In the last teaching weeks before Easter I revisited some travel books on post-war Japan – in particular Alan Booth’s Roads To Sata, Lost Japan by Alex Kerr, & The Inland Sea by Donald Richie. It was quite enjoyable to reread some of the books which I read before I got really stuck into Japan as an academic subject, and nice to introduce them to my students, too.
In one of Booth’s books, it turns out he passes through Kuroishi, a town in northern Japan which features quite heavily in some of my research. I’m hoping to visit the region this summer, both to visit the local archives there, but also as a chance to visit the real site of some of the events I’ve been studying. So it was surprising to encounter a portrait of the town from the late twentieth century just as I am thinking of a trip there myself.
I doubt that there’s much that’s tangible to be gained from standing in the same space (no doubt changed unrecognisably) about which I plan to write, but I’ve enjoyed very much my prior experiences of visiting archives off the beaten track. For all the tired legs and heavy bags, the frustrations of travel and of research, the noisy cockerel and bad food in one ryokan I stayed in, and the piped music in my room at 5am in another place, they’ve been valuable trips for reflection and personal identity, as well as the source of some really valuable source material.
I think a real visit up north should probably take place in the winter: it is after all snow country. That said, most of the events I’m writing about took place in the summer, when people returned home from Tokyo, so if I do go in August, I will be more directly following the steps of the figures from the 1920s. Better them than Alan Booth, I think, who always seems to be walking through the rain.
Fireflies 