Late August 2009
(Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday, Thursday morning)
It was 6:00 when I arrived at my hotel. Dinner time. But as I walked around the quiet neighborhood, I realized a problem: there were no restaurants. There were several small hotels like mine that would feed you breakfast and dinner if you ordered it when you made your reservation—I hadn’t. There was a tourist attraction nearby—the large housing complex of an important samurai—but the two or three cafes and souvenir stands were already dark. Besides that there were only residential houses, a long empty street, and a 7/11 around the corner.
I didn’t want to have dinner at a convenience store, but I didn’t have a choice. There was no other place. I made the best of it. I tried the “red” spicy fried chicken (very tender) and a piroshky, a Russian snack that resembled a fried dumpling. It was cheap—even with drinks and dessert and breakfast for tomorrow, I still spent less than ten bucks. It was casual—I plopped myself down on my futon bed, spread out my food on the tatami mat floor, and ate while holding a book to my nose. It was fun.
Aizu-Wakamatsu reminded me of Kanoya, except with more history and less restaurants. It had a very small-town feel, and like Kanoya, it’s in the middle of nowhere. There are hills inside the city and hills surrounding the city on the outside, but no ocean. Aizu is as deep inland as a city in Japan can be.
When I woke up the next morning, a miracle happened: my earache, which persisted since Hakodate, suddenly vanished. I was healed! Of course, this ailment would be replaced with another, namely giant blisters on my toes, but I don’t want to complain. Point is, I was mostly healthy by now and feeling pretty good.
My first stop was the aforementioned tourist attraction, Aizu Bukeyashiki, the home of one of the most important retainer samurai of the old Aizu domain. The houses were typically pretty with wooden beams and gleaming roof tiles. There was even a pond with golden carp that swam so close to the edge of the water, you could practically scoop them up in your hand. But what I liked even better were the life-sized dolls interacting with the artifacts in the room. A samurai greeting a guest, a woman playing a musical instrument, a girl with short hair playing with a paper ball.
And the signs! Glorious English signs! They explained things like why there was a wagon of sand underneath the toilet. (Apparently the doctor checked the excrement for warning signs of sickness—ew!) Or that the giant chugging water wheel in the dark room that smelled of damp wood was a rice polishing machine. (Although it didn’t explain how it polished rice or even why rice needed to be polished in the first place.)
But there were no English signs in the museum. Coming up the stairs from the rice polishing machine, I stumbled across a room filled with the portraits of great men. Hanging off the second floor balcony was a banner showing the last lord of Aizu, Matsudaira Katamori, and two members of the Shinsengumi, including my old friend Hijikata. (Remember him from Hakodate?) I was curious. What was the relationship between the two parties? And why was it displayed here, in a house neither owned by the lord nor the Shinsengumi?
I asked these questions to the women at the front desk in my garbled Japanese.
“No, there’s no relationship between these people and this house,” she said. “The banner is old.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I have an interest in the Shinsengumi.”
The women picked up the phone. “Just a minute,” she said.
A short while later she showed me the location of the Shinsengumi Memorial Museum on a Japanese map. Incidentally, this did not appear on my English map at all. I thanked the woman and bought an akabeko keychain from a basket on her counter. An akabeko is a red cow with a bobbing head that’s a symbol of Aizu.
Another museum on the grounds showcased women and children of the household committing suicide. Two women slumped over, one with a child over her lap, its eyes shut. The dolls wore traditional white gowns of seppuku. Considering seppuku involves ritually disemboweling oneself, their clothes were oddly pristine and bloodless.
When Satsuma and Choshu (Kagoshima and Yamaguchi) declared the end of the Shogunate, the restoration of the Emperor, and the coming of the Meiji era in 1868, Aizu resisted. The Imperial army marched on Aizu, and their armies clashed. Aizu’s castle burned. Sensing defeat, the wife of the manor declared the household must commit suicide. Seppuku followed.
A third woman in white leaned up in agony. She gazed up at scary-looking soldier with a long orange vest and a sword in his hand. “If you are a friend, help me to die,” she pleaded. In fact, he was an enemy. But he obliged. A quick swipe of his sword, and she too lay dead.
The soldier had long red hair.
“Kenshin!” I gasped in horror.
(Kenshin is a red-haired samurai who worked as an assassin for Choshu at this time in history. He appears in the comic series Rurouni Kenshin, which I read in college.)
Somehow, though, I doubted the fictional hero of my comic would appear in a history museum. My memory flickered; I recalled another red-haired soldier among the miniatures of Goryo-kaku Tower in Hakodate. There was a pattern here. If only I knew what it was.
Before leaving the samurai villa, I asked a woman working at the souvenir shop why the soldier had red hair. Apparently the men in the Imperial army wore wigs in order to intimidate their enemy. They were supposed to resemble some kind of animal. What animal? I didn’t actually catch that, but later I read something about “red bear” wigs. Odd. Whoever heard of a red bear?
The bus ran a loop from tragedy to tragedy. My next stop was Iimori Mountain. In a tale similar to that of the women in white, a group of teenage boys had climbed the mountain, seen the smoke of the castle burning, and decided to plunge their swords into their stomachs. Today souvenir stands crowd the base of Iimori Mountain, selling deep-fried vegetables, soft serve, and a thousand brick-a-bracks with the name of the group plastered on it.
Byakkotai. White Tigers. Most of the boys in the group were only 16 or 17, but they were samurai and soldiers. Two swords hung at their hip, and they held a long black riffle in their hand. I studied their statues and the paintings of their journey, from a skirmish at a bridge to a retreat up the mountain. What struck me was their clothes. They all wore black, high-collared military jackets with a line of buttons down the front. I’d seen those jackets before: it resembled the school uniforms worn by my own high school students.
The White Tigers are enshrined in a temple at the mountains, and tourists surround their graves, burning incense and taking pictures. What is it about stupid acts of teenage suicide that tickles the sensibilities? Why do people think it’s romantic? It’s not. It’s a waste of life. Yet here are the White Tigers, the biggest tourist attraction in Aizu, and me, a hypocrite, snapping pictures just like everyone else.
The bus ran a loop from tragedy to tragedy, and now I came to Aizu Castle, also called Crane Castle. The crux of both acts of suicides. The fact that the castle had been at least partially burned down a hundred and fifty years ago didn’t in any way hinder its existence today. Its grey tiles gleamed in the sunlight, and its walls shone bright with a fresh coat of paint.
My English pamphlet patiently explained all the information I already knew. Yes, yes, yes a battle was fought here and Aizu lost. I got that. But how did they lose? How did their castle get burned? What was the breakdown of the battle? Who were the people involved and how did they decide to surrender? All the answers may have been inside. But if they were, they were all in Japanese—and I couldn’t read them!
I was a dog behind a chain link fence with a juicy bone on the other side. No matter how I jumped at the bone, the metal links would snap me back. That’s how I felt when I explored the museum inside the castle. I saw pictures of the battle, but I couldn’t read the explanations. If only there was a guide, like that lady in Yamaguchi Prefecture, someone who would take me by the hand and lead me like a child through the displays—but there was no guide, no one in this afternoon crowd who would stop and talk to me.
That was the real source of my frustration, I think. I went to these places of history in order to find someone who shared my love of history.
To find someone to talk to.
The alarm rang the next morning. Slowly, sleepily, I got out of bed, sorted my trash, and packed my bags. It was time to leave Aizu, but not before making one last stop. The Shinsengumi Memorial Museum was located in the old town district of Aizu. The train station had no automatic wicket or even a person to take my ticket. I walked right out without anyone checking to see if I’d paid the correct fare. Across the street was a temple and down the road, rows of quaint, wooden shops selling painted candles and local crafts.
I recognized the Shinsengumi museum by the triangle-striped banners bearing the kanji “makoto” or sincerity. The first floor was packed with Shinsengumi figurines and memorabilia, candy to my eyes, but I didn’t buy anything until after I saw the museum, on the second story. This floor was even more crammed with artifacts—no English of course—but as I had some information of the Shinsengumi already, I didn’t mind. I browsed through the small, empty museum and took pictures of anything that caught my attention.
Quite a bit caught my attention: banners, paintings, old photographs—and costumes. I came across a black button down jacket very similar to the ones the White Tiger boys wore, except pinned to the sleeve as a badge of identification was the word sincerity. It was a Shinsengumi uniform. After taking a picture, I skimmed the explanation for any kanji I knew. A single horizontal mark caught my eye. It was the mark for the number one, but read as a name it could be Hajime.
Saito Hajime. Unlike most of the Shinsengumi, he survived, long into the Meiji era. He became a policeman. That’s what impresses me, that he continued to live and serve in society. Compared to all the other tragic suicidal wastes in Aizu, here was a man who chose to live.
When I came down stairs, I said to the man at the counter, “You probably like the Shinsengumi?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you like them?”
“I like Saito,” he said.
Saito? He wasn’t one popular ones. “Really? Why?”
“He fought for Aizu,” he said.
That was true. Saito was the one who led what little Shinsengumi remained in the battle of Aizu, amid the burning castle.
“Have you seen his grave?” the man said.
“Grave?”
“It’s at the temple over there.”
He drew me a map and I thanked him. The temple was quiet. It was not a major tourist attraction; indeed my guidebook hardly noticed that part of town. But there was a sign, surprisingly in English, that identified the grave as Saito’s and gave a brief account of his life. According to the sign, he wished to be buried at the temple.
Maybe it’s better this way. Tourists flock to the graves of the White Tigers, buying souvenirs and making a racket. But Saito, who in surviving showed more heroism than any of the foolish boys, is able to rest in quiet, dignified peace.
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