Reminiscence-A Trip to Nagasaki (18-24 November 2010); and a Note on the History of Nagasaki

Introduction

Since today is the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Nagasaki, I thought I'd write about my experience in the short week I was there.

I visited Nagasaki last November (2010). 2 years back, I was offered the same opportunity by my department (the East Asian Studies Department, Faculty of Arts, UM), but turned it down for a debate competition in Bangkok (oh yeah, tons of fun that was *rolls eyes*). Therefore, when the Department asked me again if I wanted to go to Nagasaki around August or September, I considered myself quite fortunate and seized the opportunity. It was probably at the expense of other juniors, or kouhais who wanted to have at least one opportunity to visit Japan before they graduate. I feel like I'm supposed to feel some remorse and apologise here...ah, they all got to stay in Tokyo for 2 weeks anyway, so all's well that ends well, saith the Bard.

We (Zakaria sensei, Dr Nasrudin, En Aziz (of the Museum of Asian Art) Hakeem (a junior) and I) left Malaysia at midnight on 18th November to Fukuoka Airport on Korea Airlines (a journey totalling 9 hours, stopping at Incheon International Airport). Ah, yes. Korea Airlines-where "Moslem Meal" is actually "Vegetarian" with the labels changed, and where I first heard "King of Anything" by Sara Bareilles. Got that song stuck in my head for a fortnight. But I digress.

We arrived in Nagasaki at 1PM. It was late autumn in Nagasaki. Leaves everywhere were brown, the roads were clean, and it was Sakamoto Ryoma year, so his posters were everywhere. It was quite an amazing sight. And I kicked myself a couple of times for not bringing a camera. Sunrise was around 7AM and sunset around 5PM, and the chilly but dry wind (14 degrees Celcius) made me more appreciative of the heater in the Nagasaki Park Side Hotel room. And the lack ofhalal meat meant we had to live on seafood, miso soup, bread and butter, and the cookies available at a nearby convenient store.

We were in Nagasaki for the Youth Network Project, conducted by the Nagasaki Shin-Shakaijin Network, in conjunction with the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Hall. It was a meeting not only between organisers of different institutions, but between the students as well, from Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea. The main theme of the symposium was to find "methods to develope and organise a peace network by Asian youths." In the seven days we were there, three days were reserved for these meetings, as well as other activities, such as visiting the Peace Park and Hypocenter Park, the Atomic Bomb Museum, film screenings on the Atomic Bombings and listening to lectures by the hibakushas (atomic bomb survivors).

We had one day off. So Hakeem and I decided to visit half of Nagasaki. By foot. Hey, we could have taken the tram, but we didn't have that much money to spare. We wanted to save so we could buy some souvenirs at the museum shop or at the Coco Walk Shopping Complex. It was a tiring, but quite satisfying trip, at least on my part.

After the Otsukare-sama (Thank you) party on the night of the 23rd, we retired to our room and packed our belongings and souvenirs (with the currency exchange rate, there weren't much options to begin with, except a stacks of postcards and some small Coca Cola cans that cost around ¥58 each). We returned to Malaysia on the 24th, just in time for me to sit for my paper on Korean Foreign Policy, which could be seen as fitting considering the day before, Yeonpyeong Island was bombarded with North Korean missiles.

The History of Nagasaki (and the actual focus of this essay)

Ah, the history of Nagasaki. Quite rich, much like the kasutera sponge cake they inherited from the Portuguese. And linked to our own history as well.

Nagasaki the port was founded by the Portuguese and Jesuit missionaries in 1571, but the history of the island itself (Kyushu) was older. The island was the first territory in the Land of the Rising Sun to receive the message of Christ through the evagelical zeal of the Jesuits. It was in 1547 when St Francis Xavier, then in Malacca for the second time (out of five visits), met a Japanese fugitive named Anjiro (or Yajiro; later renamed Paulo de Santa Fe), whose description of Japan piqued his interest and would later lead to his visit of Kagoshima in 1549. It fell on the Captain of the Malacca Fort, Dom Pedro da Silva da Gama, to arrange for Xavier's visit to Japan. Malacca's role in aiding the mission to Japan was acknowledged by Xavier in his letter to King John III the Pious of Portugal.

The island of Kyushu became the bastion of Christianity and Portuguese dominion in Japan, which would lead to the founding of Nagasaki as a trading post and missionary centre. Of course, the combination of Portuguese guns, Jesuit passion, and the growing number of Japanese Christians converts, even among the daimyos (landlords) and samurai, were considered as serious threats to the newly-established Tokugawa regime.

Beginning from the 1590s until the late 1630s, the Tokugawa Shoguns issued edicts banning the spread of Christianity in Japan and cruel punishments in order to 'persuade' the Christians to apostacise, such as crucifixions, desecration of the image of Christ and Mary (known as fumi-e, treading images), and dangling the unfortunate souls on top of the lava of Unzen. This persecution was marked by the important event of the Martyrdom of the 26 Saints on February 1597, where six European missionaries and 20 Japanese Christians were arrested and forced to walk in the snow, where they were later crucified on the hills of Nishizaka in Nagasaki. This brutal persecution also led to the important event of the peasant uprising in 1637-38, known as the Shimabara Rebellion, led by the charismatic 15-year old Amakusa Shiro. The defeat of this rebellion would drive the Christians underground (later known as Kakure Kirishitan, Hidden Christians) and forced to adopt Buddhist images and rituals to conceal their faith (such as replacing images of Mary with the Goddess Kannon, and having lay members replace the duties of exiled padres).

I was unfortunate to not have the time and opportunity to visit the site of the Shimabara Rebellion, but I did visit the Site of the Martyrdom, as well as the Museum and Monument. It was satisfying to be there,to say the least, to be among the old documents and letters of Portuguese missionaries, of old crucifixes and relics carved from wood, of fumi-es and disguised Mary statues, and old maps and books, which included references to Malacca.

Nagasaki later fell to the Dutch, the only European group tolerated by the Tokugawa regime. The Dutch used Nagasaki port as a gateway into Japan, building a wharf and a factory in Dejima near the Nagasaki harbour. Nagasaki was also viewed by the Tokugawa authorities as the sole gateway to Western science and knowledge of the outside world (known as Rangaku). Such knowledge would include the limited information on the Malay peninsula, made available to the Japanese only through the Reijusan Zusetsu, a book by Shiba Kokan (1738-1818), which was a translation of Francois Valentijn's Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (Old and New East India).

The black ships of Commodore Perry eventually led to the end of Japan's seclusion period, and it was followed by the influx of foreign merchants and missionaries in Japan. One of these was the Scotsman Thomas Glover, who aided the rebels in the Boshin War, leading to the Meiji Restoration. His former house was later converted into a tourist attraction. I did not have the opportunity to go to the Garden as it was too far, but I did visit his grave at the Sakamoto International Cemetery.

There was something wrong with the idea of me viewing an international cemetery as a tourist attraction. It felt like those emo kids who go to graves and read pretentious, narcissistic poems...but it was free, as opposed to other tourist attractions. So there. It was a decent cemetery, and it was interesting for me to discover the division of quarters in the cemetery, such as the Jewish quarter, the Chinese, French, British and American quarters (I was half-expecting a grave of a Malayan to be there), and the grave of Nagai Takashi, a survivor of the atomic bombings until his death due to leukemia in 1951, and the author of The Bells of Nagasaki, which I was fortunate to have read even before this Nagasaki trip.

The most important part of history associated with Nagasaki is obviously the atomic bombings on August 9th, 1945. On this day, at 11.02AM, the American pilots dropped an atomic bomb of 3.25m in length, 1.52m in diametre and 4.5 tonnes in weight, nicknamed the Fat Man, on the city of Nagasaki, emitting an energy equivalent to 21 kilotonnes of TNT and heat of 3,900 degrees Celcius (poetically called 'Brighter than a Thousand Suns'). The damage caused was staggering. The area within a 2-mile radius of the hypocentre was destroyed completely. Almost 80,000 people died on the day, and the survivors (hibakusha) would later suffer the effects of radiation.

As I visited the important sites that marked this event, such as the Peace Statue, the rebuilt Urakami Cathedral, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hypocentre, the lonely Torii (gate pillars) of the Sanno Shinto shrine, the Atomic Bomb Museum and the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall, I could feel the message that the people of Nagasaki wanted to share with the world: they oppose the development of atomic weapons and the evils of war, which would eventually lead to a nuclear holocaust and the extinction of the human race. The museum here and in Hiroshima are unique in Japan. Unlike the museum in Tokyo (which I have visited), they have no qualms about presenting the rise of military fascism and Imperial Japan in an objective manner. They readily acknowledged the crimes committed by the Japanese Army in their conquest of Asia, in the Sino-Japanese War, and in World War II. And they also see the atomic bomb as bringing an end to the hideous war. And they wished for it to stay that way. They campaigned strongly against the continued nuclear weapons development by the Powers and nations (USA, Russia, China, UK, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, and Iran), as they do not wish for their fate to befall other people. 'No more Hiroshima, no more Nagasaki, no more War,' one of the hibakushas said at the end of his lecture.

Conclusion

So ends my reminiscence of my trip to Nagasaki. It's actually one of the longest notes I have ever written, I think. Much of this essay is based on facts. Good. I have no problems with being factual in my reminiscences. Now, how do I end this essay? It's a bit cheesy, but a quote would do well, I think.

"The person who prays for peace must not hide even a needle, for a person who possesses weapons is not qualified to pray for peace"-Nagai Takashi (1908-1951) in Heiwa no To.