The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 by Eric Hobsbawm

(Book Review)

This is another classic history. It was originally published in 1962, but has gone through numerous reprintings and is still available today.
Eric Hobsbawm is a famous British Marxist historian, and this book is part of his series analyzing recent history from a Marxist perspective.

I bought this book, along with another Hobsbawm book: "Revolutionaries", a few years ago in a Nagoya bookstore. Both books have sat on my shelf ever since and although I would leaf through them from time to time (I quoted Hobsbawm in this 2004 post) this is the first time I've read this book cover to cover.

It was not an easy read for me, which is why I waited a long time before sitting down and seriously reading it.

As the title indicates, the book covers the Revolutionary period of European history, specifically the Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848, and the years in between. But Hobsbawm never tells you what happened during those Revolutions. Instead he analyzes the conditions leading up to the revolutions, and the conditions resulting from them.
If you, like me, enjoy narrative history rather than analytical history, than this is strike one against the book already.

Added to that is a prose so dry and academic that you really have to concentrate hard to follow what Hobsbawm is saying.
A typical example:
When we come to analyse the social and political structure of the world in the 1840s, however, we leave the world of superlatives for that of modest qualified statements. The bulk of the world's inhabitants continued to be peasants as before, though there were a few areas-notably Britain-where agriculture was already the occupation of a small minority, and the urban population already on the verge of exceeding the rural, as it did for the first time in the census of 1851. There were proportionally fewer slaves, for the international slave-trade had been officially abolished in 1815 and actually slavery in the British colonies in 1834, and in the liberated Spanish and French ones in and after the French Revolution. However, while the West Indies were now, with some non-British exceptions, an area of legally free agriculture, numerically slavery continued to expand in its two great remaining strongholds, Brazil and the Southern USA, stimulated by the very progress of industry and commerce which opposed all restraints of goods and person, and official prohibition made the slave trade more lucrative. (p. 369). And on it goes like that. And the sad thing is, that's only half the paragraph.

I know I ripped that out of context, but just imagine a whole book written in that dry tone.
I constantly found my mind wandering as I tried to work my way through this book, and in the end I could only get through it in small doses at a time.

It's a pity this book isn't written in a more accessible style, because once you get past the dry prose the ideas contained within are really fascinating. If you take the trouble to engage this book, you will learn a lot of interesting things from it.

Hobsbawm has taken an 60 year period of history when all of Europe was consumed with the struggle between absolutism and liberty.
"Liberty, that nightingale with the voice of a giant, rouses the most profound sleepers...How is it possible to think of anything today except to fight for or against freedom? Those who cannot love humanity can still be great as tyrants. But how can one be indifferent?" (Ludwig Boerne (W) quoted in Hosbawm p. 138)

Every history student knows about the great revolutions of 1789 (which started in Paris and then spread to the rest of Europe) 1830 (which started in Paris and then spread to the rest of Europe) and 1848 (same deal).
But to this broad picture, Hobsbawm adds several more waves of revolution which don't always make the history books, such as the wave of uprisings that took place between 1820-1824.
Hobsbawm describes how the European revolutionaries during this period saw each local revolution as being connected, and dreamed of a single unified Republic. He compares the unified front against absolutism in every country as being similar to the struggle against fascism in the 1930s. And he compares events like the Greek Revolution in the 1820s which drew left wing support from all over, to the Spanish Civil War in the 20th century.
(And for that matter, comparisons are made to the Spanish civil war in the 19th century, in which liberal intellectuals threw their support behind the international brigade which went to support the Spanish liberals against the reactionary Clericals in the Spanish civil war of 1820-1823).

But it is not just the political revolutions that Hobsbawm is interested in. He examines the dual industrial and political revolutions and their impact on each other. For example, the political revolutions abolished feudalism and serfdom. Although this was partly done because of idealistic reasons, it also had the affect of flooding the cities with cheap labour needed for the factory owners. Thus ideology was largely shaped by the industrial necessity.
Hobsbawm also highlights some of the paradoxes of the age. For example liberal opinion eventually eliminated the slave trade in Europe, but that same liberal opinion placed a preeminent value on free trade, which helped to ensure that slavery would remain lucrative in it's two remaining strongholds: Brazil and the Southern United States.
Also the liberal attitude idealized a laizefaire state, but, partly as a result of liberal reforms a bureaucracy was created and by 1840 government expenditure in liberal Britain was four times as great as autocratic Russia.

Hobsbawm also charts the birth of capitalism, it's earlier disasters and recessions, and how its proponents quickly established it in the popular mind as the only possible system of human existence.

The book has chapters on almost every imaginable facet of society: war, peace, land, religion, secular ideology, the arts and the sciences. These are all interesting in their own ways. For example, Hobsbawm in his chapter on science Hobsbawm explores the early conflicts between religion and science.

In his section on the arts, Hobsbawm claims that almost all of the art of lasting value from this period was politically motivated (contrary to the post modern view that true art must be separated from politics). He cites examples from Mozart's "The Magic Flute" to Beethoven's "Eroica" to the French painters such as Delacroix and David to all the romantic and revolutionary novelists of the period.

However as fascinating as all these sections are, once again one finds oneself having to wade through very dry and thick prose.
I recommend this book with caution. It's not an easy read, but for the reader willing to struggle through it there's a lot of interesting material in here.

Addendum: Also any one not fluent in French will find all the untranslated quotes an additional annoyance.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent post production interview After reviewing a couple Chomsky documentaries, it's interesting to hear how he feels about them. Turns out he's not a huge fan of "Manufacturing Consent"

The Guns of Navarone

(Movie Review)

I couldn't really tell you why, but I was in the mood the other day to see an old classic film the other day.

I have a soft spot in my heart for old films (maybe because when I was growing up, it was all I was allowed to watch) and I even consider myself a bit of a classic film buff.

...Although I guess you'd never know it from reading this blog.
What can I say? The old films have a lot of charm, but they demand a certain amount of attention. It can be difficult to sit through them after you've had your attention span ruined by MTV and Family Guy.

This film is a perfect example of the good and bad points of classic film.

It's a great World War II film, filled with classic actors doing their true-grit tough-as-nails hardened soldier routine.

Gregory Peck plays the lead character, doing his usually tough guy role.

Anthony Quinn also plays a real tough guy. And he's even promised to kill Gregory Peck's character after the war.

David Niven plays a....well, if you've seen any David Niven movies, you know he's not much of a tough guy actor. He plays the intellectual explosives experts and corny joker of the group, and in doing so provides a nice contrast to Quinn and Peck.

It's great to see all these classic actors at the height of their fame. And they all do a bang up job.
The script is pretty well written, and there's a great, "One of the people in this room must be a traitor" scene that gave it some extra punch near the middle.

And what's more, I had been watching so many new movies lately, I had almost forgotten what real films used to look like before CGI. When they are in the storm, or when the boat gets shipwrecked, or when they're climbing up the cliff face, that's really them doing it.

(Well, actually I know they're using a studio tank and they're not really getting ship wrecked in the ocean, but those are real actors with real water.)

But the pacing of the film just killed me. I had a hard time sitting through it to be honest.

This film takes place in Greece during World War II.
You don't hear a lot about Greece in World War II these days do you? You hear a lot about the battles at Normandy and D-day, but I'm not used to associating Greece with the intrigues of World War II, which lends a bit of exoticism to the setting, and the film makers try and use this to maximum advantage.

[Although come to think of it, there was that "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" (W) movie that came out a few years ago. And that was pretty interesting (I saw it on video). But aside from that, I'd venture that most people don't know anything about Greece in World War II.]

Wikipedia cites "The Guns of Navarone" as being "part of a cycle of big-budget World War II adventures that included The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Longest Day (1962) and The Great Escape (1963)."

"The Longest Day" is still on my list of films to see someday, I've - seen the other two. All 3 of these other films are loosely based on real events, which would lead you to expect "The Guns of Navarone" is historical accurate as well.

In fact (citing wikipedia again) it's based on a novel, not a real historical event, and there wasn't even a real island called Navarone. But the events of the film/ novel are framed by the real life "Dodecanese Campaign" (W).
(If you're a history geek like me, finding out these things becomes important to you. Apologies to everyone one else.)

The version I rented was the collectors DVD, which contained an interesting admission by the director that if the film was being made now-a-days he would have had to change the whole pacing of the film. It's something we all know, but it was interesting to hear the director say it himself.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky - Venezuela, a Model for the World?

Futurama: Bender's Big Score

(Movie Review)

Despite my best efforts to buckle down and study, I end up wasting more and more time watching stupid movies.

But you can say this for Futurama, it's a very pleasant waste of time.

Although I was a big Simpsons fan, I didn't watch much Futurama when it was on in the late 90s. I saw the first episode, wasn't terribly impressed, and never really followed up on it. (Half of the series run was after I had gone to Japan anyway).

I became a Futurama fan when I was living back in the states a few years ago. I was working 3rd shift so I was on a weird sleep schedule, and watching a lot of late night cable TV. And Futurama was being re-run late at night on both the Cartoon Network and Comedy Central.

And it was a lot of fun. It may not have been quite as funny as the Simpsons was during their hey day, but the fact that the series took place in a wonderful animated crazy future world meant that absolutely any zany idea could happen. Every few minutes some ridiculous new alien or futuristic gadget would come on screen. It was perfect brain candy for my short attention span.

Since that time, Futurama came out with 4 direct to DVD movies (W). The other night, I was feeling in the mood for some light entertainment. Renting these movies was not an option as they never got released in Japan, so I thought I'd try and track down an internet copy of the first of these movies. (Which, I don't need to tell you web savy people, is no problem at all. Within a couple minutes I found what I was looking for.)

For now, I feel like I got my fix in, so I have no plans to continue on and watch the rest of the movies in the near future. But you never know. My self-resolve may break down again, and I might find myself wasting more time watching movies of the internet. Stay tuned to this blog to find out.

This movie isn't anything special. It's essentially just an hour and a half episode of Futurama. But that's okay. Unlike "The Simpsons" much hyped theatrical release, this was a direct to DVD movie, so it's about what you would expect. And unlike "The Simpsons Movie", it held my interest all the way to the end.

The movie starts out with some great comic self-referencing: a series of gags in which the characters almost seem self-aware of having been cancelled two years previously, and a not very subtle attack of the Fox executives who ordered it.

From there it quickly descends into the usually Futurama zaniness and morbid humor, complete with one of the main characters getting his head chopped off and his body crushed within the first 10 minutes.

For fans of the series (which is probably everyone who goes through the trouble to rent the DVD), there are lots of references to previous characters. One of the neat things about Futurama (unlike most cartoon comedy shows) is that it actually keeps track of its continuity and characters and stories evolve over time. That's true in this movie as well.
But, lest I intimidate any newcomers, it's also pretty easy to catch onto what is going on.

Richard Nixon's head once again returns as the President of Earth, complete with his trusty Spiro Agnew by his side. (That whole running Nixon gag is another thing I love about Futurama. Any other show would have given up on mocking Nixon by the 21st century, but Futurama is still kicking him around.)

The songs were the weak point--a pity because Groenig and his team have put together some wonderful musical parodies over the years on both Simpsons and Futurama, but this time around they obviously didn't have the time (or maybe the energy) to bother. The songs end up essentially just being time fillers.

All in all, a great way to waste time for anyone trying to get through another week night.

Link of the Day
"Black Faces in Limousines:" A Conversation with Noam Chomsky

Hellboy 2

(Movie Review)

Last summer I wrote on this blog that I went out and rented the first "Hellboy" movie, a movie I had previously had no interest in, because of all the rave reviews Hellboy 2 had been getting.
(In particular I was influenced by Time Magazine's review which you can read here.)

Now a year later this movie has finally hit my video store, so I get to check it out.

And it lives up to the hype.

Judged by the standards of normal summer super-hero blockbusters, it's a very strange offering. It mixes in elements of the fantasy genre such as fairies, elves, trolls, and goblins. It is a superhero movie, a "Lord of the Rings" movie, and Harry Potter all mixed together.

The characters in this movie are wonderfully strange, such as the evil tooth fairies, the baby / tumor, and Johann Krauss, a character completely made up of ectoplasmic gas.
I was slightly disappointed that the FBI agent John Myers, who was one of the main characters in the first film, didn't return (there was a throw-away reference to his being in Antarctica) but perhaps his absence freed up the film to bring bring in more strange new creatures to fill up the screen.

In fact, some scenes in the film are so crammed full of magical creatures that I regret not having seen this film on the big screen. It was hard to make out everything on my small little screen. (If you watch the director's commentary, Guillermo (W) is constantly telling you to go back on the DVD and pay attention to this or that creature in the background or upper right hand corner, but I couldn't be bothered).

The fight scenes in this movie are also pretty cool. What more could you ask for?
Someday when I'm back in the US I'll have to get around to seeing "Pan's Labyrinth" (all the copies in Japan don't have English subtitles). And I'm also looking forward to seeing Guillermo's upcoming take on "The Hobbit".

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky vs Bush Family Policy

The Illusionist

(Movie Reviews)

"Zodiac", flawed thought it was, whetted my appetite for an intelligent mystery, suspense movie. So I remembered this one.

This movie had been recommended to me by Paul a little over a year ago following my review of "The Prestige".

I had promised to look up "The Illusionist" when it came out in Japan, and then sort of just forgot about it.

Not all American films get a big release in Japan, and "The Illusionist" never hit my local video store.

Now that I was in the mood to watch it, however, I decided just to watch an illegal version off the Internet. I'm not proud.

(Someday, I'll write a post about how I think illegal pirating of material on the internet would almost completely disappear if people had more access to stuff legally. Because I totally would have paid the 150 yen to rent this movie if only that had been an option for me. But that's another subject for another post.)

This movie is...well, it's nothing special, but it's pretty OK.
The plot keeps you guessing right till the end. The pacing is a little bit too slow and the story gets a little bit too drawn out. (Really what we have here is a 30 minute story stretched out into a feature length movie). But although I got a little restless at times, on the whole the movie kept my attention.

Ed Norton is one of my favorite actors, and as always he does a bang-up job in this. Paul Giamatti isn't quite in the same league, but he always does a nice job.

The ending I found slightly anti-climatic, and once the film was done I felt like it didn't make a great impression on me one way or the other. But it held my attention while I was watching it. Sometimes that's all you can ask from a film.

Link of the Day
Drain the Swamp and There Will Be No More Mosquitoes

Tsukumi / 津久見

(Better Know a City)

Monday, June 15, 2009
As I work my way further and further from my home city of Nakatsu, I'm spending more and more time in the car. Despite leaving my house shortly after 7, it was about 11:30 by the time I arrived in Tsukumi. (Had I known what I was doing, I probably could have taken a shorter route. Instead, for lack of any better directions I just followed the coast.)

After driving through Usuki, I went through a long tunnel. When I exited the tunnel, I was in Tsukumi, and the first sight that greated my eyes was a great view of the mountains.
There was what looked like a scenic overview, so I stopped there to take a picture. (After I had already stopped the car, I saw a sign forbidding parking because it was a truck turn around--or something like that. But I was only there for a couple of minutes).
I tried to capture the view on film as much as was possible.


After that, I continued driving into Tsukumi. I followed the signs and stopped at the town hall, where I picked up some maps and pamphlets.

Tsukumi seemed like a really beautiful area, and I was sorry I didn't have more time to spend there.
If you look at Tsukumi on a map, the town boundaries look a bit like an octopus. It's a long thin boarder around the coast with several tentacle like peninsula's that jut out into the water. Not surprisingly, it's famous as a port town.
Southern Oita prefecture is extremely beautiful on the right day. The ocean water looks really clear and beautiful, and the mountains are filled with so much green vegetation it almost has a bit of a tropical look (at least to my mid-Western eye).
Tsukumi has plenty of both ocean and green mountains, so it has no lack of scenic views.

They are, however, in the process of carving up and tearing down several of these mountains to make cement out of them. [Obligatory reference to "Dogs and Demons" (A) here]. The cement industry is the big industry in Tsukumi, and so driving through the town you also see lots of mountains with their faces torn off and also a lot of big factories for processing cement.
What was interesting to me was that the town makes no attempt to try and hide this. Even the town brochures have many pictures of the torn up mountains, and the cement construction cites are on the tourist map. (Admittedly In any wide angle photo of the city, it would be hard to remove the construction completely.)

I left my car parked in the town hall and decided to wander around central Tsukumi a little bit.
Tsukumi wasn't huge, but compared to a lot of the really dinky towns I've been to on this project, I thought it at least had a decent downtown area. There were several shops, restaurants, pachinko parlors (W), et cetera.

From the town hall, I walked on a foot bridge over the train tracks to Tsukumi train station. I went down the stairs on the other side of the station, and saw a picture of Otomo Sorin.








I had no idea who Otomo Sorin was before coming to Tsukumi, and since there was no English information available in the town I only got a vague idea of his significance while I was there. I could tell from all symbolism surrounding his memorials he must have been one of the early Japanese Christians, but that was about it. If you read the wikipedia article, they explain his historical significance there.

I followed the road down to the ocean, where there was a ferry port.
The ferry is for the two islands off the coast of Tsukumi, Hotojima Island and Mukujima Island. (Actually there are more islands in Tsukumi, but I think these are the only two the ferry makes regular trips to).
I'm sure both of these islands are quiet scenic, but I didn't feel like I had time to fit them in. The day was already almost half over, I still had all of mainland Tsukumi to explore. It was a 25 minute trip one way just to get to one island, not counting buying the ticket and waiting around for the next ferry to depart, et cetera.
So, alas, I skipped the islands. My loss I'm sure.

Next to the ferry port was a big park called Tsukumin Park. It had a huge playset for the kids to climb around on. (Actually it was more like several different playsets connected to eachother with a series of ladders and tunnels, but it was still pretty cool). Being a weekday afternoon, however, the only people wandering around the park where old people.





I walked down the road along the ocean for a while, and marveled at how clear and beautiful the water looked, and how beautiful the mountains were.




I saw signs for the grave of Otomo Sorin, 2 kilometers away. Maybe I should have saved time by going back to my car and driving, but after having spent the entire morning behind the wheel I was still feeling like doing some walking. So I walked out there, and enjoyed the charm of the small town streets.

On the way there was a park on a hill (high enough up apparently that there was a sign designating it as one of the tsunami safety points) called "Otomo Park". I walked up there. Not too much to report. There was a miniature wooden ship, and a lookout tower from which I got a good view of the town.








And I continued on towards the grave of Otomo Sorin.
It was a pretty scenic walk, and I got some more pictures along the way.





The grave and surrounding memorial park about Otomo Sorin still didn't tell me much about who he was. But I walked it and took some pictures.








And then I walked back.

At this point I felt like I had explored central Tsukumi, and it was time to get back in the car and go out along the coast.
And so I drove along route 217. After going through a couple tunnels, I took a turnoff for Enoura and Akasaki Penninsula.
Actually it's a little confusing telling which is which. As far as I'm concerned, they're the same peninsula but the part that juts out a little further, Akasaki, gets its own name. So I stopped here for a minute to consult the map, while I simultaneous admired the orange tree orchard carved out on the mountainside. (I had seen a few of these before, but this is the first one I stopped to video tape).




Next I followed a long and windy road out to Akasaki peninsula. It was a short distance from where I was, but everywhere takes a long time to get to in Tsukumi because you always have to go up and down the mountainside. So I drove up the mountain, down the mountain, and got to the edge of Akasaki Peninsula. The map had advertised a small shrine and a scenic view. And there was a small shrine. I'm not sure if the view was all that special.








To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that the drive out to Akasaki Peninsula was worth it, but that's all part of the fun of exploring. You never know what you're going to find when you head back.

On the drive back, I stopped the car briefly on the side of the road to get a picture of the view from the mountain looking down.




I continued driving on to Enoura Peninsula, and then around to Youra Peninsula.
Again, this might sound like a simple drive along the coast, but it was winding up and down mountains again and it took a consider amount of time to move a small distance on the map.

From one of the mountains on Youra Peninsula there was a scenic viewing area, where you could look out and see the ocean and the mountains.






And I continued driving down the coast. Eventually I went out onto another peninsula. (Or was it the same one. The naming system is a little bit confusing.)

Right out on the very tip of this last peninsula is the Mamoto district. And right off the coast of the Mamoto district is Hotojima Island.

I had already decided that I didn't have time to fool around with the ferry time tables today. But as I drove out towards the edge of the peninsula, Hotojima Island looked so close I thought I'd be able to drive right up to it.

Nope, no luck. The road ended. Still, as I got out of my car and walked on the rocks by the ocean, the island looked so close that I thought I could just use some stepping stones to skip and jump my way over to the island.





And it really was almost that close. If there had been a few more strategically placed rocks, I could probably have hopped, skipped, and jumped my way across.
I thought for a moment there might be a foot bridge across to the island, but then I realized those were just telephone wires.

Actually the island is so close that it beats me why they don't just build a little footbridge connecting it to the mainland. That way people wouldn't have to mess around with the Ferry.
It would be great for tourists like me, but the people who live on the island would be the ones who really benefit. They must get sick of taking that 25 minute ferry all the time when they are (literally) spitting distance from the mainland.
Why in the world don't they build some sort of bridge?
Well, I'm no civic engineer. Maybe there are problems with the ocean current or other complications I don't know about. Maybe the powerful ferry boat lobby is in control of this town.
At any rate, from what I could see it looked like everyone on the island had there own private boat anyway, so they probably weren't too inconvenienced.

There was a clump of houses on the island coast, and in fact the island looked a lot more populated than the Mamoto district peninsula did. Maybe there were cool places to hang out there, I'll never know.
I considered wading across the ocean, but it might be deeper than it looked in the middle. I'd probably have to swim it. Which means I should have to leave my video and camera behind. And my wallet and my car keys. And then I would arrive on the other side soaking wet, covered in sticky salt water, and without any money.
No, it wasn't worth it. Hotojima Island was so close, but for me so far away.

I saw a pillar sticking up on one of the rocks on the coast, and I thought it was some sort of shrine. I started climbing up the rock, although halfway through I noticed that there was no trail of any kind and I probably shouldn't be climbing on it. I half expected the fisherman to start yelling at me (as people often do in Japan when you try and get off the beaten path) but they just ignored me, so I climbed up anyway.
The pillar turned out to be...I don't know actually. Something connected with the phone lines I guess. At any rate from the top of the rock I got a good view of the island, and took some video.






I now decided to turn around and head in the other direction.
I drove back west on the 217 and returned to the center of town. I kept driving along the coast and, before I knew it, the road took me right through a cement factory.

I was still on the main road, but I had the feeling of driving through a private factory and wondered if I was supposed to be there. On both sides of the road there were industrial buildings, factories and smokestacks. And above the road were all sorts of conveyer belts enclosed in tubes connecting the two buildings. I had the feeling of suddenly being in one of those disutopian futuristic movies where the robots have taken over everything. Oh yeah, and it smelled bad too.

After getting through the factory I tried to continue driving up the Northern coast of Tsukumi, but I ran into the usual roadblocks, construction,winding roads and confusing street signs.

I was beginning to lose patience with it all, and I was also feeling tired and hungry. I hadn't had lunch yet, and I had been out in the sun all day. It was now 4 o'clock, so I decided to return to the main part of town.

I ate at my favorite chain restaurant in Japan, Joyfull, and indulged myself at the free coffee bar for a bit whilst I read my book.
Once I felt like I had my energy back, I set out again. It was after 5, but in the summer days the sun stays out a little bit longer.

I walked around the downtown area, and retread a lot of the ground I had gone over that afternoon. I even toyed with taking one of the ferries out, but when I got to the ferry port they were already closed for the day. I went back to the train station, and looked around there some more.
Right off from the train station was a road labelled, "Showa Road" and I decided to follow that and see where it would lead.

As I walked down the street, I saw a sign for an English school.
Even though I've been in Japan for a number of years now, I still kind of feel like I have a special connection whenever I see one of these schools, especially out in the countryside where foreigners are few and far between. "Oh, look, there's an English school. And here I am, a native English speaker. I have a connection here."

There was an older woman sweeping below the sign, and she called out to me to ask me where I was from and what I was doing. "I'm from Nakatsu," I said without thinking (as we long term expats tend to do) and then had to correct myself. "No, sorry, I mean I'm from America. I live in Nakatsu now. I'm just out sight seeing in Tsukumi today."

"Do you have some time? What is your schedule?"
"I don't really have a schedule. Yeah, sure I have some time."

"Will you come inside with me? I'd like to talk with you."

It was a bit odd, but you get this sometimes in Japan. Maybe she just wanted to have a chat with a foreigner. And if this would make her day, I was more than happy to do it. I suspected she probably wanted me to work at her school, which I couldn't easily do from Nakatsu. But I didn't have a good reason not to at least hear her out on the proposal either, so I went inside with her.

Sure enough, after exchanging some pleasantries, she mentioned she had need of a native speaker for a couple hours a week. "But it's probably too long from Nakatsu."

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry. It took me almost 3 hours just to get here today."
Her husband (who had also come into the room)chimed in, "Yes, 3 hours, that would be about right from Nakatsu."

"Oh, that's too bad. I was hoping we'd be able to use you here. Oh well."

But as long as I was sitting in their living room, I figured I might as well ask them a few questions about Tsukumi. And for their part, they seemed more than happy to play the tour guide and tell the foreigner all about their home town, so it worked out well.
"Right," I said, pulling out my maps, "so what's worth seeing in Tsukumi."

"In Tsukumi? There's not much to see in Tsukumi," the woman said. "It's just a coastal town, and the coast is so mountainous that it's difficult to drive around easily. Not many people come here for tourism. The only thing it's really famous for is its mikan (W) orchards."

I pointed on the map to a few of the places I had already been to. "I went up to the tip of this peninsula," I said, "And I tried to go to Hotojima Island. There's no way to get there from the peninsula, is there?"
"No, you have to go back to the center of town and take the ferry port."
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, was there anything interesting on that island missed out on?"

She and her husband both thought for a while, and then answered, "No, the island has nothing. It's just a bunch of fishing boats, and houses for the fishermen. Young people don't find it interesting at all."

"And Mukujima Island?"

"No, nothing interesting."

"Alright, now I also passed a big baseball stadium on the road. Does that get a lot of use?" [I didn't stop to take a picture here, but there was a big baseball stadium out on one of the peninsulas close to the town center."

"Oh yeah, they play a lot of games there," the husband answered.

"And I also noticed a lot of cement factories around here. And a lot of the mountains are carved up."

"Yes, that's for the limestone. It's Tsukumi's main industry."

I moved on to more banal questions. "Now this road here is named "Showa Road". Is there any reason for that?"

"Because it was made during the Showa era," the woman answered. "That's the only reason, just a reference to when it was built. Have you ever been out to Showa Town in Bungo Takeda? There they've got a street built to look like the Showa era. When you enter it, it's like going into a time slip. But this street is nothing like that."
(In a previous post on Bungo Takeda, I was somewhat critical of the effectiveness of this "time slip". But we'll let it pass here.)

The woman went on to tell me more about Tsukumi. "Tsukumi is in a bad way," she said. "It has been ever since the economy went sour."

"You mean last September?"
"No, I mean since about 15 or 20 years ago, when the bubble burst in Japan. It's been really tough on Tsukumi. In fact the economic depression has probably hurt Tsukimi worse than any other city in Oita. So many of the shops have had to close around here, there are only a few shops left in the downtown area now. And all the young people had to leave for the big cities to get jobs. Now only the old people are left in Tsukumi. There are almost no children left anymore. He," she indicated her husband, "used to run a music school. Now he's lucky to just teach a few private lessons a week. That's just how it goes here."

I can't count the number of times I've heard this story. Apparently 30 years ago or so all of these country towns in Japan were actually vibrant communities instead of the retirement centers and ghost towns they've turned into today. If I had a time machine, I would love to see what all of these towns looked like back then.
As for the shops, well I don't doubt that Tsukumi was probably better off 20 years ago. But compared to a lot of the other small towns I've visited in Oita, I thought Tsukumi had a decent downtown center.

"But why has Tsukumi been hit harder than all the other towns?" I asked.

"Well, aside from the things I've already mentioned, the main problem in Tsukumi is that there's no real industry. We're just a small fishing town, so when the economy started to go bad, there was nothing to fall back on other than just fishing."

"What about agriculture?" I asked. "I saw a lot of orchids driving around."

"Yes, people are getting quite interested in agriculture," she answered. "Even more so than they used to be. Japan imports most of its food now, but with the world food crisis looming, and with the energy crisis, we're wondering if we're always be able to do that. So many people are returning to farming now, and converting land that used to be used for recreation back into farming."

[I should note I'm not sure about the accuracy of any of this information. I'm just reporting the conversation. Sometimes from my students in Nakatsu I get the opposite picture, of perfectly good rice fields lying fallow because no one can be found who has time to work them.]

After talking a bit more, I mentioned I wanted to see a few more things in Tsukumi before the sun went down. When I entered the house, I had been slightly worried about getting sucked into a long conversation but they were very good about letting me leave. I asked what else I should see in Tsukumi and the woman recommended Akahachiman Shrine to me.

I followed her directions to Akahachiman shrine, and it turned out to be right behind the town hall where I had started the day.
Akahachiman was a standard shrine. Nothing special but I took a picture anyway.



Walking down the block, I can across Ishigane shrine, which had a path leading up the hill behind it.
I decided to climb up this to see where it would lead.
The walk up the side of the hill had a very beautiful view of downtown Tsukumi, and I took a few pictures.








When I got to the top of the hill, however, the view was not so great. It was just a tower with speakers mounted on top of it. I couldn't even get a view of the surrounding town because all the trees were in the way.
"Well, that's a funny path," I thought. "Climb all the way up the hill just to see a speaker tower."
But then I noticed the path went down, and then up again to a second peak. "Ah, no wonder," I thought. "This is the path I'm supposed to follow."



So, I followed the path up to the second peak, which turned out to be just as disappointing. I don't even know what it was. Some sort of...something. A rusty tower with a sort of box on it.
I left the hill a bit confused as to why it had all these hiking trails leading up to it. But at least the view walking up had been nice.

After that I decided to call it a day, and leave Tsukumi.

Tsukumi Links
Road to Encounters: Life on a Rias Coast --Several links from this page to different articles on Tsukumi
Onto the slightly more bizarre: School teacher arrested for peeping up student's skirt in Tsukumi, Oita,
Living by my-monstrous-self a blog about living in Tsukumi,
Tsukumi panorama gomagara-mountain Photo

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky Interview - VideoConference

Zodiac

(Movie Review)

This movie was recommended to me by a couple different people, so I thought I would check it out.

I didn't know anything about it before I popped it in the old DVD player (like a lot of movies that come out while I'm in Japan, I sometimes miss out on all the release publicity), but it turns out that this movie is based on a true story about the Zodiac killer (W), who terrorized California in the late 1960s.

Now, despite being a bit of a 60s nut, I never heard of the Zodiac killer before I put on this movie. (I guess true crime stories were never really my interest). But, as portrayed in this movie, he apparently made quite an impression on the citizens of California at the time. And I learned a great deal by watching this movie.

This movie is incredibly historically accurate. Surprisingly so for a Hollywood movie. (And if you watch some of the DVD extras, you learn how much effort they went through to get everything as accurate as possible.)

In fact, so far does this movie go in pursuit of accuracy that they break some of the principle rules of plotting and screenwriting. In any other movie you would expect maybe composite characters, a streamlined story, and a climatic conclusion. You get none of that in this movie.
In fact, for most of the movie, it's hard to tell who the main character is. Robert Downey Jr. hogs the screen as Paul Avery for the first half of the film, but then his character drops off the map for the second half. Jake Gyllenhal's character is in the background for most of the movie, until he becomes the main character near the end. The Police office David Toschi (W) dominates the middle of the film, but then fades away to become a supporting character.

You've got to admire the courage of the film-makers to go for accuracy over entertainment. And you would think that this would be the kind of film that a history geek like myself would go nuts over. But to be perfectly honest, it tested my attention span.

I think the problem was, when it came down to it, I just didn't care that much about the Zodiac killer. If this kind of meticulous accuracy had been applied to a subject I was more passionate about (like any of the people on my wish-list for biopics, for example) I would have loved it. It's a pity we get so many biopics about serial killers, and so few movies about civil rights or labor leaders. Oh well.

The first half of the film, when the killer is active, is really interesting. The film shows the killer attacking his victims, and there are a lot of really suspenseful scenes mixed in with the investigation. And Robert Downey Jr. really chews up the screen as the hard-drinking, smart mouthed, investigative reporter Paul Avery (W).

As a former Star Trek fan, I also enjoyed small Star Trek connection in here. It turns out that Melvin Belli (W), famous defense lawyer who went on live TV to answer a phone call from the Zodiac killer, also guest starred in a Star Trek episode, and the film-makers were nice enough to throw in a couple lines of dialogue highlighting this connection.

Where the film drags on is the continuing investigation long after the Zodiac murders have stopped. This second half of the film is where I started to get restless in my seat, especially as this film goes on for 2 hours and 4o minutes.
And (spoiler) since they never conclusively find their man, it means that there's never a very satisfying end to this movie, even if it is an accurate ending.

Still, before I put in this movie, I had no idea who the Zodiac killer was. Now I know all about him. And for at least half of the movie I felt like I was entertained while I was learning. Can't complain about that.

Link of the Day
The Torture Memos
and Where is Obama's solidarity with the freedom-loving peoples of Iran?