Niji no Matsubara

   Yesterday morning I took a walk through the "hunted" forest of Karatsu's Niji no Matsubara.

Karatsu

   Saga isn't what many people would consider Japan's most exciting prefecture. It's the kind of place you've got to pass through when traveling somewhere else, which in my case is Nagasaki in the west or Kumamoto and Kagoshima in the south. That said, there are a few places in Saga that are worth visiting, one of which is the town of Karatsu.

   An hour's drive from Fukuoka, or about an hour and half from Tenjin (Fukuoka City) by local train, the small coastal town is easily accessible and provides a interesting day's worth of sightseeing.

   At the heart of the city is Karatsu castle, a beautiful white-washed structure rising above a promontory. Known as the "Dancing Crane Castle" (舞鶴城 Maizuru Jō), the original castle was constructed from 1602 to 1609. 

    The donjon pictured to the right is unfortunately a reconstruction. Like so many of Japan's once great castles, the original Maizuru Jô was destroyed after the feudal han system was abolished in the late 1800s in an ill-conceived attempt to eradicate vestiges of the former ruling system.

   Like many provincial towns, though, Karatsu offers a nostalgic glimpse at what Japan once looked like before the economic bubble of the 80s when life was simpler, less uncertain. Bus stops, diners, and beauty salons are little changed. You can't help but feel as if you've stepped back in time to the Shôwa Period. 

   As you might expect with similarly historic towns, in the vicinity of the castle, you can still find some of the so-called "quietly dignified" residences of the former samura class. Known as buke yashiki (武家屋敷), the homes are often surrounded by distinctive stone walls, sometimes with hedges atop, recessed entrances, and beautifully manicured gardens. In the city of Chiran in Kagoshima prefecture, most of these homes are open to the public. In Karatsu, however, I couldn't tell if any of them were. 

 

    Throughout Karatsu there are buildings dating back to the Edo, Meiji (See Karatsu Bank) Taishô, and Shôwa eras that are have been fairly well maintained. That's often the case in Japan, though, isn't it? It's in the backwaters where the wealth of the postwar boom years failed to trickle down that many of the better examples of architecture can be still found. There wasn't the mad dash after cash so common elsewhere that motivated property owners to bulldoze their cultural heritage and replace it with shabby condominiums, parking garages, or pachinko parlors.

   Recommended times to visit Karatsu depend upon what you'd like to do there. The summer months can be rather nice. There is a long stretch of beach that's not nearly as crowded with sunbathers on weekends as the beaches in the suburbs of Fukuoka city can be. The water is cleaner, too. Some the hotels even rent rooms for the afternoon so you can shower and rest after playing on the beach all day.

   Karatsu's biggest event of the year, the Karatsu Kunchi festival, falls around the Culture Day holiday (Nov.3). While not as exciting as, say, the Yamakasa Gion festival in Hakata (Fukuoka City), it makes traveling all the way to this town worth the while.

Karatsu Bank 2

They really don't make them like they used to. 

Karatsu Bank

   In a previous posting, I wrote about the Meiji era architect Kingo Tatsuno (辰野金吾) and promised that I would add some photos of his other buildings if I ever had the chance to see them. Well, the opportunity arose in early April while I was on a business trip to the city of Karatsu, Saga prefecture, hometown of the architect.

   I was in luck: the Former Karatsu Bank (旧唐津銀行) building had recently been refurbished and it's doors once again opened to the public only a few weeks before my visit.

   Built in the 45th year of Meiji (1912), it was one of the last buildings Tatsuno would see completed before he died in 1919 of the Spanish flu.

   Unfortunately, that is all I know of this iconic structure. The historical section of the former bank's homepage is, ironically, still under construction.

Exterior shot of the bank

Power cables, arrgh!

I was happy they had the good sense to maintain the integrity of the lighting and mail boxes around the bank. Now, if only they would bury the goddamn power lines so people can take photos of the building without having to photoshop them out.

Shall we go inside?

Azaleas

   There really isn't a better time to visit Japan than the spring. During the first half of the year, a series of flowers bloom in a fashion as orderly as the Japanese themselves: narcissus and camellia in January; ume (plum) blossoms in February; peach blossoms in March; sakura (cherry) blossoms in late March or early April, depending on the weather; wisteria, azaleas, and peonies around Golden Week; hydrangea from late May; irises in June, and so on.

    Before coming to Japan I couldn't have identified a peony had my life depended upon it, but nineteen years on I'm practically a botanist. Much of my knowledge of the flora Japanica has come to me passively, through dating women who either taught or were learning ikebana (flower arrangement). The rest has been filled in by students, many of whom are invariably trotting off to, say, Mount Kuju to view the wild azaleas in June, foraging their local woods for horsetails and bamboo shoots in early spring, or joining tours to see famous sakura tree. (Seriously.)

   I must be turning Japanese, because I too willingly (and gleefully) partake in these flower viewing festivities. A few years ago I traveled to the Daikôzen temple (大興善寺) in Kiyama, Saga prefecture to see the azaleas there.