Japan: Swords and Butterflies - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 267

its passenger-loading arrangements to improve packing sardines. English signs are every-
where, but they jar the English speaker. Words seem to be either out of context or meaning-
less in their context. (“Inferno Is Cream; After Shove Shaving Crème”). Layered over and
under the new Japan are thought-waves of the old Japan.
Two words capture these thought ways: uchi and soto. Uchi denotes house, commu-
nity, the spirit of Japan. The Japanese, it is often observed, are race proud. Uchi reflects that
pride. Soto connotes all things beyond the spirit of Japan. Foreigners ( gai jin ) are soto, and
foreign things are soto . One's forebears may have lived in Japan for a century (Koreans,
for example) but one is still soto . One's forebears may have lived abroad for a century (the
Japanese in Brazil, for example), but the Brazilian Japanese returning to Japan is regarded
as uchi . Lafcadio Hearn, whom the Japanese called the ghost from the West, would have
understood.
HOW IS JAPAN'S HISTORY EMBEDDED IN ITS CITIES?
Japan is a seabound nation dotted with harbors and ports. Country and city are quickly ac-
cessible to cruise-ship visitors. For example, Yokahama and Tokyo are embraced by Tokyo
Bay. And Kobe, Osaka, and Hiroshima are easily accessible from Kyoto. More important
for the visitor is Japan's refusal to let modernity tear down history's treasures. Tokyo, with
some of the most valuable real estate in the world, holds tightly to the vast acreage of the
Imperial Palace and its surrounding park. The busy port of Nagasaki keeps sacred the site
of the city's atomic explosion, as does Hiroshima's Peace Park, the memorial to the ap-
proximately 200,000 who ultimately died in August 1945 in both cities. An earlier history
is commemorated in Osaka, whose beautiful medieval castle is flanked by boxy, modernist
skyscrapers.
And many will argue that the two most beautiful historic sites in Japan are lovingly
preserved. One is the shrines and temples of Kyoto, whose quiet gardens, long rooflines
(the Heian Shrine), and three-storied temple pagoda evoke a sense of sacred beauty in vis-
itors and supplicants alike. The second is the architectural complexity and beautiful sym-
metry of Shirasagijo Castle (the White Heron Castle), about twenty-five miles west of
Osaka near the city of Himeji. The castle, built in less than a decade (1609-1619) by about
25,000 workers, soars 150 feet skyward, with each of its many roofs rising on top of one
another in a graceful upward curve. Its high keep (donjon) is protected from earthquakes
by massive pillars that rise up from the ground and give and sway, but do not break, when
the ground trembles. The castle is a monument to feudal Japan, and as a tour guide may
say, it evokes the ghosts of samurai and their great lords, the Shogun. [241]