上り口説 Nubui Kuduchi

A little while ago I enjoyed an opportunity to watch a streamed recording of the play “Paper,” written and directed by Singaporean playwright Tze Chien Chong; it debuted with a chiefly (or all-?) Japanese cast in Kôchi (Shikoku) and Yokohama in 2024, after a number of years of delay due to the Covid pandemic. The production was produced by Washi+, a Kôchi-based theatrical company led by Ayumi Hamada, whose family has been producing Tosa washi (traditional Japanese paper) for roughly two hundred years.

I never got around to writing a blog post about the ten-day whirlwind tour of washi-making sites across three prefectures that I accompanied back in October 2025. I don’t know if I will. But, it was on that tour that I met Ayumi and learned about Washi+, as part of our tour of her family’s paper mill, Kashiki seishi (Kashiki Paper Company).

The production was so good! Dramatic, engaging, theatre, that also conveys so much about the struggles of traditional craft production today. It’s a play from which people can gain a greater appreciation for the importance of local materials, traditional techniques, the struggles and difficulties faced by such industries today, and so forth, but it’s also just plainly engaging, interesting, enjoyable theatre. I hope the recording (which included English subtitles) might be made more widely available someday. And/or that it might also be staged again. Maybe even somewhere outside of Japan.

The plot centers around a Mr Takano, a conservation expert, who travels to Japan on behalf of a museum in Norway, seeking the best washi for conservation. There, he meets and meets with a number of papermakers, seeking to find one the museum can contract to produce washi for the museum’s use.

The papermakers we meet represent a number of different types, or cases, of the kinds of people making paper today. Some are family businesses, stretching back generations, that are failing, dying, because of a lack of interest and lack of buyers; some have heirs who aren’t interested in a life of papermaking. Some of the papermakers Mr. Takano meets are people who compromise on quality in order to sell and be commercially successful; some are people who stick to using only the most traditional methods and natural materials, but this means high prices, and they struggle amidst low demand. Some are from families with a long history, and some are starting into the business out of their own interest. Some are eccentric young people passionate about paper and the rural lifestyle, while others are experienced elders, deep in their expertise. We learn about how climate change or other factors are making it more difficult today to grow the best kōzo (paper mulberry; the key natural material from which washi is made), to access clean water for the papermaking process, or to have ideal conditions otherwise. Wild animals are increasingly entering into the farms, damaging or eating the plants. Farmers are getting older, or are shifting to growing different crops that will be more profitable. Even with a passionate individual or couple trying their best to make good paper, it can be a small-batch operation, unable to provide enough quantity of high-quality paper for a big buyer, even when that buyer (e.g. Takano) comes.

These are all things we learned on the Washi Workshop tour, and it was incredible to see it represented on stage, to relearn and deepen my appreciation of these things. And, having met a diversity of papermakers on the tour – some old, some young; some running large mechanized operations and some very small-batch; some just starting out and some Xth generation National Living Treasures; some making paper in only the most traditional ways and others making a combination of more and less traditional papers – it was fun and interesting to see this diversity, and complexity of the current state of affairs in traditional craft industries, on stage.

Parents who put the continuation of the family business ahead of their children’s interests or happiness. One grandmother who pushes her grandson to work hard in the factory even though the conditions aggravate his asthma. The grandmother who cannot accept that times have changed, that the business cannot continue – insisting that surely a big buyer will come tomorrow, and all problems will be solved. Her family, very understandably, says, no buyer is coming. A son trying to do what’s expected of him, to take over the family business, but he was never really taught, or doesn’t really know, the correct philosophy, e.g. how to balance successful business with being loyal to the tradition; appreciating the stakes involved in continuing an endangered tradition, and the current state of the industry, and the tradition, nationwide (or worldwide).

It’s about traditional industries like paper, of course, but it’s also a play about families, about how things can change over the generations, as times change and so forth. And it’s about rural life, and that whole other, related, phenomenon and contemporary matter of discussion, of population decline in rural communities, the gradual decline and even outright disappearance of entire communities; the emptying of the countryside, and the loss of the local knowledge, histories, heritage that goes along with that.

Too many buyers of traditional craft products today don’t know, don’t understand, don’t care what it is they’re buying. I know I’m certainly guilty of this myself; when it comes to buying anything for myself, e.g. at a temple fair or antiques shop, I may be more knowledgeable than the average tourist, but I am no connoisseur, no expert. The word “washi” is so popular these days, but just about anything can be labeled as washi, obscuring what’s actually handmade, or high quality. As we learned on the tour, some makers, especially those who work closely with individual artists, or other individual buyers, have been gently trying to encourage their customers to pay attention to, educate themselves about, the differences in different types of washi, and to gain an appreciation and knowledge of what exactly they themselves desire. What thickness of paper is best for their work? Sized or unsized? Washi from which region, from which mill? Made with what ingredients? Produced in what way? Some of the artists on the tour expressed they wanted to be more careful, more cognizant, more selective, in these ways going forward, and also, that they might start to write more about exactly what kind of paper, from which maker, from what year, a given work was printed or produced on. The makers, and the artists, similarly, are also hoping that wholesalers and resellers – e.g. the companies that provide washi to artists and others in the US, UK, Europe, and elsewhere – might start to educate themselves, as well, to label the papers they sell, and to speak more knowledgeably with customers, encouraging them to take interest in whether they wish to buy Tosa paper or Echizen paper, kôzo paper or ganpi or mitsumata paper, paper from this maker or that maker, and so forth. It made me realize the extent to which museums, also, don’t provide this information on their gallery labels; and I wonder to what extent they even keep that knowledge in their own records. It would be lovely to see a major museum do an exhibit about just paper, helping visitors to understand and appreciate these things – the differences in the types of paper, but also the diversity within the industry in the various ways I touch upon above, the various challenges facing the tradition, and so forth.

It’s business, it has to be profitable to survive. But it’s also tradition, and pride. It’s serving something bigger – not just in the abstract, in terms of tradition, making the ancestors proud, family reputation, Japan’s reputation, the reputation of washi itself, these sorts of things – but also in the concrete, in terms of making something high quality, correct, that will serve the purposes of those who need it: so that artists, calligraphers, conservators, and others who rely on papermakers can have the high-quality paper they want/need for their own work.

I know I’m repeating myself, but the way that the play combines both the world of traditional craft, illuminating these challenges and complexities for an audience, and at the same time presents numerous very human, emotional, family stories – as I said at the beginning, a play that is very much educational about traditional arts and social/cultural issues, but is simultaneously just plainly enjoyable, engaging, emotional theatre – is really wonderful. I am so glad to have gotten to see this production.

Washi+ will be doing another production, called Itonamu, live at the Setagaya Theatre in Tokyo, March 13-15. I so wish I were going to be able to be in Tokyo for this.

All photos in this post are my own.

I would like to start this third post in the series by jumping back in time to the 13th century, and Emperor Go-Uda (#91, r. 1274-1281), whose mausoleum was easily one of my top favorite visits.

I woke up on Feb 24 this year (fortunately, a National Holiday, and a day off from work) to find a fair amount of snow in my little private rock garden, and I don’t think I could have known that it would turn out to be as significant a snowfall as it turned out to be, but I do know that we only get any real amount of snow – anything more than an inch or so, that sticks – two or three times a year. So I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. I don’t recall what exactly led me to decide to make this trip instead of a different one – I know I considered Kurama-dera, a temple up in the mountains which surely must also be gorgeous in the snow – but, in any case, I made my decision.

Google Maps had me take a bus up into the mountains, to the northwest from Ninna-ji, towards Takao, and then walk down (see that dotted section, on the left side of the map?). I was nervous about the walking paths – were they going to be muddy? Were they going to be even open and accessible? Was it going to end up being walking along the side of a road with cars on it? What was this path that Google Maps was encouraging me to do?

The bus got stuck in traffic on the way up – the driver said a truck had gotten stuck, or stopped, at some point, and it was blocking up all the traffic up ahead. I dunno. I waited for a little while, and then decided to walk. Ended up trudging through some fairly heavy snow – well, I guess it’s all relative, but the heaviest snow I’ve experienced anywhere outside of Hokkaido in many years – past a Lawson’s with a view of snow all atop the mountains, and made a little detour to check out Hiraoka Hachiman Shrine, then made my way into and through a residential neighborhood, uphill, until finally I got to a little opening, at the end of a dead end or cul-de-sac, which opened into a foresty walking path.

Oh my goodness, it was magical. So quiet, no one else around at all. Sheltered for the most part from the wind and snow, as I gleefully made my way along this – well-maintained, very accessible, not difficult at all – forested path, just enjoying the experience.

Until I finally came out at a moated area, and the wooden structures of the mausoleum just barely visible through the trees.

Emperor Go-Uda was a son of Emperor Kameyama (r. 1259-1274), and a member of the Daikakuji line of imperial succession, which alternated for a time with the Jimyōin line, and then devolved into the Northern and Southern Courts… it was a whole thing. But, in any case, Emperor Go-Uda’s tomb, and I guess I should say, in particular the trip to get there, was very very cool. It was honestly one of my favorite, most enjoyable, most pleasant days of such obscure history adventures that I’ve had in the past year or two, and it would not have happened – or at least would not have happened the way it did – if I hadn’t set myself on such a silly quest.

After taking my photos of the mausoleum site, I continued downhill, out of the forest, into the Saga and then Arashiyama areas, walking past fields, and just empty, quiet, areas with almost no one else around, which gradually gave way into the much more heavily tourist-trafficked parts of Arashiyama, by which time it had not only stopped snowing, but whatever snow there might have been in this part of town was already melted away and gone. Even more fleetingly temporary than the sakura, the snow in Kyoto is really something special.

Right: Stairs to the tomb of Emperor Go-Daigo, at Nyoirin-ji in Yoshino.

In April 2024, during sakura (cherry blossom) season, I set out one day with the intention of visiting Tsubosaka-dera, a temple in southern Nara prefecture that is just *gorgeous* in sakura season, with a pink tahōtō pagoda and a large Buddha sculpture seemingly (from certain vantage points) surrounded, immersed, in sakura. But, once I realized that the train I was on stopped also at Yoshino, I changed my mind and decided to go there instead.

Yoshino is famous for its cherry blossoms, but what I had forgotten, or hadn’t known to begin with, is that it was also a place where Minamoto no Yoshitsune, his beloved Shizuka Gozen, and his (shall we say bodyguard?) Musashibō Benkei, fled and hid while pursued by Yoshitsune’s brother Yoritomo. I’m not sure if I quite understand exactly what Yoritomo’s reasons were for trying to have his brother killed, but in any case, Yoshitsune and company fleeing and hiding is something that comes up in a lot of Noh and Kabuki plays, and elsewhere.

Apparently, the very same Yoshimizu Shrine which served as that hiding spot for Yoshitsune et al, about 150 years later became the temporary imperial palace for Emperor Go-Daigo (96th emperor, r. 1318-1339), who in 1337 fled Kyoto with the Imperial Regalia, and set himself up as Emperor in Yoshino, claiming to be the one and only true emperor, while Emperor Kōmyō, in Kyoto, despite possessing the imperial palace and being supported by the Ashikaga shogunate, was a false emperor, in possession of false regalia. (Incidentally, Emperor Kōmyō’s mausoleum is in Fushimi.)

In any case, Go-Daigo’s tomb is not at Yoshimizu Shrine, but at Nyoirin-ji, a half hour walk away. I spent however many hours of the day exploring the town, and then towards the very end of the day, had to make a tough decision whether to try for seeing the mausoleum and risk missing the bus back to the nearest train station, or whether to go home and have to come all the way out to Yoshino to try again another day. Fortunately, I was able to make my way to the temple, up a godawful number of steps to the tomb, and then back down just in time to catch the bus.

Coming up towards the latest emperors, the Meiji Emperor (#122, r. 1867-1912) was the last to rule from Kyoto, and the first to rule from Tokyo. His reign saw the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the official abolition of the samurai class, and the rapid modernization & Westernization of the archipelago into an Empire of Japan organized in numerous ways – from government to education to infrastructure to economics to imperial expansion / colonialism – as a modern nation-state, drawing upon Western models. There is, of course, a lot more one could say about Meiji, but for the sake of this blog post, he was not only the last emperor to rule from Kyoto, but also the last to have his official mausoleum there. Though in some respects looking not all that different from the many other imperial mausolea officially designated and aesthetically homogenized during his reign, his mausoleum (bottom of the two photos above) is perhaps the largest since that of Emperor Kanmu (50th emperor of Japan, r. 781-806)(top of the two photos above), the first to rule from Heian-kyō (Kyoto). Symbolically bookending a period of Kyoto being the imperial capital for over one thousand years (794-1868), the two have their mausolea next to one another, in Fushimi, in the south of Kyoto City. I visited these two way back in 2010, when I was in Kyoto for a summer.

Meiji’s son ruled as Emperor Taishō from 1912 to 1926, after which his son, in turn, ruled as the Shōwa Emperor from 1926 until his death in 1989. Both are entombed alongside their empress consorts at massive mausolea in the far western area of Tokyo, not far from Mt. Takao.

I finally visited these relatively recently – November 2024 – during a weekend when I was in Tokyo for something else (I live in Kyoto now), and just took the time to go out there. Much like Meiji Shrine or Kashihara Shrine, the Musashi Imperial Mausolea complex feels very modern, nationalist, grand in a distinctly modern way.

Right: (top) Mausoleum of Emperor Taishō; (bottom) Mausoleum of Emperor Shōwa.

Maybe to some extent it is only because I know that it’s so recent – if I didn’t, maybe it wouldn’t feel this same way. I wonder. But it does make me feel more uneasy visiting these sites than most of the others – whereas the mausolea of most emperors feel to me like I’m visiting as merely someone with a nerdy interest in history, visiting those of the latest emperors, or places like Kashihara Jingu or Yasukuni Shrine which are so tied into modern politics today of Empire-era or WWII-era nationalism, the ultra-rightwing nationalism that is still very active and present even if not always so visibly… makes me feel like just purely by visiting I am positioning myself within those discourses, contributing to the visitor numbers of these very nationalistic sites; wondering what the other people I see there are thinking about the site, and about Japan – their reasons for visiting – and what they might imagine about mine.

In any case, I visited, and I moved on.

Today, I am not sure whether to say I can’t believe that I’ve already visited more than ninety imperial tombs (though, again, as I wrote in the first post of this series, there are a couple of places where more than ten are entombed together, so I did get to check quite a few off the list all at once), or whether to say I can’t believe there are still more than thirty left. (Please don’t think too hard about the numbers; there’s some funny business in my list, but it’s all fine, I promise.)

Those that remain are chiefly the earliest emperors, who the Meiji government officially assigned various kofun tomb-mounds in Nara and Osaka prefectures as their officially-designated mausolea. I also have yet to visit the tomb of Emperor Junnin (r. 758-763) on Awaji Island; two at Jōshōkō-ji temple way out there in the mountains in northern Kyoto, where I’m frankly a bit nervous about whether I really can get there by bus; and the tomb of Emperor Go-Murakami (r. 1339-1367) at a temple called Kanshin-ji way out in the distant edges of Osaka prefecture. And, fingers crossed, I believe all of these should be relatively accessible, with just a bit of walking/hiking. Out of all of the mausolea I’ve visited, only one have I given up on – that of Emperor Junna (r. 823-833), near Ōharano Shrine in southwestern Kyoto City. Though it was easy enough to get to the Shrine by a combination of train and bus, and though the early stages of the walking paths up into the mountains were actually some of the most nicely maintained I’ve seen, every branch ended in a dead end fairly early on, and even though Google Maps clearly shows a road going that far, signs posted even indicated (if I am understanding them correctly) that the roads are blocked off at some point. So, even if I wanted to spring for a cab to take me up the mountain, as I did for the tomb of Emperor Sutoku on Shikoku, that seems to be a no-go. I’ve been turning to a random Japanese person’s website for tips or reassurance whenever I needed it, as to what signs to look for, whether it really was okay to enter in past certain signs or fences, what route to take to get to some of them, and it’s been super helpful; but even on that website, it says this was the hardest one to get to. I’ve read over their description multiple times, and the first X times I thought it said they were only able to get there in the end because the workers (telephone poles, apparently? or just cutting bamboo?) made an exception or something… reading it again right now, it sounds like I think maybe it is doable without having to get some kind of special permission, special exception, from the workers, but just that it’s a difficult, 60+ mins all uphill, hike. I don’t know. I’m a little tempted to give it another go, but I’m also tempted to just call it done and leave it be. On the plus side, I don’t think I would have ever visited Ōharano Shrine or the beautiful temples in the area, if I had not been on this silly imperial tombs quest. And that’s very much the point.

As it happens, I visited the tomb of Emperor Jimmu, the legendary first emperor of Japan, since writing the last post, so I guess we’ll start there.

Here it is. One thing I guess I was surprised by is that from what I can tell, the area identified as Unebi goryô, that is, the mausoleum site, is not the entirety of Mt. Unebi, nor the center of the mountain, but just off to one side. Many of the other ancient emperors, the mausoleum itself is a manmade kofun tomb-mound, a manmade hill. But here the mausoleum is not the mountain, it’s just off to one side of it. A number of the other earliest legendary emperors are similarly identified as having their mausolea around the edges of the same mountain. It was a bit of a shlep, not exactly the easiest thing in the world walking 30 mins here and then 15 mins to the next one and then 10 mins to the next one and then 20 mins to the next one and then 20 mins back to the station – I definitely thought of giving up a few times. But, all in all, I managed to see four or five in one day, so, thumbs up me, I suppose.

As I made my way through visiting the mausolea of various emperors, those of Emperors Toba (#74, r. 1107-1123) and Konoe (#76, r. 1141-1155) were two of the ones which immediately stood out to me as architecturally different, notable, interesting. Both are located almost next door to one another, within or around the former location of the Toba Palace, a secondary palace just south of the imperial capital of Heian-kyô, originally built by Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa in 1086 and later expanded and used for a century or so by various emperors. The site is in what is today Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, just a short walk from Takeda, the southernmost stop on the Kyoto City Subway Karasuma Line.

As you can see in the photos, Toba’s mausoleum has some kind of small structure just behind the gates, while Konoe’s has a large two-tiered tahôtô pagoda. Thanks to Google Maps contributors for a better picture of the thing at Toba’s. According to this random website, it seems that Toba’s was originally built with a three-story pagoda (三重塔, sanjû no tô), but today a smaller, Edo period, building stands there – perhaps identified as a Hokkedô 法華堂, unless I’m skimming too quickly and misunderstanding? In any case, according to this random website that just happened to be one of the first ones to come up when I googled it, Konoe’s is the only imperial mausoleum to have a pagoda today. It says it was built by Bifukumon-in, aka Fujiwara no Nariko, empress to Emperor Toba and mother to Emperor Konoe, and that the tower was most recently rebuilt by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the late 16th century. These are, I believe, the only two I have come across to have such structures inside the gates – or, at least, for certain the only two out of the emperors around their time. The fact that it’s not just one, but two, makes me wonder whether this should be attributed more to the personal whims or preferences of Bifukumon-in or someone else of the time, or whether it might be seen in a slightly broader context as a product of a trend in Buddhist practice, belief, or affiliation of the Imperial household at that time. Either way, I’m afraid I am not going to take the time to do proper research on it; it’s interesting, but for the time being I’m just going to leave it at that.

The mausoleum of Emperor Seiwa (#56, r. 858-876) is sort of a special one for a few reasons. Firstly, Emperor Seiwa is claimed as the ancestor of the Seiwa Genji branch of the Minamoto samurai family, making him the direct ancestor of Shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo, his brother Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and a whole bunch of their other close relatives who appear prominently in the dramatic events of the Hôgen and Heiji Rebellions (1150s) and the Genpei War (1180s), which I believe I summarized briefly in the previous post. Seiwa himself lived a few centuries earlier, and was therefore obviously not directly involved in those events; but, even so, as these 12th century events are particularly prominent in legend and story and so forth in Japanese art and literature, seeing Emperor Seiwa’s tomb was like a little bonus on top of visiting the tombs of figures like Yoritomo, Emperor Antoku, Prince Mochihito, and Taira no Kiyomori.

A second reason that Emperor Seiwa’s tomb stands out is because of its location. It is one of three or four in Kyoto that are located way up in the mountains, in places that are truly difficult to access – or would be, if there wasn’t a bus. To be clear, there are quite a few that involve a tiring uphill hike, and for Emperor Sutoku’s on Shikoku I did end up taking a taxi. But most of these, tiring as they might be, at least in terms of “distance as the crow flies,” they’re really not that far from town, or a temple, or whatever other starting point it may be. Not that far from a regular bus stop. Emperor Seiwa’s, by contrast, is located in Mizuo village 水尾, a 4 km drive or walk from the nearest train station or ordinary regular city bus stop – and all of it uphill. Thank goodness there’s a special Mizuo Neighborhood Association 水尾自治会 bus, organized I guess especially by and for the residents, which runs a few times a day. But only a few times a day, leaving Hozukyo Station around 8am, 9am, 2:20pm, 3:45pm, 5:15pm, and that’s it. Gotta be real careful on your timing.

The third reason, is that it has this wonderfully woodsy look and feel, as does the Emperor Seiwa Shrine (Seiwa tennô sha) nearby. I was disappointed to find, once I got there, that there didn’t seem to be anyone immediately present to get a goshuin from, or any omamori or anything, but even so, I visited the shrine. Love this very woodsy torii gate.

The mausoleum itself, thank goodness, is honestly not that bad of a walk from the village. Once you’ve taken the bus up into the neighborhood, I think if I remember correctly it’s only about a 20 minute walk to the tomb. Granted, it’s a lot of downhill and then uphill, but I had been mentally preparing myself for much worse. And, all in all, I managed to visit both the tomb and the shrine, and make it back to the bus stop within an hour – catching the 2:20pm bus up, and the 3:30pm bus back down. (phew).

I’m not sure when, but at some point soon I think I’m going to brave the treks to the mausoleum of Emperor Junna, which seems to be about an hour hike from Ōharano Shrine in southwestern Kyoto (a bus ride away from Katsura Station), and the mausolea of Emperors Kōgon and Go-Hanazono, which are on the grounds of Jōshōkō-ji temple 常照皇寺, way way up in northern Kyoto. It seems there is a bus that runs a few times a day, that I can catch relatively easily from various places in town, but hoo boy, fingers crossed that that one works out, because if I somehow get stuck up there with no bus back…. o_O I called the temple one time to check, that they could tell me which bus to take, and the woman I spoke to seemed very “even if you do catch a bus up at this time, I’m not sure there’ll necessarily be one to get you back. You have to catch a bus very early, make sure, be careful, you don’t want to get stuck.” So, again, fingers crossed. Here’s hoping.

In any case, next is the mausoleum of Emperors Takakura and Rokujō.

This one, while somewhat unique I suppose in the way that it’s situated up against the mountainside, with the white wall and the tall staircase, is one I wanted to highlight just for the location and the history of it. Getting there was a tiny bit of a hassle, as walking there from almost any part of Kyoto City requires you to figure out how to get across a busy highway, and it took me a little bit before I understood that Google Maps was guiding me to a small, somewhat hidden, walkway that goes under the highway.

In any case, Emperor Rokujō 六条天皇 (#79, r. 1165-1168) abdicated in 1168 in favor of an uncle, who then took the throne as Emperor Takakura 高倉天皇 (#80, r. 1168-1180). Both, ultimately, are buried, or enmausoleumed, here. Takakura married Taira no Tokuko (Kenreimon-in) 平徳子, a daughter of Taira no Kiyomori, in 1171, and in 1180, he was pressured to abdicate in favor of their son, the infant Emperor Antoku (see the previous blog post), so that Kiyomori could retain or accumulate more power. This spurred the Genpei War of 1180-1185, which was all kinds of dramatic and historically impactful and so forth.

But, Takakura also had a second lover, or consort, a young woman of the court named Kogo no Tsubone 小督局, with whom he even had a child. In order for her to escape the ire of Kiyomori or Tokuko, Kogo no Tsubone became a nun at this tiny temple called Seikan-ji 清閑寺, which I had never heard of, but which I was so glad to learn of and get to visit as a result of making my way out there to see this mausoleum. The entrance to the temple is this cute gate at the top of a little flight of stairs, and Kogo no Tsubone has her grave there, right near that of Takakura (Tokuko / Kenreimon-in outlived them both and is buried elsewhere, at a beautiful grave in Ōhara, while the two lovers get to be together, or very nearly, here).

To my surprise, just near the gates of the mausoleum, I also noticed a tiny little handwritten wooden sign pointing the way to a little-known back entrance into Kiyomizu-dera, one of Kyoto’s most touristy, famous, popular, and beautiful temples. So, that was another wonderful pleasure – to get to visit Kiyomizu that day, which I wasn’t planning or expecting, and to get to see it from another side.

Though I guess it’s a digression from talking about the mausolea of emperors specifically, Kenreimon-in’s grave in Ōhara is in a beautiful location, up at the top of a set of steps, surrounded by lovely orange leaves in autumn, not far from Jakkō-in, the temple where she spent her last years. The mausolea of Emperors Go-Toba (#82, r. 1183-1198) and Juntoku (#84, r. 1210-1221) are also nearby.

Next, I suppose I should mention the mausolea of Emperors Go-Saga (#88, r. 1242-1246) and Kameyama (#90, r. 1259-1274) at Tenryū-ji. This is easily another one of the most famous and most touristy / visited temples in Kyoto, right at the heart of the Arashiyama touristy area. And, I’d wager, quite likely the two imperial mausolea most centrally located within a Buddhist temple. Goodness knows how many tourists and others visit the main buildings and gardens of Tenryū-ji every day. But, standing facing the iconic main tourist entrance as in the first of the two above photos, just turn right (where the yellow arrow is), and you’ll see the view I’ve screenshotted from Google Maps here. Just to the side of that gate is a sign that clearly says No Enter in multiple languages. But the Japanese says 参拝以外立入禁止, or, no entry except for worship [at the imperial mausolea]. I was extremely hesitant, but I asked staff at the temple and almost without hesitation they said it was perfectly fine to go past the bamboo bar, and just turn left immediately after passing through that gate, and I’d see the mausolea. Even so, permission or not, I felt awkward skipping past a very clearly blocked-off gate in such clear view of so many tourists… I did so as quickly and quietly as I could, got my photos, and left.

Kameyama’s older brother and predecessor Emperor Go-Fukakusa (#89, r. 1246-1259) represents another interesting development in the history of imperial mausolea. Like Emperor Toba (above), his mausoleum in Fushimi features some kind of roofed structure behind the gate. Unlike that of Emperor Toba, however, this mausoleum is in fact that of not one, but twelve emperors, ranging from Go-Fukakusa in the mid-13th century to Emperor Go-Yōzei (#107, r. 1586-1610), bringing us into the 17th century, and the Tokugawa (or Edo) period.

Kameyama and Go-Fukakusa were the ancestors of the competing Daikakuji and Jimyōin lineages which alternated the succession for a time and then developed into a fuller-blown Northern and Southern Courts (Nanbokuchō) situation in which, for much of the 14th century, there were simultaneously two emperors both claiming to be the one and only true ruler. In short, drama. My goodness. One thing that I fight interesting about that whole period, which I don’t think I had ever known earlier, was that while the so-called “Northern Court” emperors held Court in Kyoto, maintained possession of the imperial palace, were supported by the Ashikaga shogunate at the time as legitimate, and forced the so-called “Southern Court” emperors into, essentially, exile, ruling from a distant location, it was the Southern Court emperors, by contrast, who are regarded today as having held the authentic Three Imperial Regalia (the Sword, the Mirror, and the Jewel), and to therefore have been the legitimate ones all along. In any case, we’ll come back to them later.

For now, I’d like to finish off this second of what I guess has become a series of imperial mausolea posts, with one more set of mausolea.

Taking after the example (precedent) set by Emperor Go-Fukakusa, I suppose, fourteen emperors from Emperor Go-Mizunoo (#108, r. 1611-1629) through Emperor Ninkō (#120, r. 1817-1845), covering nearly the entire Edo period, are entombed together behind these impressive-looking gates at Sennyū-ji temple in southern Kyoto along with quite a number of their consorts and children. Emperor Shijō (#87, r. 1232-1242) is also buried here. Because I am a nerd, and an Edo period specialist, I was hoping that this whole “visit every imperial mausoleum” quest might involve me getting to visit the mausolea of each individual Edo period emperor, learning a little more about each of them in the process, and getting to post individual photos of each individual one as I came across them. But, alas, unfortunately, such was not to be. So, no individual photos of the individual gravesite of Emperor Go-Mizunoo (1596-1680), the longest-living [retired] emperor outside of Hirohito. Go-Mizunoo was one of the only emperors to receive Ryukyuan ambassadors or musicians at the imperial palace, as they never did so after the 1630s. It means not being able to visit or photograph the individual gravesite of his consort, Tokugawa Masako (aka Kazuko, aka Tōfukumon-in), a granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu and a notable person in her own right, or the gravesite of their daughter, Empress Meishō (#109, r. 1629-1643), one of the few reigning empresses in Japanese history, who was one of only a very few sovereigns to ever meet with a Tokugawa shogun in Kyoto, as no shogun traveled to Kyoto for over 200 years between 1634 and 1863, and who also welcomed Ryukyuan ambassadors or musicians to the imperial palace (an obscure detail most Japanese historians wouldn’t know about, but the Ryukyu embassies are my focus); Retired Emperor Go-Mizunoo was present for these as well. Empress Go-Sakuramachi (#117, r. 1762-1770), also included in this mausoleum, was the last woman to reign herself from the Chrysanthemum Throne (thus far!). Glancing through the names of the various empress consorts, and imperial princes and princesses, I don’t immediately recognize the names of any others about whom I have anything much to say. But, in any case, it is interesting to see how imperial burial practices changed so dramatically in this period – with the twelve emperors buried at Go-Fukakusa’s mausoleum the only previous instance, I believe, of more than two emperors being entombed together (although having not researched it, who knows how the Meiji gov’t rewrote the history through their (re-)designation of sites), and then Sennyū-ji becoming the imperial mausoleum site for nearly the entire Edo period.

Emperor Go-Horikawa (#86, r. 1221-1232), as well as Emperor Kōmei (#121, r. 1846-1867) and his empress consort Empress Eishō, each have their own separate mausolea, much more closely resembling the many from earlier centuries, nearby within the same Sennyū-ji complex and separately accessible.

More to come in my next post…

Since moving to Kyoto two years ago, I almost couldn’t help it but to come across, from time to time, the sites officially designated/recognized by the Imperial Household Agency (Kunaichō) as the mausolea of past emperors of Japan. Between my summer in Kyoto in 2010, during which I spent so many days bicycling around the city in search of historical sites and the like, and other far briefer visits here and there, I’d already come across quite a few.

So, I decided to embark on what I think has been arguably my dumbest quest ever: to visit all of them. (The numbers get a bit funny – I think the total on my list is around 124, counting in Empress Jingu who’s not considered among the number of officially recognized rulers in succession (i.e. not the Nth Emperor), and also being sure to not double-count those who ruled multiple times; also, there are a few mausoleum sites that are counted for more than ten emperors in a single location, so when I say that I’ve already visited 82 of them, it’s actually more like 60, since on a couple of occasions I was able to just mark down ten or twelve all at once.)

Nearly all of the official mausolea are located in the three prefectures of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. There are also two in Tokyo, one in Ōtsu City in Shiga pref., one at Shimonoseki / Dan no Ura in Yamaguchi pref., one in Sakaide in Kagawa pref. on Shikoku, and one I have yet to visit on Awaji Island in the Inland Sea. Some are more easily accessible than others – some are right in town, and some are quite a trek. Some have been a pain in the neck to get to, but ultimately offered a beautiful view, or got me to visit a corner of the city I might not have otherwise, or otherwise helped allow me to see/visit something cool. Some have been, quite genuinely, a pleasure, such as when I trekked through the snow, and then through a forested walking path, to get to the mausoleum of Emperor Go-Uda, which looked quite attractive in the snow. That was such a fun, enjoyable, heart-happy day.

I’ve done no research on any of this. No doubt, there’s a really interesting history to it, as burial traditions changed over the centuries, from the kofun tomb-mounds of the earliest periods to individual tomb sites in the city or high up on mountains, to collective ones serving as the official mausoleum for more than ten emperors at once. A few have pagodas or other sorts of architecture; most take an extremely similar, standard, form, which I imagine was created – standardized – in the Meiji period, when the government made its official designations. It is in part because they are so standard that I say this is a dumb, silly, quest – the vast majority of them look, honestly, just the same as the rest. So it really is much more about the view or environment around them, and just the experience of going different places, and of “collect ’em all,” of ticking them off a list, game-ifying the experience, than it is about capturing the visual appearance of each different one in a photo.

Further, I honestly have no idea which of these might actually be the site of the actual burial of the emperor in question, and I think that in many cases scholars, experts, etc. don’t know either – in many cases, perhaps no one knows. This is certainly the case when it comes to the earliest emperors, about whom we know next to nothing – whether they were real, whether they even existed at all, whether the imperial names we know now (e.g. Emperor Sujin or Suinin) are a reference to someone we might know by another name, or an amalgam of multiple people… and even if a given figure was historically real, I’m thoroughly unclear by what criteria the Imperial Household Agency has decided that this kofun or that kofun is the tomb of Emperor X and not Emperor Y. In some cases, there may be a centuries-long tradition, that it’s traditionally been thought of as being the tomb of Emperor X, and if so, I’m all for retaining that bit of folklore – especially when we have little else to go on, and archaeological efforts haven’t revealed otherwise, or haven’t been conducted. In any case, by contrast, there are of course those instances where it is definitively known that this is indeed the tomb of a given emperor – the most recent three or four emperors would certainly fall into that category. And I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few of the other pre-modern and early modern ones are accurate, in that sense. But, while there is certainly something to be acknowledged about the fact that however many of these sites do not, actually, contain the remains of the emperor named, and/or were not, actually, the historical site where memorial rites were done for them, regardless, these are the sites that exist on the official list today, so, these are the sites I’m visiting, and checking off my list.

Now. Without further ado, let me just touch upon some of the more interesting ones I’ve come across.

(16) I guess we can begin with the mausoleum of Emperor Nintoku 仁徳天皇 (r. 313-399), also known as Daisenryō kofun 大仙陵古墳, in Sakai City, south of Osaka. At nearly half a kilometer long, more than 300 meters wide, and about 35 meters high at its highest point, this is one of the largest tombs in the world, with roughly double the volume of the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

And utterly impossible to get a sense of from ground level. Walking along, most of it just looks like trees and moat. No sense of the whole thing. I just read online that you can go up to a public viewing area on one of the upper floors of Sakai City Hall and get a decent view from there, so I’ll have to give that a try. But in any case, I anticipate that most of these large kofun, these tomb-mounds of all the earliest emperors, will be difficult to get a sense of in the same way.

In any case, at one end of the whole rectangle is this “worship spot” 拝所, where visitors are meant to come and pay their respects towards the emperor, towards the entire mausoleum site. As exceptional as Emperor Nintoku’s tomb is in its world-class size, this part is actually rather representative of the standard design created and maintained by the Imperial Household Agency for nearly all of the mausolea sites. We have the multiple layers of white stone fences, the grey torii gate, and a wooden sign in just this style, indicating first the name of the emperor and the name of the tomb – in this case, Mozu no mimihara no naka no misasagi 百舌鳥耳原中陵 – and then three standard phrases telling you (1) no entering into the grounds without authorization, (2) no fishing or hunting birds, etc., and (3) no cutting bamboo, trees, etc. Finally, “Kunaichō” 宮内庁 (the Imperial Household Agency).

(39) The tomb of Emperor Kōbun 弘文天皇 (r. 671-672) is, I suppose, a good example of this. Here you can see the same white/grey stone fences, criss-cross black little gate, and torii gate behind it. The wooden sign is somewhere behind me, earlier along the path up to the gates.

Kōbun I thought was interesting just because I had definitely heard of the name Prince Ōtomo, and of the succession dispute between him and Prince Ōama, who eventually took the throne as Emperor Tenji / Tenchi, but however many times I had read the name “Prince Ōtomo” in whatever history book, I had no memory of ever hearing that same figure referred to as Emperor Kōbun. To put it another way, he figures in such a major famous event in Japanese history, and yet his name as emperor is barely known (to me, at least), his reign was very short, and his grave is very modest and unassuming, as far as imperial graves go. One extra claim to fame, though, I suppose: his is the only imperial tomb in Shiga prefecture, and one of only six outside of Kyoto/Osaka/Nara. It’s right behind Ōtsu City Hall, if you’d like to go check it out yourself.

(75) Emperor Sutoku 崇徳天皇 (r. 1123-1141) is the only ruler whose official mausoleum is on Shikoku, and for a long time I thought I was going to really have to go out of my way – to intentionally make an entirely separate trip to go see it. Fortunately, that turned out to not be the case.

Sutoku was exiled to Shikoku after being defeated by his younger brother, Emperor Go-Shirakawa, in an 1156 conflict known as the Hōgen Rebellion, or Hōgen War. I’ll leave the details for now, but suffice it to say it involved the Minamoto and Taira clans, and along with the Heiji Rebellion of 1159, represents sort of an opening act before the Genpei War, the main event, of 1180-1185.

In any case, Sutoku’s tomb is in a city called Sakaide 坂出, which I had never heard of, in Kagawa prefecture. But, as it turns out, that’s not far at all from Kotohira-gū (aka Konpira-san), a major famous Shinto shrine, as well as the Kanamaru-za, the oldest Kabuki theatre in Japan (and thus in the world) still regularly used by professional Kabuki actors.

I have a friend who lives on Shōdoshima, in the Inland Sea, and while there are ferries there from Kobe, Himeji, and Okayama (all of which are closer to me in Kyoto), there are also ferries from Takamatsu, on Shikoku, and so I figured out that I could make a bit of a trip of it. In the end, I didn’t end up getting to spend any time at all in Takamatsu City, but regardless, the train from Kyoto, via Okayama and across a bridge to Shikoku, stops in Sakaide. So I took that train, spent a night in a hotel in Sakaide which provided me with a free ticket to the neighboring onsen establishment, which was rather nice, and then the next day, made sure to visit Konpira-san and the Kanamaru-za (somewhere that’s been on my list for ages – truly, a dream to get to finally see it), and to then take a train and a bus and, finally, a taxi, way up the mountain to Shiromine Temple 白峰寺 (left), where Sutoku’s tomb is located. Yes, by the way, for anyone reading this who wants to go visit the tomb, you’re going to have to take a bus way out to a remote part of town, and then a taxi up the mountain. But, I did it, got a goshuin at the temple, had that experience, and had an all-in-all fine, easy, uneventful time walking back down the mountain (about 40 mins, down many many steps and then along the side of the road), back to that very same bus stop. And then from there, to a train to Takamatsu, and then a ferry to Shōdoshima. Thankfully, it all worked out, and I managed to fit all of that into one day, and to make it all the way to Shōdoshima that same night.

(81) I guess I’ll finish this first installment with the tomb of Emperor Antoku 安徳天皇 (1178-1185, r. 1180-1183), the boy emperor who tragically died in the epic Battle of Dan no ura in 1185. Unless I’m mistaken, I think he might be the only Emperor of Japan to have ever died in war.

Antoku’s grandfather, Taira no Kiyomori, led forces loyal to Emperor Go-Shirakawa to victory in both the Hōgen and Heiji Rebellions, and by 1180 – some 20+ years later – Kiyomori had risen through the ranks to become, basically, the power behind the throne. He married one of his daughters to Emperor Takakura, and then pressured to have their son – Kiyomori’s grandson – be named emperor at the young age of two. This was Emperor Antoku. The Minamoto clan, rivals to the Taira, concerned about and opposed to Kiyomori’s power, backed Antoku’s uncle (Takakura’s brother), Prince Mochihito, for the throne instead, and the whole thing erupted into a five-year-long war, the Genpei War, which is today easily one of the most famous, most storied, wars in Japanese history. Noh plays, Kabuki plays, books, poems, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, songs, 20th-21st century contemporary artworks, all sorts of things have been inspired by or based on The Tale of the Heike (Heike monogatari), the classic epic which tells the story of this war. A war which ended at Dan no ura, at Shimonoseki, at the straits separating the westernmost point of Honshu island from Kyushu. There, the Minamoto won a final, decisive, victory, and nearly all of the most prominent members of the Taira clan – as well as Emperor Antoku – drowned in the waves.

Antoku’s mausoleum is attached to Akama Shrine, facing and overlooking the waters where he died.

I wasn’t expecting it, but visiting here actually made me emotional. So much of samurai history, and of history in general, can often feel so far removed from our reality – it happened so long ago, amidst such a very different culture, a very different world in so many meanings of the word. And the story of the Genpei War and that time, perhaps all the more so, as it has been so filtered through the Tale of the Heike and the countless retellings and so forth over the centuries; it’s become so infused into Japanese culture, it all feels more like characters in a story much more so than a real history that happened to real people. But visiting Dan no ura, I was surprised to find that I actually couldn’t help but to think of Emperor Antoku, and everyone else involved, as real people. As actual humans who, privileged and elite as they were, were unlucky to live at a time of such political conflict and outright violent battle. The story is told of the young Taira no Atsumori, only 15 when he died, who is said to have been a beautiful young man, elegant, refined, talented at the flute… someone who is held up as sort of the symbol of all who never deserved to find themselves having to fight in a war. And Antoku, all the more so. Yes, he was Emperor, in a certain sense one of the most elite, powerful, privileged, people on the planet at that time. But he was also a child, only about age 7 when he plunged into the waves with his grandmother (or wet-nurse? I’m not positive on the story). How frightened he must have been. How tragic and sad that any child should have to die so young. How horrific these events for all in the Taira clan, and indeed for many in the Minamoto as well, who fought and struggled, and suffered, killing or being killed.

Japan is filled with peace monuments. I am not even sure if this statue of Antoku and his grandmother is meant to be one. But to me, and perhaps because my mind was swirling with thoughts about the ongoing war in Israel/Palestine, this statue struck me as a particularly moving monument to the tragedy of war, and to the need for peace.

Reading about the Ryukyuan royal treasures that went missing in 1945 – most of them presumed stolen, rather than destroyed; and a few of them recently rediscovered and returned – I happened for the first time upon *images* of them displayed in a pre-war, 1926, exhibition at the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum (東京府美術館, today the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum 東京都美術館): the 第一回日本名宝展覧会, which I’m tentatively translating as First Exhibition of Treasures of Japan, though I wonder if others have already written about this in English at all. With artifacts such as these, whether it’s the ones that have been lost, and sit on the FBI Stolen Art File list in the hopes that they might someday be found and returned, or whether it’s the few surviving ones which have become all the more precious amidst the loss of so much Ryukyuan material heritage otherwise, I cannot help but be intrigued by moments like this, learning a bit more about where these items were at different moments in time – and, to happen upon not just a textual mention, but actual photographs!

In the photo above, we see on the left a Ryukyuan royal investiture crown, known as hibenkan 皮弁冠 or tamanchaabui 玉御頭冠. This would have been granted to a king of Ryukyu as part of investiture ceremonies, in which Ming or Qing envoys formally invested him with the position, powers, legitimacy, and recognition as “king of Ryukyu,” in the name of the Ming or Qing Emperor; subsequently, the king would then wear it on various ceremonial occasions, as well as in his posthumous ugui portrait. On the right is a black wūshāmào 烏紗帽 (J: usanmō) court cap, like those worn by Ming court officials, and by Ryukyuan kings before their formal investiture. Both are displayed atop boxes emblazoned with the Ryukyuan royal family’s fijai gumun 左御紋 (J: hidari gomon) crest.

It’s funny sometimes how, even after taking an interest in these artifacts for quite a few years, and reading quite a few articles about them (both academic and in newspapers, magazines, etc.), and seeing them on display a number of times, I never before came across any mention of this “First Japan Treasures Exhibition.” Not until coming across discussion of it in an essay by Hokama Masaaki (curator, Okinawa Prefectural Museum) in the back of the wonderfully thick catalog for the Tokyo National Museum’s 2022 “RYUKYU” exhibition. Reading this essay for the first time, I somehow leapt to the assumption that what was shown in 1926 included the artifacts now lost, and on the Stolen Art File List, which would make the newspaper & exhibit catalog photos from that exhibit all the more interesting and exciting as precious rare photographs of now-lost artifacts. Reading it again, I feel more confident that these were not the artifacts stolen from Okinawa in 1945, but rather the ones that were held by the former royal family in Tokyo at the time, which survived the war and are today held at the Naha City Museum of History as National Treasures. Still, very cool to come across these images.

The exhibit was open for just one month, from March 19 to April 19, 1926, at the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum in Ueno. It was organized, or sponsored, by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper corporation. Hokama cites a listing of exhibited artifacts in the March 18 paper as including (my English translation) “Ryukyu royal crown and clothing,” “snakeskin shamisen” (jabisen), and under the category of swords, “Chiyoganemaru,” the name of one of the three Ryukyuan swords today included in the collective National Treasure designation as “Ryukyu Royal Sho Family Documents” (琉球国王尚家関係資料).

Hokama shares with us an image of a picture postcard of the Ryukyuan royal investiture crown and robes as they perhaps looked on display in the exhibition. Bizarrely, I have not been able to find in the 2022 RYUKYU exhibit catalog any details (citation, credit line) as to what collection this postcard might be held in, but I would love to get my hands on it, and see the postcard in person.

This crown is one of two known to have existed before the war, and the only one known to have survived. It is easily the most cited, most famous example representing the whole collection of “Ryukyu Royal Sho Family Documents,” and its missing counterpart, easily the poster child, so to speak, for all the royal treasures missing and presumed stolen from the royal family’s Nakagusuku udun mansion in 1945.

The crown was granted to the king of Ryukyu by investiture envoys from the Qing Empire as part of ceremonies formally investing him on behalf of the Qing Emperor – that is, officially making him King. As for the robes, I’m going to have to look into this again, because I was under the impression that the investiture robes were always in the Ming style, but the robe in this postcard has the asymmetric collar and certain other stylistic elements of a Qing robe, so perhaps it was not the investiture robe, the one worn by the king during his investiture, but another robe granted alongside such robes.

Meanwhile, another set of robes that look decidedly more in line with Ming style appear in a photo next to the Ryukyuan objects. To my surprise, these were labeled as being 「明朝ヨリ上杉景勝ニ贈リシ衣冠冊封」: Ming investiture cap and robes granted by the Ming to the Sengoku warlord Uesugi Kagekatsu (1556-1623). These were on loan to the exhibition by his descendants, the Uesugi family, who were lords of Yonezawa for much of the Edo period and prominent nobles still in the 1920s-30s. Maybe it’s just my ignorance, but I wasn’t aware of anyone in Japan receiving investiture from the Ming outside of Ashigaka shoguns, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and a 14th century imperial prince known as Prince Kaneyoshi. Hideyoshi’s investiture robes are today held by Myôhô-in temple in Kyoto, and I thought (mistakenly?) that they were one of the only surviving examples of such in Japan. Apparently not?

So, I guess maybe there are additional examples of Ming investiture robes in Japan. What can these teach us about the Ryukyuan ones that no longer survive, I wonder?

Reading up on these Uesugi robes just a little, it seems they survived the war and are held today at Uesugi Shrine in Yonezawa. It would be fun to see them, if I ever make my way to Yonezawa and if they should happen to be on display; or if they’re ever loaned to a museum in Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo, or elsewhere where I might see them. Fingers crossed, though, that we might be allowed to take our own photos – many shrines and temples are rather stingy about allowing photos of their “religious treasures,” and for example the Kyoto National Museum has a blanket rule of just not allowing photography at all, ever, even though the Tokyo National Museum and a great many other museums in Japan are increasingly allowing it.

An article I found by Aramiya Manabu of Yamagata University briefly introducing the Uesugi robes indicates that while the corresponding court cap and rhino-horn belt have been lost in the case of Hideyoshi’s investiture goods, those granted to Uesugi Kagekatsu survive. The cap and clothing in the Uesugi set, as well as an associated document granting Kagekatsu honorary court rank or position as a Ming military official, were officially designated Important Cultural Properties (重要文化財) by the Japanese government in 2018. Aramiya further clarifies what I perhaps should have thought of, but didn’t, which is that Kagekatsu was not himself ever invested as “King of Japan,” but rather that this robe survives from when the Ming invested Hideyoshi as “king,” and granted robes and other things to him and his retainers. It was at that time, when Hideyoshi received Ming envoys at Osaka castle in the 9th month of the 5th year of Bunroku (1596), that Kagekatsu received these robes, as one of the chief retainers of the newly-invested “King of Japan” (日本国王). In Ryukyu as well, the court received robes not just for the king but for high officials as well, though, again, I’m not aware that any at all survive.

In light of the recent reappearance of several Ryukyuan ugui royal portraits believed stolen from Nakagusuku udun in 1945 right alongside some number of investiture robes, however, one can hope that these, too, just might resurface sometime. In the meantime, it was interesting to come across these images, and just a little more information on the movements of these royal treasures in the pre-war period. Looking forward to hopefully coming across more information, as I continue to keep my eyes out for it.

Finally went and saw the Murakami Mononoke Kyoto show that’s been up for half a year or so. I generally tend to think of Murakami as over-hyped, if that’s the right word – not that his work isn’t fun, creative, interesting, smart, but just that surely there are so many other artists out there who a museum could be highlighting. Much like Murakami Haruki over in literature – in the past X years, I think a much wider variety of Japanese literature has been getting published in translation around the world, and a wider variety of contemporary artists are getting shown in overseas museums, too. But it feels as though there was a period when Murakami and Murakami overshadowed, or crowded out, so many other writers and artists for no good reason.

I think I’ve always been skeptical about canonization, and people becoming more and more famous just simply on the back of because they’re already famous. I sorely regret not taking a seminar in Canon Formation during my PhD; I’d be really interested to have a deeper sense of how to think about these things. But, at the end of the day, is Murakami the greatest artist of our age? Is he the most innovative, the most talented, the most deserving of being shown again and again, bigger and bigger? Or is he as famous as he is, just because he’s famous, just because name recognition and brand recognition builds on itself?

Japan Society in New York had a fantastic show in 2011 called Bye Bye Kitty, highlighting sixteen artists who were not Murakami. Some were already pretty big names (I got to meet Aida Makoto, who is a fairly problematic figure, but nevertheless, a famous person who I met), but it was through this exhibit that I, and the Japanese-art-loving community in New York, got to first “discover” Yamaguchi Akira, Tenmyouya Hisashi, and others. I hope that more Japanese artists doing similar or related sorts of things – people who are not Murakami – can continue to get to enjoy more of the spotlight.

Alright, one more critique: Murakami Takashi has been challenging assumptions or breaking norms about commercialism in art for decades. But where it may have started as some kind of statement, an act that challenged norms in the art world and was something striking and interesting, now I can’t help but feel that it’s just plain old self-serving profit-making. I went to his show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008, where there was some controversy over Murakami’s desire to include a Louis Vuitton boutique inside the gallery, and the Museum’s decision, ultimately (I don’t know what discussions or debates or negotiations there might have been), to agree to it, despite the Museum’s commitment to its identity as a non-profit, and commitments to an at least nominal lip-service to the idea that museums are not for-profit auction houses or galleries; that art should be appreciated in a manner separated apart from any considerations of monetary value, collecting, or commercialism. The inclusion of the boutique – actively selling Louis Vuitton products with Murakami designs on them – in the gallery, was at that time, to my mind at least, an interesting, intriguing, challenging of norms which called attention to the commercial aspects of nearly all art. And it became a point of discussion and I presume something art historians and art critics talked about for years. But that was more than 15 years ago, and since then I feel Murakami’s continued self-promotion and merchandise-ification of his brand, has become tired, and crass.

Alright. That said, though, I won’t lie, this show reminded me just how worth it Murakami’s work is. I’m very glad to have seen it in the end, and not skipped it. Because, at the end of the day, he is still really famous, and popular, and his work is both visually, aesthetically, enjoyable, and includes many works that feature clever, fun, interesting reinterpretations or manipulations of classical forms and motifs of traditional Japanese art. It makes references to specific artworks, motifs, genres, etc. that, if you’re familiar with the referents, makes it feel like it’s adding layers of meaning, layers of cleverness, both on the part of the artist, and on your own side, as the viewer, who gets something more out of it because you have the knowledge, the cultural capital, necessary to recognize the referent.

At the end of the day, even though Murakami’s particular aesthetic has begun to feel old, tired, repetitive to me, and while other artists’ works feel comparatively much more fresh and new in the diverse and interesting ways that they mix the traditional and the contemporary, even so, I still cannot help but to think, to feel, to admit, that that blending of traditional Edo period popular culture and the colorful, anime-pop pop culture of today, is still so fun and appealing.

Gradually moving through my old drafts. This one is from just about a year ago, August 2023.

Arriving on Taketomi Island and seeing how many people were also getting on or off boats, and how much infrastructure was there guiding people to resorts, buses, tours, … I just immediately got this feeling of sadness, and of guilt. 

Because, of course, I am a visitor here too. I am one of the people contributing, too, to how many people are here, and to wanting and using that infrastructure. 

It’s what people always say about Hawaiʻi, and what they’re saying right now about Maui, in miniature. An island of 300 residents, overwhelmed by I don’t know how many tourists every day. An island famous for its traditional machinami townscape experience, rich in local traditional culture.

I don’t know what I expected coming here. In retrospect, I’m not sure how unreasonable it was to expect that somehow I’d actually be one of only a few tens of people visiting at the time, and that it would be quiet and pleasant and personal. I’ve certainly been to Inland Sea towns, and to places like О̄gimi, where I felt like one of only a very few visitors at the time. 

I’m not sure I’m seeking some “authentic” experience in the Orientalist sense. Like as if all traces of modernity should be absent, everything protected so that *I* can have an “authentic” experience. But I want the residents to have a quiet, true experience, true to just living life, even if that’s a life that also includes tourists. This – what I found on Taketomi – this is too much. 

I’m disappointed in myself to find that I didn’t take any pictures of the whole line of very touristy stands and booths right outside the area where you gather to sign up for water buffalo cart rides. Who would want this in the middle of their village? It’s one thing to live in a big city, that includes god knows how many locals, visitors, tourists, commuters, all mixed in all together. But to live day in, day out, in a tiny village that’s got these grossly explicitly touristy, almost theme-park-like establishments right in the center of the village?

I know that I have friends who have given this much deeper thought – people who specialize in these sorts of issues academically, professionally, and/or as activists. I’ve certainly been aware of, and thinking about, these issues for years. As an art historian / historian with some background in Museum Studies, and as someone who has lived in Hawaiʻi, Okinawa, and now Kyoto, I am frustrated to find I don’t really know exactly what to say. The theoretical frameworks, the specialist jargon, just isn’t quite coming to mind. I find myself viewing all of this less as an academic, as a Heritage Studies specialist, than as just a traveler. 

Villagers have had to put up signs saying “don’t enter,” “don’t come further than this,” “don’t enter these roads,” “don’t enter these houses,” because it’s far too easy as a visitor – and I’ll humbly admit I felt it too – based on our experiences of being tourists in other locations, and just sort of unconsciously, because of whatever visual or other cues there may be that I can’t even name, it is far too easy to just sort of enter a tourist mode and assume every street and every house might be some kind of cafe or shop or sort of tourist site of some kind. Or, maybe we should give ourselves a little bit of a benefit of the doubt, rather than framing this solely as “bad tourists,” and acknowledge that unlike in many places where there’s a main touristy shopping street or two that feels decidedly different from a residential area, here, those spatial distinctions and cues are absent. Yes, we could blame it on tourists making bad assumptions, being in “vacation mode” in their heads, and not thinking of it as a place where people actually live. And there’s certainly some validity to that, in places from Okinawa to Kyoto to Hawaiʻi. But it’s also a fact of the townscape here – that everything within an X block radius of the most obviously touristy parts is also part of the “historical district,” and that includes residential homes, right alongside, or just a few steps away, from the actual tourist-facing / customer-facing establishments. Which is not to say I blame the locals, or saying that their tourism problems are their own fault for not reorganizing the whole village and/or its architecture, its visual aesthetics. I’m just saying that it’s a different situation, different circumstances, from a lot of places, in this way.

Still, with that being the energy – tourists wandering around, constantly passing past your home, some small percentage mistakenly wandering into your property or even into your home, to the extent that you have to put up signs saying No Entry – what must it be like for the people here to have their entire town be like this?

I think Taketomi may have also been the first place I saw signs explicitly saying that sacred spaces – called on here in the Yaeyama Islands, or utaki 御嶽 on Okinawa – are off-limits. Do Not Enter.

The town has a charter aimed at protecting the traditional townscape, natural environment, and community. I would be curious to read a brief history of this – how effective has this charter been? We can imagine how much worse things might be without it. But, at the same time, what exactly does this Charter do – what function or impact does it have? I can equally easily imagine things being much better, or much worse, regardless of the presence of this charter.

Though I do suppose that at the very least, it reminds visitors what the residents are trying to protect and encourages them to keep those values in mind; and, though I don’t know the legal/political details, I imagine it strongly encourages, if not outright binds, local government to have to act in accord with these values.

The Charter has gone through a number of revisions, but seems to date back to 1971 in its first form. Today’s version is summarized in five ideals: do not sell 売らない, do not pollute 汚さない, do not disturb 乱さない, do not destroy 壊さない, and make full use 生かす. That is,
(1) don’t sell homes or land to people who will not respect the traditional townscape, community vibe, and natural environment. (One wonders what discussions, negotiations, agreements went on that allowed Hoshino Resorts to build a hotel on the island!!).
(2) do not pollute the land, air, or sea of the island.
(3) do not disturb the traditional townscape aesthetic with excessive signboards or anything else visually disruptive. and further, do not disturb (according to the English translation posted) “the island’s moral order.”
(4) do not destroy the natural environment, or the traditional rural village environment
(5) what they translate here as “make full use” is the Japanese word ikasu, which can be translated as “take advantage of,” “make use of,” meaning to use the village’s traditional architecture, local culture, traditional customs and rituals, to promote the island and to support lively and spiritually fulfilling life for the residents, and can also be translated as to make something grow, to revive it or give it life.

One thing that Taketomi has done is to implement a fee for visiting the island. It’s only a very small amount, 300 yen, but even so, I think this would contribute at least somewhat to serving as a disincentive for at least some visitors – thus reducing crowd numbers – and it also raises funds from those who do visit, which can be put towards conservation and so forth.

Even within the bounds of this Charter, it’s clear that choices have been made. To allow the construction of the Hoshino Resort. To allow X number of boats to come every day, bringing hundreds if not thousands of tourists. To allow cafes, water buffalo cart rides, and certain other touristy things, to operate in the way they do. I have no problem with local people making choices, changing things, doing whatever they want to do to make their lives however they feel like. And I do think that in any of these situations, it’s imperative that we remember to consider the agency of the local people themselves. If they wanted to welcome certain changes to their community, to their island, that’s their prerogative. But, I have to wonder just what was more freely chosen by the locals, versus forced upon them by circumstance (economic or otherwise), and/or by pressure from the tourist industry.

There are no corporate convenience stores on the island, or indeed any big-name corporate establishments as far as I remember; certainly nothing that disturbs the traditional, small village, aesthetic. What cafes and so forth do exist are all housed in traditional-style homes. I noticed only a very, very, few buildings that deviated from this, and the ones that come to mind were the building for operating the water buffalo cart rides, and a garage or two for small vans/buses that drive people around the island. Just outside the water buffalo establishment were a number of small kiosks, selling various other goods or services; this square or plaza was definitely the most Disney-like, the most touristified, part of the island. And, I suppose, by a certain measure, it would be fair to say that outside of this square, and the entry area around the ferry port, the whole rest of the village as far as I saw was, indeed, almost entirely small traditional houses, white limestone walls, dirt roads… But even so, that first impression getting off the boat and immediately seeing people calling out to the visitors where to line up if they’d booked this or that activity (rental bikes, kayaks, snorkeling, maybe – I don’t remember exactly which things were and weren’t present), or to line up for buses to hotels, that alone, combined with just the sheer number of visitors, and then this one touristified central square, that got me thinking, and feeling thoroughly conflicted, about my interest and desire to visit places like these but also a feeling of guilt at being a part of the tourism that locals have to contend with.

I know some have come to the decision that they won’t visit Hawaiʻi or certain other places, period. And others have chosen to actively work to actively shame or pressure others into not doing so. I understand where they’re coming from. And now, I understand it even more deeply, more strongly, from more direct personal experience. But, of course, the ironic thing is, we need to travel, to experience things ourselves, in order to have that experience, to feel it and know it that much more truly, for ourselves.

So, I think for now at least, I’ve decided for myself that this doesn’t mean I’m going to swear off traveling, or spending time in places like Okinawa or Hawaiʻi or the touristy parts of Kyoto, but it does mean that while I am glad to have visited the once, to have seen and experienced Taketomi, and to have seen and photographed the various historical sites and so forth that I did on the island, I have no plans or intention to visit Taketomi again any time soon.

Reading an autobiographical piece by Okinawan artist / playwright / novelist / cultural writer / cultural official Yamazato Eikichi, and it’s kind of amazing how many big name, famous, notable, figures keep coming into the story. Seems like he knew everyone who was anyone in Okinawan culture at the time – or, they knew one another. It’s got me thinking about the dynamics of how and why this happens.

One reason for this, certainly, is that many of these figures were born into wealthy and/or prominent families, and because of that or some other reasons had the privilege of studying in Tokyo, or studying abroad. Many may have been supported by their families for some portion of their lives, allowing them to engage in art or writing or whathaveyou without their time and energy being dominated by work. Many were born into families with connections, allowing them to have these very connections that I am finding notable. Privilege, in these and other ways, surely is one major part of the answer.

Privilege is most likely the chief contributing answer as to why it just so happened that Yamazato’s father was close with Ifa Fuyū – first head of the Okinawa Prefectural Library, often called the “father” or “grandfather” of Okinawan Studies – and that Yamazato ended up going to the same middle school (in that wealthy neighborhood, or if not geographically-determined, then a school for kids of that same circle of wealthy families) as Yamaguchi Jūzaburо̄, who later took the name Yamanokuchi Baku and is today regarded as one of the most significant/famous prewar Okinawan writers. Presumably, Yamazato’s father’s membership in elite society can also be credited with why (how) he happened to know prominent-even-at-that-time painter Yamada Shinzan, and was able to write to Shinzan to ask him to look after young Eikichi. (This was around 1926 or so, and Shinzan would be invited in 1928 to contribute a painting to the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery, a major national/imperial-level honor, reflecting his prominence even at that time.)

Still, some of it surely was just chance. What explanation other than chance could it be that the police officer assigned to surveil Yamazato’s first solo art exhibit in Okinawa (because avant-garde art scared the authorities that it might be subversive or something) happened to be the father of Yamamoto Keiichi, who at that time had not yet gone to art school in Tokyo, and was decades away from becoming the big-name, prominent figure of postwar Okinawan painting that he is today?

As I went to start writing this blog post, I realized that another reason for this is likely that, much like what I’ve experienced myself today, the art & culture worlds (and adjacent social circles) in places like Okinawa and Hawaiʻi are just simply “small worlds” by their nature. There are only so many art galleries, museums, theatres, newspapers, universities, and only so many professors, curators, artists, gallery owners, playwrights, actors, newspaper arts reviewers, and so forth on the island, and so naturally they get to know one another. And it’s just sort of the kind of place, and the kind of field – whether we’re talking Okinawan Studies, or Hawaiian Studies for example – that there aren’t that many people, so, yeah, if you read some scholarly articles or see some artworks and then meet artists, curators, scholars on-island, yeah, chances are they’re going to be some of the same people.

But, there’s another phenomenon going on here, thinking about all of this from a different starting point, a different way around, that I think is also very important. I still to this day regret not taking that seminar in Canon Formation my first year of the PhD; though, then again, who knows what exactly we would have and would not have covered. In any case, the point being – how do people become big-name?

Who do scholars study and who do they not? Which artists do museums collect and display, and which do they not? To some extent, of course, those who are truly influential or prominent will be the ones we talk about. Those who did in fact do something important or influential will become the ones who are studied and known for those things. But at the same time, even so, there’s undeniably also an element of chance in this.

I’m not sure I have a conclusion, some great final insight that this post is working up towards. But, then, that’s what this blog is for – things that aren’t complete enough to attempt to get published in a more formal venue. Just some thoughts.

(Continuing on from my previous post about this museum at the University of Tel Aviv)

Following the section on famous individuals throughout Jewish history, where I left off in the last post, the museum then takes us through the histories of the Jewish people. Not just the most detailed, but also easily the most vivid, engaging, and diverse account of this history that I’ve seen. Images in a diversity of artistic styles old and new are interspersed with historical artifacts and contemporary art installations. Stories are told not just of one lineage or community, but of many. This is not a history that focuses only on the most ancient periods of Judah and Israel, Babylonia and Alexandria, Greeks and Romans, nor one that focuses over-much on specifically religious developments, from the Talmud to the Mishnah. Nor is it one that centers Ashkenazi Judaism – the Jewish culture many in the West might be most familiar with, which mistakenly leads far too many to think of all Jews, the Jewish people as a whole, as fundamentally a “White” European people. We do learn a lot about life and culture in Ashkenaz, but just as much about Sephardic and Mizrahi histories and cultures as well.

I feel as though Jewish culture or Jewish histories are often presented in a way that makes me feel alienated from it; it can often be so deep into scriptural references, spiritual or theological concepts, the histories of this and that text (I’m sorry that I don’t know the first thing about Daf Yomi or Pirket Avot), this and that Rabbi (no, I don’t know what Meir ben Samuel or the Tosafists or Rabbeinu Gershom said about gevurah or emunah or whatever), that I not only feel out of my depth but I also feel like this is not the Jewishness I know, nor one I’m particularly interested in knowing. This is not the version of Jewish identity that speaks to my experience, or to my identity, personally, as a member of the Jewish people.

But these exhibits take us out of the books, out of the obscure and theological, and into rich, cultural, tapestries of historical experience. Of visual, material, and ritual culture; of diverse geographical, cultural, and political contexts. An earthenware pot from the Qumran caves, which once held part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A 16th c. scroll of the Book of Esther produced and used by a community expelled from Spain a century earlier, in 1492. A brilliantly decorated wooden torah case from Kochi, India, in a style that many Sephardic or Mizrahi communities call a tik.

We read about women like Rivkah bat Meir Tiktiner (d. 1605), whose Yiddish-language treatise on religious and ethical issues – reflecting not just simply being literate at a time when the vast majority in Europe were not, but extensive learning – is said to have been the first such treatise by a Jewish woman to be published. And of Doña Gracia Nasi (b. 1510), a woman who fled the Inquisition, reclaimed her Judaism, and built an incredible merchant empire, linking Brussels, Venice, and Istanbul, using her wealth to establish numerous schools and synagogues, and to support Jewish settlements in the Galilee. An interactive screen – one of many in the museum – shows information about the history of Jewish communities in numerous countries around the world. I would not at all be surprised if what it says about conversos arriving in Japan among Spanish and Portuguese groups in the 1570s, though I don’t personally know any of the details. And all throughout, we see models of synagogues and other significant buildings from around the world, in diverse architectural and aesthetic styles, as well as dioramas depicting notable historical events.

The exhibits continue to be just as vivid, rich, complex, as they take us into the modern era, of new Republics based on Enlightenment thinking, and new ideas of citizenship, and of national identity or belonging as divorced from religion. I am no expert in this field, and I ask your forgiveness if I misunderstand or misrepresent anything in the next few paragraphs (or, anywhere in this post) – I feel I learned a lot from the museum, but of course, that’s nothing compared to the deep, nuanced, complex expertise of a truly well-read scholar of the subject. But, that said, I’d venture to say that the modern idea today of Jews as being merely “White” Europeans “of Jewish faith” can be traced back to this. Or, at least, this is a rather key moment in those developments. Amidst new ideas of republican citizenship, Jews were asked, pressured, incentivized, to adopt a national identity, e.g. as English or French, to attempt to shed the Otherness, the Oriental association, that had so long brought them discrimination, persecution, marginalization. And, of course, as is frequently the case in periods of assimilation in many other times and places around the world, this was not solely (or necessarily even primarily) something imposed upon them, but rather a complex circumstance of pressures and agency, of changing times and social/political/cultural trends, within which some Jews chose to go one way and some another, to see themselves – their Jewish identity, their identity as Jews – as meaning one thing, or meaning another.

Jump forward to today, and I suppose the assimilation of Jews into Whiteness was – to some extent, in some ways, at least – so successful, that far too many people deny our peoplehood entirely, and refuse to believe that we, as a people, have any claim to anywhere, let alone to the land of Israel. Armenia for the Armenians, Ukraine for the Ukrainians, Thailand for the Thais, but nowhere for the Jews. They look to certain definitions or ideas of race, ethnicity, or religion rather than others; certain ideas of nationhood, peoplehood, tribal membership, indigeneity, rather than others, whichever feel the most natural to them, based on their own experiences, upbringing, and so forth; and they look to ideas that grew out of this particular period of history, or that grew out of certain other particular periods of history, and take those ideas of who the Jews are and are not, as gospel. As the unchanging, cross-historical, fundamental, essential truth of who we are; who we must be. They claim to be “critical” of imperialist, colonialist, racist, epistemological frameworks or whathaveyou, and spout all kinds of “knowledge” and theory, but still are not critical of their own assumptions about who Jews are, where Jews fit in the world.

But, returning to the late 18th century, all new developments have their pushback as well. Even as, in some respects, societies began to incorporate Jews as simply fellow citizens of a different religion, at the same time, new modern ideas of race once against cast Jews as the Other. The museum of course highlights the Alfred Dreyfus case, perhaps the most famous, most oft-cited example of an event marking the emergence of a modern form of antisemitism. But, unlike other museums, I feel it produces a remarkable balance – on the one hand, sharing with us quite a few materials I was interested to see, such as a reproduction (not just an image on a panel, but an object on display) of the newspaper with Emile Zola’s front page article accusing the French army and gov’t for their treatment of Dreyfus, and discussing the incident in some detail, while at the same time on the other hand, not allowing this incident to dominate the richly diverse and complex narrative the museum presents of this historical period. The exhibits also of course mention the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” but as in galleries on earlier periods of history, the museum supplements discussions of antisemitism in Christian Europe with just as much discussion of antisemitism in the Muslim world.

As the labels in this section explain, and as I already understood, antisemitism in the Muslim world, as in the Christian world, was based for centuries in just simple religious Otherness, in being non-Muslims, discriminated against and at times persecuted, oppressed, for just that. The story of Jews in Muslim lands is complicated, as they were in most cases in a decidedly inferior status, obliged to set themselves apart by their dress, and sometimes to live only in designated areas. They were subject to special taxes, enjoyed fewer rights and privileges (e.g. in some countries, Jews could not ride a horse but only a donkey, and synagogues could never be built taller than mosques, or something like that), and were subject to discrimination and violence, but also often granted certain privileges or protections as a protected community; in some places, for example, Jews were exempt from military service. In many parts of the Muslim world, a select few Jews were among the highest political advisors or court musicians, or enjoyed similar elite positions. And yet, as in most parts of the world where Jews were to whatever extent tolerated, accepted, even privileged for a time, it didn’t last forever.

In the 19th century, we learn that as European influences began to enter Ottoman, Arab, and Persian societies in new, modern, ways, and later as European powers began to outright colonize the Middle East, many Jews saw and took opportunities to gain education, cosmopolitanism/worldliness, better economic well-being, through placing their children in European schools such as ones belonging to the French-run network of Alliance Israélite Universelle schools. Only to then have this held against them, seen as allying themselves with, or being like, the colonizers, even after centuries of living in Ottoman, Arab, or Persian society.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the same gallery, labels and an immersive number of black and white photos speak of life in Ashkenaz, in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. I won’t presume to say from memory what exactly other museums do and don’t represent, but I was definitely struck by the way ANU represented this time and place in history. It does so not through the lens of cultural memory, in a nostalgic way, from the perspective of Jews today looking back at “the Old Country” of how our grandparents lived, conflating times and places from Poland to Lithuania to Russia to Belarus across however many decades. Rather, it teaches us history in complex details: we learn, for example, that the Pale of Settlement was a particular area, coming into being in the 18th century, extending across much of what is today Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus, under the control of Czarist Russia, and that in 1897, the Jewish population of the Pale numbered around five million. We read that there was a significant population explosion around that time (at the end of the 19th century), and that as many as 80% of Jews left the shtetls to seek new lives in big cities such as Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna.

ANU is in no way a History of Israel museum, and I feel they do an excellent job, actually, of including just enough of the story of Israel/Palestine, within this more global story, that it feels very smartly balanced. I’m not sure they even had a whole section on Israel/Palestine at all (at least not in this current 19th century section), but just a few panels included within the discussion of Jews in the Muslim world.

The Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University, recently hosted an exhibition on Gaza. Sadly, ironically for a Peace Museum, I think the exhibit did little to counteract the antisemitic narratives that inform and underly the conflict, and that have fueled so much division, harassment, and violence around the world since Oct 7, and also did little to highlight or encourage possibilities for a real, true, peace in the region.

I will say, the experience of the gallery space did feel strangely peaceful, in the way that memorial museums often do. Each time I went, I was the only one in the gallery, alone in silence with black and white photos. A silence that isn’t just simply neutral, giving the sense of cold objectivity, but rather the thoughtful, slightly sad, silence of a memorial museum space. Quiet photos seeming by their silent stillness to suggest a peacefulness to Gazan life, even as the content of those images blatantly shows children with assault weapons, genocidal butchers celebrated on posters, bands of armed and masked terrorists, and so forth. “Peaceful” in that they are quiet, in that they are silent, in that they are in black & white, suggesting by their aesthetic and mode of display – regardless of their actual content – a past time, a time in the past that no longer exists, that has been lost or destroyed.

I admittedly did not take the time to read through the timeline posted in the gallery, but outside of this, textual content was extremely minimal. Very little explanation or description was posted next to each photo. The introduction to the exhibit, the artists’ statement, however, explicitly spoke in both English and Japanese of Israel’s “invasion” of Gaza, and how much death and destruction the people of Gaza had suffered since then, with nearly no mention at all of the Oct 7 attack, of the genocidal intentions of Hamas, of the widespread and extremely deep intolerance – indeed, hatred – among far too many Gazans, who will never accept peace with Israel, when the vast majority of Israelis want just simply that – peace. No mention of how Hamas is at fault for the depressing numbers of Gazan deaths, for the scale of the loss and suffering, because of what Hamas did to bring this upon Gaza (through its Oct 7 attack); to bring this upon schools, mosques, hospitals, and civilian neighborhoods by willfully and intentionally using these places as bases of military (terrorist) operations; and by stealing food and other resources from the people, starving and impoverishing them in order to fuel their antisemitic jihad and to line the terrorists’ billionaire pockets.

This framing allows visitors to believe whatever hateful anti-Israel things they may wish to believe, including the belief that the mass oppression, expulsion, or murder of Jews – that is, the destruction of the State of Israel, the destruction of freedom, safety, self-determination for the Jewish people as a people – is the right and good way to pursue “peace” for the Palestinians, for the Arabs, for the world. The exhibit provided no counternarrative to this, no encouragement of coexistence. It did not condemn antisemitic terrorism, nor did it highlight the work of groups – there are so many – that have been trying for years, decades, to try to build friendship, peace, cooperation, mutual understanding, between Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians.

It’s a missed opportunity, but it’s so much more than that. Because this exhibit wasn’t just bad; it didn’t miss the mark in the way the phrase “missed opportunity” suggests to me. Rather, it was actively harmful, actively damaging. It was plain to see from what visitors wrote on post-it notes at the end of the exhibit: many of them expressing what I take as a common Japanese perspective, that oversimplifies the world to just simply “don’t do war,” seemingly evincing no recognition or acknowledgement that sometimes a country has to fight back to defend itself, or to free itself, or to eliminate a threat in order to prevent further suffering or death in the future. Just, plainly, no one should do war, period. Yeah, well, duh, except Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, aren’t listening to you. But many other post-its reflected blatantly anti-Israel sentiments: accusing Israel of genocide, of settler colonialism and apartheid, all these accusations that cement in people’s mind not an idea of peace, but an idea of justification for violence against Israel, against Jews, against Zionists. Justification to believe in, and work towards, the destruction of Jewish freedom, safety, self-determination in our ancestral homeland.

Adding fuel to the fire of hate against Israel, supporting worldviews in which Israel deserves boycott, divestment, sanctions, lawfare, opprobrium, international pressure, perhaps even violence until it gives up on defending its right to exist, and defending the safety and freedom of its people, is not a peaceful position.

To the contrary, I would wish to see a Peace Museum condemn this antisemitic and frankly genocidal worldview, and instead highlight the humanity of the people on both sides, and support narratives in which the Israeli/Jewish and Palestinian peoples should come together to agree to peace between their two peoples. A peace free from the violent ideologies of radical extremists on both sides who perpetuate the violence, and who seek to oppress both peoples under the imposition of Jewish or Muslim conservative religious orthodoxy – theocratic policies which would deprive the people of freedom of religion, reproductive freedom, gender equality, LGBTQ+ freedoms, etc.

There are so many groups in Israel and around the world that work to build peace, friendship, mutual understanding, and that try to break down the stereotypes and false narratives that fuel hate. A Peace Museum should be hosting exhibits that focus on such groups, and their message. They could do so much good, and they choose not to.