Tokyo - Day 1 - Asakusa, Yasukuni Jinja, Shinjuku

After catching the shinkansen from the (quite beautiful) Kyoto Station, I arrived in Tokyo last Friday evening for the beginning of Golden Week, a string of public holidays in a row (Emperor's birthday, Children's Day etc.) which was a great opprtunity for travel. I was met by my friend Megumi at Tokyo Terminal and taken by her to her house, where I would be homestaying.

Note: I did take a few mediocre shinkansen videos, but I might wait until i know how to edit/put in cool music before I publish them.

The next morning, Megu and I set off for Sensoji in Asakusa. I was very happy to find my favourite "pervert poster" which the blogger Japandra ran a caption contest for in this post.

Translation: "Chikan is a crime! It will mess up your life!"

I can't remember who won Japandra's caption contest (she ran it because she thought the poster's text was lame - and it is) but my favourite suggestion was Tiago's:

You wouldn't grope your mother!
You wouldn't grope your sister!
Don't grope strangers!

Actually, though, a chikan probably would grope his sister, providing she was under 11. Why do low-minded, ugly men (Hitler, Ahmadinejad, chikan) always have to spoil everything for everyone because of their sexual problems? Get a shrink or a prostitute, or both. Leave 10 year olds alone.

The proliferation of cute characters on important or serious documents in Japan takes a bit of getting used to. But I don't think this cute policeman is going to scare any chikan into keeping their hands in their pockets.

ANYWAY.

Onwards to Asakusa.

It was packed!

So much so that everybody got into everybody else's photos.

Some beautiful rolls of (probably handmade) paper.

This god must shop at UNIQLO.

We then met up with Alex Brooke, the creator of Learn Japanese Pod, which I've been listening to ever since the end of high school (2007) when I decided that I wanted to learn Japanese. The podcasts - usually centered around fun & useful Japanese phrases, or an aspect of life in Japan - are done mainly by Alex and his friend Beb-san (she has a voice made for radio/podcasting - think a Japanese Lauren Bacall). Also, their Japanese friends and other gaijin living in Japan often make contributions. There's also the forums, with topics ranging from the best study aids to Japanese nightlife to what everyone thought about that fat bald British dude who went for a dip in the Imperial moat and terrorised Japanese policemen with his nakedness. I recommended LJP in my (as yet unfinished) series of posts called 'Textbooks are Boring: 7 Ways to Learn Japanese Online and for Free'. Oh and there's now a LJP iPhone app.

Alex is also a composer and musician, and media manager of Tokyo Weekender, an online magazine about life, entertainment, shopping and pop culture in Tokyo.Also a site I recommend if you're going to Tokyo.

Oh, and I should probably be honest and mention that in return for all this promotion (because, ya know, the whole world reads my blog) Alex and Beb MIGHT BE doing a podcast with me and Dani-chan in Osaka.

(Check back in a few days to see pictures of Dani and our Tokyo meetup, and her cute new hairstyle)

Alex, Megu and Reira demonstrated some true samurai stoicism in enduring the visit to Yasukuni with me. By the end of it we were tempted to steal one of the hara-kiri swords from the displays and put them to good use.

But why was Yasukuni so bad? And why did I even want to go there in the first place?

Last semester one of the last compulsory units Global Studies students had to take was Dr. Kiran Grewal's 'Human Rights and the Global Public Sphere' for which I wrote an essay about the purpose and effectiveness of international criminal tribunals and transitional justice - focusing on the Tokyo Trials.

My focus wasn't so much on whether the trials were fair - of course they were victor's justice, but somebody had to be punished, or to be seen to be blamed, both in Germany in Japan, for the atrocities they had committed - but on their effect on how the Japanese have thought and continue to think about their war history and war responsibility.

The book 'War crimes tribunals and transitional justice: the Tokyo Trials and the Nuremberg legacy' by Madoka Futamura (acutally an academic at Doshisha University - not too far from Ritsumeikan) really helped me understand the peculiar and individual way the Japanese think about the war.

There seems to be a drastic split in Japanese thinking between those who unconditionally and uncritically accept responsibility for everything they are accused of doing during the war and those who unconditionally and uncritically deny it. The former comes across as self-abasing to the point of masochism; an interesting social experiment would be to tell such a person right now "Did you know that the Japanese army was responsible for halving the population of China during the war?" they would probably accept it. "Yes, that could certainly have happened. We were so evil / Our ancestors were so evil. Mea culpa, mea culpa."

The latter are the kind of people who don't take feeling ashamed very well (remember, if a samurai did something shameful only suicide could remove the stain from his name) and are fed up with constantly having it impressed upon them how terrible and evil and guilty they were. Or they're angry about why the Allied Powers weren't prosecuted for Hiromshima, Nagasaki or Dresden (fair point).

The problem with both sides, Futamura argues in her book, is that neither actually cares to look critically at the actual evidence of the war; they're too biased one way or the other. Why can't we have some balance? she asks. Why can't a Japanese person say, "The bombing of Hiroshima was unfair, the Tokyo Trials were unfair, but still I don't sympathise at all with the rhetoric of the neo-nationalists that Japan did absolutely nothing wrong in Nanking?" If we could put the masochistic mea-culpa/hyper-denial nationalism binary aside for a moment, perhaps some productive discussion about issues of war responsibility could arise, and relations in East Asia would improve.

One thing the neo-nationalists really love is the Emperor. I'm not sure really how he feels about them, considering the bad PR they bring his family and country.

The majority of Japanese during the war were (ostensibly) pro-Emperor. Douglas MacArthur decided against prosecuting the Emperor for war crimes because they wanted to make Japan into a friend and ally; probably executing the Son of Heaven wouldn't have helped this goal too much. Also, the Allies had learnt something from how they treated Germany after the First World War ... and what that led to.

The teeny tiny problem is - the war was fought IN THE NAME OF the Emperor; the shape of the war was the will of the Emperor. So the Japanese were told, anyway.

"Sir, why do we have to throw twenty Chinese people down a well and drop a grenade in after them?"

"Because the Emperor wants you to."

I doubt it would be even psychologically possible, given the historical context, for this solider to consider whether to follow the Emperor's will or to disobey.

"Actually, sir, the Son of Heaven's will is kind of conflicting with my own equally important moral feelings on the above matter. Do you mind if I get back to you on that?"

Yeah, wouldn't happen.

So, imagine you're the above solider. The Tokyo Trials are concluded and the Emperor is declared innocent of any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, you, a C or B class war criminal, are left to rot in a prison.

You would be thinking, if the Emperor isn't taking any responsibility for war crimes then why the hell should I?

Perhaps a deep sense of guilt and taboo regarding blaming the Emperor for anything would prevent this feeling from being articularted as clearly or directly, but years of Emperor-worship aside, I bet those long years in prison for the B- and C-class war criminals gave them plenty of time to think about what they were being blamed for and why. If the Emperor in whose name and apparently under whose behest you had committed these terrible acts is decreed innocent, then you must be innocent too ... right? I bet that thought would be very consoling for a prisoner.

The result = a legacy of twisted, confused, shameful/defiant feelings about war history and responsibility. Living on not just in the minds of war criminals, but their families (check out Tojo Hideki's grand-daughter's opinions on the war if you want to find out how to reason massacring Chinese as "fighting a defensive war") ... as well as the Japanese public, and Japanese intellectuals.

I was so beaten down after just that one exhibition I didn't even have the energy to go find this Hitler display I had heard about where a little fact about 6 million Jews is apparently ommitted ...

ANYWAY.

Sorry, didn't mean to regurgitate last semester's essay onto you. As I said, was a bit depressed after Yasukuni, so us girls went and asobi ni iku'ed in Shinjuku.

On the plane here I read a book called 'Tokyo Vice' by Jake Adelstein, the only Westerner ever to be admitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press club. Adelstein isn't the most amazing writer, and the material is pretty dark and depressing, but he really, really knows his stuff where crime and yakuza are concerned (quite a few of them would quite like to kill him - to find out why, check it out for yourself) and he has a lot of interesting stories. Also the fact that he even came to write for the Yomiuri Shimbun (not the English -language Daily Yomiuri) is amazing.

Sections of the book focused on his time reporting on sex crimes in Kabikucho, Tokyo's sleaze district, where you can apparently buy anything except full sex, which is illegal in Japan.

I wonder what you can buy for 7500 yen? Since most of these places (and I mean both hostess clubs and sex clubs) are involved with or run by Yakuza, I wasn't too interested in finding out.

Yellow conveys the same meaning as 'red light' in Amsterdam, in both Japan and China.

I first became aware of that as a result of the 2008 Chinese internet meme, hen huang hen bao li! (Very yellow and very violent)

Is this a real photographic studio? Very likely not. If it is, the photographer isn't very creative with his shots and subject matter.

Once I had taken enough photos of the outsides of Kabukicho's 'establishments' we met up with some of Megu's friends, and 2 German girls who spoke really good Japanese, and went to Arabian Rock, an 'Arabian' themed restaurant.

I use quotation marks because I'm 99% sure the music blasting from the speakers was Bollywood. Ah, Orientalism in the Orient.

We reclined on cushions in our own little 'parlour' and ate some very yummy food.

Then, to commemorate the evening, we took Purikura.

To be honest, I don't care that music about Purikura. I'm not one of those girls who collects them and sticks them in a little book and takes it out to show people how many friends they have.

Awe, isn't that nice. Except you pull the same poses in every one and there's no scenery. And the special effects to whiten your face and widen your eyes are creepy.

Don't mind me, I'm just bitter because I always get whited out of existence with these things. Just a Cheshire smile, nostrils and glasses frames floating in mid air.

This was funny though.

Day 2, or Harajuku Day With Dani, will be up just as soon as I feel like procratinating again. I bought some very very nice things.

Mid-terms are in two weeks.

Yare yare.

On the plus side, my books from Amazon.co.jp arrived while I was away.

Free shipping in Japan is the best! And I've missed reading so much.

Must reads for any Murakami fans who may be reading this.