After an agreeable lunch of grilled mackerel, pickles, salad, rice and soup, on our first Saturday in Japan our son John took us to Zōshigaya to see the famous Zōshigaya Kishimojin Temple (founded in 1561; the main buildings date to the mid-17th century).
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| Zōshigaya Temple. |
However, our first stop was Zōshigaya Cemetery. After a brief search we found what we were looking for – the grave of General Tōjō Hideki, Prime Minister of Japan 1941-1944, who was sentenced to death by the Tokyo war crimes tribunal*. A small sign identifies the tomb as that of “Toujou Hideki a military man, a prime minister” (the difference in spelling of his name reflects a different romanization system). A few flowers decorated the grave, but exactly what remains of Tōjō are buried where is a bit of a mystery. It was the intention of the American authorities to hang Tōjō, cremate him and to scatter his ashes over the Pacific, precisely to prevent there being any permanent burial site that could attract nationalist attention and sentiments. However, it seems that some of his ashes were secretly stolen and buried. Accounts of where the stolen ashes were buried vary. The purported burial sites are the Martyrs' Shrine in Mt. Sangane, Nishio City, Aichi Prefecture, Koa Kannon Temple in Atami in Shizuoka Prefecture, and Zōshigaya. Quite what remains of General Tōjō they may contain is very hard to say.
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| General Tōjō's grave. |
Other burials tell us of less bellicose aspects of Japan’s history. We noticed a number of memorials marked by Christian crosses. Twenty-four sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart who died between 1916 and 1953 rest in a single plot. The order arrived in Japan in 1908, sent by Pope Pius X to establish a higher education. Two other Christian burials similarly reflect the large-scale introduction of foreign expertise and a policy of educating the Japanese in modern ideas and technology under Emperor Meiji in the latter part of the 19th century. Professor Alexander Joseph Hare (1849-1918) served initially in the Department of the Navy helping to give Japan the capabilities that would eventually defeat Russia at sea in 1905, and then in a more pacific role as a teacher of western business practices in the Commercial Training School. Raphael Koeber (1848-1923), born in Russia studied music at the Moscow Conservatory and philosophy and literature at the University of Heidelberg. In Japan he taught music history and gave piano concerts at the Tokyo Music School. The notice that marks his grave tells us that he “introduced a philosophy into Japan and had effected on the Japanese modern music[sic]”.
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| The burial plot of the Society of the Sacred Heart. |
Jan and I were particularly pleased to find the grave of Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), an important novelist, and perhaps the most widely read literary figure in Japan. We had visited the museum built on the site of his home several years ago and have read several of his novels. One of the most famous, Sanshirō, follows a student from his home in remote Kyushu to university in Toyko. This is a much-loved novel of social manners at the end of the Meiji era. Kokoro is a much darker story told by two narrators, a student and his sensei (a revered teacher) who has a shameful secret in his past, the betrayal of a close friend.
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| Natsume Sōseki's grave. |
A map of the cemetery listed seven other notable burials (but not Tōjō). Takeshima Yumeji (1884-1934) was a poet, painter and graphic designer, the leading artist of Taisho-era (1912-1926) romanticism. One of the first Japanese to visit the United States (where he was a whaler and gold miner) was John Manjirō (1827-1898), also known as Nakahama Manjirō. Manjirō’s knowledge of western shipbuilding techniques was instrumental (like Alexander Hare) in the development of the Japanese navy.
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| John Manjirō. |
Koizumi Yakumo (1850-1904) is better known as Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-Irish writer, teacher and translator who introduced Japan and its writers to the Western world. During the reign of Emperor Meiji, while the government was busy importing expertise from the world beyond Japan, a few westerners, of whom Hearn was perhaps the most influential, introduced the West to Japanese culture.
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| Lafcadio Hearn and his wife Setsuko. |
A writer of a very different character from Sōseki was Kafu Naga (1879-1959), known for his depictions of the demimonde of early twentieth-century Toyko was. His writings were suppressed during World War II because of his opposition to the military regime (led of course by Tōjō). Another politically committed figure was Hai Goro (1901-1983), a noted Marxist literary critic, educator and historian, whose work focused on the development of capitalism in pre-Meiji and Meiji-era (1868-1912) Japan.
Ohkawa Hashizo (1929-1984) was an actor, originally in Kabuki, but best known for his roles in more than 100 films between 1955 and 1981. He also worked in television, notably in 88 episodes of Heiji, The Detective.
The grave of Ogino Ginko (1815-1913) introduced me to an extraordinary character, and the only woman notable enough to be brought to the attention of visitors to the cemetery. Infected with gonorrhoea by her husband (whom she divorced), her experience of the shame of her disease and of being treated only by male doctors, inspired her to study for nine years to graduate in 1882 from Kojuin Medical School as Japan’s first female doctor. She founded Ogino Hospital in Yushima, converted to Christianity, and in 1890 married Yukiyoshi Shikata, a protestant clergyman. Ogino inspired other women to train for the medical profession.
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| Ogino Ginko. |
The day before our visit to Zōshigaya we had been to the National Showa Memorial Museum, which provided a good introduction to Japan from the 1930s to the 1950s. The story begins in a Japan that enjoyed few of the benefits of modern industrial society such as a domestic electricity supply or domestic appliances. A domestic convenience available only to the rich and to businesses was the ice refrigerator, a wooden cabinet with two compartments; in the top compartment was a block of ice, and in the lower the foodstuffs were kept cool.
A black and white photo showed an audience of children enthralled by a kamishibaiya (“paper theatre narrator”) who travelled the streets on a bicycle, on the back of which was mounted a wooden cabinet. The kamishibaiya told stories enlivened by illustrated storyboards and sold inexpensive sweets stored in his cabinet. This was the pre-War equivalent of children’s TV.
The Second Sino Japanese War (1937-1945) and the Great East Asia War (1941-1945, the Pacific theatre of World War II), spurred intensive mobilization not just of the military but of all society. Displays of luxury became unacceptable. Citizens were encouraged to eat simply and sparingly. As scarcity became more severe, a meal might consist of a bowl of rice and a plum. Metal was collected and melted for military uses. A housewife no longer ironed clothes with a metal iron but with a ceramic replacement. Students from primary to university level were educated to be fighters; secondary and university students carried out regular military exercises. Textbooks were revised to promote militarism. As the war came closer to home, children were evacuated in school groups to the countryside and taught in temples and other buildings.
Two exhibits were particularly powerful of examples of commitment to the war effort. When a man was drafted into the armed forces, his wife produced a senninbari (“thousand-person stitches”), a white cotton sash embroidered with 1,000 French knots. The man’s wife stitched the first knot and then invited other women to add theirs to make an image referring to the year of the soldier’s birth (the sash in the museum depicted a tiger). In his turn the soldier-to-be would create a yosegaki hinomaru (“good luck Japanese flag”), inviting friends and relatives to sign it with best wishes.
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| A senninbari. |
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| A hinomaru. |
The post-war period was one of great deprivation and hunger. Large cities like Tokyo were devastated by fire-bombing (remember that homes in Japan were made of wood). People lived in ruined structures or temporary shelters. War widows suffered particular hardship. During the war, widows were honoured for their sacrifice and received a pension. However, the American occupation abolished all military pensions, on the grounds that enemy soldiers (and, whether intentionally or not, their widows) should not be rewarded. The pensions were restored when the occupation ended.
One exhibit, a DDT pump, illustrated neatly the post-war living conditions. In poor conditions fleas, lice and the like proliferated, and with them disease. The American administration ordered mass fumigation with DDT. The display included a photo of a Japanese child being fumigated, covered head to toe in white DDT powder.
Then came the Japanese economic miracle, neatly summed up in a display of domestic appliances: liquidisers, washing machines, refrigerators, televisions and so on. The contrast with the pre-war domestic lifestyle was very clear.
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| The Zōshimaya Temple gingko tree. |
After our visit to the temple and its 700-year-old giant gingko tree, we walked in search of refreshment to Ikebukuro. Our first stop was a bakery with an enormous range of donuts whose customers (John and I excepted) were young women dressed in a variety of fashions, and with impeccable makeup. But, alas, we could not be seated for coffee. Next was the giant (ten floors) Junkudo bookstore – crowded with readers, a delightful sight for an old publisher – but the Book Café was full.
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| The Ikebukuro donut shop. |
Third time lucky, was a small café where one had to access the menu by QR code. John, aged 35, was decidedly old as the café’s customers go; Jan and I were dinosaurs. The clientele was also decidedly female, and again dressed in an array of fashions, makeup carefully applied. At the table next to us, two customers had purchased boxes of one of the cute toys that are universally popular with young people, attached to handbags or backpacks, or as collector's items. One girl was unable to contain her excitement when she opened her box – it contained two small plastic figures called chīkawa (based on characters from a manga series) that lit up when the base was pressed. The chīkawa were carefully arranged with the drinks and desserts that the young women had ordered, and then meticulously photographed. I am told that these kinds of cute figures are inexpensive, and that there is an enormous variety of them, including figures produced for sale only in a certain city or region.
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| Chīkawa figures. |
For an older generation, a good example of a temple to consumption is the Seibu department store food hall at Ikebukuro where out train line ends. Train companies own department stores, so that stations are also sites for department stores. The Seibu food hall is on two floors. One offers a huge variety of sweets, cakes, teas and coffees. The lower floor is the delicatessen, again with a bewildering variety. The Japan that we visit is, economically and socially, at least, a very long way from the Japan that dusted that little child with DDT.
*For an excellent study of the Tokyo war crimes tribunal see: Gary J Bass, Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Tiral and the Making of Modern Asia, Picador (Knopf in the USA), 2023
