Entering the Meiji
Shrine ground from Harayuku station we will find a huge wooden torii gate which
marks the beginning of this Shinto shrine. Like other Shinto shrines, a visit
to this place is like a pilgrimage which gradually transforms the world from
the mortal to the sacral. The torii gate serves as the entrance dividing the profane
human world from the sacred home of the divine spirit (Kami). We see people
bowing when they pass under the torii, to show respect as they enter into the sacred
site.
Then we follow the winding
gravel path approaching the shrine, called sando. The pathway is surrounded by huge
trees, like a deep tranquil forest. It
doesn’t feel like we are in the middle of Tokyo, in Shibuya district, one of
the busiest commercial area. In this serene forest we can only hear the sound
of birds chirping and the visitors’ footsteps on the gravel.
The shrine is
dedicated to the divine spirit (Kami) of Emperor Meiji and the Empress Shoken. Emperor
Meiji laid the foundation of modernization of Japan, known as the Meiji
Restoration, ending the Tokugawa shogunate influence. Under his leadership Japan
adopted Western ideas and production methods to industrialize the country. Japan
opened the country to the world and emerged from a closed society to one of the
most modern societies in the world, in less than 40 years. After the Emperor
died in 1912, the parliament decided to build a memorial site in the area near Yoyogi
Park, this shrine site, because the emperor and his wife liked to walk through
the gardens here.
Photo: Wikimedia
In Shinto, something divine
is regarded as Kami (divine spirit), it can be found in mythology, in nature,
and in human beings. Japanese people are amazed and have gratitude towards such
Kami and enshrined them. In this way the Meiji Shrine is dedicated to honouring
the Kami of Emperor Meiji and his wife. We can feel the whole site as an
awesome home for the Kami, reflecting how the Japanese people honour and feel grateful
to their emperor and empress.
The gravel pathway leads
us to a number of sake and wine barrels stacked up along both sides of the pathway.
More than 200 sake barrels were displayed as offering to the Emperor, donated
by famous sake breweries in the country. As the Emperor loved French wines, wine
barrels were imported from France and displayed along with the sake barrels.
Photo: Own Work
Passing the Ootori (Second
Torii Gate), we reach the Temizusha (water
font) at the entrance to the main sanctuary, to wash your hands and cleanse
mouths. Wooden ladles are provided at this water font so we can wash our hands
and cleanse our mouths. This is a ritual to purify ourselves before entering the
main sanctuary.
Before entering the
main sanctuary we can also go to the Juyosho, Amulet Kiosk, to buy charms and
amulets or writing our wish on an ema, a wooden tablet. People wrote everything
from wishing good luck, passing exams, to get a child, love and broken hearts,
forgiveness and gratefulness. There are also omamori (protective amulets) for
traffic safety, health, or success in education. Omamori are usually attached
to or put into a bag, purse or pocket, and kept until they have fulfilled their
purpose.
Photo: Own Work
Then we approach Minami
Shinmon, the main entrance to the main shrine complex. The gate is a two-story
building, made from Japanese hinoki cypress, and copper roof. We can see small
heart-shaped patterns carved into the wood work as ornament. When passing
through the gate, we must step over the wooden beam under the gate, and not
step on it, and bow our head to show respect while passing through the gate.
Photo: Own Work
On the east side of
the main shrine complex there is the Kaguraden, a building where the Shinto
people pray and participate in the special ritual (Kigansai). During the
special ritual a kagura, or sacred music and dance, Yamato-Mai, is performed as
an offering to the Kami. This sacred dance is based on a poem by Emperor Meiji
saying that we should not forget paying respect to the Kami, as we owe our
existence to the them.
Next to the the
Kaguraden, is the most sacred building, the honden, where the Kami are
enshrined. The main shrine is built in the nagare zukuri style, a common style
of Shinto shrine architecture. In this style, the roof at the front of the
shrine is extended covering the steps up to the building. The honden includes
the noritoden (prayer recital hall), the naihaiden (inner shrine hall), and the
gehaiden (outer shrine hall). The gehaiden is at the front of the main shrine,
and is where visitors pray.
Photo: Abrahami -Wikimedia
On the way-out we pass
through the Iris garden, a beautiful garden designed by the emperor for his
wife. In summer, many types of irises, the empress' favorite, blooming in
violet, blue, and white colors. Further down there is the Kiyomasa’s well a
pure spring. It is named after a military commander who dug it around 400 years
ago. The well was visited frequently by the emperor and empress while they were
alive.
When I visited Huangshan in Anhui province, my
guide showed me the place where Mister Deng often sit during his leisure time to
enjoy the scenery of the magnificent mountains, floating above the clouds. This
place seemed to be Mister Deng favorite spot and he chose this mountain area to
deliver his 'Huang Shan Speech' to promote this place as a key site to revitalize
the tourism industry, and to address the future direction of Chinese tourism.
Years later, the Chinese tourism market has transformed into one of the world's
most-watched tourist markets, the number of domestic trips reached six billion
in 2019, indicating an exponential increase compared to the number of trips
made in China ten years ago.
Known as China’s “father of reforms” Mister Deng
in 1978 announced a new policy, the “Open Door Policy”, to open the door to
foreign businesses that wanted to set up in China. The policy of “reform and openness”
(gaige kaifang) laid the foundation for a successful transition from a planned
economy to a market economy, achieving unprecedented high growth rates. Average
annual growth rates of 9.7 percent pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out
of poverty. The policy of reform and openness also led to a fundamental
departure from norms in Mao’s China, replacing collectivism and group
conformity with individual performance and diversity.
Enough said about him, I desperately wanted to
interview this man and made an application through the CPC (Communist Party of
China) office in Beijing. Knowing the tight bureaucracy of this office I wasn’t
expecting approval soon and might be never ever get the approval, I was just
trying my luck. I knew there were not many foreign journalists that got the
chance to interview him personally, Mike Wallace, Oriana Fallaci, Ezra Vogel to
name a few, who else?
Then after 4 months, I found a red envelope in
my apartment letter box, it was from the CPC office indicating an appointment in
the next month meeting Mister Deng. Wow , really? It made my day! It was my first interview with a political
leader, and from China!
So on a Saturday, at the CPC Office at Chang’an
Avenue in Beijing, I met a small man in a gray Mao suit, white socks and black Neiliansheng
shoes. I didn’t expect that he was Mister Deng, he looked so humble for such a
paramount leader. For sure, he didn’t look like as what once pronounced by Henry
Kissinger, a ''nasty little man''.
I said:
“Good afternoon Mister Deng, you are known to
be the de facto leader of China, in the way that although you are not the
chairman of the CPC and neither are you the President of China, but you are the
chief policy maker and reformer of China throughout the decades leading to China’s
great development. You are a member of Standing Committee of the Political
Bureau, and the chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Commission, but it seems
you avoid to be the top leader of China.”
Mister Deng:
“See, we must remember that chairman Mao for
most of his life, he did very good things to China. Many times he united China
and saved the party and the state from various crises. Mao Zedong Thought lead
us to victory in the revolution and it will continue to be a treasured
possession of the our country, and we will always remember him as a founder of
our party and state.
Because of his leadership he was treated like
an emperor reminiscent of the country’s imperial past. The people created Mao
Zedong’s cult of personality, fueled by fanatics, mass media, propaganda and books,
elevating his status to that of an infallible heroic leader. The whole nation
mimicked his style of drab clothing, memorizing his quotations from the little Red
Book and living under the gaze of his imposing portraits.
He then became authoritarian and led the
country in patriarchal ways, one-man rule, which are feudal in nature. He
became unwilling to listen to other comrades, did not listen to differing
opinions. We can’t say that all criticisms were right, but neither was he ready
to listen to many right opinions put forward not only by me but by other party
members. At this time, he increasingly lost touch with reality. For instance, he
did not consistently practice democratic centralism and the mass line, and he
failed to institutionalize them during his lifetime. Democratic centralism was
impaired and so was collective leadership.
I opposed the notion of lifelong terms, of
personality cult, and of one-man rule and desired to prevent the emergence of a
Mao-like strongman. I promoted ideological pragmatism and emphasized above all
the necessity of a fundamental reform of the party, especially by reviving the
inner-party discussion and decision-making processes, known as collective
leadership.”
I said:
“The world can observe the great progress that
China achieved in economic development in past decades, but many Western
scholars believed that China’s reform and opening-up policy only achieved great
success concerning economic modernization, with no significant progress in
political democratization. Some even went so far as to claim the reason for the
successful Chinese economic modernization was precisely because China did not
have any accompanying democratic reforms.”
Mister Deng:
“In this century China has been a land of
warlords, invading armies, floods, famines and revolution. Tens of millions
have died violently, or wretchedly from starvation. I told President Bush in
1989 that if all one billion of us undertake multiparty elections, we will
certainly run into a full-scale civil war. Taking precedence over all China's
problems is stability, therefore to avoid disorder and the violence we opposed political pluralism.
However, as I told Oriana Fallaci of the
Washington Post, I can tell you that after the overthrow of the Gang of Four we
emphasized very much the promotion of the socialist democracy. Without giving
up, of course, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Democracy and dictatorship
of the proletariat are the two aspects of one antithesis, and I should add that
proletarian democracy is far superior to capitalistic democracy.”
I said:
“I guess with proletarian democracy you mean the
key concept of democracy held by the Chinese elites who sought to combine
democracy with authority, dictatorship and centralism. “
Mister Deng:
“The essence and the core of socialist
democracy is that the people are the masters of the country, and it is the
system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the
leadership of the CCP. We practice democratic centralism, which is the
integration based on democracy, with democracy under the guidance of
centralism. Democratic centralism is an integral part of the socialist system.
Under this system, personal interests must be subordinated to collective ones,
the interests of part to those of the whole, and immediate to long-term
interests.”
I said:
“ John Naisbitt, a well-known American scholar
of future studies, predicts that a new ‘vertical democracy’, which combines the
bottom-up mass participation with the top-down central command, emerging in
China, and is likely to become an alternative to the Western style of
‘horizontal democracy’.
We can observe that this ‘vertical democracy’
worked well in achieving fast economic development in China. The world is impressed by the striking
economic reform under your leadership, but through the eyes of many Western observers
there has been slow progress toward political reform. Despite some random democratic
free speech, as in the ‘Democracy Wall’ period during the late seventies,
political freedom has shown almost no progress.”
Mister Deng:
“I deeply understand this point. If we fail to
do political reform, we shall be unable to preserve the gains we have made in
the economic reform. Without political reform, economic reform cannot succeed …
So in the final analysis, the success of all our other reforms depends on the
success of the political reform.
We do allow political reform, but on condition that
the three elements of China’s socialist democracy are upheld: first, the people’s rule over the government,
which is the main principle of democracy; second, the CCP’s leadership and
centralism, which are necessary for democracy; and third, collectivism, which
is also the major principle for resolving the conflicts of different interests
in practice.”
I said:
“I think while there is general agreement that
democracy literally means ‘rule by the people’ the Communist Party concept of
‘the people’ differs from the Western concept. The Western liberal view of ‘the
people’ is all-inclusive, referring to all members of society and viewing
society as an aggregation of individuals and a plurality of diversified social
groups and interests. By contrast, in the Communist Party view, ‘the people’ is
a collectivist concept. The emphasis was on the pursuit of collective
interests, rather than being based upon, or even recognising, individual
autonomy and expression of interests.”
Mister Deng:
“What China needed is socialist democracy, for
this is people’s democracy, and not bourgeois democracy, individual democracy. We practice democratic centralism, which is
the integration based on democracy, with democracy under the guidance of centralism.
Democratic centralism is an integral part of the socialist system. Under this
system, personal interests must be subordinated to collective ones, the
interests of part to those of the whole. The purpose of socialist democracy is
not, after all, to validate individualism or pluralism, but to unify the people
for the pursuit of common interests and objectives. “
I said:
“According to Western media, you ordered to use
military force through martial law in order to squash the protests that had
erupted in the Tiananmen Square in 1989, despite resistance from some leaders.
The result was bloodshed and within 48 hours Tiananmen Square was cleared. According
to intelligence estimate about 1,000 people died and several dozen of soldiers
and police were killed by protesters. Did you order the bloodshed or was it a
military blunder, Mister Deng?”
Mister Deng:
“I praised the army as ‘the bastion of iron of
the state’ and stressed that China would continue the basic policies of
economic reform and openness to the outside world. This incident has impelled
us to think over the future as well as the past sober-mindedly. It will enable
us to carry forward our cause more steadily, better and even faster and correct
our mistakes faster.
We cannot tolerate turmoil. We will impose
martial law again if turmoil appears again. Our purpose is to maintain
stability so that we can work on construction, and our logic is simple: with so
many people and so few resources, China can accomplish nothing without peace
and unity in politics and a stable social order. Stability must take precedence
over everything.
We can't handle chaos while we're busy with construction.
If today we have a big demonstration and tomorrow we have a great airing of
views and a bunch of wall posts, we won't have any energy left to get anything
done. That's why we have to insist on clearing the square.”
I said:
“There was a dramatic incident during the
Tiananmen Square crackdown that captured the whole world attention. The Western
media called it ‘The Tank Man’ incident, a lone man holding a grocery bag was
photographed and videoed standing in front of a column of tanks leaving
Tiananmen Square via Chang'an Avenue. As the tank driver tried to go around him,
the ‘Tank Man’ moved into the tank's path. He continued to stand defiantly in
front of the tanks for some time, then climbed up onto the turret of the lead
tank to speak to the soldiers inside. After returning to his position in front
of the tanks, the man was pulled aside by a group of people. The fate of
"Tank Man" following the demonstration is not known and for the world
the ‘Tank Man’ remained faceless and nameless.
May I ask you Mister Deng, who is this man that
stopped the tanks, and what happened to him?”
Mister Deng sat motionless on his overstuffed
chair, his feet barely touch the floor. Suddenly an officer came approaching
him and whispered something in his ear, Mister Deng nodded and then declared
that he had other appointment in his schedule and must go now. So the meeting
was over….
THE END
This is an imaginary interview
in memory of Deng Xiaoping
Walking the one kilometer Omotesando street is a great
experience. Known as Tokyo's Champs-Elysees, it is a zelkova tree lined avenue, featuring numerous fashion flagship stores.
Omote being ‘frontal’ and Sando being ‘approach’, it has been serving as the
main approach to Meiji shrine since the Taisho era. Nowadays the broad avenue
stretching from the Meiji shrine entrance all the way to Aoyama Street sees
millions walking its pavements to shop at the luxury brand stores.
The narrower, winding back streets of Ura-Harajuku on either
side of Omotesando are also interesting. In these streets, we find many not so
branded stores yet charming clothing stores, themed cafes, and some of the best
Japanese restaurants in Tokyo.
But even if we are not in Tokyo to shop, just walking along
Omotesando is refreshing, enjoying the atmosphere, and observing the distinct architecture
of the buildings designed by Japan superstar architects such as Tadao Ando, Toyo
Ito, Jun Aoki, Hiroshi Nakamura and Norihiko Dan.
Tadao Ando designed the shopping mall Omotesando
Hills, with 250m facade made along the street, each floor was built along a
slope to create a continuation from the street, giving additional public space.
A garden was made on the rooftop, to continue the atmosphere from the zelkova
trees along the street.
Photo: Wikimedia
Toyo Ito designed the building especially for
Tod’s, famous Italian shoe and handbag brand. With the L-shaped and a narrow frontage, the concrete wall gives
the impression of a row of zelkova trees in relation to environment in
Omotesando. Where many luxury brand
boutiques have been built, by selecting concrete as a material the designer daringly
proposed a substance and strength in contract with the surrounding glass buildings.
Photo: Wikimedia
Jun Aoki designed the Louis Vuitton building in
the image of a stack of trunks, as Louis Vuitton is famous for its luggages and
bags . The trunks, each representing a unique room, are connected with
corridors between trunks. The building with the soft texture of the metal
fabric on the facade representing fallen leaves from the zelkova trees in front
of the building.
Photo: Wikimedia
Norihiko Dan’s Hugo Boss eight-story building is
surrounded by Tod’s L-shaped building. Thus, he designed it trying to loosen the
influence of the Tod’s building by creating vertical shapes combined with
circular floors. This seems to accentuate the adjacent Tod’s building, and
creates a symbiotic harmony. The building’s structure is composed of columns
made from steel with a wood-like texture.
Photo: Wikimedia
Another shopping mall, Tokyu Plaza, has emerged
as a fortress of fashion. The unique structure was designed by Hiroshi
Nakamura, an award-winning architect. It officially becoming the home base for big
fashion retailers, as well as a host of smaller domestic Japanese brands. The
front elevator walled with mirrors looks attractive from far, but when we climb
the elevator it is quite dizzying to see all the reflections on the mirrors. It
is like walking inside a tunnel with walls of discotheque glittering ball. Fancy,
but not something for the minimalists.
The cathedral, at the banks of Fiume Adige in
the northernmost point of Verona, is just a short walk from the Ponte Pietra
bridge. It is actually a cathedral complex, since it includes the San Giovanni
in Fronte baptistery, the church of Santa Elena, the remains of the first
paleo-Christian basilica built, the Cloister of the Canons, and the Capitoline
Library.
The cathedral Santa Maria Matricolare, is a
fantastic mix of Veronese Romanesque with Gothic elements. The interior of the
cathedral mainly represents a Romanesque church, divided into three naves by
pilasters from red Veronese marble supporting Gothic arches.
When we enter the cathedral, the first
thing to strike you are the richly decorated side chapels, featuring works of
art produced over several centuries of Venetian control. In the first chapel to
the left hung a picture by Titian of the Assumption. It is a grand painting, showing
the apostles kneeling and staring at Santa Maria floating in towering clouds.
This painting was taken off to Paris by Napoleon I during his reign, but
restored to Verona after he had left Europe.
The sanctuary is enclosed by a curved choir
screen made by Sanmicheli and decorated with a Crucifixion by Giambattista da
Verona. The sanctuary itself has frescoes by Francesco Torbido, based on
drawings by Guilio Romano.
From the back of the cathedral we pass into
the adjoining small church of S. Giovanni in Fonte, which served in past times
as the Baptistery. The baptismal octagonal font located in the middle of the
church was carved from a single block of marble. It was created by the Veronese
sculptor Brioloto.
Next to the baptistery we will find the
church of Santa Elena. On the facade of the church of Santa Elena a Latin tablet
indicates the poet Dante Alighieri who here in 1320 presented his
"Quaestio de Aqua et Terra", an important issue in medieval cosmology.
In the altar of this church there is a
painting by Felice Brusasorzi depicting the Madonna on the throne with Child,
St. Stephen, St. Zeno, St. Giorgio and St. Elena.
A church dedicated to Saints George and
Zeno was built on the site and consecrated between 842 and 847, but was
destroyed in the earthquake of 1117. The current church is the result of the
reconstruction of the destroyed church, which was completed in 1140.
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