Showing posts with label Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Museum. Show all posts

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Sechibaru Coal Mine Museum

 


In the high country north of Sasebo, near the border with the  Arita district is the small local history museum dedicated to the former coal industry in the area of Sechibaru. Built as the offices of the local coal mine, the building is registered as an important cultural property as it is the only example of a Western-style building of stone in the northern part of Nagasaki prefecture. In Nagasaki City itself, there are numerous examples.


I am intrigued by the history of coal mining in Japan for two main reasons. One is that my grandfather and my father were coalminers and I grew up in the shadow of a coalmine. The second is that it is a little known part of modern Japanese history that kind of contradicts some of its cherished "myths".


I didn't know there were mines in this part of Nagasaki. I knew most Japanese coal was mined in northern Kyushu, with Battleship Island off the coast of Nagasaki being one of the famous sites, but northern Fukuoka and the Kumamoto-Fukuoka border area being some of the major coalfields. Early in this pilgrimage, I visited a coal mine museum in Nogata. A much longer article I wrote delving into the subject is here


There was not actually much on display, though the old photos were cool. I did learn that Kansai Coal Company, the owner of the mines, built a railway line in 1896 from Sechibaru down the valley to take the coal out. The previous post in this series on day 67 of my pilgrimage was on the nearby Oyamazumi Shrine and its ancient forest.


Thursday, December 7, 2023

Tameshigiri Testing a New Samurai Sword

 


Tameshigiri is the art of testing a new sword. In the good old days this would often be done using the body of an executed criminal, but sometimes on a live criminal.


When this no longer became practical a substitute was discovered that mimicked the properties of human bodies. Wet goza, the reed mats that cover tatami flooring, when wrapped around bamboo, was close to a human limb.


Nowadays Tameshigiri is a kind of an exhibition martial art, but the goza is not wet and is not wrapped around bamboo.


There are a variety of different cuts and arrangements in Tamegishiri. One of the more difficult is called Tsubamegaeshi. A vertical roll of goza is first cut with a 45 degree downward cut from left to right. then followed by an upward 45 degree cut from right to left below the first cut. Then before the cut piece can fall it is cut in half horizontally from left to right, and a final cut on the remaining standing piece of roll is cut horizontally from right to left. All in the blink of an eye. see Photo 3


This video and these photos were taken at a demonstration of Tamegishiri at the Okuizumo Tatara and Sword Museum and the sword master is Mr. Yoshihara.


Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Buried Houses of Mount Unzen Disaster

 


Not far from the Unzen Disaster Museum is yet another memorial of the volcanic disaster from the early 1990's.


A series of houses buried under meters of material with often just their roofs showing.


These houses were buried by what is called "lahar", a kind of mudflow comprised of a slurry of pyroclastic debris, ash, rocks, etc combined with rain after a volcanic eruption.


In the eruption of 1792 a massive landslide caused enough material to flow into the Ariake Sea that it caused a megatsunami, but here the flow was much slower and everybody had safely been evacuated.


One group of houses has had a roof built over it to make a museum.


The previous post was on the architecturally intriguing Unzen Disaster Museum.


Sunday, October 15, 2023

Unzen Disaster Museum

 


Mount Unzen in the middle of the Shimabara Peninsula in Nagasaki is a collection of volcanic peaks that erupted in 1792 in what was the worst volcanic disaster in Japanese history. The collapse of Mayuyama caused a tremendous landslide that killed thousands and then caused a megatsunami that killed thousands more on both side of the Ariake Sea.


Mount Unzen erupted again in the years between 1990 to 1995, and the disaster claimed 43 lives, many of which were media personnel covering the disaster


The eruption and pyroclastic flow destroyed villages closer to the mountains, but inhabitants had been safely evacuated.


many more houses were destroyed later by lahars, mud and debris flows with ash and other materials mixed into a slurry.


The Unzen Disaster Memorial Hall, also known as Gamadasu Dome is a museum about these disasters.


I quite liked the architecture, with most of the structure underground. It was designed by Kume Sekkei, a large design company that employs hundreds of architects.


The previous post was on shots of Mount Unzen taken on my walk to the museum.


It was too early in the day and the museum wasn't open yet, but I did visit on an earlier trip to Shimabara, so this last photo is of the interior from that visit.


Sunday, October 1, 2023

Okuizumo Tatara Sword Museum

 


In the remote Chugoku Mountains of Shimane is a museum featuring many Japanese swords, apparently quite a popular topic for many visitors to Japan, yet few, if any, swords were actually made in this area.


However, this is one of the most important areas for the main ingredient in a sword, iron. Japan had little in the way of iron ore deposits, and for centuries most iron was imported.


However, once the technique of smelting iron sand was introduced,  domestic iron and steel production flourished, and the Okuizumo area became a major exporter to other areas of Japan.


The museum showcases the history of the tatara forges that produced this iron. Perhaps the most intriguing is that the result of a tatara forge includes a small quantity of something called tamahagane, which is one of several types of metal that are vital to producing an authentic Japanese sword. Modern science and technology have been unable to find another way to make tamahagane.


Some days have demonstrations of working a small piece of iron in a modern forge, and members of the public are given the chance to try their hand. Also occasionally there are demonstrations of tamegishiri, sword testing, which I will show in the next post in this series.


Though having no interest in samurai swords I still found the museum intriguing, and, being so remote, is never crowded.


The previous post in this series on Okuizumo was on the sculpture of Yamata no Orochi in front of the museum. The ancient iron industry was so important to the area that there are numerous other tourist sites about it. Nearby is the Itohara Memorial Museum which I would recommend.


A few kilometers from the museum is a modern factory building that contains the only working tatara forge in Japan. It is the only source of tamahagane in Japan, so all, true Japanese swords made nowadays must buy from here. It is thought to be the inspiration for Irontown, a setting in the anime Princess Mononoke.


Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Tomogaura Tomokan

 


Tomokan is the name given to a couple of refurbished buildings in the tiny fishing village of Tomogaura, part of the World Heritage Sites of the Iwami Ginzan Silver Mines as it was one of the ports that serviced the mines.


It is thought they were originally built in the early to mid 19th century. The outbuilding is open all year round and has exhibitions connected to the port and the route to the mine.


The main house is only open from March through November. Tomokan is unmanned and free to enter.


If you are in the area then it is a good opportunity to look around a small, traditional home. My house was built about a hundred years later but used a similar construction . What is unusual is that both buildings are completely clad in sheets of cedar bark.


I earlier posted on the old harbour itself.


Sunday, August 20, 2023

Minakata Kumagusu Residence

 


Minakata Kamagusu was a Japanese eccentric and maverick who is considered by some to be Japan's first environmentalist. The house he lived in from 1916 until his death in 1941 is open to the public right next door to a modern museum to him in Tanabe, Wakayama.


In the previous post on the memorial museum, I wrote a little about him, but in this post I want to concentrate on the topic that made him famous, the shrine closure program of the government that began around 1910.


The shrine closure program only ran for a few years, and some areas resisted it quite strongly, but somewhere between 35 and 45 percent of all shrines throughout Japan were closed down. These were all local, nature-based deities that were moved, often quite some distance, to a "national" shrine.


Previously during the Meiji Period the government had "separated" the kami and the buddhas, destroying more than a millenia of religious development and in the process installing imperial connected kami in place of deities with Buddhist, Taoist, or non-imperial identities. They also began a program of creating major imperial shrines, some of which, like Meiji Jingi, Kashihara, and Heian, are now very popular.


The shrine closure program was part of this effort to create a new imperial-centered religion but also had a couple of secondary aims. One was to reduce the number of festivals that Japanese celebrated as this interfered with the industrial-oriented work ethic that the state wished to create.


Another factor was the"resource-rich" forest land that these traditional shrines encompassed. There was a lot of valuable timber on these lands when one considers the massive deforestation that the castle and town building of the Edo Period had created. It was this final point that caused Minakata to get involved, although he went on to argue an ecological viewpoint that included the destruction of culture in the formation of the state and national identity. For a more detailed look please click this recent online journal article about him.


The house is shown as it was when he lived there, thanks in large part to his daughter who kept all his possessions, research papers etc which can be accessed in the museum next door.


Sunday, August 13, 2023

Tsuyama Snapshots

 


Early August, 2014, and I set off from my hotel and start the fifth day of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage. I will walk north out of Tsuyama and then head west. I had celebrated my 60th birthday recently, and while walking with a heavy backpack in the hot and humid weather was not exactly fun, it was certainly bearable,  now nine years later I cannot imagine doing it today. Near the hotel I passed a small roadside Inari Shrine.


The Yoshii River runs along the southern edge of Tsuyama.


With the early morning light, the impressive ruins of Tsuyama castle were clearer.


Near the station is the Tsuyama Manabi Railway Museum hosed in an old Roundhouse with turntable. I believe the museum has been somewhat improved since I was there, and there is a single steam locomotive and about a dozen other trains most dating back to the 1960's and 70's. Quite nostalgic as I was a trainspotter myself till I became a teenager.


My guess would be that this abandoned building was once a ryokan.


This area, formerly Mimasaka Province, has many legends and stories of Kappa, the mythical water sprite, and the main street of Tsuyama has a series of small statues depicting them.


The previous post was the historic Kajimura Residence I visited at the end of the previous day.