The Land od the Rising Yen

room
for feudal lords, another one for non-hereditary feudal lords, then one for the
sons of feudal lords, one for the sons of non-hereditary feudal lords, one for
the brothers-in-law of non-hereditary feudal lords and so on. Then we have the shogun’s audience chambers for feudal lords, for non-hereditary feudal lords and so on,
down to the audience chamber for the brothers-in-law of non-hereditary feudal
lords. The shogun’s living quarters struck me as particularly splendid
and luxurious, but it was explained that they were simple and austere. Because,
I was told, he — the first shogun who had this palace built — was a
simple and austere man. He had one single bedroom for himself and then only a
few more for his concubines. He always left his wife in Tokyo — Edo — when he
came down here but he was always regarded as an ascetic man, a man of admirable
self-restraint, because at no given time did he have more than two hundred
concubines.
    The other rooms had lovely, poetic
names. Willow Room (where Feudal Lords were identified); Rosy Dawn Room (where they were searched); Hyacinth Room (where they were tortured) and, I believe,
the Chamber of Heavenly Pleasure where they were executed.
    They also have the Nightingale Floor
in the palace. It has got this romantic name because when you walk on it, it
gives out a whispering sound, sad and rueful, like a nightingale hopelessly in
love. The reason for this romantic arrangement is not a love of nightingales
but a desire to detect people who came stealing along the corridors, wanting to
assassinate the shogun.
     
    But where my friend went really wrong
in his comparison between the elderly geisha and Kyoto’s ruins was in saying
that some of the ruins might be older than she. My suspicion is that none of
them is. Not because that charming and illustrious lady is so old — what is
three score years and ten, or say fifteen, nowadays? — but because all Kyoto’s ruins are so incredibly young.
    Wherever you go, you read
descriptions of old temples and monuments which go like this:
    ‘Built in the eighth century. Burnt
down and completely rebuilt in 893, 1217, 1526, 1718 and 1933. The present
structure of this lovely eighth-century Temple was erected in 1965.’
    Is this Japan all over again? The
land of the most up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, antiquity; the land of brand-new
ancientness?

OSAKA
     
    Osaka is the third city of Japan the foreign tourist is likely to visit, particularly if he is of indomitable spirit
and prepared to face Expo 70.
    There is the same, inevitable rivalry
between Osaka and Tokyo as between many first and second cities: between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, between Sydney and Melbourne, between Rome and Florence, between Stockholm and Gothenburg. As in the case of the Brazilian and the
Swedish towns mentioned, one is the real, the other the commercial capital of
the country. (I have heard of Brazilia, of course; but it is not yet the real
capital of Brazil.) Osaka used to be called the Manchester of Japan, a title of
which — I was told — it used to be extremely proud.
    ‘Osaka is a village,’ people in Tokyo will tell you.
    ‘There are far too many people in Tokyo,’ your Osaka friends will remark.
    ‘Well, Osaka is not really a
village,’ you will reply, to which the Osaka-ites will add. ‘Three million
people. Just right.’ (A few weeks later I heard the same remark about the small
Austrian town, Kufstein. ‘It has 12,000 people. Just right.’ Three million is
just right; twelve thousand is just right.)
    Osaka is a big, industrial, commercial and banking
city, with ‘no culture’ as Tokyo people are fond of repeating and Osaka people are quite ready to agree; they take it almost as a compliment. They prefer
cash to symphony orchestras. It is one of the oldest Japanese jokes (of which
there aren’t many) that Osaka people spend all their money on food, Kyoto people on clothes and Tokyo people on politics. (As I have pointed out earlier, more
money seems to be made on politics than spent on it, but I reproduce the quip
as I heard it.) It is another joke that people in Osaka do not greet one another
with the customary ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good day’, but with the question: ‘How’s
business?’ To which the expected answer is the Japanese equivalent of ‘So-so’.
    When I visited Osaka it was burning
with Expo-fever. Urban motorways, highways and hotels had been built; the Expo
site buzzed with feverish activity.