Saved from the worst, Kyoto still bears scars of war
In the 2023 movie, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson casually removes the ancient capital from a list of potential targets for the atomic bomb, claiming he and his wife honeymooned there years previously. More probable is that Stimson was persuaded by dinner conversation with his cousin Henry Loomis, who emphasized Kyoto's numerous artistic and architectural treasures that he had learned of while studying Japanese history at Harvard. Loomis was perhaps under the tutelage of Japan specialist Langdon Warner, who was also credited as the savior of Nara and Kyoto and who, despite his protestations, is now enshrined in statuary in front of Nara's Horyuji Temple and Kamakura Station.
Yet Kyoto was not completely unaffected by the air raids that devastated much of the rest of the country. During the first half of 1945, the city was indiscriminately bombed five times, resulting in 302 deaths and 563 injuries. Due to press censorship at the time, documentation is scarce, but the initial raid on the Umamachi neighborhood in the city's Higashiyama Ward appears to have left 36 dead and destroyed more than 140 houses. Today, a small monument stands in a schoolyard adjacent to the Four Seasons Kyoto.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
17 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Tracing Footsteps of Absolute Pacifists in Hawaii: Adopted Son Seiki Scatters Donald Keene's Ashes at Sea
'This is the sea of Hawaii that Dad loved so much. Please rest in peace.' Seiki Keene, 75, the adopted son of Donald Keene, a Japanese literature scholar from the United States, spoke these words aboard a yacht off the coast of Honolulu. He then scattered the ashes of Keene, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 96, into the sea. At 12:19 p.m. on June 6 this year, a paper container filled with a small amount of ashes, which could fit in the palm of a hand, drifted away with pink and purple petals on the cobalt blue sea. A paper container containing Keene's ashes floats away on the ocean with Honolulu cityscape in the backgroundSeiki scattered flower petals from the yacht.A paper box containing Keene's ashes for scattering. It is an environmentally friendly container that dissolves in the sea in about two puts Keene's ashes, which he brought from Japan, into a paper container on the yacht before departing from Honolulu located between Japan and the U.S. mainland, is a place with special significance for Keene, where he developed a deep interest in Japan. Seiki wanted to mourn his father here. Moved by Japanese soldier's diaries Seiki Keene reads the same copy of The Tale of Genji that Donald Keene read as a college student, at his home in Kita Ward, Tokyo, on July Keene in September 2014 (Yomiuri Shimbun file photo)Keene is known for introducing Japanese literature to the world and for his friendships with famous writers such as Junichiro Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima. Keene, who was born and raised in New York, encountered Japanese literature in 1940 while studying at Columbia University's Faculty of Literature, when he picked up Arthur Waley's translation of The Tale of Genji at a bookstore. At that time, World War II had already begun in Europe. Feeling depressed, Keene became familiar with the world of The Tale of Genji, which did not depict war, and found peace of mind. In 1941, when Keene was a senior in college, war broke out between the United States and Japan. Keene sensed that 'great calamity was about to befall me' (from his autobiography), but when he learned that the U.S. Navy had opened a Japanese language school to gather information on the enemy, he volunteered to enroll. For Keene, studying Japanese was not only his 'favorite subject,' but also meant that he would not have to take up arms and kill people on the battlefield. After 11 months of intensive Japanese language training, Keene was assigned to the U.S. Navy Language Service and stationed in Hawaii, where he translated various Japanese military documents collected from the battlefields. When he read the diaries of Japanese soldiers who had died in combat, he found some to be highly literary and was impressed, thinking, 'This is truly a country of diary literature, dating back to the Heian period.' Keene wanted to return these diaries to their family someday, so he kept them in a drawer, but his superior officer found them and discarded them, deciding they were unnecessary. According to Seiki, Keene regretted losing them for many years. Reading The Tale of Genji Seiki Keene, right, receives an explanation of materials from Mitsutaka Nakamura, Japanese Studies Librarian, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, on June Yukuo Uyehara of the University of Hawaii, who taught Japanese literature to Keene (from an exhibition at the University of Hawaii)University of Hawaii at Manoa Library The University of Hawaii at Manoa is located north of Waikiki Beach. The spacious campus is lush with tropical trees and filled with birdsong. During the war, Keene attended lectures on Japanese literature given by Yukuo Uyehara, a first-generation Japanese American who passed away in 1998, while serving in the military. He reread The Tale of Genji, which he had enjoyed as a student, and wrote an essay in Japanese about his impressions of Kikuchi Kan's novel 'Shohai.' Mitsu taka Nakamura, a Japan studies librarian at the University of Hawaii Library who is familiar with Keene, said, 'I think Professor Uyehara was also impressed by the enthusiasm of the young American soldier.' Encounter with a kamikaze plane Courtesy of the Donald Keene Memorial FoundationAugust 1943, on Adak Island. Donald Keene, left, holds a carbine rifle in his right hand and a Japanese-English dictionary published by Kenkyusha in his left hand. After the war, when Keene was asked 'Did you actually fire the gun?' at a lecture in Japan, he replied, 'It was just acting,' making the audience of the Donald Keene Memorial FoundationDonald Keene with Nisei language soldiers in Okinawa in 1945, second from left in the back of the Donald Keene Memorial FoundationDonald Keene, left, interrogates Japanese prisoners of war after landing in Okinawa in of the Donald Keene Memorial FoundationDonald Keene performs the role of Taro in the kyogen play Chidori on September 13, 1956 (photo by Yukichi Watabe)However, Keene did not spend his wartime days in peace. He also experienced the harsh realities of battle as a soldier. In March 1945, toward the end of the war, Keene was on a transport ship bound for Okinawa. Just as the ship was about to land, Japanese kamikaze planes appeared in the sky. Keene, who was on the deck, was so nervous that he couldn't move and couldn't think of anything. Just as he felt that he had made eye contact with the pilot of a kamikaze plane approaching him, the plane crashed into the ship's mast and fell into the sea. In May 1943, he participated in the Battle of Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands, where the Japanese Imperial Army was completely wiped out. It was here that he saw a dead human body for the first time. Many soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army refused to be taken prisoner and chose to kill themselves. Keene wondered why Japanese soldiers did not throw their last hand grenades at American soldiers, but instead used them to kill themselves. Recalling that time, Keene told Seiki, 'I couldn't help but feel pity for them.' After the war, Keene became an outspoken opponent of war. He even avoided watching war documentaries on television because they brought back memories that kept him awake at night. When Seiki wore black clothes, Keene told him, 'I don't like black because it reminds me of totalitarianism and fascism.' Since then, Seiki stopped wearing black clothes.
NHK
a day ago
- NHK
Okayama illumination event captures the spirit of summer
About 1,000 lanterns adorn a 550-meter stretch along an Okayama riverside walkway. Some feature artwork by children that captures the essence of summer, such as watermelon and shaved ice. The event can be enjoyed until August 31.
Japan Times
3 days ago
- Japan Times
‘Natasha' distills global zeitgeist on the opera stage
La mer. Das meer. The Sea. Out of the darkness, hushed voices mimic the murmur of waves, whispering the word for 'sea' in 36 different languages. This intricate cascade of sound is the start of 'Natasha,' a multilayered, multilingual opera that opens Aug. 11 at the New National Theatre, Tokyo (NNTT) in Shinjuku with four performances concluding on Aug. 17. On the liminal shore of a primordial sea, two displaced youths, Natasha and Arato, meet for the first time. They don't speak the same language, but they connect through shared suffering. Together, they embark on a journey through the hellish realities of the modern world, guided by Mephisto's grandson. Seven levels of hell unfold as they travel through environmental destruction, the blight of consumerism and the devastation of war, depicted through distinctly symbolic realms like a barren forest devoid of trees or a chaotic business hell with relentless industry. Sung in Japanese, German and Ukrainian, the opera layers various other languages to blend a distinctive soundscape, including weaving in repurposed snippets from famous poetic sources, like Shakespeare, Goethe or the Chinese poet, Qu Yuan. Not only a deliberate mix of language, 'Natasha' is a bold meld of surrealism and reality, a modern allegory of mythic proportions. It's exactly the sort of ambitious, international collaboration theater fans have come to expect from NNTT's artistic director Kazushi Ono , who's also concurrently the music director of Brussels Philharmonic in Belgium and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. The libretto for 'Natasha' was written by Berlin-based Japanese novelist Yoko Tawada (right). At New National Theatre, Tokyo's press conference in May, Tawada said it was her first libretto. | RIKIMARU HOTTA 'Natasha' is the third original Japanese opera to be commissioned by Ono for the NNTT, with an impressive team of crosscultural artistic collaborators behind it. It is also the first premiere in Japan of a full-length opera by acclaimed contemporary classical composer, Toshio Hosokawa, who received Europe's prestigious BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for the "extraordinary reach of his music.' 'Natasha' is Hosokawa's eighth opera. Belgian soprano Ilse Eerens will originate the titular role, with Japanese mezzo-soprano Hiroka Yamashita as Arato and German baritone Christian Miedl as the trickster who acts as their guide. Ono first approached Hosokawa In 2019 about the new work. They soon brought on board award-winning novelist and playwright Yoko Tawada to write the libretto, and asked acclaimed German director, Christian Rath, to head up production and set design. The Berlin-based Tawada has frequently seen her plays staged in Germany and previously collaborated with Hosokawa on a narrator and ensemble musical piece for children, but 'Natasha' is her first libretto for opera. As she explained at a press conference in May, in Tokyo, it was an ongoing creative dialogue between Ono, Hosokawa and herself. 'With a novel, I usually write entirely alone and consult with no one,' said Tawada. 'But for this opera, we developed the story together from the beginning. We created a draft of the storyline, revised it, and then adapted it again. Through all these dialogues and revisions, the text was collaboratively shaped ... (it was) a unique and meaningful experience for me.' New National Theatre, Tokyo's artistic director Kazushi Ono (left) invited German director Christian Rath to head the production. | RIKIMARU HOTTA After reading Tawada's libretto and hearing parts of the score as Hosokawa completed various sections, Rath first sketched out the staging, working with his frequent collaborator, set designer Daniel Unger. 'Everybody has their own process, but I'm often starting from a visual idea,' Rath tells the Japan Times during a rehearsal in Tokyo. 'As a director, it is my goal to keep the identity of the piece intact, the original thoughts of the creators, yet also to reveal the story so the audience can relate. The music, visuals and staging must allow the audience to open the door and go into this world, to access it and understand it, at least emotionally.' Despite the emphasis on modern issues, Rath credits the 'nonlinear, poetic' libretto as allowing creative space for 'mystery and dream.' 'Tawada's style is surreal and dreamlike, so I think it allowed Hosokawa and certainly myself as a director more freedom to approach the work,' Rath says. 'There is a psychological and emotional logic within the opera that is much more important than actual reality. This piece presents a kind of duality between the spiritual and the real world that is very important to Hosokawa and Tawada, a search for an ideal, harmonious space that perhaps never existed, or existed before humanity itself.' It is a universal idea, Rath believes, merged with the distinctively Japanese concept of harmony, something Hosokawa also says was very important in the composition process. Belgian soprano Eerens plays Natasha, a role which sees her singing in both German and Ukrainian language. | RIKIMARU HOTTA Well-known for his distinctive fusion of Western aesthetics with Japanese classical traditions, Hosokawa cites many influences while working on the opera, from traditional shōmyō Buddhist chants or gagaku music to the writings of Toru Takemitsu and Kenzaburo Oe on the idea of creating a modern, 'polyverbal' opera. Hosokawa also composed with his choice of European and Japanese singers. 'I knew the main cast before composing, and I wrote with their voice ranges in mind,' Hosokawa explained at the press conference. Eerens frequently performs Hosokawa's work, including taking on the lead role in his 2011 critically acclaimed one act opera 'Matsukaze,' based on the noh play of the same name. 'You really feel the sense of collaboration, that Toshio has engaged himself with people he knows and trusts,' she tells The Japan Times during a break from rehearsals. Eerens says there's pressure, too, as 'the honor feels too big' to originate this demanding role, which sees her singing in both German and Ukrainian. Yet, sheer artistic excitement seems to be her strongest emotion. 'Natasha' is the third original Japanese opera to be commissioned by Ono for the NNTT, with an impressive team of crosscultural artistic collaborators behind it. | RIKIMARU HOTTA 'It feels like everything, the whole puzzle, came together from our very first rehearsal,' she continues, complimenting Yamashita and Miedl. 'It's so beautiful to sing with somebody where you really feel that the voices can find each other, and that you immediately adapt to each other's sounds. ... We're all really enjoying being here and starting the rehearsals together.' As opening night steadily approaches, a sense of achievement permeates the constant buzz of the rehearsal space, from Rath's presentation on the core features of the set design to Ono perfecting the timing with the chorus or the musicians as he finetunes Hosokawa's layered, complex soundscape. 'Every new work is a challenge, a risk, a journey into the unknown in some way,' Rath says. 'As creators, we must follow our instincts for expression. In the case of 'Natasha,' the message is quite strong, as it relates directly to the world we're living in, the state of humanity now, in our times.' For more information about 'Natasha,' visit
