A day in Nagasaki (長崎一天)

When it became all dark, it was time for us to leave Mount Inasa for our meals which we were told would be the best on the trip costing slightly less than 9000 yens. We were curious.
 

As a starter, we would have some assorted seafood cold cuts consisting of various types of sashimis of fish, octopus, shellfish plus the relevant Japanese garnish, beans, bean curds, tampura etc. The most unusual for me was thin slices of whale meat, which doesn't taste like fish at all. I'm not surprised. After all, the whale is not a fish, but a mammal. Some tour members didn't like it. But for me, it was OK. It hasn't got any strong flavors. Rather crispy and chewy and goes well if dipped in the sweet soy sauce with fresh Japanese mustard.

Then we had another sashimi platter with salmon, tuna and a special kind of fish whose name I don't remember. They all tasted good because very fresh.

Then this shrimp platter with soft boiled eggs and tubes of sticky steamed rice roasted or baked inside a kind of aroma rich leaf .

The other side reveals also some fried fish and fried taro.

Then this braised pork belly: soft, not oily and slightly sweet.

As soup, we had this vegetable and melon consomé, mushroom with a few streaks of carrots.

We also got another bowl of mushroom consomé with celery and a kind of Japanese rice  dumplings.

Then also various vegetable based cakes, jellies and one with shrimps, plus Japanese string bean

and for dessert, strawberry in sea weed jelly and melon

The restaurant has got some unusual looking furniture and decorations: a knight on horseback carved on the door of this side cupboard

A  Portuguese all puffed up upon seeing a Japanese lady with an umbrella

A ferocious looking Japanese dragon: in front is the rag doll of our tour leader who is also the proprietress of the travel agency organizing the tour and her shoulder bag.

Some nice Japanese crockery

More multicolor Japanese crockery

The following morning, we were taken for a short walk-about of the the Hollander Slope in the old hilly quarters of the Oura Area (大浦)  at the base of which is our hotel. Some very English looking red brick buildings. However, for a very long time, all foreigners in Japan were called "Dutch" because at that time, the Dutch at Dejima were the only  foreigners allowed to trade in Japan.

This is the old British consulate in Nagasaki

This lane at the side of the British consulate is appropriately called "Consulate Lane"
 

the road is lined with such wooden flower troughs

There is at the corner of the street a women's university: the Kassui Joshi Daigaku ( Kwassui Women's University) (活水女子大学), a private women's university founded by an American Methodist missionary, Elizabeth Russell, in 1879 and now run by an educational foundation called Kwassui Gakuin, which also runs a middle school cum high School in the area. It used to be just a Girl's School but was converted into a private college in 1919, a junior college in 1951 and full university in 1981 and since 1991 runs a graduate programme for English Literature and Language. It boasts some 1,300 students with a Faculty of Humanities (Departments of English, Contemporary Japanese Culture, and Human Relations); a Faculty of Music (Departments of Music Performance and Applied Music); a Faculty of Wellness Studies (Departments of Nutritional Health, Design and Science for Human Life, and Child Development and Education); and a Faculty of Nursing (Department of Nursing) and has exchange programme with 28 foreign universities. Kwassui Women's University. Until 2010, it retained its old name of Kwassui Women's College.

Even the tiny patch in front of its gate is turned into a mini garden! The building which now accomodates the university used to be the Nagasaki Customs House. During the Edo period, Japan adopted a "closed door policy", the only port open to foreL承ign trade being Nagasaki and only the Portuguese merchants were allowed but after Commodore Perry visit and representations, Japan opened up Nagasaki, Hakodate (函館市) and Yokohama  (橫濱) to  foreign trade with Western countries in 1859. It used to be called Minatokaisho (溱會所) but altered its name to Nagasaki Unjosho (長崎運上所) in 1863 and then to Nagasaki Zeikan (長崎稅關) in 1873, which was later relocated to Dejima (出島町)

A map at the Hollander's Slope

This is the Anglican Church built in 1862

A road sign there

These buildings looked very Dutch. For a very short period, it housed the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Nagasaki which has since relocated a little further down in huge 19th century building.



Some Dutch looking windows

A local shrine

Another lane in the very narrow Hollander Slope

A statue of the Holy Virgin Mother in the Catholic Church in the area, first built by the French Father Petitjean in 1864 and later rebuilt. Catholicism first arrived in Nagasaki in 1549 when the missionaries from Portugal, led by the Spanish Jesuit St. Francis Xavier, who arrived in Nagasaki on August 15, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary (the day Mary was said to ascend into heaven). Nagasaki, at the southermost tip of Japan on the west of Kyushu and just 50 miles from South Korea, was then the only open-port city in the whole of Japan.

Despite opposition from Buddhist monks and the local rulers,Catholicism spread quickly from Nagasaki, so that by 1580, just over thirty years, there were some 200,000 converts in Japan including a sizable number of Japanese feudal barons and  samurais along with the tens of thousands of peasants and townsfolk.

In 1587, Emperor Hideyoshi decided that they were becoming too influential and ordered that they be banished and that all Japanese Christians renounce their religion. Nevertheless, in 1593 six Franciscans, led by the Spanish friar Fr. Peter Baptiste, who illegally entered Japan in the meantime worked zealously to convert many more despite the persecution. In 1596 the Emperor decided to crack down on the Christians and ordered 26 of the leading offenders (3 Jesuits, 15 Franciscan Tertiaries, 2 laymen, and the 6 other Franciscan friars) to be arrested in Kyoto and force-marched some 500 miles to Nagasaki, a 30-day journey for death by crucifixion. Each had part of his left ear cut off before the forced march In Nagasaki where they were tied to crosses with their necks held in place by iron rings.

As they awaited death, the Catholic martyrs suddenly broke the silence by singing some psalms. The huge great crowd that had assembled to watch the spectacle fell silent as they listened. Then one of the twenty-six began to sing the Sanctus, offering themselves for the glory of God, the same way that Jesus offered his body to his disciples through the sharing of bread and wine at the Last Supper.

Then one of the Franciscans on the cross began singing the simplest of litanies, “Jesus, Mary…Jesus, Mary….” The 4000 Catholics gathered there joined in the prayer. Then a 33-year-old  Jesuit Paul Miki, son of  Baron Takayama’s army general, spoke:  “I am a Japanese and a brother of the Society of Jesus.("Jesuits") I have committed no crime. The only reason I am condemned to die is that I have taught the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am happy to die for that and accept death as a great gift from my Lord.” Miki asked the crowd if they saw fear on the faces of the twenty-six and assured them there was none because heaven was real and that he had only one dying request: that they believe. He said he forgave Hideyoshi and those responsible for his execution. Then with deliberation and a ringing voice, he gave his farewell song. It was the verse of Psalm 31 that Christ quoted from the Cross: “Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit"

Dying well was tremendously important for samurai, and they often met death with a jisei no uta, or farewell song. Miki’s strong voice reached the edges of the crowd, and then Hazaburo Terazawa, the official in charge of the execution made a sign and the samurais moved in for the kill with their steel-tipped bamboo lances whereupon the crowd broke into a roar of anger and Hazaburo Terazawa quickly withdrew. As a result of the spectacle, even more wanted to be baptized.

In 1614, another persecution began but many chose to die rather than renounce their faith and within a year, all their churches were destroyed .With the introduction of new and refined methods of torture designed to break the Christians, Nagasaki Christians migrated to offshore islands and inland, up the nearby Urakami Valley. They devised ways of handing on the faith without priests: becoming farmers and fishermen, forming an underground church, appointing a “waterman” to baptize, a “calendar man” to keep the dates of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and so forth, and a chokata, or “head man,” as overall leader.

A shrine being carried up on the main street a little distance away from our hotel

The same boat  we saw earlier now up at Urakami

St. Mary's Cathedral, often known as Urakami Tenshudō (Urakami Cathedral )( 浦上天主堂 ) Neo-Romanesque style church built in 1895 after the ban on Christianity was lifted. A French priest Bernard Petitjean discovered in 1865 that almost all the Urakami villagers were Christian but more than 3,600 of them were banished between 1869 and 1873, 650 of whom dying as martyrs but in 1873, the persecuted Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians) returned after the 7 year ban and decided to build up their church. They bought the land from the village chief who made them undergo humiliating interrogations each year for some 200 years during the annual "fumi-e" which required those present to tread upon an icon of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

Construction began in 1895 but because of lack of funds, it wasn't completed until 1917. With its twin spires at 64 meters, it was the largest Catholic church in East Asia. But on August 9, 1945 the second atom bomb, "fat boy" was dropped by a B-29 on Urakami , only 500 m (1640 ft) from the cathedral, completely destroying it. As it was close to the Feast of the Assumption of Mary (August 15) , many attended mass that day but they all burnt to death by the atomic heat-wave. Of the 12,000 Catholics in the Urakami district, 8,500 were killed.

In 1959, after a serious debate between the city government and the congregation, it was rebuilt: originally the municipal government wanted it to be retained in its original destroyed condition as a heritage site but the Christians in Nagasaki wanted to rebuild it in situ in commemoration of their persecution and their suffering. In 1980 it was remodeled to more closely resemble the original French style. Statues and artifacts damaged in the bombing, including a French Angelus bell, are now displayed on the grounds. The nearby Peace Park contains remnants of the original cathedral's walls. What remained of the cathedral is now on display in the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.
 
As a result of the two A-bombs, some 140,000 of the Hirohshima's population of 255,000 inhabitants and some 35,000 in Nagasaki.died instantly.  But apart from these, a further 200,000 people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima died from the effects of radiation.

The sign of the Cathedral

The plague at the side of the Cathedral

A centenary memorial to the faithful who attended the first church in the area in 1865.

A statue of Fr. Bernard Petitjean, the founder of the first church built here in the little garden in front of the cathedral

 Statue of Pope Jean Paul II an attempt on whose life was made in 1981. 

The crucifix of Jesus

Another view of the pope who forgave his asassinator

The garden benches with the Kumamoto Prefecture bear?

Another view of the church spire

The statue of Mary, made like the Koon Yin or kannon

Yellow rose growing beneath her feet

The French style is quite evident with its roof

The main altar with its stained glass windows

One of the side altars

Another side altar

 The last supper?

The Urakami is a small area, its streets quite narrow and its buildings very close together

Japanese roof tiles

The peace garden next to the Cathedral

A small courtyard below the cathedral

Some gravestones below the cathedral

Japanese clogs for sale on the very commercial street leading up to the cathedral

colorful scarves on sale

A children's art museum

European style tower all overgrown with creepers

The museum

Another view of the museum

Pot of flower at its entrance

clouds beneath the cathedral

One of the side streets was all covered with plants

colorful leaves

colorful flowers at the side of the narrow street

Flowers in blue

Flowers in pink and yellow

Dr. Sun Yat Sen had been to Nagasaki on many occasions : his statue at the harbor front with  Mr. and Mrs Shokichi Umeya (梅屋 庄吉) (1868-1934), a Japanese film producer and promoter from a rich Japanese land owning and ship owning family who has a photo shop in Hong Kong and a native of Nagasaki who first met Sun in Hong Kong and who later gave generous financial and even armament support to Sun in aid of the Chinese Revolution which eventually overthrew the Qing government in 1911. The statues were made in the PRC and was presented to Nagasaki in 2011 in appreciation of the efforts Mr. Shokichi Umeya. Sun had been to Japan about 14 times mostly as exiles and must have spent 10 years of his life there especially after he was wanted by the Qing Governemnt for fomenting revolution.. It was in 1904, that with the help of the Japanese, he set up the Tungmenghui (同盟會). The Japanese politicians saw in Sun an ally against the growing influence of the Western powers in East Asia and hoped that if the Sun's revolution were successful, stronger ties could be forged between the two nations against further Western encroachment. 

Buildings lining the harbor: to the left is the Museum of Arts and Craft

Japanese marine police boats

a cruiser at the harbor

Nipponised European building of the 19th century housing the Museum of Arts and
Craft

A rose in ice for 100 Yen

The town has a river running through it

a roadside statue

An old crossing of one of the rivers passing through the town

One of the 6 old bridges

A close up of the old crossing: some golden carps swimming there 

The oldest bridge in Nagasaki called Meganebashi (眼鏡橋) or Spectacles Bridge, over the Nakashima River (中島川), built in 1634 by the Chinese monk Mokusu of Kofukuji Temple. It is said to be the oldest stone arch bridge in Japan and has been designated as an Important Cultural Property. It received the nickname "Spectacles Bridge" because its two arches and their reflection in the water create the image of a pair of spectacles. On July 23, 1982, a disastrous deluge washed away six of the ten stone bridges over the Nakashima River. Meganebashi was badly damaged but fortunately almost all the original stones were retrieved and the bridge was restored to its original appearance.the so-called "eye- glasses bridge"

Young Japanese crossing the bridge, still in use

China helped the Japanese rebuild its old bridges in after a flood which took some 262 lives in July 1982 when 3 of the 6 ancient bridges were destroyed or damaged.  This is the memorial symbolizing the friendship between the two nations in Feb 1989.

Another view of the same bridge

A temple next to one of the old bridges.The Mokusu of Kofukuji Temple? Not sufficient time to find out.