sides of bamboo cross bars. This fence is of a “blind type” when viewed head on, but when it is viewed diagonally you can see through it, so that the fence ceases to be “blind.”

Teppo-Gaki.

 

Tokusa-Gaki, on the other hand, named after tokusa grass which the fence resembles, is a blind fence.

Tokusa-Gaki.

 

I must confess that before we spotted this display my interest in fences was very low indeed. But I discovered that fences are culture as are lacquered deerskin leather products.

From rice to radishes and Ranma ½

  

We took a short train ride away from frantic Tokyo to much calmer Shakujikoen for a stroll round Shakuji pond. At one end of the lake you can rent rowing boats, or swan boat pedaloes, at the other is a bird sanctuary inhabited by birdwatchers with cameras with enormously long lenses and binoculars.

 The pond has not always been the place for a relaxing stroll or watching birds, for Shakuji castle once stood on high land above the pond. In 1476 Lord Toshima Yasutsune of Shakuji castle was defeated in an ambush at Ekoda, twenty minutes’ walk from where we stay in Higashi Nagasaki. The terms of his defeat obliged Toshima to demolish his castle in Shakuji, but he did not do so. The victor of the battle of Ekoda, Ōta Dōkan, did not hesitate to punish Toshima for his disobedience. Ōta attacked and defeated Toshima, who, so legend tells us, rode his white horse to his death in Shakuji pond followed by his daughter Princess Teruhime. Ōta then demolished the castle. A few metres from the site of the castle, is the Shakuji Hikawa Shrine, founded around the turn of the 14^th and 15^th centuries as a protective guardian of the castle – it would seem with little success.

 

A Jōmon pot.

In 2010 the Nerima Shakujikoen Furusato Museum, a spacious glass-fronted building located next to the site of a settlement of the Jōmon period (14,000-300BC), opened to record the wildlife of the city, to exhibit art and crafts produced by residents, and to outline the history of the region. Fortunately, the history section was labelled in English as well as Japanese. Although a helpful volunteer who endeavoured to inform us of the exhibits in English (he had lived in Amsterdam for seven years) modestly told us that the museum displays were not very significant, in fact, they provide a helpful synopsis of the history of Sakujikoen. The story of the region begins with arrow points dated to 30,000 years ago.  The Jōmon period was a marked by characteristic ceramics and the development of hunting – as a bow and arrow in the display told us. A particularly rare artefact in the Jōmon display is the remains of woven a basket or container made of bamboo and other plant fibres.

The bamboo basket/container.

 

 

 

About 10,000 years ago, rice cultivation arrived from China and Korea via Kyushu in southern Japan. Sedentary, and therefore taxable, settlements developed and the aristocracy accumulated greater wealth. In the 17^th century the forerunner of the Tokyo megalopolis, Edo, was founded. The city needed food and the region in which Shakujikoen is located became an important supplier of rice and vegetables. White rice was central to the Japanese diet, but it lacked vitamin B1, so beriberi was a serious public health problem. The solution was pickled daikon radish, and Shakujikoen’s region became the capital of pickled daikon production. The radishes were first dried on racks to soften them. They were then pickled with salt and rice bran (which supplied the missing B1). Merchants traded the pickled vegetables in Edo, and brought back night soil from the city to fertilize the daikon fields – an 18^th-century circular economy.

The museum's exhibit of drying radishes and the wooden tub in which they were pickled.

 In 1872 Japan opened its first railway between Shimbashi in Tokyo and Yokohama. In 1915 the Musashino trains brought salary men and their families from Tokyo to Shakujikoen. Farming settlements were replaced by a town where residents acquired modern conveniences such as TVs, vacuum cleaners, rice cookers and so on. Urbanization steadily swamped the fields where once daikon was cultivated. But in the 1980s a new industry was born in Shakujikoen and nearby Nerima: the first animé films were made here. Shakuji pond was a setting for scenes in the hit manga/animé Ranma ½, and films of Astroboy were made here.

A 19th-century rice hulling machine.

 In the grounds of the museum, the home of the Kyu-Uchida-ke family has been relocated from the Nakamura district of Nerima and was reconstructed in 2010. The house was originally built in 1880; the contemporary visitor sees it as it was in 1925-1940. The construction is of wood; zelkova beams and cedar pillars support a roof of bamboo and pampas grass. The entire structure is of wood, bamboo and pampas grass – no nails were used. The family lived in the portion of the house with wooden floors. Here was their Buddhist altar and a shelf where the gods of rice, rain, salt, fire and so on were kept. More than half of the residence was floored with tatami, with elegantly designed sliding panels, carving, a tokonoma (an alcove in which a scroll and/or flowers could be displayed) and shelves for books. This area was for guests. The owners of the house were wealthy owners of rice paddies. The house we visited was the “mother house”. There were once two others for the family and other buildings to house farm workers. All this we learned from a lady volunteer who struggled to explain the house to us in English, assisted later by the volunteer we had met in the museum. He took us to see the sites where traces of houses from the Jōmon period have been excavated.

TheKyu-Uchida-ke. This view shows the guest side of the house and the guest entrance to the right.

 

The carving over the sliding doors between the two guest rooms, the tokonoma and shelves.

 The following day we were back in the madness of Tokyo – we had tickets for a ballet, Flames of Paris – in Bunkamura in Shibuya. Fortunately, Ryōka, John’s partner, and her parents guided us through the crowds to our lunch in a Chinese restaurant on the 12^th floor of a new building whose dining floors are rather unattractively (but appropriately for crowded Shibuya) named Shibuya Square Foodie Scrambles. Then we braved the masses at Shibuya Crossing to Bunkamura Hall for the ballet, lavishly produced with plenty of virtuoso solo performances. The original performance was in 1932 in Russia, with a suitably Soviet climax of the people’s triumph over the aristocracy accompanied by the Marseillaise. The Tokyo production ends with the Revolution turning on its own heroes, the death of the heroine on the Guillotine and the shooting of her lover by one of his comrades. A sign of our time with little optimism but much hate and bitterness. But I would have preferred to have my soul stirred by a rousing Marseillaise and tricolore waving dancers.

Only a century or so separates the daikon farmers and picklers of Sowa-era Shakujikoen from Shibuya Square Foodie Scrambles and the skyline of Shibuya; the changes that have led from that traditional rural Japan to an urban megalopolis are difficult to comprehend.

Neon cows (top left) graze above Shibuya Crossing.