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Bamboo Forest, Ginkakuji Temple, Kyoto, Japan Photographic Print
16 in. x 12 in.
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Geisha Girls, Looking at Camera, Kyoto, Japan Photographic Print
Keribar, Izzet
24 in. x 18 in.
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The Japanese environment is one not bountifully provided with those natural complements of soils, plant resources, animal life, and other features which made for easy productivity of material goods for early man. The aquatic resources around these island shores are rich, but they were less available to early man than to modern man. By dint of hard work through a long span of time the Japanese have made their environment a productive one, but many of these advances had to await the introduction of techniques developed in other parts of the world, and then carefully fitted to the local scene.
The historic pattern of the introduction of developed techniques into Japan has led to the false conclusion that the Japanese have been only an imitative people, whereas in the perfection and fitting of techniques to their environment the Japanese have displayed almost as much originality as did the Chinese, who also copied and adapted many alien features of culture.
Earliest man may well have been able to walk overland from the mainland to the lowland fringes of southwestern Japan, and it is notable that the Japanese archaeologists have turned up almost no record of the Old Stone Age in Japan. The inference is that occupance areas then lay on the lower coastal plains and lowlands now covered by the Inland Sea, the China Sea, and the immediate shore waters around the Japanese islands.
The Ainu aboriginal population, protoCaucasoid in origin, established themselves in such numbers that they have steadily contributed to the racial composition of the modern Japanese. Man moved upward onto the present alluvial lands and the lower upland fringes as the post-glacial patterns of islands and coastal outlines developed. Neolithic man came into the islands by sea both from the north and the west, bringing different elements of culture and probably representing different and mixed racial strains. The northerners brought useful elements of fishing economies, but they did not add greatly to the population as such. The main line of immigration lay through Korea, and the chief elements were protoMongoloid and Mongoloid in origin, to set the racial basis for modern Japan.
Out of the south, probably South China, moving along the coastal fringes came some southern peoples after the present lines of land and sea had developed. In popular thinking this stream of peoples bulks high in contributing to the Japanese population, but it is doubtful that this is so. These southern peoples undoubtedly did bring many culture traits into Japan related to the use of the sea and the subtropical elements of the environment.
Since most of these migrants came into southwestern Japan, bringing higher culture traits, it is natural that this was the early center of Japan. In a rigorous environment not bountifully providing for early man, the coastal lowlands of the southwestern portion were both the most livable and the most productive. Here the mixing of the early racial stocks and patterns of culture took place, and here also began that conversion of alien traits into traits distinctively Japanese.
Macanese food is among the most interesting in the world, and it’s found nowhere else, with many reasonably priced restaurants to explore. Chinese is of course everywhere, ranging from Cantonese dim sum breakfast shops to the Jade Garden in town and the Dynasty at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental hotel, both famous even among Chinese gourmets. But there are also many Portuguese-run establishments serving backhome-style dishes with chicken, olive oil, saffron, and codfish.
Many other restaurants reflect cross-cultural influences from Brazil, Africa, India, Madagascar, and Malaysia, as weıı as neat ways with seafood invented in Macau itself. I can recommend the Portuguese-style Cacarola on a quiet square on Coloane Island and, a real find, the Clube Militar de Macan in the middle of town. Macau once had a garrison, but when it got down to seven soldiers (now there are none), the club was opened to everyone. The dining room, in mahogany and crystal, resounds with past glory; the Macanese food and Portuguese red and white wines are delicious and the prices reasonable. Portugal’s military men clearly knew how to look after themselves so far from home (975 Av. da Praia Grande).
The country code for calling Macau is 853.
You may rightly wonder why on earth such an absurdly huge thing was constructed at so remote a time as the 8th century. The motive at the back of it was religion, or rather superstition, if you like. Now, Buddhism was first introduced into Japan in 552. Though it encountered some opposition at first, it began to spread like wild-fire, especially after it became an established religion in 621, when all the aristocratic, or ruling, classes had succumbed to it, from the Mikado down.
About the same time the country was visited with a series of natural calamities, including a virulent pestilence which destroyed thousands of lives. This was attributed to the wrath of the Sun Goddess because of this wholesale worship of the new foreign god. It was to appease the Sun Goddess, therefore, that this great Buddha was cast, and installed as the chief idol of the great Tōdaiji Temple. So, it was in reality an image of the Goddess herself in an ingeniously Buddified form, called Roshana, or Birushana.
Thus the Daibutsu was only one of the many wondrous things created around the great Tōdaiji Temple, most of which, however, have been destroyed. The Daibutsu itself has passed through many vicissitudes, and many a tragic and romantic story has been woven around its colossal form. Yet it remains today almost exactly as it was when first cast, except the head, which, in a fire, fell off the shoulders and was subsequently replaced. This, together with the gigantic bell, 48 tons in weight, the 3rd greatest bell in Japan, cast in the 8th century, and other relics of the Nara period, tell tales of the grand scale on which the Tōdaiji was conceived and built.
The Daibutsu-den, or the hall in which the giant Buddha was housed, was of an ornate design and elaborate structure, quite different from its present makeshift of an ungainly structure, and the Daibutsu, covered with gold coating of which only a very faint trace is seen today, must have shone in the past with a glorious radiance quite dazzling the spectator.
Daigo Temple, Kyoto, Japan Photographic Print
, Panoramic Images
24 in. x 8 in.
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One of the principal things to be pointed out at any one of these great temples will be its landscape gardens, the charm of which would increase if you knew something of its history and significance. The soul of a Japanese garden is in its imitation of nature, or reproduction, within a narrow space of the beauty and variety, of nature’s limitless landscape. It derives no inspiration from the mere utilitarian desire for shade, fruit and promenade.
As in painting one would compress on to a small canvas a whole region of natural landscape, so is a Japanese “niwa” (garden) a replica in miniature of the depths and solitude of a great mountain, the picturesqueness of its rivers and cataracts, the pathless profusion of primitive forests, and other attributes of nature’s scenic phenomena. Hence the indispensability of a hill, a pond and stone-lanterns, symbolical of temples or rural habitations.
The art of gardening came from China in the wake of Buddhism, and its Buddhist significance became accentuated during the Kamakura period, when the contemplative Zen Sect gained a strong foothold. Instead of retiring into the mountains, the priest might create in his garden the same effect of being remote from the world. Thus, the first garden artist was a priest. Later in the Ashikaga period it passed into the hands of tea-masters. Then it became an indispensable part of the tea-room which must have an unworldly atmosphere. A celebrated garden-artist of this period was Sōami, to whom are ascribed some of the oldest and best gardens — those of Kinkakuji and Nishi Hongwanji. Rikyū, the greatest name in tea ceremony, was also noted for his skill in gardening.
Later in the Tokugawa era the art passed into the hands of special gardeners, but Kobori Enshū, who was a great tea-master, was also distinguished as a gardener. His handiwork may be seen today in the gardens of Daitokuji, Kōdaiji, Nanzenji, Chionin. But by far the most famous of his works was the garden now seen in the Imperial Detached Palace of Katsura which you can visit by permit of the authorities concerned.
This was a palace built by Hideyoshi for one of the Imperial princes, and Kobori Enshū had, it is said, extracted the promise from the Taikō that no limit was to be put on time or money, and that he was not to be interfered with in his work. The result was a marvel of landscape gardening, which, being laid as it was on dry level ground, not far removed from city life, had all the air of remoteness and deep sylvan stillness and solitude.
Landscape gardening was responsible for several minor but perhaps equally difficult arts of diminutive gardens, often seen in Japanese homes, “bonkei” (tray gardens), “bonseki ” (stone-and-sand gardens represented on trays), “bonsai” (dwarf trees), of which you can see perfect specimens in Kyoto as in most other parts of Japan.
If you are interested in old mansions, combining the archaic style of wooden architecture and the classic beauty of landscape gardening, you must by no means miss the Detached Palace of Shugakuin, which covers an extensive area of ground, affording good scope for walking. There are three huts, upper, lower and middle, with winding gravel paths in between, commanding lovely views of the surrounding plains and mountains. Many precious paintings and other things of artistic value are kept here.
Bamboo Lane, Nishiyama, Kyoto, Japan Photographic Print
16 in. x 12 in.
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If this were a guide-website to serve tourists on the spot, it would have been necessary to write this part of the chapter first. However, there are several excellent guide-books specially devoted to Kyoto, and here I shall try only to shed a little light on that phase of Kyoto which makes the strongest appeal to those going about with no other purpose than to look around and enjoy novelties in scenery and in life.
If Kyoto is a charming Mecca of all foreign tourists to Japan, it is no less so to the Japanese whose lot it is to dwell outside its radius. It is always full of visitors from every part of Japan. Even Osaka, inside of an hour by bus, looks upon it as its premier holiday land. Many wealthy persons there are, even in the Kwanto district, who have villas in the quieter parts of Kyoto that they may recur to them from time to time and enjoy Kyoto’s many aspects under its varying moods.
The very approaches to the city are picturesque. Coming from any direction, the visitor is greeted either by the indigo-blue bamboo bushes, the fresh and clear, babbling river, or by the quaint low-lying houses of humbler folk so reminiscent of old days. The central railway station is modern enough, but a few minutes’ walk away from it in any direction will give one the impression of being in the old capital. It may be the soft green outline of the undulating mountains, or it may be one or other of the old temples and palaces, that excites our sense of being in Kyoto. Even the show-window dressing in busy avenues of Shijō and Gojō is arresting because of its elegant style. There you do not see the best sample goods in blatant display as in other commercial cities, but only a few choice specimens tastefully arranged, suggestive of quality rather than quantity of production. Walk into one of them and you will be waited on by a charming shopkeeper whose manner seems to show he is more anxious to please than to sell. Taste, courtesy and politeness fill the air; everybody is willing to help you make the most of your opportunities. Without even a hired guide one may often, with a guide-book, do wonders in Kyoto.
Kiyomizu-dera is one of the first scenic spots to view. A Buddhist temple, to be sure, but it has the least air of being one. One of the oldest Kwannon temples, it alone would justify your stopping off at Kyoto. Its situation is on the verdant hillside, ascended by several flights of steps, and upon its “butai”–dancing stage–which was a synonym for the highest point in Kyoto, one commands a magnificent view of the surrounding woods and valleys, with ex. quisite glimpses of sweeping roofs of other temples and pagodas gleaming among the trees. To look down from the Kiyomizu “stage” gives us a sensation totally different from that we get when looking down from a skyscraper of a commercial metropolis; the one makes us grateful for this life and the other hate it. The temple has a wondrous roof on which connoisseurs could lecture for hours.
Descending the slope, and passing one of the picturesque “tea-pot-lanes,” lined with small porcelain shops, selling the famous Kiyomizu wares, you will emerge into the heart of Maruyama Park with its shrines of Gion and its winding walks ablaze with cherry in spring or with maples in autumn. Other famous temples of Chion-in, Nanzenji, Sanjūsan-gen-dō, etc., are not far from here.
Expensive Shopping District with Night Traffic, Ginza Area, Tokyo, Japan Photographic Print
Bachmann, Bill
24 in. x 18 in.
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To describe a great city like London or Paris to an American, or a mighty American city such as New York or Chicago to a European, is a comparatively easy matter. They are kith and kin, so to speak, sprung from the same civilization. Tokyo is different. It would be as misleading to treat it as an Eastern city as not to treat it as such. Tokyo has none of the characteristic, often sordid, aspects of a so-called Eastern city. The keen observer will not be slow to gain glimpses, through the crevices of its modern exterior, of that inner life which distinguishes it from any other great city in the world.
Tokyo had grown to be a very complex and indeed highly civilized city during its three centuries of national seclusion. To this civilization has been added in the past hundred years the modern superstructure of the West. To the newcomer the city may seem a heterogeneous medley, at once ultramodern, quaint, colorful, even bizarre–a “cocktail” sort of a city. He may think that Tokyo is passing through a violently transitional stage, or that it is perhaps only half Western. The true explanation is that Tokyo is unique–the result of its peculiar evolution, and must therefore be judged or appreciated by its unique standard. The same applies to the old cities of Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya and other big cities.
It would be simple to describe Tokyo in yearbook style as the capital of the Japan, one of the half-dozen World Powers, with an extensive area of 213 square miles, a little more than Chicago, inhabited by 12,790,000 people, a city with all the latest improvements in the accommodation and administration which go to make a great metropolis. Such a description, however, will give no picture of what Tokyo is really like. To frame an adequate picture one must dip a little into its historical background.
“In the April of blossoms anyone may come,” runs an old proverb. It is a time for general outing. Even old women and the laziest stay-at-homes go out to call on friends, or make pilgrimages to temples of the dead or to Shinto shrines, not necessarily for flower-seeing, yet the gateway to the temple and the courtyard of the shrine are invariably studded with cherry trees.
The eighth of April is the birthday of Shiddhattha Gautama or the Buddha, and celebrations in his honor — the Festival of Flowers — are held at every Buddhist temple. That of Hibiya Park with its dazzling pageant of chigo (temple pages) and other ceremonies is typical, and the day sets the zenith of the sakura season. Little wonder that sightseers and devout pilgrims from rural districts should choose this time to visit Tokyo and other urban centers.
As for youths and maidens, ever on the alert for pleasure, it is, of course, the time of their life, as witness their joyful presence and their gay manners everywhere. Young students are on holiday in the sakura season, as the academic year begins about the middle of April. Alike on those happily graduated or matriculated, and on those “plucked,” the gods cause the blossoms to smile. All are out for flower-viewing, either to celebrate success or to dissipate gloom.
No more motley throngs of humanity can be seen on the face of the earth than at flower-viewing in the height of the sakura season. All grades of society are represented: bourgeoisie jostles with proletariat, smart city people mingle with ruddy country folk. There are ladies, factory girls, soldiers, students, merchants, artists, and many varieties of young and middle-aged men generally known as “salary men,” with their wives and children.
Occasionally one meets with foreigners, conspicuous by their tall stature and, if tourists, by their curious glances. Beggars are conspicuous by their absence. Is it due to the police control or what? They have no need to beg in spring. There are enough leavings of food, half empty bottles, and forgotten odds and ends to be garnered. Close observation will show some wretches silently cleaning up in the footprints of the holiday-makers. The magnanimity of nature, so beautifully symbolized in spring, is emulated at every scene of hanami, reminding us of the Lord’s miracle of the bounteous feeding of the multitudes.
Babylon’s Hanging Gardens, One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Giclee Print
16 in. x 12 in.
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The Seven Wonders of the World Of Antiquity:
(1) The Pyramids of Egypt.
(2) The Gardens of Semiramis at Babylon.
(3) The statue of Zeus at Olympia, the work of Phidias.
(4) The Temple of Diana at Ephesus.
(5) The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
(6) The Colossus at Rhodes.
(7) The Pharos of Egypt, the Walls of Babylon or the Palace of Cyrus.
The Seven Wonders of the World Of the Middle Ages:
(1) The Coliseum of Rome.
(2) The Catacombs of Alexandria.
(3) The Great Wall of China.
(4) Stonehenge.
(5) The Leaning Tower of Pisa.
(6) The Porcelain Tower of Nankin.
(7) The Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople.
The palace of the Escurial has sometimes been called the eighth wonder, a name which has also been given to a number of works of great mechanical ingenuity, such as the dome of Chosroes in Madain, St. Peter’s of Rome, the Menai suspension bridge, the Eddystone lighthouse, the Suez Canal, the railway over Mont Cenis, the Atlantic cable, etc.
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