The A-Bomb

The A stands of course for Atomic, but for me the A also stands for the Ambiguity I feel with regards towards the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the representation of history on both the American and Japanese side.
This Tuesday I visited for the second time the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki. Although I knew what to aspect, I still was blown aback by the pictures of the impact of the bomb on the city, it’s destructing power, the fires that worsened everything after the exploding of the bomb, the survivors, the injuries most likely caused by the radiation.
The museum focuses on the actual bombing and the effect it had on the people. It also has a little section for some of the forgotten victims, the foreign people living in Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped. Especially the fairly large Korean community who under the colonial rule of Japan in Korea had been brought to Japan to work, have been neglected by both the Korean and Japanese government for a long time. Although I can understand that the museum chooses to focus on the actual bombing and the suffering it causes, I do miss the explanation of the historical background of the dropping of the bomb. Because the dropping of the A-bomb is intrinsically linked with Pearl Harbour, the Japanese atrocities committed in Asia during World War II. By neglecting this background it also steps over the question if the dropping bomb was as much a necessity as until now is claimed by the U.S. Government. The museum does give clues that it might not have been as much needed as is claimed. According to an American classmate it is still thought in most High Schools that the dropping of the A-Bomb was necessary to end the war quickly and thereby saving the lives of the soldiers that would be used when the U.S. would do a land invasion, as well as the lives of the people under Japanese occupation, for example working on the Thai-Burma Railroad. There is the conviction that Japan would continue fighting until the bitter end, having the woman and children standing ready with wooden sticks to attack the American soldiers. Another reason is that after the atomic bomb Japan surrendered unconditionally, giving up all it’s colonies, which might not have been case if the atomic bombs had not been dropped. But there are also indications that Japan was on the verge of collapse, being bombed from the air, and virtually being blocked off by a naval blockade. Japan had declined the Potsdam Declaration basically because it asked for unconditionally surrender, and was seeking contact with Russia the only country with which it still had a neutrality pact, to negotiate peace on better terms than unconditionally surrender. Russia declared war with Japan on the same day as the first Atomic bomb was dropped. And according to some the argument for dropping the bomb on Japan, had reasons other than only ending the war quickly, such as paying back Japan for Pearl Harbour, preventing the Russians from occupying Japan, and showing that all the money that had gone to Manhattan Project was not wasted. Unfortunately, the museum also did not provide much information on the reasons for dropping the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki as well as the ultimate surrender by the Japanese.
After the dropping of the A-bomb, the city of Nagasaki focuses on the promoting of peace, Japan got the so called peace constitution, drafted by the U.S. in which Japan was prohibited to have an army. Now more than 50 years later, Japan is the 4th biggest spender on it’s military, although they are still called Self Defence Forces. The ruling party in Japan, the LDP, wants to change article 9, the article in which Japan is denied the right to have an army. One of the main arguments is that Japan wants to be taken serious by other world powers, not only on economic terms but also on military ones. Japan also lives under the threat of possible atomic bombs made in North Korea. And the U.S. are fighting a war against Iraq that they can’t win.
The museum does make you aware of the enormous damage the atomic bomb caused, and that humans should not use this weapon once more against other humans.

Somewhere in between

There is enough place to park to park my bike on the campus, I can study in the library with all my books spread out, and there are no cues for the cafeteria. My dormitory seems to be deserted. All the signs are obvious, it’s vacation! The first semester (for the Japanese the second and thus last semester of the school year) has finished. Although stating the obvious, it remains remarkable how time has a habit of passing, very very quickly. And leaving me behind in a kind of contemplating mood, thinking about everything that has happened, the things I have done and seen, and the things I’ve learned the last 5 months. In Leiden by now, all the Japanese language training should have come to an end. Until now my program has consisted mostly of Japanese lessons, or lessons in Japanese about subjects related to Japanese culture. And I find it surprising how many kanji (Chinese characters) I still come across that I can’t read. Seeing friends reading books in Japanese without apparently any difficulty, it feels like I still have a long way to go. But there’s no other possibility than try to walk the way so I also bought my share of Japanese books through which I am now plunging my way, with a little help of my friend, the electronic dictionary. On the other hand, I can now understand fairly all the lectures the Japanese teachers give, while being in a Japanese High school I was never really able to figure out what they were talking about. And I am even able to talk with Japanese people about subjects related to more tentative area’s such as politics, so somewhere I must have made some progress. Next semester we will have the opportunity to also take lectures and classes together with the Japanese students in Japanese. And we will also have to write a 25-page essay in Japanese about a freely chosen subject. And almost every single week the subject of this paper changes, depending on which subject has caught my attention. There are so many really interesting things concerning Japan of which I would like to know more that I have more than enough idea’s to produce 5 papers.
Because the real intellectual content of my lectures was not always that high, I have the feeling that I learned most outside school on a whole range of subjects. Not only the process of really living on your own, using daily life Japanese, but also meeting people with interest in subjects I hardly knew anything about such as Kyoto school philosophy, post modernism, theology, the homeless in Japan, have broadened my view on the world but also made it more difficult to find out what the subjects I am really interested in. But I guess that I still have more than enough time to find out what I really want with my life. Or perhaps I am never going to find out and just live from the one day to the other day, enjoying what it brings and just let time do what it has got to do. But for now I am all going to put those thoughts aside and kicking of the vacation with a schooltrip for 3 days to Nagasaki, Shimabara, Unzen and Kumamoto.

Setsubun

Although Kyoto is still shimmered with cold, some shrines are preparing for the coming spring and the festival that welcomes spring called setsubun on February the 2nd and 3rd. The shrine in the vicinity of Kyoto University, called Yoshida shrine is famous for it’s setsubun. Especially because the performance of the devils and the casting them away with beans is said to be still resembling how it was performed in former times. The devils represent all the evil one accumulated during the year and by ousting it all out, one enters the new year again with a pure heart. Some of my teachers were quite enthusiastic about it and recommended every one of us to go and see it. It was hard to miss, because the road in front of the main entrance where usually some 5 obentou (lunchboxes) sellers stand, was now covered with stands offering all kinds foods to the huge crowd that decided to ignore the rainy snow and climb up the temple to have a look what’s going on. Those stands you can find around any bigger temple and they are always offering the same kind of foods, yakisoba, yakiniku, chocobanana’s, food that should resemble French pancakes. Nice of course, but not very exciting. I must admid that I missed the real performance by the devils so I perhaps missed the real interesting part. Although standing in the row to buy something from of those stands, one devil had a go at me and But I went to the burning of all the omamori that were bought last year and which protecting charm had faded away over the year, making it necessary to buy them anew. The whole inner yard of the temple was cramped with people, and the paper and wood caught surprisingly fast fire although it was still lightly snowing. Although for me the whole festival wasn't as exciting nor really traditional as it was said to be still a huge crowd came to the shrine, even from neighbouring cities just to see the festival. Somehow, I had the feeling I had seen similar things before and I missed a kind of individual flavour to the whole festival. And strangely enough individual flavour is something one comes across quite often, at café’s and bars. One characteristic is that they are almost always very small giving room to only 30 people at most for a bar. But it also gives them a kind of intimacy, as if you know the people who are inside, a kind of living room feel. And not the kind of living room feel many café’s try to embody in their establishment, but really the feeling as if you are in their living room. One of the reasons is that usually the place is connected with the room where the owners live. If you just go through one door, you are in the middle of their lives. A feeling that not only comes over me when visiting a café, but also going into the second-hand bookshops as well as when I am buying fresh vegetables. And sometimes you can see the family sitting in their living room. Because so many establishments give are expressing their owners taste in both interior as well as music, the nightlife is quite differentiated. You can find bars specialized in heavy metal, hard rock of the 70’s, bubbling r&b, tribal techno, roots reggae and dub across the nightlife district. And I hope that with the coming of spring more people decide to turn a space into a nice cafe or bar, hopefully fulling a new spring of individual expression.