French aviator's aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (2)

Oct. 30, 2014

French aviator's aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (2)

The story about Japy’s ambitious flight and the friendship which emerged from his meeting with Sefuri inhabitants took a fresh turn in 2013, when a female Japanese reader organized a reading performance about the episode in Paris and Beaucourt.

After the conclusion of the twinning contract, interchanges between Sefuri and Beaucourt were at a low ebb, due in part to difficulty in actually receiving each other’s mission. The 9.11 terrorist attacks of 2001 in the United States also forced them to postpone related programs. In the meantime, Sefuri merged with the neighboring bigger municipality of Kanzaki in 2006. At present, Kanzaki has a population of 32,000, including about 1,700 in the Sefuri region.

The reading performance has helped to revive momentum for interchanges between Kanzaki and Beaucourt. Kanzaki City officials, led by Mayor Shigeyuki Matsumoto, have spent busy days preparing to welcome Beaucourt Mayor Cedric Perrin and Nicolas Japy, a grandson of Japy’s elder brother, on the occasion of the performance.

Yuko Aoki, the Japanese reader, has written a text for the performance, Les Ailes d’André (André’s Wings), by herself. The canon-like performance is played in Japanese and in French by two readers, Aoki herself and Vanda Benes, a French actress and stage director.

Her project emerged from a casual conversation with her long-time French friend, Jenny Kimura, as she happened to be a remote relative of the Japy family through her mother. The performance in André’s birthplace in September last year was timed to coincide with the annual Japy festival there and played before dignitaries in Beaucourt and a group of Japanese friends of Aoki, including a couple from Saga. The incident has been remembered in Beaucourt so strongly that one street in the city is christened “Sefuri-Saga-Japon.”

Aoki, who worked with Japan’s public TV channel NHK for over 30 years, currently serves as president of the Reading Center in Karuizawa, the sole facility of its kind in Japan. She expects to continue the reading performance at a total of 11 places across Japan through November.

Aoki’s reading campaign culminated in a performance held at a public hall in Kanzaki in late October in the presence of Nicolas Japy and his family, his wife and two daughters and a son.  The Beaucourt mayor partially joined the reading.

The visiting Japy family also realized their long hoped for meeting with the author of the book before the performance; they dined with the 89-year-old former elementary school teacher at a comfortable Japanese-style hotel in Saga. The author took the occasion to present a copy of her book to Nicolas.

The aileron of Japy’s aeroplane which Nishikawa saw at her old school is currently stored at a display facility in Sefuri. Another wooden piece of the airplane, the upper part of the broken vertical stabilizer, had been held at a villager’s home, but this is also stored at the same facility. The aileron measures 152 centimeters in length and 42 to 52 centimeters in width, while the part of the vertical stabilizer is 70 centimeters in length and 22 centimeters in height.

The two “witnesses” of the incident were on display for visitors at the reading performance in Kanzaki. Also on display were four pieces of old photos, including the one showing Japy lying on the bed just after he was rescued from the crash site.

These photos were provided by a woman who lives near Fukuoka and whose father served as an interpreter for Japy while he was in Sefuri. “My father could speak several foreign languages. Maybe, this is why he was called to the place where the French aviator was receiving care,” Akiko Takada recalled. Because her father died of a war-related disease outside of Japan in her childhood, she cannot clearly remember what her father talked about Japy. “But I remember this. My father told me, ‘When I began to talk to Monsieur Japy in French, he looked so delighted,’” she said.

Japy continued to dream of visiting Japan again, but he could not. The airman devoted his remaining life mainly to training young pilots and developing air routes in Tahiti and other places. He died of heart attack in 1974 when he was strolling on the shore in Finistére, Bretagne, northwestern France. He was 70. Gondo confirmed this by obtaining a copy of a local newspaper article about his demise.

The reading performance took up not just Japy’s aborted flight but also the history of the Japy family and that of Beaucourt. The two readers, playing as friends in their 50s to 60s, were mutually talking about their dreams for their second stage of life while linking them to Japy’s passion for life and his courage.

The reading performance in Kanzaki was preceded by an opening event, in which 23 Sefuri Junior High students performed a short play depicting how Sefuri villagers, their ancestors, rescued Japy. The school has been performing the play every three years since 1994 as part of cultural festival programs, according to Principal Kazuhiko Kubo.

“We hope that our students will inherit this moving story over years by performing the play,” he said. “The beauty of the town of Sefuri is condensed in the story.”

The year of 2016 marks the 80th anniversary of the incident, which has linked the two municipalities in Japan and France beyond time and space. Nishikawa, a mother of two daughters, is trying to help organize programs in commemoration of the heroic incident for the particular year, soliciting support and ideas from as many citizens as possible. She hopes that the episode will contribute to strengthening friendship and humanity among young people on both sides.

French aviator’s aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (1)

Oct. 30, 2014

French aviator’s aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (1)

The girl was always looking up at the red, rectangular object put on the wall of the poorly lit corridor in front of her classroom, without knowing it was so important an item that would later lead to a twinning between her native place and a small French city. “We were playing and running around there every day, but nobody told us what the object was,” said Kiyo Nishikawa, who was then a pupil at Kuboyama Branch School in Sefuri Village, Saga Prefecture, southwestern Japan.

She recalled. “It was when we were third graders. One day, our class teacher told us, ‘Decades ago, an airplane with a man from France aboard crashed in the Sefuri mountains and villagers in Sefuri, the people you know, tried hard to rescue the airman. It sounds so great, doesn’t it?’” Then, she realized that the object was a part of the crashed airplane, actually a wooden aileron on the left wing.

French aviation pioneer André Japy was on a 15,000-kilometer flight from Paris to Tokyo in November 1936, with a prize of 600,000 francs at stake. As the distance had to be covered in 100 hours, Japy took off from Hong Kong in bad weather on the last leg of the flight early in the morning of Nov. 19, and his Caudron Simoun, registered No. 7078, got caught in turbulence over the East China Sea. He gave up flying direct to Tokyo and looked for an airfield to land in western Japan, but his plane was struck by a violent wind down to the steep southern slope below the peak of the 1,055-meter Mt. Sefuri.

Japy, then 32, was seriously injured and hovered between life and death, but he was rescued alive by inhabitants in Sefuri. Rescuers reached the crash site through trackless paths, braving rains and fogs in darkness. It was about four hours after the crash.

Japy had suffered deep wounds in the forehead and had the left thigh and the left hand broken. Those who rushed to the scene included local firemen and a police officer as well as farmers and charcoal burners. An on-the-spot investigation made two days after the accident revealed the fuel tanks on both sides had been empty. The altimeter had shown a reading of 820 to 850 meters, according to police records. To be lucky to Japy, among those who reached the scene was a local physician, who told those people to bring the injured on a makeshift stretcher slowly and carefully down to his clinic and quickly gave him a first aid treatment there. Japy was later moved to a national university-affiliated hospital in Fukuoka, about 50 kilometers northeast of Sefuri.

A book compiled by a children’s book writer, who lives in Saga City, in 1991 gave a detailed account of how Japy was rescued and how warmly he was received by Sefuri inhabitants when he revisited the village before returning to France four months later.

The story, notably the bravery of people in the small village for rescuing Japy, was handed down from generation to generation in the airman’s birthplace, Beaucourt in the Territory of Belfort, northeastern France, as André hailed from the Japy family, well known for its contribution to the town over centuries. The situation was somewhat different in Sefuri; the story was not uttered actively among people in the village, partly because Japan and France became enemies to each other in World War II. The situation also may be linked to a Japanese saying: Good deeds should be laudable, when done not openly. This obviously made Sefuri people involved hesitant about talking about the incident.

A monument was built by the villagers at the crash site in 1966, 30 years after the incident. But Chiaki Gondo, the author of the book, had to spend almost five years for investigating the incident once again, looking into old materials and documents and interviewing more than 100 people.

Impressed with the philanthropic spirit of the villagers and Japy’s courage for the journey, Gondo hoped to introduce her book, entitled “Fly! The Red Wings,” to someone who may be interested in the dramatic episode in France.

Her hope was realized three months after the release of the book. Her younger brother, who was a business executive, met two friends of his in France. These people helped to present copies of the book to the French government and Beaucourt City, paving the way for Sefuri and Beaucourt to enter into a sister city affiliation in 1996, exactly 60 years from Japy’s abortive but ambitious flight.

Nishikawa, the former schoolgirl in Sefuri, grew up and became an elementary school teacher, but the story about the French airman seldom came up to her mind, until she met Gondo at a ceremony on the closing of her old school in 1998. “At that time, I came to know that Mrs. Gondo has been visiting the monument on the anniversary of the incident every year.” This led her to endeavor to make the episode widely known to young people in Sefuri so that the story will be handed to the next generation.

The first aid treatment made by the Sefuri physician, Shigeto Ushijima, for Japy proved to be appropriate, and this helped him to recuperate miraculously. Since he was grateful for the care provided by Dr. Ushijima, a letter of thanks was presented to the physician in the name of the then French ambassador to Japan, A. Kammerer.

In the course of research for writing the book, Gondo visited Ushijima’s house, though he had moved to a different place several years after the incident. The letter of thanks came up in discussion between the two, and a few weeks later, a copy of the letter, written in French and dated on Dec. 26, 1936, was sent to her via the Sefuri Village office, according to Gondo.

She could obtain a lot of information about Japy at his home, but she found that the physician and his wife were living a very humble, publicly unknown life. “This made me feel so choked up,” she recalled tearfully.

Tanushimaru grape farmers trying to adapt themselves to new consumer tastes

Sept. 28, 2014

Tanushimaru grape farmers trying to adapt themselves to new consumer tastes

Grape production is a time- and energy-consuming job. About 150 grape farmers in Tanushimaru, southwestern Japan, are busy growing the very juicy, big grain Kyoho grape from early spring to around August, not just fertilizing grape trees but also bending their branches in the favorable direction, thinning out young fruits and covering bunches of grapes with white bags to protect them from rainfalls and bugs.

Tanushimaru Town, which became part of Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, in 2005, is the birthplace of Kyoho grape production, which was realized after years of hard work by a group of young farmers in the town from the 1950s to the 60s.

Japan’s grape production amounts to about 185,000 tons a year. The Kyoho is currently the most popular grape species in Japan in terms of acreage. Grape farmers are trying to be more aware of changes in consumers’ tastes, further refining their growing techniques. Particularly, reflecting consumers’ preference to easy-to-eat, seedless products, they have come to use various agents and hormone drugs. This has made some grape growers rather concerned about their future business.

The Kyoho grape is an indigenous species developed by a Japanese cultural scientist in the 1930s. The Kyoho species, so named by the developer, had not been commercially produced until Tanushimaru farmers succeeded in growing the grape with big fruits in 1960.
The success came only after three years of studies by the group, who had launched an unprecedented farmers’ research laboratory for farmers, with the support of Michishige Ochi, an agronomist who inherited the work of the Japanese developer.

The Kyoho grape boasts of its big grain size. So, Kyoho farmers have been less enthusiastic about turning out seedless products. Seedless Kyoho products are available now.
Such grapes are produced by soaking young bunches of grapes into a cup containing a vegetable hormone which halts the growth of seeds. Then, a different growth hormone has to be used to enable them to have big grains without seeds. Sometimes, a coloring agent is also used. "People say they (the agents and others) are harmless, but their continuous use is unfavorable to grapes," said a vineyard owner, whose father was one of the young grape farmers who joined the inauguration of the research group. His vineyard uses no chemicals, growing grapes as naturally as possible, he said. 

Tanushimaru attracts tens of thousands of grape lovers every summer. About 60 vineyards in the town are open to tourists from July to September to let them enjoy grape gathering under the trellises. Kyoho grapes usually have a dark purple color, but light green and pink ones are also available.

People can pick up as many grapes as they want at these vineyards. No admission fees are required, and they can buy their catches for 1,000 yen to 1,300 yen per kilogram. As grape production is coming to an end this year, grape farmers in Tanushimaru are already thinking about what kind of products should be satisfactory to consumers in the coming year.

Minamioguni, southwestern Japan, boasts of harmonious coexistence of people and nature

Aug. 30, 2014

Minamioguni, southwestern Japan, boasts of harmonious coexistence of people and nature

Minamioguni Town, a mountainous region in the southwestern Japan prefecture of Kumamoto, is proud of being an original member of the Most Beautiful Villages in Japan union, a nonprofit organization launched in 2005.

The union is modeled after a similar grouping inaugurated in France in the 1980s. The movement then spread to other European countries. In Japan, seven towns and villages which have a population of 10,000 or less, including Minamioguni, got together to demonstrate themselves as communities who are out to preserve scenic landscapes and rich natural resources with the backing of environment-conscious local people.
The union accepted other eligible communities across Japan in later years. The number of member towns and villages increased to 54 in 2013.

Minamioguni, with a population of about 4,400 and an area of 11,000 hectares, has a lot of widely known tourist spots, notably the Kurokawa hot spa retreat and the Senomoto Heights which commands a good view of the active Aso volcanic mountains. But it also boasts of more casual spots which are attractive to nature-loving tourists.

The Hill of Oshitoishi, with mysterious rocks scattered around, is one of new handmade tourist spots in the town. The hill, at an elevation of 845 meters, had been little known to outside people until what appear to be petroglyphs, or rock engravings in the prehistorical age, were confirmed on some of the volcanic rocks in 1989 by local education board officials. Later, the petrolyphs were authorized by a UNESCO-affiliated rock art academy, and the site was found to be the remains with nine groups of artificially placed rocks. As an access road to the site was opened a few years ago, the hill has become famous as a “power-giving spot."

“If you are interested in our town as a Most Beautiful Village in Japan, I would say you should also visit the Hiranodai Heights,” a local tourist association official said. Hiranodai is located to the east of the Kurokawa hot spa valley. There are nature trails and a village of log houses in a quiet atmosphere on the foot of the heights. An observatory is high up to the heights.
Tourists may also be recommended to drop in at a farmers’ market with various vegetables fresh from the garden and dine at country-taste restaurants staffed with local people. Farmer-run inns are also available at some locations in the town.

The launch of the Most Beautiful Villages in Japan union came at a time when mergers of towns and villages were recommended across Japan from the 1990s under Japan’s local government realignment policy, which, critics say, made it difficult for small but nicely preserved communities to protect their natural landscape.

The Hill of Oshitoishi used to be a pasture co-owned by farmers to reap grass for cattle. Local people worshiped the rock garden as a sacred place for a god of water and held rites regularly on the top of the hill. They have inherited the site from generation to generation. Most people in the area still live on cattle growing. They have preserved the environment around the hill over years, burning off dead grass, improving paths and doing other jobs together.

The hill has no gates and fences. Handwritten guides, set up along the access road, read "Go forward carefully, please." or "Soft shoulders!." Tourists are asked to pay 200 yen as an “admission fee” at a reception house below the hill. Oshitoishi, the main rock so called, is marked with a sacred straw rope. The rock is 5.5 meters high and 15.3 meters around, and its vertex points to the North Star.

A rock on the western end of the hill, called Hasamiishi, has a slit through which the son can be seen setting on the winter solstice and from the other side, the sunrise can be seen on the summer solstice. A nearby rock, called Kagamiishi, has petroglyphs engraved on its face to the south. Because the main rock apparently has a magnetic force, compasses irregularly move, when placed near the rock. People had believed that it rains when the one climbs up the rock. “When I was a kid, we were always told by elders not to climb on the rock, particularly in the rice harvesting season,” said a farmer who mans the reception house.

Tourists can borrow small compasses at the reception house. While showing how to use the device, the reception house keeper, who is one of the 40 co-owner farmers, told visitors, “Please feel the force of Oshitoishi, and you will be empowered with its strength.”

It is uncertain if every visitor can feel the strength of the rock, but tourists should find themselves being refreshed while feeling smooth winds on the hill and thinking of the life of ancient people believed to have deified the rocks.

History-backed real power displayed in summer lantern festival by southwestern Japan town

Jujy 27, 2014

History-backed real power displayed in summer lantern festival by southwestern Japan town

Hita, a land-locked town in Oita Prefecture, Kyushu, southwestern Japan, sees its population continuously decline, as is the case with many other local cities in Japan, but its residents are proud that the region used to be a domain directly controlled by the Tokugawa shogunate government for over 200 years from the 17th century.

Hita's real tradition-based strength is displayed in a summer festival in which gorgeously decorated tall floats lit by many lanterns slowly progress on the city’s main streets.

The 300-year-old Hita Gion Festival is performed as an evil-dispelling rite dedicated to three shrines in the central part of the city for three days in late July. As dusk falls over the area, four “Yamahoko” floats, decorated with dolls of legendary figures, gathered at a square in the Mameda district and went in procession before thousands of spectators. As many floats left the Kuma-Taketa district for a tour on a different course.

The floats, 6 to 8 meters high and 3 to 5 tons in weight, were pushed by dozens of young men from behind with a few steersmen in front.

The performance by the teams from the Mameda district culminated when their Yamahoko floats ran up a slope toward a bridge at the end of Uwamachi Street one by one. Music played by their bands on board went into full swing.

Mameda Yasaka Shrine is located on a corner of the Mameda district, the most attractive tourist spot in Hita City, which has a population of about 70,000 at present. An old shrine keeper received worshipers while holding a time-honored lion mask said to be a shrine treasure. “Please come on and have your head bit with the lion’s mouth, and you will be protected from evil,” he said. “This mask has to bite the visitor’s head twice. When a thousand people come, I have to do it two thousand times. That’s a really tough job for an old guy like me,” he said happily.

A shop was set up in front of a different shrine at Nakajo within the Mameda district to sell miniature charms to spectators. “This charm can keep evil spirits away for you,” said a shopkeeper, who was in his 70s. A girl and a few women were seen buying four or five “paipai” charms of small paper flowers. “You can place them not just at the entrance of your house but also put them to your car or at your kitchen,” he said.

The festival was designated as a national folk cultural asset in 1996. Most Yamahoko decorations are newly built every year, but "Miokuri" embroidered drop curtains for some floats are more than 100 to 150 years old. The number of centuries-old cultural assets is expected to boost Hita people's spirits and enrich the town's atmosphere further.

Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, gives glimpses of diverse, aboriginal spots to visitors

June 29, 2014

Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, gives glimpses of diverse, aboriginal spots to visitors

About 80 pct of the names of towns and villages in Hokkaido, northernmost Japan, are said to be traceable to the language spoken by Ainu, an aboriginal tribe. Sapporo, the name of the most populous city in Hokkaido, means a “dry, big river” in the Ainu. Tourists to Hokkaido, particularly the eastern part of the landmass, can have glimpses of not only many scenic natural spots but also sites linked to the Ainu tribe.

People in Ainu-related areas are even more enthusiastic than before to attract tourists as the “irankarapte” hospitality campaign was launched jointly by various local organizations, public and private, in 2013. Irankarapte represents “hello” in the Ainu, but it is a slightly formal word of greeting toward visitors from distant places.

The 71,100-hectare Shiretoko natural park lies in the northeastern tip of Hokkaido. Shiretoko, which means “a remotest land” in the Ainu, is actually a peninsula jetting into the Sea of Okhotsk. It is one of the four UNESCO-registered World Natural Heritages in Japan, but it is the sole asset which reminds visitors of the importance of diverse, aboriginal values in Japan, the largely unitary country. Hokkaido is also proud of classic Ainu dancing, which was registered as a UNESCO intangible cultural asset in 2009, four years after Shiretoko became the World Heritage.
Tourists can see a show of Ainu dancing, including the “horippa” circle dance, at a theater built in an Ainu community by Lake Akan. The show is performed by those who are clad in ethnic costumes with Ainu patterns. Items and animals that give blessings of the nature or cannot be lacked for life have been respected by Ainu people as gods, among them bears, owls, salmon and fire. They call their gods as “kamuy.”

The “Kamuy Wakka (god water) Falls" are one of the most attractive spots on a tourist cruise from Utoro Port along the northern coast of the Shiretoko Peninsula. The falls are located beneath a steep cliff and flow directly down into the sea.

The cruising ship service starts from a different port during the winter season because Utoro is then closed with thick ices flowing from the north. The 491-gross-ton Aurora II brings passengers to waters off Cape Shiretoko on the tip of the peninsula on a once-a-day 3-hour-and-45-minute cruising from Utoro. "Sometimes, we can have a distant view of the landscape around the tip into the other side of the peninsula, but the area is usually filled with fogs," a sailor said.
The scenic, wild environment of Shiretoko, coupled with the traditional Ainu dancing, is expected to give further chances for visitors to think about the importance of preserving the precious ecological system and diverse cultural assets for the future generation.

Flower gardens at Kyushu brewery entertain visitors every spring and autumn

May 28, 2014

Flower gardens at Kyushu brewery entaintain visitors every spring and autumn

A beer brewery in Asakura City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, southwestern Japan, has a 70,000-square-meter farmland, which turns into flower gardens with quite different tastes every spring and autumn. The land, to be covered with 10 million red and pink poppies in May and white and light purple cosmos from October to November, attracts tens of thousands of people from neighboring regions every time.

The Kirin Brewery Co. plant was opened at the site formerly occupied by an airfield for the defunct Imperial Japanese Army before the last war, then said to be the largest one in Asia, in 1966. The plant was built there not just because vast land lots had been available but also because pure river and underground water can be obtained nearby.

The poppy and cosmos garden fairs, launched a few years after the opening of the brewery, were expanded year after year. The events have now become so famous that traffic jams usually occur on roads to the plant every weekend while they are under way. A free shuttle bus service is available to carry visitors from the nearest railway station to the brewery in about 10 minutes.

This year’s Poppy Festival started on May 10 for a three-week run. Visitors stroll in the poppy fields and enjoy shopping and eating with booths set up by local food and farm product vendors..

“They (the poppies) were in full bloom around the middle of this month, “ said a person at the information. “Some flowers then fell in rains, but they should be still attractive toward the month’s end　this year,” she said. Careful visitors may also find double-petaled poppies.

The flower gardens lie right in front of the main gate to the brewery compound. After enjoying the flowers, registered visitors can take part in guided tours of beer brewing lines at the plant and try various beer brands free of charge.

The flower garden events are part of Kirin’s value-sharing social activities as a corporate citizen. But they have also become a precious tourist asset for the agriculure-oriented local economy. The events are expected to be even more popular as Japan is becoming aware of the importance of environmentally friendly green tourism.