Hakodate

    

     The bus is almost totally dark, the lights having been turned off so as not to spoil the night view. In front of me, a female guide pours out a stream of mostly unintelligible keigo, the polite form of Japanese. As we ascend the mountain traffic officers with flashing batons direct us to stop, and we wait for the oncoming vehicles to pass on the narrow road. Nothing much is visible, but then a gap opens in the tree line and an old Japanese woman erupts in appreciation: ‘Sugoi! Yahhhh! Mieru!’ Far below there is a city built on a peninsula, its lights splitting the black emptiness of the sea in two. 

     Hakodate, the city on the peninsula, has a very interesting history. Notwithstanding its situation at the southern tip of Hokkaido, the sparsely populated and most northerly of Japan’s four main islands, it was one of the first ports to open to foreign trade in the 1850s. Thus ended two and a half centuries of almost complete isolation. A sense of Hakodate at the time can be gleaned from a letter written by the governor of this outpost to Commodore Matthew Perry, whose squadron of 5 American ships arrived in the harbour in 1854. The governor described it as ‘an outlying, remote region’, ‘no bigger than a pill or a speck’, with a ‘sparse and ignorant’ population. It ‘produces almost nothing’, he wrote. Getting there from the capital took 30 days in summer, 37 in winter. 

     Now around 300,000 people call it home, and there are street signs in Chinese, Korean, Russian and English. It’s famous for its squid, and produces perhaps the best beer in Japan (try the Weizen at Hakodate Beer). Apparently, 4.3 million people visited last year. Posters hanging from handsome street lamps announce excitedly that the shinkansen, or bullet train, will be arriving in Hakodate in 2015. This costly development will cut the train journey from Tokyo to four hours, shaving 90 minutes off the present travel time. 

     Still, in this writer’s view, the way to arrive will always by ferry from Aomori, an inaka (rural) city on the north coast of Honshu. The ship sails slowly northwards, passing between hilly peninsulas, then across the Tsugaru straits, where the calm waters of the bay give way to open sea. Soon a dark bump appears far in the distance: Mount Hakodate. For a long time the city is concealed behind its bulk, and it’s only as you near the mountain that it comes into view.

Aomori

     It is the longstanding international connection that gives Hakodate its appeal. The city’s Motomachi district, at the foot of the mountain, is celebrated for its attractive European and North American-style buildings. These are a wonderful counterpoint to the awful post-war architecture found with such depressing frequency in other Japanese cities. (In truth, the modern parts of Hakodate itself suffer from the same problem.) Best of all is the yellow and greyish blue Old Public Hall, which brings to mind a plantation house in Gone with the Wind or 12 Years a Slave, with its gables, second floor veranda and decorative parapet. Visit during the day and you may see Japanese women dressed as southern belles.

     As is true of all Japanese cities, the best time to walk the streets of Hakodate is in the evening, when the atmosphere in Motomachi is tremendous. The steep streets are devoid of people, the Victorian-style street lamps are illuminated and the city’s trams, with their wooden floorboards, clunk slowly over cracked roads between the train station and the mountain. Hundred year old buildings like the former British Consulate are lit up. It feels like a miniature San Francisco, but without the homeless problem and with the added appeal of a ropeway that travels through the night sky to the top of the peak.  

     On the mountainside, past Motomachi and what was once allegedly a gay quarter, there is a small sloping enclosure surrounded by a rusty white railing. It looks out onto the bay, and the land beyond. At the back small American flags have been placed in the turf beside a pair of humble and weather-beaten gravestones. It’s a reminder that this has long been an international city, a rare thing in this insular nation. 

In the footsteps of Nikos Kazantzakis in Japan

        

          Through a grille in a thirteen hundred year old wooden pagoda I see them: tiny clay figures of incredible age, their expressions concealed by the semi-darkness. Unlike the handful of squinting Japanese around me, I was prepared for this. Feeling like a minor criminal, I grab my flashlight and direct the weak beam at the scrawny ascetics before me. They are ululating and pounding their chests in lamentation, mourning the passing of the Buddha in their midst.

          I did not come to Horyu-ji to see these miniature statues, though. I was instead inspired by a description I chanced upon in a musty biography of one of my favourite writers: Nikos Kazantzakis. A student of Buddhism, he made a pilgrimage here in 1935, and raved about it in a letter to his wife in these terms: “Exquisite. Peaceful, pagodas, springtime-sweet air, Buddhas smiling in the half-light, paintings on silk, dancing girls and, above all, the goddess Kwannon, the goddess of mercy. This is the most beautiful statue I’ve ever seen.’

          On this late June day, however, the air is not springtime-sweet. The sun is bright, ferocious and dazzling. For once I look at the umbrella-wielding Japanese women with something other than scorn. Nor is it especially peaceful. Smart tour guides with blue flags and squeaky voices march hordes of bored-looking Japanese junior high school children around the large grounds at military pace. Occasionally, a shout of ‘atsu!’ (hot!) from one of the boys rises above the general murmur.  

          There’s a dearth of foreigners, or at least white people at Horyu-ji, underlining the fact that it’s not that easy to get to. It took me two hours from Kyoto Station, first on a slow-paced local train along a single-track railway to Nara, then across a tableland of saturated rice fields and ugly houses to the dusty town of Ikaruga. Green hills could be seen in the distance in all directions. After a fifteen minute walk in unforgiving heat and humidity I reached a long and narrow avenue of sloping pines. It seemed a fitting approach to one of Japan’s oldest temples.  

          Indeed, according to the tourist bumf, Horyu-ji is home to ‘the world’s oldest surviving wooden structures’, among whose number is the aforementioned five-story pagoda. Looking at this brown and white edifice with its deep eaves, I find the claim hard to believe: rather disappointingly, it looks in great shape. I had hoped for a sight redolent of antiquity that would send a thrill though my body. Of more interest are the immense and discoloured clay guardians, with their rippling muscles and fearsome expressions, that protect the central gate. Now they do look old. 

          As I leave the spacious western precinct, exiting through the long and shady cloister gallery, I feel a thrill of excitement. Ahead in the gallery of treasures the statue of the goddess Kannon waits, the one Kazantzakis called the most beautiful he’d ever seen. It stands before a mandorla in a hall of its own, a remarkably tall and slight wooden figure, with long arms and a water vase in its left hand. The figure is feminine, but the face looks more like a man’s. 

          It’s a mesmerising sight, well over a thousand years old, but is it the one Kazantzakis spoke of? Later, back in Tokyo, I discover that Horyu-ji houses another celebrated statue of Kannon, a so-called ‘secret Buddha’ that can only be seen in the spring and fall. I guess I’ll never know.