3) AOMORI CITY 青森市 – Rassera, Rassera: The Story of the North

A voyage to Aomori, Part 3 of 5

From the sanctuary of Osorezan I crossed back to this world of artifice and illusions. A two-hour descent from the Shimokita Peninsula by train brought me to Aomori City (青森市), the capital of Aomori Prefecture and my base for a few more days of northern exploration.

Aomori. It is a name synonymous in the Japanese imagination with scallop-fishing, apple-growing, and above all the Nebuta Festival.

The city perches at the south end of Mutsu Bay, at almost the geographic centre of the prefecture, where it brings together the diverse cultures, histories, trades and forces of nature of a land whose present form is of very recent construction. Most of Aomori City as we know it today was built upon the wreckage of World War II, while the concept of Aomori Prefecture as a coherent unit is scarcely a century old. Let's take a look at the story of the north end of Japan.


The First Peoples and the Japanese Conquest 

If we speak of illusions, we should do away with one of this country's most popular: that is, the myth of the homogenous nation. The closer you actually look at Japan, the less escape there is from the hollowness of those claims that this is a land of one people, one ethnicity and one culture.

Get on a bus at Aomori Station and within twenty minutes you come to one of Japan's most interesting archaeological excavations, right there in the suburbs of Aomori City. The oldest finds at the Sannai-Maruyama site (English website here) date back almost 6,000 years, to the world of the earliest known inhabitants of this region.

Hakone - The Volcano With Thousands of People In It

Approximately 200,000 years ago, in what is now the southwestern corner of Kanagawa Prefecture, there was an explosion of catastrophic proportions. Some time later, about 50,000 years ago, there was another one. The result: a great volcanic complex of lava domes and calderas, all contained within an elegant ~15km-wide mountain rim just southeast of Mount Fuji.

Mount Hakone (箱根), as it came to be known, produced its most recent outburst around 1,000 BCE, which blew up the northwest flank of the central lava dome and created, eventually, the picturesque Lake Ashi (Ashinoko, 芦ノ湖). Though it has not exploded since, it remains a tectonically active area with frequent seismic swarms, fluorescent yellow deposits, and fumaroles which still belch out great columns of sulphurous gas; and the risks from earthquakes, landslides and toxic fumes have led to the zone's active management by the Kanagawa authorities.

Lake Ashi, with Mount Hakone's western rim behind it, as seen from the central lava dome.

Ōwakudani.

Notwithstanding this volatility, the Hakone highlands' location made them the effective gateway to the Kanto plain and, from the 1600s onward, to Japan's burgeoning new capital of Edo (Tokyo). This raised Hakone's human significance, such that by the transformations of the Meiji era, its stunning natural beauty, prolific onsen (hot springs) and the looming profile of Mount Fuji were already popular with visitors seeking a quality getaway, foreign dignitaries included.

Since then, Hakone has developed into one of the greater Tokyo area's most popular tourist destinations, supported with dozens of ryokan (traditional Japanese inns), hotels, museums, shops, cultural heritage sites and examples of local folklore, and connected by a reliable transport network of trains, ropeways, cable cars, buses, and boat cruises across the length of Lake Ashi. The Hakone Free Pass, for about 5000 yen, gives you either two or three days worth of unlimited use of these transport options, as well as covering passage between Hakone and any stop on the Odakyu Odawara Line.

And yet, the human intrusion manages not to terminally disrupt Hakone's natural integrity. Most buildings and tourist facilities are concentrated into clusters – the entry point at Hakone-Yumoto, the lakeside town of Hakone-machi, or the crossroads and transport connections of Gora and Sengoku – or are otherwise dispersed along the mountain complex's long arteries, which snake through densely forested slopes, sheltering valleys and tranquil streams down deep ravines. Hakone offers much to those exhausted by the Kanto region's mass of humanity: hiking routes provide an escape into the clouds, and strolling through the sleepy hamlets may be a welcome contrast to the crammed containers of tourists chugging between them.

Kanamara Matsuri - 'Festival of the Steel Phallus'

Each year, on the first Sunday of April, the Wakamiya Hachimangu Kanayama Shrine (若宮八幡宮金山神社) in Kawasaki (between Tokyo and Yokohama) holds an unusual festival.

The Kanamara Matsuri, or "Festival of the Steel Phallus", dates back to the Edo period. According to legend, a sharp-toothed demon fell in love with a woman who did not feel likewise to him. So when she married someone else, the envious demon hid himself inside a certain orifice of hers before the wedding. Then, when her hubsand's corresponding organ made ingress, the demon deployed his jaws in such a way as deprived him of said organ, and no doubt inflicted quite considerable pain. Apparently this happened to a second husband too.

This, perhaps understandably, made a lot of people in the village upset. So the woman came up with a plan, and consulted a blacksmith to forge a phallus made of steel. With this they managed to trick the demon and broke his teeth. Angered and humiliated, the demon left her body, though the legend is not clear whether he escaped or was arrested.

Hence, the steel phallus: which has been enshrined here ever since, and whose significance is commemorated each year at this festival. The shrine is said to be especially popular for prostitutes, who pray to it for protection against sexually transmitted diseases; though it also attracts married couples to pray for family harmony, people of diverse sexualities, and businesspeople seeking prosperity.

A Tribute to Tortured Souls

On a day we have chosen to celebrate the love that joins and defines us as human beings, I would only ask a moment of your time for reflection.

Only a moment – for to sink us to the depths of despair would be neither apt for the occasion, nor constructive for the betterment of love in the world. But a moment nonetheless: in order that we remember that love, inherently, is a joy that should bring us all together, not pit us against one another; should bring no person the terror of heartbreak, or pain of hope lost; and must be protected, at all costs, from the corruptions of a social order where too many are prepared to gain from the suffering of others.

This is a world where however one looks at it, all that is good about love faces tremendous challenges. And as we take joy today in our victories in surmounting them – in our thriving relationships, our fond memories and exciting plans, and the warmth of time spent with those who mean everything to us – let us never forget, that we have yet to make this a world where this joy reaches everyone. Let us never forget that anguish and cruelty, for anyone, is not the way of love; but that we, as societies, as people, must take responsibility for every heart broken, and every person left behind.

So please: remember them.

Remember those whose loving relationships have failed; whether because of betrayal, or succumbing to selfish interests, or any other cause.

Remember those who follow the path of love, only to be taken advantage of then abandoned like depleted commodities, and left with their dreams shattered in pieces by the wayside.

Remember those whose love is not fulfilled, because of the expectations of gender: the despair of men not considered "masculine", women not considered "feminine", those who do not identify as male or female at all, or those whose bodies, beliefs, behaviours, wealth or paths in life are mocked as inadequate by social norms. Remember those left so hopeless, then told by those around them that it is their own fault. Remember that in denying those hearts a place, a home, those societies wreak terrible wrongs upon the universe.

Remember those ostracized, discriminated against or subjected to violence and terror, because their love is criminalized by their societiess. Remember, in places where anyone dares forbid it, those who love people of the same sex; or people from different lands; or two, three or more people who all love them back. Remember those who in spreading love to where the madness of humankind would purge it, do the most to redeem us all.

Remember those torn from those they wish to be with: by tyrannical relatives; by self-interested political factions; by compassionless immigration laws; by violent conflicts; by segregationist dogmas or religious police; by any, in fact, who find in themselves the reprehensible callousness to separate those who love.

Remember those whose experience of love is shredded asunder by sexual violence; above all by rape, that thing with no basis in nature or sanity, which should never have been permitted to enter our world. Remember those who, violated once, are violated again when blamed, shamed and degraded for it by those around them.

Remember those so stricken with the rending, slicing agony of wronged love, and then with the incineration of the soul that is society's normalization of these nightmares, or indifference to their misery. Remember those for whom the thought of living one moment more in this world becomes an unthinkable burden – who find themselves looking, instead, to the freedom of death. Remember that they do so not out of self-regard, nor irrationality, nor mental disorder. Remember them as those from whom our kind's violations of love exacted the ultimate price.

Remember that the stars are on the side of all who love. Thus there are no star-crossed lovers – the very concept is a shameful scapegoat. There are only society-crossed lovers. Of all the ways we break people's hearts – from laws to norms, from violence to alienation, from betrayals to manipulations, from dogmas to hysterias – none of these crimes are committed by love. We, the human race, are authors of all these things; we introduced them to Earth; and nature, the universe, contain no excuses to spare us responsibility for putting them right.

So please: remember. Remember today the thousands who on this day, are unfulfilled as love-capable creatures; and remember that this is so not because reality is just like that – but because of choices, by humans among us, to do them harm.

Remember them today: the tortured souls, in all lands of Earth. And when we have remembered, then let us stand up and do our parts, from wherever each of us is placed, to emancipate their love from the chains and blades our kind has woven to torture them. To establish this as a world where to harm, exploit or subject any love is wrong. To make this a world where love, triumphant, leaves no-one behind.

2) SAPPORO – The Story of Hokkaido (北海道 の ものがたり)

I left Akita at 4:30am, hauled my luggage on and off trains for seventeen hours, and staggered into Hokkaido's prefectural capital long after dusk.

As with most things in Hokkaido, the first word belongs with the Ainu, the indigenous people, whom we shall return to properly in due course. Sapporo's name comes from sat poro pet ("dry, large river") in the Ainu language.

Sapporo is one of Japan's youngest settlements, with dedicated settlement only beginning in the 1860s. A century and a half later, it is Japan's fourth most populated city, prosperous and popular, and renowned for its beer, chocolate biscuits, miso ramen, snow festival, and hosting of the 1972 Winter Olympics.

Now is that or is that not a planned city?

But to understand it – and to understand Hokkaido – we have to go back further than the birth of Sapporo. Much further. 40,000 years further, in fact, to the Pleistocene epoch: far enough to make out its geo-ecological umbilical cord, which was totally separate from that of Japan's.

Notice anything major that isn't there now?