Calm local town excited on expected World Heritage registration of old pumping station

May 28, 2015



Calm local town excited on expected World Heritage registration of old pumping station

Residents near the riverside pumping station in Nakama City, Fukuoka Prefecture, had been little aware of its historical importance until a few years ago. Cherry trees planted inside and outside of the compound of the facility provided a nice location for local people to enjoy cherry blossom viewing parties. The site was also sometimes used as a shelter to protect people from floods, according to Manabu Hamada, a Nakama City government official.

The 105-year-old pumping station has come into spotlight this year, however. The facility was among the 23 industrial assets in eight areas across Japan recently recommended to be registered as World Heritage by a UNESCO-affiliated organization.
The Onga River Pumping Station started supplying water to the Imperial Steel Works, Japan, in the Yahata area of the current Kitakyushu City, in 1910. This was about 10 years after the inauguration of the steelworks as a symbol of Japan’s  industrialization drive in the decades after Japan opened itself to the western civilization toward the middle of the 19th century.
The pumping station is still in operation, providing 120,000 tons of water a day to the Yahata steelworks. This is 70 percent of water used there. Water is used to cool the blast furnace body and steel rolled out of the mill, and to clean steel sheets and other products. Overall, 200 tons to 300 tons of water is said to be necessary to make one ton of steel.
The pumping facility, located in the inside of the east bank of Onga River, is capable of providing up to 180,000 tons of water to the steelworks, currently owned by Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp.
The pumping station is actually a rectangular, double-ridge building. The walls are covered with red bricks, while gray slag bricks are used for beams and arched window frames. The design provides a stylish outlook to the building as a whole.
The northern section of the building was used as a pump room and the southern section housed a coal-burning boiler which provided power to a steam engine. The facility started operation with four pumps introduced from Hathorn, Davey and Co. of Britain. The boiler and steam engine system was introduced from Babcock and Wilcox, also of Britain. The facility was electrified in 1950, but at that time, the building and related structures were preserved almost as they were.
River water is taken at a point up on a water gate and funneled into a settling pond in the northern area of the facility compound. An 11.4-kilometer water supply pipe starts from the northern end of the compound and crosses a branch of Onga River, and then it runs northwardly and eastwardly toward the steelworks.
Three historically important structures at the steelworks in the Yahata area are also among the candidates this time recommended for World Heritage registration.
The compound of the steelworks is sandwiched by the sea to the north and an amusement zone and densely populated areas to the south. The candidate assets there are not open to the public. Visitors can only have a distant view of one of the three structures from a recently built viewing deck. No entry or photo is permitted. Instead, visitors can take a look at monuments set up at part of the site formerly occupied by the steelworks.
The 10th generation model of the No. 1 blast furnace, which was in operation from 1962 to 1972, is preserved and opened to the public at a site near the steelworks compound.
The recommendation by ICOMOS, the UNESCO-affiliated entity, for the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel Making, Coal Mining and Shipbuilding,” has paved the way for the 19th case of World Heritage registration of natural assets and other globally important sites in Japan. The recommendation must be authorized by a UNESCO committee in charge of the matter at its meeting from late June to July. Indications are that the recommendation will be adopted at the meeting, but South Korea has raised objection to the recommendation, claiming that some of the 23 assets are related to forced labor involving Koreans taken from their homeland when Korea was under colonial rule by Japan from 1910.
Hamada is a key person of a five-man task force set up by Nakama City, southwestern Japan, in April 2014 to promote the pumping station as part of the candidates for World Heritage registration. Nakama City, with a population of 43,000, has so far had few tourist assets, It had no budget for tourism-related activities until last year, but the former coal mining town has earmarked 30 million yen for tourist-related purposes this fiscal year, according to Hamada.
No entry is permitted into the pumping station compound, because it is a working, high-voltage facility. Some other candidate sites recommended this time are also operating, among them a shipbuilding yard crane. If registered, these facilities will be the first operating World Heritage assets in Japan.
The compound of the riverside facility had been surrounded with densely planted trees. The facility could be little seen from outside, but many of the trees were cut down earlier this year, enabling people to have a look at the facility from outside.
On a holiday in early May, just after the ICOMOS recommendation was made public, the sites involved were flocked by hundreds to thousands of visitors. The Onga River Pumping Station attracted at least 450 visitors on that day, said Hamada. After the initial fever, the number of visitors comes to around 100 on weekends.
The pumping station was not included in a provisional list of World Heritage candidates prepared by the Japanese government in 2009. Later in the year, a group of experts took a firsthand look at the facility and recommended that it should also be included in the candidate list.
A large water supply system was indispensable for steelworks in the modern times. This means that a water supply facility was always built as part of a steelmaking project. “This is what experts (in the steelmaking business) equally stress,” said Hamada. The pumping station attests to this theory as it continues to operate at the original site.
When the site will be actually registered as a World Heritage, “we will have many jobs, not just to better preserve the facility but also to make it available as an asset for the public, so that its historical value may be disseminated,” Hamada said.
People in the Meiji era carefully used old items and assets as long as possible. When the power for the pumping station changed to electricity from steam and then, when the facility was shifted to an unmanned operation, “they (the facility operators) could have rebuilt it to a smaller, easier-to-maintain facility, by scrapping old and unnecessary items and sections, but they did not do so,” Hamada said. “This may be a spirit of craftsmen in the Meiji Era,” he said. “We can learn their view by looking at this facility and we will have to preserve the asset toward the years ahead.”

Incoming boating season in riverside spa town in southwestern Japan gives rare view of cormorant fishing

April 28, 2015

Incoming boating season in riverside spa town in southwestern Japan gives rare view of cormorant fishing

The boating season in the riverside Harazuru spa town in Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, opens on May 20, timed to coincide with the start of "ayu" sweetfsh catches in the area. This means that busy days will start for "usho" cormorant fishermen in the area, including Noburo Usui, who is 30 years old and the youngest among them.
Cormorant fishing in Harazuru, facing Chikugo River, the biggest in Kyushu, has been inherited by three different clans over generations. The three families each keep five or so cormorants.
Usui and his 33-year-old brother keep five birds.Their cormorants include a couple of five-year-old birds which are at very good terms with each other, according to Usui. They raise their cormorants since they are young, but they do not name the birds. "We haven't named our birds, because they are not pets," he said. "They are rather co-workers for us."
Cormorant fishing, or "ukai" in Japanese, can be seen at 12 places across Japan at present, but birds used for such fishing are wild cormorants caught in a certain designated seaside in eastern Japan.
The oldest usho man in Harazuru had died after the end of the last cormorant fishing season, but the remaining five members are relieved to hear that a friend of his has come forward to fill his place, making it possible to carry out this year's nightly fishing performance with six men for tourists as before.
Cormorant fishing in Harazuru involves three boats, each with the boatman and the cormorant operator aboard.
The three  boats stream down the river one by one, and the first one drives fish off their nest on the riverbank, while the second and third boats catch the fish. Usho men operate two or more cormorants, with their throat bound in neck, and let them catch ayu and other fishes while tourists watch them from aboard different boats.
One of the most famous ukai performances takes place on
Nagaragawa River in Gifu Prefecture, central Japan. Most ukai performances have been inherited over years with the patronage of the rulers and warlords in the respective regions. Those engaged in the performance in the Nagaragawa area belong to the Board of Ceremonies of the Imperial Household Agency, as the tradition is seen as part of historically important court assets.
The ukai fishing in the Harazuru area has no prestigious background; the practice has been continued as a kind of fishing method, not a tourist performance, by river fishermen over centuries.
Unlike those in other regions, cormorant fishermen in Harazuru do not wear special ukai costumes, nor do they use torches and other items. Ukai fishermen in the area feel it is becoming more difficult to maintain the tradition, as is the case with those in many other regions, but they are proud that their practice can be traced back to the ancient days. Two wooden items excavated from one of the eighth century ruins in the ancient capital of Nara indicate that ayu fish preserved in salt, believed to have been caught in cormorant fishing near Harazuru, had been presented to the court.

During the off-season, Harazuru usho fishermen live on different jobs, such as fruit growing. "Our ukai performance maybe looks less impressive (than those in other regions), but this is just because we're basically river fishermen," Usui said.
Usui started learning about cormorant fishing from his father when he was 17. "When I started learning it, my brother had already been working as a cormorant fisherman. So, I just followed suit, telling myself 'this is my family's business, if not easy,'" he said.
A headache for them is the fact that river fish is becoming less available in recent years. During the season, they feed their birds with the catches during the performance on Chikugo River, but in the winter season, they have to procure sea fish. They freeze it and give it to the birds piece by piece.
Usui lets his birds swim in the river sometimes toward the start of the ayu fishing season. He is also ready to show the ukai performance, upon request, on various occasions in neighboring regions, He and other usho fishermen in Harazuru hope that these off-season activities will make Harazuru more widely known, helping them to preserve the centuries-old practice over the years.

Japanese sake brewers see signs of long-awaited pickup in demand amid changes in eating habits

March 26, 2015

Japanese sake brewers see signs of long-awaited pickup in demand amid changes in eating habits

A special sake rice wine shop set up on the compound of Shinozaki Co.’s brewery was filled with customers trying to find their favorites on one day in mid-March. The occasion was an annual “kurabiraki” event held to introduce the year’s new brew. On the wall of the shop were an old photo and a copy of a winner’s certificate the company obtained in an international wine exhibition, but customers were busy looking for good buys, paying little attention to the items. 

The photo, taken in the 1930s, shows sake brewers standing in front of a brick chimney. "We don't have an original print of the picture. That's all we have,"said Hiroyuki Shinozaki, the owner and president of the company. "We were using coal as a fuel at that time, but we now use an oil burning boiler, and we have an advanced temperature control system." 
Shinozaki Co., located in Asakura City, Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan, won the Trophy award from the International Wine Challenge of London in 2007. The competition organizer had launched the sake Japanese rice wine division in the year. 
This year's kurabiraki tasting event attracted as many as 1,600 visitors, including young women. This was another sign that Japanese are beginning to take a fresh look at "seishu" sake rice wine. Seishu has been regarded as Japan's "national liquor," but its domestic consumption has been on a steady decline since the 1970s, reflecting changes in people's eating habits, notably the so-called disalcoholization and consumers' preference for imported drinks. 
Domestic sake consumption for 2010 stood at 590 million liters, down about 30 percent compared with the 1980s. The number of operating sake brewers across the country declined to about 1,500, almost half the 1955 level. 
In the slumping years, consumption picked up from time to time following brewers' efforts to provide new products to meet consumers' changing tastes, for example, fruity or dry and smooth products, but the downtrend remains to be reversed. 
Sake was generally seen as tacky and unfashionable until recently. Such a negative image is beginning to be corrected. In the past 10 years or so, Japanese sake products, especially high-quality rice wine brands, caught on well with consumers in Western countries and in some Asian markets. 
Sake brewers also have had a follow wind at home. "Sake is cool." Unconventional consumers, such as young men and women, feel so. Consumers in their 50s and 60s or older follow suit, saying, "Why don't we try sake once again." 
Usaku Nakao, the owner of Ayasugi Co., a time-honored sake brewer in Fukuoka City, feels that the decades-long downtrend is coming to an end at long last. He recalls that domestic sake consumption for 2011 grew about 2 percent year on year. It was the year when widely scattered areas in northeastern Japan were hit by a devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami killer waves.
The mishap, which claimed about 18,000 lives, initially made Japanese hesitant about drinking, but a young sake brewer in an earthquake-hit area issued a message on the youtube site calling for supporting affected small brewers by drinking, not refraining from drinking. This gave a boost to sake consumption in Tokyo and elsewhere, as the disaster reminded Japanese of the importance of their traditional culture and habits. 

I was long waiting for you to return, having prepared sake with finely fermented rice, but it was all in vain. You, my love, did not come to me. 
 (A personal translation) 

This is a poem made by Lady Kuramochinouji and included in Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, which was compiled in the eighth century. 
Today’s sake brewing technique has come to an extremely high level, Nakao says. Sake rice wine is made from rice and water, coupled with “koji” rice malt and yeast. Rice brewers now have very advanced systems and knowhow for, among other things, controlling temperature for the fermentation process, polishing, or shaving, rice grains to have the purest possible ingredient, and selecting and culturing healthy, fine koji malts and yeasts. 
Shinozaki had an encouraging news from abroad this year. The company’s new “Hiramatsu” rice wine brand, launched on top of its flagship “Kunigiku” label, was served at the Japan Night event as part of the prestigious World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. 
"The tide has changed,” said Michiaki Shinozaki, who assists his father as director in charge of management and planning. “We have inherited our (sake brewing) technique over years, but we were not necessarily active about selling sake products,” he said. “We have launched the Hiramatsu brand, but we couldn’t do such a thing until a few years ago.” 
Sake brands account for only less than 10 percent of alcoholic and other drinks turned out by Shinozaki. “Shochu” distilled spirits account for half of the total and “amazake” fermented rice-based sweet drinks 40 percent. 
Japan’s government is drumming up to increase sake exports to foreign countries. The campaign represents an effort to demonstrate Japan’s cultural assets extensively to the rest of the world.
Ambitious sake brewers are poised to take the occasion to increase their export business, though they have to overcome linguistic and other barriers to reach foreign consumers. In 2013, “washoku” traditional Japanese cuisines were recognized by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage. President Shinozaki, the seventh owner in the family’s 200 years of history, sounded cautiously optimistic about the future sake business in foreign markets. 
"Sake and washoku are a best combination, you know.” He said. "Sake makes washoku dishes even more tasteful, and people say sake rice wine can go with meat dishes, too.”
Ayasugi, whose sake business dates back to 1793, provides its products to Kashiigu Shrine, a local old Shinto shrine, for its rites every spring and autumn. The company and its sake brand are named after an old sacred cedar tree at the shrine. 
Ayasugi hangs a new “sugidama” ball of fine cedar branches at the entrance of the shop every year, as other brewers do. The item is an indication that “We have come up with the year’s new brew.”
"Sake is always beside us, Japanese. Served on various special occasions, sake enables us to share joys and sorrows all the time,” Nakao says. He believes that sake is a blessing from nature. “We hang the sugidama ball while thanking for nature.”

Spa resort town Beppu comes up with new attractive spots to entertain hot spring lovers

Feb. 27, 2015



Spa resort town Beppu comes up with new attractive spots to entertain hot spring lovers

Residents in Beppu, an internationally known spa resort, agree that the town owes its current prosperity to Kumahachi Aburaya, an early 20th century entrepreneur known as an idea man and a doer. Aburaya, who was good at advertising, launched Japan's first tourist bus service with charming young girls aboard as attendants, after refurbishing his hotel to a Western style one in 1924.
He also actively used the "onsen" spa logo mark and created an original catch copy, "Japan's three Number Ones. The best mountain is Fuji, the best sea is Setouchi and the best spa is Beppu." His innovative ideas contributed to disseminating the name of Beppu across Japan. Today, Beppu people are as active and innovative as the tourist industry legend in entertaining tourists with new attractive events and spots.
There are 12 courses of guided tours organized by local volunteers for a new herd of deep spa lovers, including night and gourmet spot tours. They take tourists to attractive locations, sometimes on the back streets, in the town's eight popular spa areas.
Another attractive project, which involves 88 selected hot spring baths in Beppu, calls for participants to try part or all of them one by one and have seals stamped on a booklet prepared for the tour at the baths they visited. When they accomplished all baths, they will be named an "onsen master" by the "Onsendo" project promoter, affiliated with the Beppu Tourist Association.
Onsen masters are awarded a black towel with a special logo as a token for the top rank, while blue, red, green and white towels are provided to other participants according to the numbers of hot spring baths they have tried.
At the top of the listed 88 hot spring baths is Takegawara Spa, a city-run facility which is housed in an 80-year-old wooden building and located in the busy Beppu Spa area.
Takegawara, which literally means "bamboo roof tiles," dates back to 1879, when the spa was opened near the sea shore for fishermen's families. Then, it became a bath for common use by local residents.
The two-story building with a high ceiling was registered as a cultural asset in 2004.
Takegawara was previously for residents only, but it is currently available for tourists, too. A woman at the reception kindly explains how to take a bath to unfamiliar visitors. "The temperature (of the bath) is sometimes 44 degrees centigrade, but it is 43 degrees today," she said. My wife had a chat with a young foreign woman  in the women's bath room. She introduced herself as a tourist from the Czech Republic and said, "I'll be back to Tokyo tomorrow to wind up a two-week tour of Japan."
When my wife referred to the names of famous spa areas in
Beppu, she appeared to be very much familiar with the spas in the town, among them Kannawa Spa. Asked whether it is not too hot, she replied smilingly, "No problem."
On an ally behind the Takegawara Spa building was Hirano Museum, an individually run museum with a collection of some 5,000 pieces of photos, posters, phonographic records and other materials about the town's history and culture. At the center of the main display room was a big photo of Aburaya, often called the revered old Mr. Kumahachi by local people.
He was a christian and went to the United States twice to study about tourism.  Standing beside his photo was a life-size picture of one of the female bus guides he recruited for the launch of the bus business.
Beppu, the second biggest city in Oita Prefecture, southwestern Japan, has a population of 125,000 and attracts more than eight million tourists a year.
Beppu and neighboring regions accommodate about 10 pct of Japan's 2,300 hot springs.
The eight major spa areas in Beppu boast of a daily output of hot water of 50,000 tons combined. In an attempt to demonstrate the attractiveness of the spas in Beppu and other areas, Oita Prefecture adopted the nickname "Onsen Prefecture" for its self in 2013.
Tourists, if lucky, may find a cute "onsen" logo mark registered by the prefecture at souvenir shops and other locations.
Of the hot spring baths in the popular Kannawa area, Hyotan (Japanese gourd) Spa has won a highest rating of three stars on the Michelin Guide. The spa boasts of an original spring water cooling system, which has made it possible to provide a 100 percent pure hot spring water by reducing the temperature of the water faster than ever, but with its rich ingredients intact.
The system is built with fine bamboo branches hung from an elevated wood trough, on which very hot water brought up from the spring source trickles down to be cooled to an appropriate temperature.
The actual cooling system is about 5 meters high, but a downsized model is placed in front of the entrance so that visitors can enjoy the facility as a foot bath. 
The "Yumetake" system, jointly developed by the spa operator and Oita Prefecture, is currently used at six facilities in Oita and Nagasaki prefectures.
The number of inbound tourists to Japan is on the increase in recent years, reflecting the government's policy of strengthening tourism as a growth industry and the yen's weakness against other currencies. But hot spring resorts in Japan are not necessarily successful in increasing tourists. This is partly because of diversifying tastes amid changes in social activities.
Beppu is more active than other spa resort towns, however. Its energetic effort to attract more tourists is expected to continue, as its people are willing to have more innovative ideas for the town.

Nagasaki revisited as shelters harboring secret Christians in feudal years

January 29, 2015

Nagasaki revisited as shelters harboring secret Christians in feudal years



Nagasaki, located in the westernmost part of Kyushu, one of Japan’s four main islands, has many faces in its historical background. Nagasaki City, the capital of Nagasaki Prefecture, is one of Japan’s two A-bombed cities, the other being Hiroshima. Nagasaki and Hirado, about 70 kilometers to the north, used to be “windows” for external commerce for about 250 years of “sakoku” isolation from the 17th century. 
Sites linked to secret Christians in the feudal years can be found in widely scattered areas in Nagasaki Prefecture.

Tabira Church, which stands on a hilltop overlooking Hirado Strait, was completed after three years of work in 1917 and dedicated in the following year. At present, 600 to 700 believers attend the church, though the number was once about 2,000, said an old man who was on hand to receive visitors at the church. “Our church will turn 100 in 2018, just three years ahead. So, we have to discuss where to build a monument (in commemoration of the centennial),” he said.

Christianity was brought into Japan by a Jesuit missionary, Francisco de Xavier, in the middle of the 16th century. Other missionaries followed suit and quickly won many believers among not only influential persons but also ordinary people in Kyushu and other parts of western Japan. But their propagation was banned a few decades later.

As Christians began to be persecuted, some of them gave up their faith, while others maintained their faith secretly at shelters. 
One can imagine the severity of the persecution by visiting a monument built in memory of 26 martyred Christians on the top of Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki. The so-called 26 Saints of Japan, including three boys and six foreign priests and monks, were taken to Nagasaki and executed there on February 5, 1597. 
Rites in memory of the martyrs will be held at churches across Japan, including Tabira Church, on the very day.

The year of 2015 is a special year for Christians in Japan. A group of secret Christians appeared at a church built for foreigners in Nagasaki and confessed their faith before a French missionary  on March 17, 1865, exactly 150 years ago. Despite the incident, the crackdown on Christian believers continued until 1873, when the new Meiji government scrapped the ban on the propagation amid criticisms by Christian countries. This eventually opened the way for Japanese Christians to build their own churches.

For Christians and related persons in Nagasaki Prefecture, this year will be even more special. Japan will formally recommend a total of 13 time-honored Christian sites, 12 places in Nagasaki Prefecture and one in neighboring Kumamoto Prefecture, this year as candidates for UNESCO World Heritage registration. Tabira Church, formally called Catholic Tabira Church, is among the candidate sites.

Tabira Church consists of the church building itself, a priestly house, front gate posts and an adjoining graveyard. Construction was carried out by congregation people, who carried up bricks, roof tiles, wood and other building materials from the sea. Lime as joints between bricks was made by burning seashell brought from the seashore. A kiln built for this purpose remains at an original site near the front of the church.

The red brick church building has a three-story front structure and behind it, a high arched, dome chapel with a beautifully painted interior. On top of the front building is an octagonal dome-shaped belfry, from which the bell is rung three times a day.

Visitors are received first by a statue of the Virgin Mary of Lourdes, built in front of the entrance in 1981. Then, they walk into the church and find beautifully decorated stained glass windows in the upper and lower sections and high above the altar. Those in the lower section depict the life of Jesus Christ from his childhood to death and resurrection. 

This year’s mass on the New Year’s Day brought together about 250 believers. As part of the mass, participants held a rite to celebrate the coming-of-the-age of two male followers.
According to a monthly newsletter published by the church, there will be no children who receive Holy Communion this year. “This is probably the first since our church started,” the author wrote anxiously.

The number of believers is further declining in the Tabira congregation, just like other Catholic churches in remote regions. As a result, the maintenance of the church is becoming harder. But the number of tourists appears to be increasing, since the proposed World Heritage registration of the Christian-related sites, including Tabira Church, became widely known last year. The encouraging news is expected to help Tabira congregation people to keep their faith and tradition from generation to generation over the years.