Tag Archives: hiroshima

Visiting Japan is the best way to help the country post-earthquake and tsunami

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A geisha at Kiyomizudera in Kyoto

It’s such a cliche to point out that Japan is a contrast of old and new traditional and modern, but the comparison keeps coming up because it’s true, and is a part of the country’s cultural DNA. It would be a surprise not to see some people — women, men, old, young, children — dressed in traditional kimono at ancient temples and shrines. It’s not unusual to have a contemplative (dare I say, zen-like) centuries-old spiritual site plopped into the middle of one of the world’s most bustling megalopolises. Japan is home to 14 of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.

So it makes sense for me to start this series of blog posts with a photo of a geisha (or a maiko, a geisha-in-training) I saw seemingly floating amidst the crowds of tourists at Kiyomizuedera, one of the thousands of amazing temples scattered throughout Kyoto, the city that contains the soul of Japan. The geisha is a romantic stereotype of Old Japan, and yet, the tradition of geishas performing ancient music and dance continues today.

I returned this month from a two-week trip to Japan with my wife Erin Yoshimura and my mom, Junko. We traveled there for several reasons:

First, because Erin has never met my mother’s family in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.

Second, because as Japanese Americans, we both believe it’s important to connect with our roots and appreciate where our values come from and why we think and behave the way we do in the United States.

Third, because we think it’s a cool idea to bring out American side to Japan and see how it’s different from Japanese society.

And fourth, because traveling to Japan is a great way for people around the world to support Japan’s recovery from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region of northeast Honshu, Japan’s main island.

According to an Oct. 5 report from the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism to Japan fell by 62% and 50% in April May over the previous year because of the disasters (including the man-made nuclear disaster at Fukushima). It’s been improving in the months since — in June and July tourism was 36% below 2010 levels. That’s a huge loss for a country that is the third-largest tourism economy in the world.

No, we didn’t visit Tohoku. We flew to Narita Airport outside Tokyo and took a connecting flight to Chitose, the airport that serves Sapporo in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. We spent a couple of days in Sapporo and met with my uncle Fumiya Mori and aunt Mistuko, then took trains to Nemuro, my mom’s hometown on the easternmost tip of Hokkaido. We spent several days there with my uncle Kazuya Mori and aunt Eiko (I adore her) and got to visit Akan National Park (sort of like Japan’s Yellowstone) and the Ainu Village that showcases the culture of the native people of Japan. From Hokkaido we flew to Tokyo and spent four busy days there, then took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima. We spent a coupe f days there, and visited the powerful Peace Memorial Park, which forever commemorates the atomic bomb blast of Aug. 5, 1945. We ended the trip in Kyoto before flying home from Osaka’s Kansai Airport.

Two weeks is a long trip, but it was worth it to squeeze in such a diverse array of destinations and see Japan from the dual perspective of foreign tourist and someone coming home after a prolonged absence.

LINKS:

View Day-by-day photo albums on Facebook from our trip to Japan.

View 34 short videos on YouTube of our trip to Japan.

2011 Japan Trip: Photo albums by day

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Senso-Ji Temple in Asakusa

Here are complete day-by-day photo albums of our trip to Japan on Facebook (you don’t need a Facebook account to see them, but you’ll need to log in to Facebook to share or post a comment). Many of the photos (like the food shots, for instance) will be included in individual blog posts.

DAY 1 – Flight to Japan, arrive in Sapporo | DAY 2 – Sapporo | DAY 3 – Arrive by train in Nemuro | DAY 4 – Nemuro | DAY 5 – Nemuro: Akan National Park, Ainu Village | DAY 6 – Leave Nemuro, Arrive Tokyo | DAY 7 – Tokyo: Meiji Jingu, Shinjuku, Shinagawa | DAY 8 – Tokyo: Asakusa, Shinagawa | DAY 9 – Harajuku, Shibuya, Asakusa (Sky Tree), Shinagawa | DAY 10 – Shinkansen to Hiroshima | DAY 11 – Hiroshima: Peace Memorial Park, Miyajima | DAY 12 – Kyoto: Kiyomizudera | DAY 13 – Bus Tours of Kyoto, Nara | DAY 14: Depart Kyoto, arrive Osaka’s Kansai Airport

34 short videos of our 2011 trip to Japan

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I recently returned from a fantastic trip to Japan, with my wife Erin Yoshimura and my mom. We flew first to Sapporo in the northern island of Hokkaido, where one of my uncles lives, and then traveled to Nemuro, my mom’s hometown on the easternmost tip of Hokkaido, where another uncle lives. Then we flew down to Tokyo for a few days, then Hiroshima, then Kyoto before flying home from Osaka’s Kansai Airport. It was grueling at times — two weeks is a long trip, especially with your mom! — but I really had a great time and it’s given me a lot to think about… and write about.

I’m still sorting out notes from the trip and organizing the zillions of photos. But I did finally finish editing and titling the many videos I shot with my Lumix LX5 camera. Here are 34 short videos with brief descriptions. Feel free to graze through them, or watch them all (they’re on my YouTube channel).

NOTE: I’ve signed up to include ads on some of my videos, including these ones of Japan. If you feel inclined to click on the ads that show up, I get a little bit of coin in return. If you want to get rid of them, just click the “x” in the upper right of each banner ad.

As I write blog posts, I’ll also embed these videos within them. So think of these vids as previews of some of the topics I’ll be covering.
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Reiko Rizzuto’s “Hiroshima in the Morning” is a powerful memoir

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Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, author of the new memoir "Hiroshima in the Morning."The media are reporting on how Muslim Americans are braced for attacks this weekend, because of the 9/11 anniversary. I know what that’s like, unfortunately, though not on the scale of violence and hatred Muslims are facing today.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of American “patriotism” that Japanese Americans still get nervous every December 7 because we grew up with racial slurs of “go home, Japs” and “Remember Pearl Harbor!”

Such are the deep emotional scars that form after a national trauma, and ethnicity and religion add layers of fear and complexity. It’s understandable in a way, but also unjust — Japanese Americans had nothing to do with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor any more than German Americans had to do with the blitzkrieg of London. And Muslim Americans certainly had nothing to do with the awful attacks of 9/11. It’s too bad that so many Americans can’t understand such a basic fact and separate nationality from ethnicity, faith from fanaticism.

These schisms are bouncing around my head along with the powerful writing of author Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, whose terrific second book, “Hiroshima in the Morning” has just been published by the Feminist Press.

The book on its surface is a simple idea: A memoir of Rizzuto’s 2001 trip to Japan, paid for by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts to research the stories of Hiroshima bomb survivors, a group that shrinks each year as the generation passes away, in the city where her own family roots are planted. Rizzuto lived there for eight months to find people to interview, so she could write her second novel.

Instead, she came out of the experience with her life changed profoundly, and this memoir came first before the novel, which is finished but incubating a bit before she sends it to editors under the name “Shadow Child.”

Until the novel comes out, readers can devour “Hiroshima in the Morning” and marvel at Rizzuto’s craft and literary approach to telling non-fiction stories, as well as her brave willingness to expose the emotional evolution she undertakes by the end of her fellowship.

Her ability to write literature as if it were non-fiction is what set Rizzuto’s first novel, “Why She Left Us,” which won the American Book Award upon its release in 2001, apart from other books based on the Japanese American internment.

Rahna Reiko RizzutoRizzuto, who is half-Japanese, based that first book in part on her mother’s experience of being interned at Camp Amache in Colorado during World War II. But she interviewed many former internees to collect observations, details, relationships, experiences and story lines that she wove together into fiction that rang with the power of truth.

She wrote the novel in the different perspectives and voices of its main characters, and jumped through time and space in ways that masterfully held the reader on track, following the devastating legacy of internment on generations of one family. It was unorthodox, artsy and literary, and a riveting read.

I look forward to seeing how she uses the research in Hiroshima as fuel for her fiction, especially after reading “Hiroshima in the Morning.”

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Atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki are faded memories in U.S.

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I participated in the 2006 Hiroshima "World Peace Day" commemoration in NYC, and walked in a candlelight vigil from the Buddhist Temple in Manhattan to a Harlem church.

Mention August 6 to most Americans, young or old, and my guess is you’ll get a blank stare. “What about August 6?” Mention Hiroshima and you might get a second blank stare. Most Americans can’t name the date that the first atomic bomb was dropped, Aug. 6 1945 on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped, on the southern port city of Nagasaki. Today is the 65th anniversary of that bombing, August 9.

Tens of thousands of civilians were killed instantly in both bombings, some leaving just shadows like stationary, permanent ghosts on walls next to where they had been standing. But because of the raging fires caused in the blasts’ aftermath, and the deadly radiation poisoning from the black rain fallout that followed, up to 166,000 people in Hiroshima, and 80,000 in Nagasaki were killed within a few months. People who survived the blast suffered injuries, burns and deformities; some are still dying today from cancers that lay dormant for decades.

In Japan, the atomic bombings are national tragedies that are commemorated to this day, much like we probably will commemorate 9/11, fifty years from now.

But here in the United States, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have over the years become historical factoids, questions on tests, for most people. Sure, there are recent Japanese immigrants and U.S. anti-war activists who remember and mark the anniversaries, but for most Americans — even, I’m afraid, most Japanese Americans — there isn’t much thought given to the devastation suffered by either of those cities so long ago and far away.

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