It is the rainy season here in Tokyo. So far this seems quite mild compared to last year, when we regularly received 1" or more of rain per day. But despite the rain, summer is also tourism season. We have had the privilege of visiting Japan so often that we’ve been able to track the changes to Tokyo in just a few years. There are some constants: the trains are on time (until today, that is, as I write this from a 5 1/2 hour delay), many businesses are torn down yearly and completely rebuilt into something new, and there are tourists. But who those tourists are and how many, that has changed dramatically.
Due to probably myriad factors, but primarily the dramatic rise of the Chinese middle class, ease of visa requirements, and weakening yen, Chinese tourism (including Taiwan and Hong Kong) now makes up half of all tourism to Japan, a nearly 100% increase over the last two years. In fact, overall tourism is the highest on record to Japan, with 2.1 million tourists last month alone. To put this in context of our time in Japan- when we first visited in July 2009, fewer tourists visited Japan that month, from the entire world, than tourists from only mainland China did in May 2016 alone. That is a huge increase.
You can see this increase everywhere and in many ways; English is far more common, the cultural norms against defaulting to English have loosened or disappeared, there is signage in Mandarin and Korean most places, and there is an even more pronounced xenophobia. It is also, hard to believe, even more crowded.
This crowding is manifesting in part in the Shinkansen rail pass system, which is a foreigner pass that is an incredible deal. With the increase in tourists, this is putting more strain on the Shinkansen, which is a luxury mode of travel that often has many empty seats, so, it’s not terrible to have more demand. Last year, for example, we rode a first class car on a 16 car train to northern most Honshu with 2 other people. Part of the benefit to our “green car” (first class) passes is those cars are often empty and guarantee a seat. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I arrived at the station at 6:00 am to reserve a ticket for the 6:40 train north to Akita.
“I’m sorry, the train is sold out,” the attendant said in Japanese.
“Really?! Ok- the 7:40?”
“All trains are sold out. Every car. Every class. Until 12:40pm”
I stared, shocked, that that many people had a desire to visit rural northern Japan. There is nothing in northern Japan that traditionally attracts tourists; Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Hiroshima are all in southern Honshu. I randomly picked a train going north to Morioka, which seemed to have some things worth seeing, and made my way.
Not having a plan is a constant state of “I don’t know.” My first I don’t know was in not knowing where I was going; turns out Morioka was boring and not worth visiting. Instead I settled on Hiraizumi, a very old town with shrines important in the early 2nd millennia. But to get there was a whole other series of I don’t knows. I didn’t even know if my Shinkansen stopped at the nearby major station- Ichinoseki. Turns out it did, so I jumped off and realized I was not in Kansas anymore. The next train- I mean any train- was not for an hour. Hiraizumi was only 7 minutes away by train, but the train came only once every 80 minutes. I waited. In Tokyo every train line has an arrival every 3–5 minutes; this was an exercise in patience.
Above: a typical view of small homes, mountains, and rice paddies.
I got into Hiraizumi along with a train-full of domestic octogenarian tourists. There is one platform in Hiraizumi and it is so small it doesn’t even have a gate- instead, two older workers looked at every person’s ticket and gave them an earnest “dozo”, they didn’t even mark the tickets as used.
Above: the entire train schedule, for every day of the year, in Hiraizumi.
Hiraizumi is now a very small town of not even 7,000 people in north-eastern Honshu. Nearly 1000 years ago, however, it was the capital of the Tohoku region, and served as the home of the ruling Fujiwara family. At the time of its height around 1100, it rivaled Kyoto in size and splendor. The first shrines in Hiraizumi, which still stand today, were built nearly 1300 years ago.
Above: the reconstructed Noh theater. Still in use.
After the fall of the family in 1189, Hiraizumi slowly faded from notoriety. Although many of the buildings were destroyed, there are still remains or structures that still stand. Most notable is the Tendai Buddhist complex Chuson-ji, which is situated on mount Kazan.
Above: a view of the rivers below from my ascent.
To get there, I walked up the foot of the mountain path, which is lined with cryptomeria trees, easily 50 feet tall and most well over 400 years old, planted by monks.
Many small “umbrella shrines” line the way, in tribute to specific people or for certain purposes.
Along the way you encounter the Hondo, or main hall.
The main hall houses an area for worship along with several golden statues of the Buddha. Out of respect, I did not take photos.
Nearby the main hall are two belfry. The second contains the original bell cast in 1300, though no longer played due to a prominent indent, likely due to 700 years of use.
Only two buildings in chuson-ji are truly original without reconstruction. One is a sutra repository- the other is Konjikido. Konjikido is an altar, 5.5 meters square and about equally tall, made of wood and covered completely in gold leaf. It resembles a small pagoda and houses inside of it more than 30 statues, predominantly of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas, covered in bronze and mother of pearl along with lacquer finish. It is extraordinarily detailed, and now completely contained behind glass. It sat in the open air for nearly 100 years and the fact it remains largely undamaged after its completion in the 12th century is remarkable. The mummified bodies of four generations of Fujiwara lords are buried underneath it. Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed.
The above is the building that houses Konjikido, not the altar itself. There was a protective building, built out of unfinished wood, to protect Konjikido which is still intact, and was finished in 1288.
There is a definite irony to Japan at times, between seeing 900+ year old buildings largely untouched, and later in the day walking past a restaurant I saw being built last year which is now torn down and being turned into something else. The preservation of ancient culture while surging forward in innovation is something I strangely admire here. I think that every time we speed by rice paddies or shrines on the Shinkansen. And sometimes that innovation begins to eat its own tail, ending with all the trains full. But that leads to interesting “wakarimasen” experiences; I likely would not have ventured here if not for the sizable tourist influx and resulting stranglehold on the Shinkansen system. So I guess I owe my fellow, seemingly innumerable, tourists a thank you, especially because none of them went to Hiraizumi, so I got to spend a day feeling like I was no longer one in the large crowd.