Dawn of a tragic era

Feb 8, 2004

Dawn of a tragic era

Across a waterfront park in the Shirahama district of Yokosuka, beyond a bronze statue of Admiral Heihachiro Togo, the 15,000-ton Mikasa, his flagship in the Battle of Tsushima (1905), is anchored in concrete — its chrysanthemum figurehead golden in the winter light, the Rising ...

For the visiting guests of honor

Jul 6, 2003

For the visiting guests of honor

Togo Heihachiro, fleet admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, dealt a huge blow to the Russian armed forces when he sent the czar’s Baltic Fleet to the bottom of the Tsushima Strait in May 1905. It was a stunning victory for Japan in the ...

Shame and the pious pioneer

Jun 1, 2003

Shame and the pious pioneer

Commodore Matthew Perry pried open the door to Japan, and the first American to pass through it was Townsend Harris. Perry’s 1854 treaty with the Japanese government opened Shimoda, at the tip of the Izu Peninsula, south of Edo (now Tokyo), to American ships ...

GIs occupied 'paradise'

Mar 2, 2003

GIs occupied 'paradise'

Landing craft from U.S. warships arrived in Otaru Bay under a pallid sky in the early morning of Oct. 5, 1945. Reconnaissance aircraft were banking overhead and jeeps, amphibious vehicles and large trucks kicked up clouds of dust below. The occupation of Hokkaido had ...

Where the moon's 'pure light' shines

Nov 3, 2002

Where the moon's 'pure light' shines

Three narrow valleys indent the pine-tufted Honmoku headland. Around 1887, Hara Zenzaburo, Yokohama’s leading silk merchant, built a villa atop the lip of San-no-tani, the third valley from the west. While father drank in the view of Tokyo Bay, the Tanzawa and Hakone ranges, ...

Yokohama: city of wide horizons

Nov 3, 2002

Yokohama: city of wide horizons

Yokohama owes its rise to political compromise and a natural harbor. The Tokugawa shogunate and Commodore Perry, on the occasion of his return in 1854, could not agree on a parley site to discuss the opening of Japan to trade. The shogunate insisted on ...

They came, they saw, they democratized

Apr 28, 2002

They came, they saw, they democratized

“Bataan,” the C-54 transport carrying Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP), landed at Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, at 2:05 p.m. on Aug. 30. The general, wearing sunglasses and puffing on a corncob pipe, struck a dramatic pose near the top of ...

Mar 17, 2002

Twelve heavenly stories of wonder

On a visit to Yokohama’s “Theater Street” (Isezakicho) in the early 1890s, Henry Finck, the music critic of the New York Evening Post from 1881-1924, watched “the wonders of electric light, telephone, [and] phonograph . . . [demonstrated] to gaping natives.” A face in ...

Mar 17, 2002

Yokohoma vs. Kobe: bright lights, big beacons

Yokohama and Kobe have much in common. Busy ports, both have swanky shopping streets named Motomachi, Chinatowns, Western-style houses on the hill and monument-dotted former foreign settlements. Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Some think so. However, comparisons between the cities seldom include their tallest yardsticks, their ...

Jan 20, 2002

When something Western this way came

Like a Yankee daimyo, on Nov. 23, 1857, Townsend Harris made a progress to Edo (now Tokyo) from his residence in Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula. Proceeded by an American flag made of Japanese crepe, Harris, on horseback, was escorted by a guard of ...