A series of international meetings brings us back in Japan, this time in Tokyo (a few years back, we were in Nara) . A couple of holes in the agenda allow us a few outings. Am with Sylvia and André; Cynthia is joining me later on in our stay (her first Asian stop on her way to South-East Asia...)
Sunshine brings us to parks and shrines.
First the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace (photo thanks to John W picked up from Flicker), built on the grounds of the Edo Castle (gone), a fairly recent realisation (1968) incorporating remnants (walls) of the old castle. The Gardens are adjacent to the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor lives, and which is not accessible except once or twice a year. Much of the original buildings that constituted the Palace were destroyed by earthquakes and fire – and that includes fire-bombing by the Allied in 1945 which destroyed pretty well all of what was left of the original Meiji Palace. It is from the basement of the concrete library that the emperor declared the capitulation of Japan in August 1945. There is a great film, The Sun, the last of a trilogy by Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov on “dictators” - he did one on Lenin, then Hitler – that is fascinating, showing Hirohito in the very last days before capitulation, as he was briefed and advised by the cabinet, so sheltered and so fragile in a way; there is that scene where GIs are making fun of him, taking pictures with him, while he is taking a breath of fresh air out of his underground compound – how humbling it must have been for him and the whole of Japan! (On "The Sun" and Sokurov see NYT review http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/movies/15lim.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=sokurov&st=cse) Closer to now, the current emperor and his wife were in Canada earlier this year for a long cross-Canada visit – a human interest story: while in Toronto they reunited with their tennis coach-partner of some 50 years ago that now lives around here…
On the occasion of the “20th Anniversary of the Enthronement of His Majesty the Emperor”, they are having a special exhibition of bonsai – 14 are on display, one of which goes back 550 years, 84 cm high, and is said to have been “cherished” by the third shogun – amazing!
The East Gardens are a vast expanse, but not the next garden we see, the Koishikawa Korakuen,
one of Tokyo's oldest and most beautiful Japanese landscape gardens, built by close relatives of the Tokugawa Shogun in the early Edo Period. No different than other Japanese (or for that matter Chinese) gardens, it attempts to reproduce famous landscapes from China and Japan in miniature, using a pond, stones, plants and a man made hill. It is particularly attractive with the leaves turning, and in the quietness of the morning, walking around the lake (which is representing lake Biwa, the largest in Japan). We are told it is worth a visit in late February, especially that a weeping cherry tree near the garden's entrance is then in full bloom.While we are in the area, we visited the Yasukuni Shrine,
a Shinto worshipping place dedicated to spirits of war heroes (some 2 million of them), a well-known shrine and highly controversial as it included the enshrinement of WWII war criminals, and because the Prime Minister 
visits it every year to pay his respect to those who died for the country (Koisumi in this picture, a couple of years ago). Not seen lightly by surrounding countries like China, victims of the big “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” push that was the war! On the grounds of the shrine is the modern military museum, Yushukan, that exhibits among other things a vintage fighter plane (“type-O carrier-based fighter”) used during the “Greater East Asian War”, mainly against China. Staying at the Grand Prince Akasaka Hotel, where “by a clear day” (it happened twice!) you can see the Fujiyama, snow-capped, profiling in the distance!
Tokyo, November 2009
