Icchô Rondon

Mitsubishi Ichigô Kan in 1909 (Meiji 42)

   One of my favorite areas of Tôkyô is Marunouchi, the commercial district located between Tôkyô Station and the Imperial Palace. I love the architecture, both old and new, the tree-lined streets, the proximity to the Imperial Palace, and, well, I could go on and on.

   The land where Marunouchi stands today was originally an inlet of Edo (Tôkyô) Bay. It was reclaimed in the late 1600s and during the Edo Period (1603-1868) feudal lords close to the Tokugawa Shogunate, known as fudai daimyô, maintained homes in the area. Following the Meiji Restoration, the land was used as a barracks and parade ground for the Imperial Army. And around 1890, the land was bought by the Mitsubishi company which began to develop it as a center for business. Mitsubishi still owns much of that prime real estate today.

   The first "Mitsubishi Ichi-gô Kan" (Building No.1) was completed in 1894 (Meiji 27). It was followed by the construction of a large number of similar brick buildings, and by the early 1900s the area was nicknamed Icchô Rondon (One-Mile London) because of its resemblance to the British capital.

Tôkyô Station, designed by Kingo Tatsuno, was completed in 1914.

 

   As is sadly all too common in Japan, very little of Icchô Rondon remains today. Except for Kingo Tatsuno's Tôkyô Station, and the Ministry of Justice building near Hibiya Park, I don't think any buildings from the era have survived. If you ask your Japanese friends why, they'll probably shrug. Push them a little and they might venture a guess that the area had been destroyed in the Great Kantô Earthquake of 1923.

   There is some truth in that. The massive quake, which killed an estimated 140,000 people in the fires alone, destroyed much of the city, including parts of Marunouchi.

Damage to the Marunouchi Building. The original building was completed in 1923. Today's building was completed in 2002.

Metropolitan Police Department burning at Marunouchi. Going, going, . . .

   The earthquake, however, explains only part of the story: many of Marunouchi's brick and stone buildings, though damaged, continued to be used long after the Great Kantô earthquake.

   The aerial bombings of Tôkyô during the Pacific War also took their toll. B-29 raids from the Marianas began on 17 November 1944 and continued right up until the day Japan capitulated, 15 August 1945. The Operation Meetinghouse air raid of 9–10 March 1945 is estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in history. More than 50% of the city had been wiped out.

   For more on the war and the bombing of Japan, watch the documentary "Victory in the Pacific by WGBH's American Experience. 

   I have no idea when these photos were taken. Many of the modern-looking buildings were built in the 30s. The Dai-ichi Seimeikan which housed the GHQ of the occupational forces was built in 1938. The Tôkyô Chûô Post Office (white building just left of Tôkyô Station) was built in 1933. The outer portion of the post office remains today and was incorporated into the design of the new building that was finished last year.

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   This photo was probably taken in the sixties, judging by the extent of development. It amazes me that the Japanese will build something, tear it down, build something else, tear that down, then build yet another building. There doesn't seem to be a sense of permanence in the designs, something that is not new to Japan. The Dai-ichi Seimeikan replaced a beautiful brick building. (You can see it in the second photo from the top. It is the building on the left side of the street with the street car in front of it.) The exhibit at Seimeikan says that it was a bold move by the architects to do away with the original building. Bold? I'd say it was egotistical and rash. They took a a real gem of a building and replaced it with something you see in pretty much any city today. Progress!

   Marunouchi today.

   Mitsubishi's Ichigôkan today. Completed in 2009, it is an exact replica of the original Ichigôkan which had stood on that corner from 1894 until 1968. Wouldn't it have been better, and certainly cheaper, to just keep the original Ichigôkan? Apparently there was a movement to try to protect the building, but they failed to keep it from being torn down. 

   Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, Tôkyô suffered a similar fate. Although it managed to come through both the Great Kantô earthquake and World War II unscathed, it was no match for the wrecking ball. Fortunately, the central lobby and reflecting pool were disassembled and rebuilt at The Museum Meiji Mura in Nagoya.

Language of Love and Hate

   When learning a foreign language, and particularly when you're fully immersed in it, you may come to associate words with the places where the words were first learnt, or with the person who first taught you them. As the years pass and your circle of acquaintances or, in my case, roster of former lovers grow, you may start to notice that the mood or nature of a relationship can be characterized by the words that were acquired during the time when those people were in your life.

   A rocky relationship with one woman taught me the words ayashii (怪しい, questionable, dubious, fishy, suspicious, unreliable), yabai (ヤバい, chancy, dodgy, touch-and-go, in hot water), and so on.

   My first marriage was wellspring of words such as iyami otoko (嫌み男, sarcastic bastard), dasan-teki (打算的, calculating), sekoi yatsu (stingy bastard), and yôryô ga warui (要領がわるい, cack-handed). I also learned the word 慰謝料 (isharyô, “consolation money”, a.k.a. alimony) from that woman. Ah, the memories!

   Less contentious lovers have taught me, among other things, toriko (虜, a slave to love), horeru (惚れる, be entranced, be taken with), and zokkon (ゾッコン, to be head over heels). Sigh.

   For someone like me who enjoys reading and writing, who hungers for new words and vocabulary, to be in the company of someone who is a source for fresh vocabulary or novel ways of saying what has long become tiresome and clichéd can be as stimulating as a drug.

Guns Over the People (G.O.P.)

   According to an article in the Huffington Post today, the daughter of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal who died in last December's mass shooting confronted Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) over her vote against allowing debate on expanding background checks for firearm purchases.

   Reading the article, it occured to me that this was an odd and uniquely American debate between those who demand the continued ease of access to guns to protect themselves from a perceived threat of violence and those who seek to restrict that accessibility to guns because they or someone they care for have suffered from real gun violence.

   Sadly, it's often those on the side of further loosening restrictions who win the debate. They're the ones with the guns, after all.

   And if you thought the NRA was over the top, a rival gun rights organization called the Gun Owners of America (GOA) has criticized the NRA for (heaven forbid) compromising on gun rights issues and selling out the gun rights movement.

   I pledge allegience to the Guns of the United States of America and to the Freedom for which they stand, one Nation under Guns, Guns, and more Guns, unrestrictable, unrelinquishable, uninfringible, with assault weapons and ammo for all.

   In his response to the Sandy Hook mass shooting, LaPierre LaPyoo had this, among other malarkey, to say:

   "And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal. There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people. Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bullet Storm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Combat, and Splatterhouse.

   "And here’s one, it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research staff can find it, and all of yours couldn’t? Or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it? Add another hurricane, add another natural disaster. I mean we have blood-soaked films out there, like American Psycho, Natural Born Killers. They’re aired like propaganda loops on Splatterdays and every single day."

   So, LaPierre's answer to gun violence is to not restrict access to guns which would be a violation of the Second Amendment, but he's all for restricting freedom of speech because (what?) James Madison was only kidding when he wrote the First Amendment?

   Click this, for a reminder of what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment.

   There's a lot of freedom-luvin' patriots out there who are arming themselves to the teeth out of a fear that the gu'mint is going get 'em and they hell as ain't goin' without a fight. But, even if these crackers had Bradley tanks and RPGs in their arsenals, the government would still kick their arses. 

Profiles That Discourage

   On Wednesday, while the nation was focused on news about a possible arrest of a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, several amendments to the gun control bill, including the so-called Manchin-Toomey amendment which would require universal background checks--the lowest hanging fruit of a bill that was already modest in scope--were defeated. The amendment, which has public support of 92%, received only 54 votes in favor, 46 against, meaning it failed to clear the 60-vote hurdle needed to move ahead. Four Democrats (Baucus of Montana, Begich of Alaska, Heitkamp of N.Dakota, and Harry Reid of Nevada) voted no. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it should be noted, voted against the amendment for procedural reasons, in order to preserve the right to bring the measure back up for another vote.

   According to The Washington Post, "A number of other amendments also failed to earn the 60 votes necessary to pass: A GOP proposal including a number of changes, 52 to 48; a bipartisan amendment to stiffen penalties for 'straw purchasers,' 58 to 42; a GOP-backed amendment that would have permitted 'national reciprocity' of state-issued concealed carry permits, 57 to 43; a GOP plan to extend gun rights for veterans, including those deemed unable to manage their financial affairs, 56-44; and a Democratic amendment to limit the size of ammunition magazines, 54-46."

   All in all, it was a dark day for advocates of comprehensive gun control, but hardly surprising. In spite of its waning influence over the electorate, the NRA still has such a firm hold on politicians in Washington that policies even a majority of its four and a half million members support can't get passed, let alone voted upon. You might as well give the NRA naming rights to the U.S. Capitol Building.

   Monday's bomb attack which killed three people and injured more than 180 reminded Americans that public safety cannot be taken for granted. I strongly feel, however, that the greatest threat to Americans today is not a terrorist with a home-made bomb, but rather the feckless politicans in D.C. who are unable to stand up to the gun industry's lobby and do the right thing. Shame on them.

   28,840 people have been shot so far this year in the goold ol' United States. In a normal country, a fraction of that dismal statistic would be more than enough to prompt action on gun violence. Not in America, though, where not even the massacre of twenty innocent school children was enough to move Senators to vote for modest changes in our gun laws. It makes me sick.

   In 1955, then Senator John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography describing the accounts of eight senators who had crossed party lines or defied the opinion of their constituents to do what they believed was right. A new edition of the work is scheduled to be published later this year. Working title: Profiles That Discourage.

Itchy Fingers

   Some people just can't help themselves.

   Shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing which has claimed three lives and injured more than a hundred, conservative commentator Erik Rush was quick to blame the attack on "evil" Muslims. 

   NPR's political editor Ken Rudin, on the other hand, urged caution in his tweet: "Remember when everyone pointed fingers immediately after Oklahoma City and were proven wrong? Some caution here, please."

   My thoughts exactly. Before rushing to hold Muslims responsible for the horrific attack, consider what The New York Times had to say: "some law enforcement officials noted that the blasts came at the start of a week that has sometimes been seen as significant for radical American anti-government groups: it was the April 15 deadline for filing taxes, and Patriots’ Day, a week that has seen attacks in the past. April 19 is the anniversary of the deadly 1993 fire near Waco, Tex., that ended a 51-day standoff and left 80 members of a religious group called the Branch Davidians dead. April 19 is also the anniversary of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which prosecutors said was conceived in part a response to the Waco raid."

   I wonder, if a radical American anti-government group is found to be responsible for the bombing, will Erik Rush then insist that all conservatives be killed? I suspect the answer would be "No."

Bombs Away!

   Wayne (BoomBoom) LaDerrière, the head of the National Bomb Association, lobbed a verbal grenade at critics following the bombing at the Boston Marathon and calls for tougher bomb-control laws. We have included an excerpt of LaDerrière’s speech here:

   "As spectators, we do everything we can to keep our athletes safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at sporting events. The only way to stop a monster from killing our sports heroes is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a bomb is a good guy with a bomb.

   "Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you'll print tomorrow morning: 'More bombs,' you'll claim, 'are the NBA's answer to everything!' Your implication will be that bombs are evil and have no place in society, much less in our sporting events. But since when did the word 'bomb' automatically become a bad word?

   "A bomb in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn't a bad word. A bomb in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn't a bad word. And when you hear the glass shattering in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won't be able to pray hard enough for a bomb in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

   "So why is the idea of a bomb good when it's used to protect our President or our country or our police; but bad when it's used to protect our athletes in their sporting events?"

   "I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put police officers armed with explosive belts or suicide vests at every major sporting event - and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of Semtex is in place when our athletes return to their next game, match, or race."

   "Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our sportsmen and sportswomen return to the field, court or pitch, we need to have every single stadium, gymnasium, court and racetrack in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work - and by that I mean security armed with grenades, mortars, and plastic explosives, embedded with nuts and bolts and nails.

   "Right now, today, every stadium, gym and aerobics club in the United States should plan meetings with instructors, coaches, administrators, team owners, and local authorities - and draw upon every resource available - to erect a cordon of destruction around our athletes right now."

   "There'll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, the clock is literally ticking, this is the day for decisive action.

   "We can't wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can't lose precious time debating legislation that won't work. We mustn't allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us. We must act now, never forgetting that bombs don’t kill people, people do."