Ordinary people on hand to receive tourists for World Heritage Christian sites on remote Japanese islands

December 24, 2018



Ordinary people on hand to receive tourists for World Heritage Christian sites on remote Japanese islands

Japan saw its Christian-related historical sites in the westernmost part of the Japanese Archipelago inscribed on the World Heritage list in July 2018. A joyous mood spread in regions involved just after the incident, but old Christian churches on remote islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, as part of the World Heritage sites, stand to receive visitors in a calm atmosphere.
All but one of the 12 sites are actually the villages or remains linked to the so-called hidden Christians, the people who maintained their faith secretly in the absence of Western missionaries amid the ban on Christianity from the end of the 16th century. The exception is Oura Cathedral, Japan's oldest Christian church built in Nagasaki City in the 1850s.
Four of the World Heritage sites are located in largely isolated areas on the Goto Islands, which lie about 100 kilometers west of Nagasaki.
Accompanied with an unprofessional guide, a group of tourists visited a stone-built church which stands on a hill right behind a village of Christians on Kashiragajima Island. They were asked to take off their hats and refrain from talking loudly within the church, because it is a place of prayer.
The church is usually closed, but three old local women, who are Christians, are on hand to open the door for tourists by turns, the guide said.
The guide introduced herself as a "pilgrimage guide." She started the job a few years ago after attending a course opened by a local nonprofit organization, called "Pilgrimage College."
The number of tourists to the Goto Islands has been growing since around the registration of the sites as the World Heritage, but the regions involved remain relatively unsophisticated.
The Goto Islands are formed by about 140 isles, where about 57,000 people live.  The local economy depends mainly on fishery.
Because there are no major tourist bus companies, staff bus guides are limited. This is the reason why local tourist organizations are trying to raise guides for tourists from among ordinary people.
The number of amateur guides is precisely unknown, but 20 or so people are believed to be so registered in the region.
"I studied together with a few others, but those who actually work as pilgrimage guides, like me, are limited, maybe three or four," the guide said. "This job is tough, you know, sometimes we have to be on a long bus ride, sometimes aboard a boat."
Every one of 10 Goto islanders is said to be a Christian. "I am not a Christian, but I love this job," she said.
Another amateur guide took care of the tourists on the second half of their tour on the islands. "I studied for becoming a guide at a course sponsored by the local government," she said, "because I like talking with people."
The local authorities hope to take the occasion to bolster the economy in the region as a whole, at a time when its mainstay business, fishery, is not active enough. But they also have to be careful about preserving the historical environment around the sites. Christianity was introduced into Japan in the middle of the 16th century, and just after that, Christians spread quickly in the western part of Japan. But a crackdown on missionaries and Christians started soon, toward the end of the century.

Many Christians fled from the Nagasaki region in search for safer places, on the Goto Islands or elsewhere, but they found only environmentally hard places for them to resettle, for instance, locations just above steep cliffs or deep into inlets.
The locations turned out to be convenient for them to live while hiding their faith, however. A series of bitter, sad episodes in their history is expected to be told further over centuries, sometimes through the voices of ordinary people in the region.

Disaster-hit town in southwestern Japan pinning hopes on young power for survival

November 29, 2018




Disaster-hit town in southwestern Japan pinning hopes on young power for survival

The southwestern Japan city, hard hit by heavy rain and floods in July last year, sees insufficient progress in restoration works in the affected regions, but community leaders are determined that they must move forward while striving to find a new path of survival for its future. Asakura City, Fukuoka Prefecture, has recently launched an event to demonstrate its resolve for restoration widely to in and outside of the city.
Stage programs for the two-day event featured mainly performances by local kindergarten kids and high school students and other youngsters. 
The mishap left 35 people dead or missing in remote communities in the upper reaches of small rivers, flattened and destroyed hundreds of houses, and damaged farmland and forests.
The slow progress in the post-disaster works is attributed in part to lack of consensus among people involved about how to rehabilitate the affected communities. People are divided over how to resume their life, some of them hoping to return to original places while others seeking to have safer places to build their new life.
Experts agree that the city needs to have a broad-based, carefully refined restoration plan, not cosmetic programs, for its long-term survival.
The disaster came at a time when its population had been steadily shrinking in the past decades. This was the case with many other local cities and towns across Japan amid an aging of society.
The population of the city came to 50,500 as of October 2018, 15 months after the disaster, down from about 60,000 in 2005.
City leaders hope to come up with a grand design for its survival, which is expected to focus on beefing up agriculture as its core business. But the city needs to explore a new, innovative approach to strengthen its farming business, by introducing, for example, an information technology-based method to explore a new type of farming, an expert says.
Asakura is geographically close to big consumer markets, notably Fukuoka, the prefectural capital, and it is traditionally strong at producing peaches, persimmons and other fruits,
To introduce such new approaches for farming, efforts must be made to bring in a new breed of young farmers by making the region more attractive to the young generation.
The event site was occupied by booths carrying foods, farming products and items like handicrafts.
One of the hottest areas at the grounds was a booth where customers, including kids with parents, were seen trying hard to pack as many oranges as possible into a given single net for a fee of 500 yen each.
The energies of young people displayed at the event is expected to give impetus to the restoration efforts for the affected regions and people from now on.

Music becoming key community-boosting tool in Japan

October 30, 2018

Music becoming key community-boosting tool in Japan

Various types of music are drawing attention as a key community-boosting tool in various parts of Japan. The move has come at a time when Japanese people think about how to better spend their spare time amid the maturing of society, coupled with a low economic growth.

No precise figures are available about how many of the municipalities across Japan, approximately 1,700 at present, have come up with music-related events as a town reactivating initiative, but it is believed that 100 or so cities and towns, small or big, organize or support events like music festivals for bolstering their economy.
In Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, local culture-related organizations join forces with the city authorities to organize a city-wide music festival every October.
The 2018 Kurume Promenade Music Festival attracted tens of thousands of people at 10 different open-air performance sites, not just public parks but also a railway station corridor and a Buddhist temple.
The latest two-day festival, the sixth of its kind, brought together about 100 groups who played jazz, hard rock and classic as well as traditional Japanese music.
Appearing on the stage at the main site, just next to the city office building, Kurume Mayor Tsutomu Sasaki remarked, "This town gives weight to music and raises musicians." Actually, those who played at the festival included a few locally raised musicians.
The 57-year-old mayor, who took office in January, then appealed for citizens' greater support to the initiative before those who packed the main event site.
The main site was surrounded with booths and shops set up by vendors in a picnic-like, casual atmosphere with not just young people but also older persons and kids present.
At one booth beside the stage, a group of volunteers organized a class for kids to craft plastic straw flutes so that children may feel close to music.

The flute making class may help grow up young musicians from the community so that the city may be enlivened further in the future.

Japan's big retailers moving to increase hazard endurance amid abnormal weather

September 30, 2018


Japan's big retailers moving to increase hazard endurance amid abnormal weather

Employees at the shopping mall were busy receiving hundreds of customers late in September for a special three-day sale after a hiatus of three months.
The facility was forced to suspend its business due to the flood of a nearby river following torrential rain early in July. The heavy rain, triggered by the approach of a rain front, played havoc in widely scattered areas in southwestern and western Japan.
The shopping center, located on a site of 118,460 square meters in Ogori City, Fukuoka Prefecture,  consists of the main building, which houses more than 70 shops, directly run and tenant, and the parking just in front of the building with a capacity of 1,600 cars. But both of them were extensively inundated with river water which climbed over the banks.
The facility, opened in 2013, had a retention basin beneath the building, as the area is within a flood danger zone on the newest hazard map made by the local authorities. But the basin was overwhelmed, and as a result, water got into many parts of the shop area. Dozens of vehicles parked were flooded. But the mishap caused no human damage.
The early July heavy rain also forced some other shopping facilities in the affected areas to close its business, but damage to them proved to be lighter than at the Ogori facility.

The series of occurrences at distribution facilities came at a time when Japan's major commercial businesses, particularly those in the distribution sector, have been asked to cooperate in overcoming natural disasters, because their business is directly linked to people's daily life.
The distribution sector is hoped to play greater roles than ever for hazard endurance, because Japan sees unprecedented, abnormal weather patterns to occur almost every year.
The Ogori facility, operated by Ion Kyushu Co.,  conducted evacuation training for cases of fire and earthquake earlier years, but it plans to carry out an evacuation drill annually for cases of a flood, too, from now on. It also expects to improve the water level gauge system for the on-site, underground retention basin.
Other big distribution facilities involved are also expected to improve their ability for hazard endurance.
The Ion Ogori shopping center launched what it dubs
the "ReStart Campaign" to mark its comeback to business, introducing new lines of items, expanding the eat-in food court and building a small corridor which accommodates handicraft shops run by citizens.
A long line was built toward a lottery amid the shop area.
 "We offer many kinds of gifts for customers with receipts of 3,000 yen or more," said an employee. "This is a token of our thanks to the customers for their support to our reopening."

Annual TV program gives time for Japanese to think about charity for the socially weak

August 28, 2018

Annual TV program gives time for Japanese to think about charity for the socially weak

An annual charity program produced by Nippon Television Network Corp., or Nittere, with the key phrase "Love Saves the Earth," has become something like a national event in which many Japanese think about how charity should be for the socially weak. This year's 24-Hour Television, the program called so, was aired around the clock from August 25 to 26 on the Nittere network, drawing an average audience rating of 15.2 percent.
The instantaneous rating came to as high as 34.7 percent just before the closing event.
Similar charity programs have been launched by some other TV networks. But, despite the strong public attention, the Nittere program draws various views from interested people.
Some viewers warn of what they see as a tendency of using socially weak people for commercial purposes in excessively moving scenes.
Organizers say events in the program are aimed at encouraging the socially weak, but they sometimes make viewers feel as if they have to be moved all the time while watching people like handicapped persons, critics say.
The special feature Nittere program, the 41st of its kind, focuses mainly on events for enhancing public awareness about challenges facing disabled and handicapped people as well as those who need welfare.
Programs aired this year included footage of a girl with an artificial leg trying to scale a 3,000-meter mountain with a special support team and a boy drummer with glass eyes who played a session with a top stage musician.
The 24-Hour Television for 2018 linked a total of seven event sites nationwide. At a special stage built in front of the north gate to Japan Railways' Hakata Station in Fukuoka, southwestern Japan, many kids were seen playing with colorful twisted balloons.
With balloon walls put up around to make a balloon art square, students attending a local vocational college were on hand to take care of children and their parents.
Next to the balloon square was a booth set up by a major domestic detergent maker, one of the six corporate supporters to the program this year, to promote its recycle-reuse campaign to collect used clothes from consumers and send them to poor countries.
During the two-day program, donations were accepted at the event sites nationwide for use to programs in three areas, welfare, environmental protection and relief for disaster-affected people.

Donations by viewers this year amounted to 267 million yen as of the end of the program, according to organizers.
The viewer audience rate climbed toward the end of the program, as a 33-year-old comedian, selected as this year's charity runner, cut the goal tape at the Tokyo site after covering a distance of 161.5 kilometers in a triathlon race.
Japanese people have become even more aware of the importance of binding together to strengthen their mutual ties since the devastating earthquake and killer tsunami waves of March 2011, which claimed some 20,000 lives mainly in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan.
The roles for the media to help boost the spirits of mutual help broadly in Japan's society may become more important than ever in the years ahead.

Japan threatened with continued, ominous weather phenomenons in hot summer

July 29, 2018

Japan threatened with continued, ominous weather phenomenons in hot summer

Japan's Meteorological Agency has been busy issuing unprecedentedly strong warnings and alerts this summer in light of a host of unusual weather occurrences.
The agency has introduced new, even stronger warning patterns for an impending climate-related danger. The agency sometimes uses such wordings as "The impending danger is an inexperienced one, or what we have not seen in the past 50 years or so." This is part of efforts to remind people more of the seriousness of floods, landslides and other climate disasters in recent years, but their efforts stopped short of minimizing the damage of heavy rainfalls in widely scattered areas of western and southwestern Japan early in July.
The mishap claimed more than 200 lives, including the elderly and kids who were slow or unable in evacuating to shelters and other safer places.
The latest torrential rain was a "a new type of disaster to which "our past experience cannot be used," said people well informed with the series of recent climate change around Japan. More recent and to be more irregular, this season's 12th typhoon came to hit the Japanese Archipelago from the east.
The typhoon was born in the western Pacific far south of Japan July 25 and quickly moved northward toward Japan, and then, it began turning anticlockwise to the west around the edge of a cold vortex, which had emerged south of Japan following the meandering of the westerlies.
In the medium-latitude Asian climate zone around Japan, the weather usually comes from the west on the prevailing western winds. "What a strange rain storm! The typhoon this time has come from the east," said people in concerned areas.
There was no fatal damage following the storm, but it played havoc with areas so far believed to be more resilient to disasters, bringing heavy rain and strong winds to bays opening to the east or the eastern sides of mountains.
The typhoon came amid weeks of unusually hot weather in many areas of Japan. The temperature rises from time to time to around 40 degrees centigrade at not a few places across Japan. This has left dozens of people dead because of the heatstroke.
A Meteorological Agency official recently declared that the abnormally hot weather is "a kind of disaster."
Japan's political leaders stress on various occasions that Japan must make greater efforts to make itself more proof to natural disasters, but it is uncertain whether its effort will be a success, in view of various new challenges facing the country.

Rare, brackish water fish ushers in hot summer in southwestern Japan

June 26, 2018

Rare, brackish water fish ushers in hot summer in southwestern Japan

River fishermen living near the mouth of Chikugo River flowing into Ariake Sea, a deep inner bay in southwestern Japan, have busy days catching a rare, brackish water fish from late May to June.
Etsu, the fish so called in Japanese, lives in certain areas in Ariake Sea, their only habitat in Japan.
Dishes of fresh etsu are served at 20 or so Japanese-style restaurants in the lower reaches of Chikugo River. This is because the freshness of the fish declines quickly after catch.
The catch of the fish, a kind of grenadier anchovy, is allowed from May 1 to July 20, while the season for etsu dishes runs from June to early July.
Some restaurants with etsu dishes served are run by etsu fishermen, and these restaurants attract many people loving the local rare cuisine in the season.
"My boss goes for fishing everyday during the season, sometimes alone, sometimes with fellow fishermen," said a young waitress working at a riverside etsu restaurant in Johjima, in the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture.
"He catches 50 or so fishes, when the tide is good," she said, while looking down at a few etsu drift net boats moored on the river behind the restaurant.
Etsu fishes swim upstream from the sea for spawning early summer, up as far as about 10 kilometers from the river mouth.
Roes spawned there stream down the river, and baby fishes grow up while living deep in the sea. Then, grown fishes go up the river for spawning, and to complete the life cycle, most of them die after that.
Etsu is classified as an endangered species on the Environment Ministry's red data book.
The fish has a leaf-like flat, slender body, which is about 30 centimeters long. The female fish has a swollen belly with roes.
The fish is cooked in various ways -- deep fried, simmered in sweetened soy sauce, boiled and seasoned, and sliced fresh sashimi.
Slicing the etsu fish for sashimi needs a special cooking technique; because it has many small bones contained, the body must be finely sliced with the bones cut. This leaves a crispy taste, the reason why the etsu sashimi is so loved by fans.
The stock of the etsu fish was once threatened with over fishing and changes in the environment due in part to the construction of dams upstream in Chikugo River.
Because catches of the etsu continued to decline from around the 1980s, groups of local fishermen have tried to improve the environment for its habitat, but the situation is yet to be fully improved.
Local people involved hold a service every year for the rare brackish water fish on May 1, when the ban on its catch is lifted. Further efforts to preserve the environment for coexistence of the fish and the community are expected to continue so that the unique food culture may be maintained over years.

Areas hit by last year's floods in Japan alarmed by early start of rainy season

May 29, 2018

Areas hit by last year's floods in Japan alarmed by early start of rainy season

Hydrangea, the moisture-loving plant, is beginning to color in various parts of Japan as Japanese are bracing for the upcoming sweaty, hot days in summer.
The "tsuyu" rainy season usually starts early June and runs until around the middle of July in most parts of Japan, but the Meteorological Agency declared that this year's tsuyu season began in Kyushu and other southwestern Japan regions on May 28. This was 23 days earlier than last year or 8 days sooner than the average year.
The start of the rainy season allows farmers to prepare rice paddies for this year's crop by bringing in water from irrigation canals. But those in mountainous areas damaged by floods in northern Kyushu early July last year are concerned about the outlook of weather this summer.
People affected by the floods are returning to their areas, but some people are still living an uncomfortable life at temporary housing.
Rehabilitation work at farming areas near flooded rivers and valleys in Asakura, Fukuoka Prefecture, is getting into full swing, but damage near smaller rivers largely remains to be attended.
A rice farmer, in his 70s, saw his rice paddies in a hilly area mostly washed away in a mudslide last year, but he expects to prepare unaffected paddies soon for this year's crop.
The tsuyu season begins when the rain front emerges over the Japanese Archipelago between the cold air mass from Siberia and the hot air mass south from the western Pacific. The tsuyu rain front is getting activated earlier than usual this year because the high pressure system south of Japan is strong amid the high temperature observed in regions from the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia, weathermen say.
This year's summer in Japan is expected to be hot and long. Hot weather contributes to a good rice crop, but too high a temperature may lead to a drought, while a long spell of rain and floods are threats to rice farming.
Rice growers hit by last year's floods are hoping that rehabilitation work will be finished as soon as possible at the damaged areas, before the start of the full rainy season this year. Farmers, while working on rice planning, may be finding themselves consoled with hydrangea flowers seen here and there around rice field footpaths.