Last days in Tokyo: fireflies, a sea of clouds and 20 weddings

 

After a splendid Japanese dinner, we stood on the bridge over the stream and marvelled at the magical display of fireflies in the bushes beside the water and darting above the stream. In the background, the sound of waterfalls accompanied the display. And during the day we could see up close in a firefly biotope (a glass case) the tiny insects that generate so much light once darkness falls.

Spot the fireflies.

 The garden was artfully lit to pick out the shrubbery and trees, and the three-storey pagoda that dominates the garden from the rest of the hill. It had once stood at the Chikurinji temple in Hiroshima, but had been moved there, in a dilapidated state,  in 1925, only two years after the destruction wrought by the Great Kanto Earthquake, and restored.

The garden at night: note the pagoda on the hill top, centre.

The pagoda by day.

In 1924 the Shiratama Inari Shrine, which once was the centrepiece of one of Kyoto’s three great festivals, was similarly brought to the Chinzanso. Statues of two white foxes guard its entrance.

The Shiramata Inari shrine and one of its guardians.

A chinquapin tree, more than 500 years old, in contrast, has not moved from its spot and has withstood earthquakes and firebombing. A twisted rope and cut white paper around its 4.5 metre circumference told us that this is a sacred tree.

The sacred tree. Note the zizag cut paper.

 All this less than four kilometres from the crowds and skyscrapers of Shinjuku. The ancient garden is now conserved for the pleasure of guests of the very modern Hotel Chinzanso. Jan and I had stayed here in 2019 as part of our celebration of our 40^th wedding anniversary, and retuned at the end of our long stay in Tokyo for two days of luxury and comfortingly attentive service.

 

In the the 14^th century the site was known as Tsubakiyama (camelia mountain) for the many wild camelias that flourished there. Apparently, Fuji was visible from the hill (no longer – too many buildings block the view). During the Edo Period (1603-1867) the land belonged to the Kuroda clan who lived in a villa there. The site appeared in one of the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo of Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). In 1878 the land was owned by general Yamagata Aritomo (1838-1922), prime minister of Japan from 1889-1891 and 1898-1900, and a military man with a distinguished career. He was also an art connoisseur, who was also responsible for three of Japan’s finest gardens: Murin-an in Kyoto, Kiki-an in Oddawara, and the Chinzanso mansion and gardens, the latter designed by Iwamoto Katsugoro.

 

In 1918 Yamagata passed the garden to Baron Fujita Heitaro (1869-1940), a businessman and president of the Fujita group. Fujita respected Yamagata’s wishes to leave the property unchanged, but the 1945 firebombing did much damage to the garden and its buildings. However, in 1948 Ogawa Eiichi, founder of a company now known as Fujita Kankō, one of Japan’s largest hotel and tourism groups set about restoring the garden. Ogawa had more than 10,000 trees planted and the garden reopened in 1952. The hotel opened on the site in 1992.

 

In 2019 I had marvelled that the fireflies had survived in the heart of Tokyo. However, as we walked through the gardens this time, we noticed two people working by a glass enclosure, and later spotted another enclosure in the bushes by the stream. For the Chinzanso fireflies are not just a wonder of nature; they are also an attraction for hotel guests that is carefully managed to avoid disappointment. For a moment, I was disappointed, but on reflection if the hotel guests provide the economic incentive to ensure the survival of the fireflies, then a little management is no bad thing. And some of the garden’s attractions are natural: the cherry blossom and camelias in early Spring and the maples in the Autumn.

 

The Japanese love spectacles, and the Chinzanso makes sure to provide them. At 07:10, 09:10, and then at ten and forty past the hour (precisely: the Japanese are nothing if not prompt) a gong announces the Tokyo Sea of Clouds Experience. Equipment positioned in and around the Yusuchi Pond produces, on demand, quantities of mist. The experience, as the hotel leaflet explains, begins with “Pagoda in the Clouds: The sea of clouds envelops the three-story pagoda for around 5 minutes”, and next the “Great Sea of Clouds: ¾ of the garden is blanketed in the sea of clouds for around 8 minutes”. Things don’t always go to plan: our second day in the hotel turned out to be quite windy, blowing the “Cloud” in the wrong direction.

The Chinzanso "clouds".

The other great experience offered by the Chinzanso is weddings. On Saturday morning as we sat in the lobby waiting for John and Ryōka, a constant stream of taxis delivered the guests for the twenty (sic: Sunday was much quieter, only six) weddings scheduled for that day. The older generation of guests consisted of men in lounge suits or morning suits and their wives in smart dresses or kimonos. Then there were the young couples with small babies or excitable toddlers, all in their best outfits (very few of the women in kimonos). Single men arrived in groups, all in standard black suits; young women in twos and threes in their best dresses.

 

Like all hotels that cater to this trade, the Chinzanso has a wedding chapel for western-style weddings (there is also a Japanese shrine for the more traditionally minded). Ryōka told us that there is no standard set of words; rather couples exchange their own choice of vows, overseen by a “minister”, apparently usually non-Japanese and probably not a formally qualified minister. This ceremony has no legal force: the legal marriage is done at the Ward (municipal) office, simply by paying a fee and signing a form; no vows, no witnesses, no formalities of any kind (divorce is legally done the same way). Some couples forego the chapel and banquet. As the couples left the chapel, they were given a long (very long) round of applause, which to my ears at least sounded very un-Japanese in its unrestrained enthusiasm.

The Chinzano's wedding department's image of an idyllic wedding.

The chapel part of the day over, the wedding party moved to an area in the banqueting building for photos and videos. Those married earlier in the day when it was raining missed out on the second photo location: a small terrace overlooking the garden. Based on the couples we saw, the brides tended to favour off-the-shoulder white dresses; the men tight fitting shiny light grey suits that made them look like contestants in a talent contest. We did see one couple in traditional dress: the bride in a kimono over which she wore a hooded white garment, the groom in a restrained dark grey man’s kimono. We saw this bride’s gorgeous kimono later when they emerged from a lift on our floor as we waited for our lift. The banquet followed the photos, either in the same building as the chapel, or on one of the eight floors of an adjoining banquet building. Ryōka told us that the banquet was usually in French style, not Japanese.

 

One finished, only nineteen more photo sessions to go.

As we sat in the lobby waiting for John and Ryōka, a bride and groom who had finished the celebrations walked along a corridor, the groom gallantly holding his bride’s flowers while an attendant carried her train, into the lobby and out to a waiting taxi, their departure documented in photos and video. These little processions went on all day – we saw one or two more as we sipped afternoon tea.

A couple in traditional Japanese wedding dress.

 The hotel provides a full range of services for the wedding business. There is a large room, set up with numbered tables, where couples meet wedding planners. There are beauty parlours, hair stylists and large numbers of hotel attendants to guide the couple through the various stages of their big day.

 

The catering side of the hotel is staggering in its scale. For meetings and weddings the cuisines are Japanese, Chinese, western and Japanese-style French. The guest part of the hotel has four Japanese restaurants, an Italian and a bistro, a bar, a lobby lounge that serves cocktails as well as “authentic English afternoon tea” and an evening high tea, and a salon for tea, sandwiches and light meals.

 

The Chinzanso is convenient for a visit to the area around Waseda University, one of the most prestigious in Japan, founded in 1882. John had been a postgraduate researcher there in 2019, so we returned to the area for old times’ sake. A large cast bronze statue of the founder of Waseda, Shigenobu Ōkuma presides over the heart of the campus: we had seen the plaster cast at the atelier of Asakura Fumio (1883-1964).

My friend Shigenobu Ōkuma.

We visited the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, named after the translator into Japanese of the complete works of Shakespeare. The building is modelled on the Elizabethan Fortune Theatre of London. We had time to see a small exhibition about a kabuki actor who was known for performing female parts.

The theatre museum building.

There is also art museum, the Aizu Museum. Much of the museum was closed for the installation of a new exhibition, but we were able to see a circular painting by Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958), whose home in Ueno we had visited a day or two after we arrived in Japan, and Shimomura Kanzan (1873-1930): Light and Dark, ink, gold and silver paint on a single sheet of Japanese paper 4.45m in diameter. The story of the manufacture of the paper is almost more spectacular than the painting: it was made by Heizaburo Iwano of Fukui and 30-40 assistants who spread the pulp (mainly of mulberry with some hemp and gampi) and dried it. Yokoyama painted the clouds (the dark) and Shimomura the sun (the light). The work is displayed on a wall behind the main staircase; as light catches it, the tones of the painting shift as if dawn were breaking, or dusk descending.

 

Yokoyama Taikan and Shimomura Kanzan, Light and Dark.

An exhibition of Japanese art in the USA and Mexico confirmed my motto that wherever you are in the world you are never far from Mexico: here was a black and white woodblock print by Kitagawa Tamiji (1894-1989), Nude in Taxco. Kitagawa travelled first to New York and then to Mexico, where he worked with Mexican artists who were expressing in images (murals and prints) the ideas of the Mexican Revolution. He established one of the famous Escuelas de Arte al Aire Libre (Open Air Art Schools) in Taxco, a charming colonial town known for its silver jewelry and gorgeous 18^th century church: the church of Santa Prisca can be seen behind the female nude in the print.

 

In the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Tokyo was another little surprise – and a rather tangential connection to Mexico. The cathedral is a monumental and simple (some would say severe) concrete cruciform structure designed by Tange Kenzo and finished in 1964. The interior has none of the decoration that one associates with Catholic cathedrals. There are only four statues: a Crucifixion to the right of the altar, a simple white image of the Virgin in a tiny chapel, a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Pietá in the Vatican tucked away where one barely notices it, and the connection to Mexico: a small statue of Justo Ukon Takayama (1552-1615, beatified 2017), who died in Manila, in the Phillippines, then under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico). In 2019 his statue was carried into the cathedral by four Filipinos, blessed at the altar, and celebrated in a mass attended by the Filipino community of Tokyo

The statue of Takayama is carried into St. Mary's cathedral.

Takayama was born Takayama Hikogorō, a samurai and daimyo (lord), baptized in 1564. Takayama converted a number of his subjects and destroyed numerous Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. When ordered to abjure his Christian faith, he refused, renounced his property, and left Japan to exile in Manila with his wife and children. He died 44 days after reaching Manila. I must say that I wondered whether destroying temples and shrines, not very ecumenical acts, was a good qualification for beatification – but then I am not a Catholic.

Happy Filipinos welcome the statue of Takayama.

 More from Japan next year.