Hiroshima and Miyajima

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I am now in Honshu (see map), Japan’s “big island” that extends from Kyushu north to Hokkaido (think Sapporo and snow).  It’s the most populous island and home to Kyoto, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Sendai.  Except for about three or four weeks in Shikoku (mid-April into May), I’ll be here until August, when I go to Hokkaido and Korea, each for a week.  Then it’s back to Honshu for the rest of my journey.

Hiroshima and Miyajima each have notable icons:  Hiroshima its Peace Memorial and Miyajima the vermillion torii gate that sits in the sea.  I’ll describe these first, then move to other impressions:  the walk down Mt. Misen on Miyajima and this area’s food.

Peace Memorial looking to the Dome

Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial.   Like Nagasaki, Hiroshima lost roughly 140,000 people when the atomic bomb was dropped.  Similarly, its peace memorial is a cluster of buildings in a large, lovely and peaceful park at the bomb’s epicenter.  One building, called “The Dome” is left standing in ruins as a memorial.  And, like Nagasaki, it has a building that memorializes those who died, which is a tough thing to visit in either city.  Here, rather than a building that both descends down into the earth and pushes upward through water to the sky, Hiroshima’s is a round underground structure that gives a 360˚ view of the devastation after the bomb was dropped.  That depiction is made of 140,000 different tiles, one for each person who died.

Hiroshima’s Peace Museum is also different from Nagasaki’s.  It is more mission-driven, advocating the end of nuclear arms.  Included is a display of all the letters it has written to heads of state to protest the latest nuclear test blast (the last was this century to our President).  And, since Hiroshima was the first city on which the atomic bomb was dropped, there are displays of declassified internal US memos describing the thinking behind using the bomb.   The memos state that the research and development effort had cost the government $2 billion (in 1940’s dollars) and that some felt dropping the bomb would justify the expense (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).  There was concern that the Soviet Union was moving into Asia so dropping the bomb would be a warning to them to stay away.   Apparently Japan had reached out to the Soviet Union to seek peace before the bomb was dropped, but our response did not provide sufficient room for talks to proceed.  And last, we chose cities like Hiroshima because they hadn’t been bombed (much) and we wanted to see the extent of the damage the bomb would cause.  It was very disturbing reading.  It made me quite angry at the slaughter any country can wreak so dispassionately and the senselessness of war and politics where narrow, rigid assumptions dominate.

Torii Gate at Miyajima

Miyajima’s Torii Gate.  I left early Saturday morning to go to Miyajima to see the gate when the tide had not fully gone out and left late afternoon as the tide was moving in.  (It also looked like it would be the only even partially sunny day I would have in Hiroshima, so I had to take advantage of it!)  The gate is truly iconic:  a beautiful, vermilion symbol of Japan and its Shinto religion.   It sits off the water from the Itsukushima Shrine, a vermillion and white complex of wooden buildings.  I saw a woman in a cream-colored silk kimono – her wedding garb – with her family and future husband being escorted  into a room for the wedding ceremony or blessing.   Yes, it’s touristy and yes, it’s a good idea to get there early (better to be there at high tide), but it is a beautiful, amazing place, where you can  feel the deep traditions of Japan and look across the sea to urban Hiroshima creeping up the hills.

Temple construction

A comment on construction: The Torii Gate is not the original one, but it has been faithfully reproduced.  This one was built in 1875.  As I learned from a Dutch architect I met on the way to Kagoshima, the Japanese preserve their historical buildings and rebuild and renovate them in the same way that they were first made.  In another Miyajima shrine and at Hiroshima Castle (which was destroyed by the bomb and rebuilt), the original construction techniques are used: mortise and tenon joints rather than nails, huge wooden logs as beams, some notched and overlaid to be able to span the building’s length or width, etc. 

Looking from Miyajima toward Shikoku

The  Walk down Mt. Misen.  I took a gondola to Shishiiwa Station, about 1,200 feet above sea level, where on a clear day you can see Shikoku (I could only imagine it).  From there I walked toward Mt. Misen (the island's highest peak at about 1,600 feet) and down through the primeval forest, passing various shrines on the way to the Itsukushima Shrine.  It is a very well-traveled path, so most of it is stepped, paved, and otherwise graded, though my calves are still aching two days later.  There were a number of people hiking, mostly down, including a man who was intently going from shrine to shrine on pilgrimage, stopping to pray at each. 

Rock "fortress" against avalanche

About three quarters of the way down, I noticed a large barren spot, evidence of a sizeable avalanche.  As I continued, I saw that the side of my path, along one side of the avalanche valley, had recently been carefully and narrowly terraced.  Then I saw a huge pile of rocks, built fortress-like across the valley itself.  When I crossed to the other side, I saw several sluices built into the fortress to let water through.   Even further down, I saw another rock fortress, including around a lone tree, aiming to divert whatever came down the hill from a nearby shrine.  It was quite a construction.

Statues of Buddhist disciples

Tengu statue

Buddhist statues with caps

At the edge of town was another complex of buildings, Daisho-in, a well-known temple of the Shingon sect of Buddhism (so says the pamphlet).  The place was alive with statues.  There were hundreds of small expressive Buddhist-like figures, each different, that I later learned depicted Buddhist disciples.  There were 2-foot tall fierce warriors protecting the shrine.  Best of all, there was a bigger than life statue of a figure with a Pinocchio-like nose and wings, a Tengu, said to possess supernatural powers.  Some of the small Buddha statues wore red bibs and others colored caps.  The descriptive pamphlet said that parents who had lost children took care of these statues as if they were their children.  It was all quite fascinating and lovely, including the drumming and chanting before a brief sermon talk by one of the followers at the temple, about family from what I could understand. 

Soba & oysters

Food.  At the end of my walk, I was ready for lunch, so stopped at a lovely restaurant/ryokan.  There I had typical regional food:  buckwheat soba noodles (perhaps hand-made) and the largest, most luscious oysters I have ever seen, cooked in a tasty broth.  It was delicious!

Okonomiyaki

On a different day, I sat at a restaurant counter and watched the cooks make a Hiroshima specialty, “okonomiyaki”.  Okonomiyaki is essentially a multi-layered  sandwich cooked on a grill:  a thin crepe bottom, on top of which is put a pile of shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, other vegetables, and pork, fish, shrimp or oysters. This is then flipped over so the veggies can cook, while a circle of udon or soba cooks by its side.  The veggie/crepe is put on top of the noodles and continues to cook while the last layer, an egg, is cracked, mixed, and then spread in a circle to fry.  The cook plops everything on top of the egg, flips it all over, paints it with the shop’s own special sauce (similar to smoky or sweet barbecue sauce), herbs and spices, and voila!.  It was really good.

As everywhere I’ve been, there’s always fish in many forms.  While much is similar here, for the first time I had sushi (fish on top of rice).  In Kyushu raw fish was served sashimi style, i.e., without rice.  Both are delicious.

This posting would not be complete without a brief comment on the weather:  it is February, now early March, so not really winter and not yet spring.  Here, that means we’ve had roughly five days of clouds, mist, light rain, or steady rain (London weather, some would say), to one day of sun.  Every time there’s a sunny day it is just wonderful:  I smile, I laugh, there’s a bounce in my step, and I take lots of pictures.  Hopefully there will be more sunny days as spring comes.  And you can remind me of this in the heat of the summer.

Bicycle umbrella clamp

And that leads to a snippet:   In the picture, you’ll see a clamp in the middle of the bicycle, which is designed to hold an umbrella upright to shelter the rider.  I saw several women riding along this way, Mary Poppins style.  Quite effective!