What can I say about this in a brief entry? There are peace museums in several cities in Japan, the biggest being in Hiroshima. The Kyoto one is run by the university as a way of making up for the fact that the university was complicit in the war culture of imperial Japan. The exhibits start out by presenting some history and the war culture of Japan 1920 - 45; chilling stuff. It goes on to focus on the air raids on Japan and the A bombs. After that it focuses on wars since then and peace movements. It is devastating but ends on a note of cautious hope. It is good Dan was along to translate and explain things but much of it needed no translation. It was also interesting to see after the Tokyo-Edo Museum, which did not comment on this at all.
There is a clause in the Japanese constitution, Artical 9 saying that Japan will not rely on war to solve international disputes. Some politicians want to modify this, others want to preserve it as written, the country seems evenly divided. Some of Dans friends are working to preserve Article 9. The issue is much more complex than I can try to explain here, but I do hope they succeed.
Tomorrow we will go to Osaka to see a puppet festival with Dan and Toshiko. I will post again
tomorrow night or the following morning, PG
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I forwarded your blog site to John Grant and his to you. Turns out you're both in same parts of the world at a similar time frame. Still sounds wonderful. I'm fascinated with Japan but combination of flight time, cost, language, crowd, etc etc - not sure I'll make it. Eager to catch up next time you make it to the Burgh. Hopefully you'll be greeted with City of Champions again! alas not for the Bucs...
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