The town figures into the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, from around 1100 C.E. And traces of the network of Buddhist temples, Kokubun-ji, from the 700s also are documented near the old city center. But the grid of narrow lanes, extensive use of heavy gray roof tiles, and the system of waterways through the old town center mostly date from the middle ages and especially the 260 years during the settled feudal period. It is these physical traces and the connections to the people who inhabit these spaces today that so strongly attracts my heart and sparks the curiosity in my mind. Learning to read the layers of time in the streetscape makes the slowly changing view a lively exercise in remembering each of the decades recalled by a particular building, monument, or layout of streets and other long-lasting features like locations for temples and shrines. By extension this taste for reading the cultural landscape makes a walk or bike ride through the fields and hamlets skirting the mountainsides equally enjoyable, as elements from the 1970s or 1950s or 1910s come into view. And so, while I do not wish the current generation of residents to live in the past, I do wish that they would conserve as much of the physical material as possible so that others, too, may feel some personal experience of the place where people before us also lived.
Other parts of the world with medieval city streets and buildings have worked hard to keep these special features for others to understand in the future, and for outsiders to enjoy now. There is a quality of life that cannot be created (like a movie set filled with fake buildings and lives) or paid for with lots of money. That quality of life grows slowly, like moss or patina from many seasons of sunrise and sunset.
Until the 1980s and 1990s the urge to destroy old buildings and widen the streets for automobile convenience and logic somehow bypassed the old center of Echizen-city. So you could walk or bike during dusk and easily imagine yourself transported back 50 or 75 years ago, so little has it all changed in its arrangement of living and work space and the traditional construction materials of wood, tile, paper, and some metal sheathing. But new money from the central government, ambitious mayors, and eager business leaders began to imagine for themselves the ways to make the city look brighter and more colorful; like the rest of Japanese cities rebuilt after WWII. Luckily, a lot of these ambitions were fulfilled at the city outskirts, filling in productive rice paddies to make parking lots and building foundations. So the old heart of the city persisted, thanks to construction work focused elsewhere.
In summer 2016 the plans got underway to prepare the ground for a new city hall to replace the one from 1950 that stands on the ground once occupied by the feudal lord’s castle from 1600 to 1867, through nine generations of rulers. When the feudal lord at the end of the Edo Period deeded the property to city residents at the transition from shogunate to parliamentary democracy in 1867, the main gate was moved a few 100 meters west to the south side of the Shokaku-ji temple, where it still stands today, 150 years later.
But as the blacktop parking lot behind the city hall was removed and two smaller public buildings on this lot were razed, the outlines of the feudal castle came into sight again. Most impressive was the remaining section of stone rampart, 3.5m by 20–25m, built in 1600 by hand: sourcing, transporting, then setting the stone (no cement or mortar) to form both the inner and outer moats. The rest of the stone walls of outer and inner moats were removed in the first years of transition from feudal to city government as part of the construction of a primary school that educated the next generation for 40–50 years before outgrowing its use and moving north 250m to the preset East Elementary School. What ever happened to all that stone wall from the outer moat and the outfacing side of the inner moat during the removal process, nobody seems to know or wonder about now. After the elementary school moved off the old castle site, the current city hall was opened in 1950 and the space of the former castle, gardens, and ramparts was buried and blacktopped until summer 2016.
To simplify the storyline, 12 months were set aside for excavation and documenting the site before rendering it ready for the heavy equipment and construction crews to erect the multi-story city hall for future generations. There was no vision or political will to incorporate some of this physical fabric of the feudal years into the new building, and so the weeks passed until August 2017 when destruction of the stone rampart loomed and a few dozen citizens rose up to challenge the purpose and process leading to this situation of casually erasing the city heritage for all future generations.
When the city of Takefu (70,000) merged with nearby Imadate (10,000) in October 2005 to form today’s Echizen-city as part of the national government’s incentive to reduce the number of municipalities and duplication of services, there was at the time a pledge to locate the new, joint city hall equidistant to both communities. But the current Mayor Nara, in his 3rd term and talking of running again, determined to keep things in downtown Takefu by ordering blueprints for the former castle site (former back lot becomes new city hall, current one becomes next parking area). In other words, no real effort was used to acknowledge and capitalize on the historical feature of the stone wall. He declared “200%” that the city hall blueprint would be carried out on this site.
The unexpected street march (8 video clips here), protest letters, local newspaper stories, and investigative tenacity of a group of residents caused the mayor to rethink for a moment and make his offer to number the stones in order to reconstitute a facsimile of the wall nearby. On the first day of destruction, shouts from onlookers at the work site and suggestions of a sit-in caused delays for a few days, but then a 4m metal wall went up to blind any witnesses to the cultural destruction. A neighbor adjacent to the property then built a scaffold for observers to climb. But later that day a 3.5 m wide viewing area was created by substituting clear plastic sheets for the steel ones to offer an overlook to the site.
So while most school age young people and other residents do not know or perhaps do not personally care about city decision-making, accountability (setsumei sekinin), and the imminent extinction of price-less (immeasurable, but also lacking modern utility value?) cultural heritage, a few people did file freedom of information papers to discover that procedures were not completely transparent, nor well thought out.
At least for a small segment of the residents, the past is very alive with meaning and highly endangered by construction-oriented people like the mayor, caught in the 1970s-1980s mindset that public works and construction bids make the city budgets big again. But then there was a time when people believed smokestacks belching black smoke was a sign of economic vitality, too.
Seeing the drama unfold has caused me to wonder at the attachment that I feel for this adopted 2nd homeland, a city where I have worked and lived for about six of the past 33 years. Not being born a local son or daughter of this place, the legacy is not strictly my concern. And yet I do feel some attachment to the physical elements of the past; perhaps due to the relatively deep roots here by comparison to my own relatively shallow immigrant depth in the New World; or due to the perspective of reaching middle age: that increased consciousness of time’s passage and the way that a person I see in front of me displays the child before and the elder some years from now, a chrono-vision.
What do I love about Takefu (Echizen-city)? Some things appealing about the place can be found in all of Japan’s regional cities of 25,000 to 100,000 people: scale is suited to bicycling or walking, climate, food, social amenities and infrastructure all are pleasing; of course the language is satisfying to hear and speak and learn, too. And some other things appeal due to personal experience of the times spent in this one place and the friendships sustained over the decades, events to see or be a part of (including the year of teaching in junior and senior high schools around the valley, 1984–85), and the layers of memories in all seasons and weather conditions and all times of day or night: on foot, driving, or biking the main streets and the back lanes (roji). Thanks to this peculiar mix of familiarity and yet foreignness, being in this city is a unique bi-focal experience: focusing on things that residents don’t see, but also seeing some of the local meanings and common knowledge that most outsiders or visitors don’t think about. Anthropologists occupy the in-between space of participant-observers, chronicling a place and a time different to local residents’ own views and also different to outside spectators’ understanding of the place. But these general and personal sources of satisfaction might have been equally true for some other part of the country if I had been working there instead of Takefu.
What is it about Takefu-alone that I like so well? The physical fabric of the past is alive and can be touched directly, not in a printed book (kiroku hozon — preserved only by documentary publication) or as a monument to describe the past significance. Both the layout of connecting streets and place names (cultural geography) and the history that goes with the people, places, and the events and artifacts here allow a person to become part of the past; to touch and personally catch a glimpse of other times and realities. In other words, very little imagination is needed to be a time traveler in Takefu, compared to the bombed and/or earthquake-shaken and rebuilt streets elsewhere in Japan.
Why is there emotional pleasure, personal meaning, and intellectual value in expanding one’s circle of interest, awareness, and care for a few generations backward or forward? The Native Americans are credited with the advice for making important decision by using the perspective of 7 generations, a timeframe of 150 to 200 years, in other words, the perspective of a mature tree or a long-lived cold water whale: how would one’s decision be viewed by the 3 generations before one’s own peer group and moment in history, and also by the 3 generations who will come after one’s own life is done (one’s children, grandchildren, and still one more generation after that). By following this long view advice, one acknowledges that many lives are touched by one’s own actions or inactions. The recognition of being tied to those who came before and those who follow makes the daily routines richer, more vivid, and especially meaningful. The days and years fill with the weight of responsibility to other generations who depend on your own behavior, reflections, and decisions.
Here then is the answer to my question: what do I love about Takefu? There are the personal meanings and the general features of Japanese language and society, but of this one location among all the rest of the urban and rural places around the islands, this one holds the texture, colors, structures, and light that reflects and illuminates the past (and future). I flow in the river of time here much better than other places.
Roots grow long but slowly. And with such strong roots one can grow high enough to see long distances and produce branches that are wide enough to shelter many people and the other creatures. In other words, a person who is alive to the past can also be alive to the present and the future; one is not rootless or easily distracted, confused, or misguided by ignorance. A different extended metaphor to show the power of historical sensitivity comes from the world of physics: a lever allows a person to move big things. A person who is deeply connected to the local landscape of the past has a very long lever that extends across several historical times, a lever that is capable of moving even the biggest modern problem. But a person unconscious of the connections between the past and the present has very little leverage with which to move a big problem. In that case the simplistic consumer mind takes over and one’s decision becomes nothing more than comparing numbers, the bottom-line price tag instead of fuller accounting for all value, opportunity cost, and debts externalized to others. Thank you, Takefu, for teaching me the lessons of physically touching the past, living with it today, and using this lens to see the widest possible picture of this place and our time. The past is fragile and does not speak loudly, but yet it is powerful and cannot be bought for any price or synthesized in facsimile. I pray that more residents can see the meaning and worth of the pieces of the past that still can be seen and lived among today.
Photostream and commentary this past year is www.flickr.com/photos/anthroview
