第九日 長崎 - 雲仙 - 天草 - 熊本

 

クリック

長崎は今日も晴れで始まった。車を車庫から出して、荷物を詰め込み雲仙に向かって出発。
長崎郊外の田んぼという田んぼが荒廃して、最早田んぼとして使われていないのを目の当たりにし、日本は今にお米も自給自足できなくなる日が近いのではないかと懸念する。

雲仙

仁田峠付近の展望台から普賢岳の頂きがちょっと頭を出しているのが見え、その隣に１９９１年の噴火でできた平成新山が巾をきかせている。新山の山肌を見ると噴出されたゴロゴロした石や、流れ出た溶岩流の跡をはっきり見て取れる。雲仙は温泉町を通り過ぎるとき、硫黄島のにおいが強くし、湯気が噴出していたが、人影は多くなく、往時は勢いのあったであろうホテルが寂しげに立っていた。

口之津港からフェリーで天草の鬼池に向かうが、思っていたより利用者は多く、フェリーはギチギチに車を積んで出発。乗り切れずに次のフェリーを待つ人もでた。学生時代に友達とバスで回った天草に私は殆ど半世紀ぶりに戻ってきた。あの頃の天草は今にも増して秘境、世界の果てという雰囲気のある所だった。今は道路が整備されたが、人口が増えたとは思えない。崎津の教会を対岸から眺める位置で、地元の元船乗りさんと話す。

自分は昭和３８年に高校を卒業したが、それからセネガルやマダガスカル付近で漁をする船にのっていたことがあるし、タンカーで駿河湾付近を航海したこともあった、という話からすると彼はエンジニアか？漁師さんではなさそう？？今や崎津では３‐４の家族が漁を生業としているのみ。自分が小さい頃は一学年に５０人のクラスが２組ぐらいあったこともあったが、今は学校もない。「廃村になるのかな」と寂しそうに、でも「そんなもんさ」といった調子で話す。

この旅で５つ目になるお城、熊本城を外から見る。すでに閉門されている時間。やはり石垣は地震でかなりのダメージを受けていた。崩れた石の一つ一つに番号が付けられお濠に並べられている。その数は膨大で、気が遠くなりそう。私が生きている間に石垣の再生はちょっと無理じゃないかと思う。

Today is Yumiko's "Nostalgia Day". We are visiting an island that she last visited almost 50 years ago as a student with a few friends. But first things first! We make slow progress from Nagasaki towards Unzen. At some point, however, we quickly take a small road up to the most active volcano in Japan, Unzen. The last major eruption was in 1991, causing extensive damage at the foot of the mountain and destroying around 2,000 houses. It also created a "new" peak (1,486 metres) which towers over the "old" one by about 50 metres. It smells strongly of sulphur.

We take a nice road down to the harbour of Kuchinotsu, from where we take a ferry to the island of Amakusa. It only takes 30 minutes.
Yumiko remembers something of her journey back then, but we (narrowly) miss our first destination, the mission church in Oe. During the persecution of Christians, Amakusa was the last refuge for many Christians because the island was difficult to reach. 

After the persecution ended, some French missionaries came here and built a small church in almost every fishing village. From Oe, we drive on to Sakitsu, where another church, together with the small fishing village, was recognised as a World Heritage Site in 2018.
The church is probably the only one where believers pray on tatami mats. We have a long chat with an elderly man from the village, who tells us that "in the past" there were 400 children here.
Nothing is left of it. Four families still live from fishing, the young have long gone and the old are dying. He shrugs his shoulders. That's just the way life is.

Our last destination was the Amakusa Collegio Museum. It is interesting because it tells the story of the "Four Boys", who were the first Japanese ever to be allowed to leave Japan and travel to Rome in 1590 - 1598 as part of a delegation from the Tenno. 

They learnt Latin, western music and culture and returned with a number of instruments and machines previously unknown in Japan. Among them was a printing press modelled on Johannes Gutenberg.

 This machine "revolutionised" the distribution of printed matter in Japan. Shortly after their return, however, the political situation in Edo changed and one of them was exiled to Macau, for example!

It is now only two hours to Kumamoto. We reach the city in the early evening, check into a run-down hotel and walk round the castle. Unfortunately, it was badly damaged by an earthquake in 2016. But it is being rebuilt. It will take decades, but it will be worth it. Until then, thousands and thousands of chunks of stone lie carefully "labelled" in the castle moat, waiting for their turn.

第八日 長崎

クリック

今日も夏日で日差しは強い。今日一日は長崎を足で回り、車は車庫で過ごす。午前中は駅より南にあるオランダ坂、オランダ坂途中にある西洋館群、グラバー邸（園）、大浦天主堂と、どの観光客も訪ねるお決まりのコース。

昨日長崎について早々、港に超大型のクルーズ船（４５００人の乗船客＋１５００人の乗組員）が停まっているのを見たのだか、どうやらその乗客である中国人観光客が全員グラバー邸に来ていたように思う。

朝から甲高い中国語が飛び交う中、庭園を見て歩く。邸からは昔、きっと遮るものもなく港を一望出来ていたに違いない。長い「ひさし」が家のどの部分にもついていて、それがグラバー邸を魅力的にしている。

石炭や武器の輸入で財を築いたスコットランド人だったようだ。

午後からは駅より北にある１７世紀に処刑された（よって聖人となった）キリスト教信者の碑や、原爆が投下された場所、および原爆の資料館と気の重くなる見学地であった。

こちらは不思議と中国人観光客は少なく、むしろヨーロッパ系、フィリピン人、韓国人の観光客が目立った。街の中を歩くのも、この照り返しの中なかなか体力を消耗することで、山の中歩きの方が楽だったかなあ・・と思う次第。

Today the car stays in the car park. Because breakfast is too expensive for us, we eat in our room with things we bought yesterday at AEON. There is also a new-fangled coffee machine with these new-fangled capsules. We read through the operating instructions several times until we finally get some coffee from this marvel of technology.

Dutch Slope

We walk about 20 minutes to the first of the few sights in the city. Not much waso8 left after the attack in 1945. It's the "Dutch Slope", a steep, cobbled path that a Dutchman blasted out of the mountain about 120 years ago to get to the homes of the foreigners. Because there were no other foreigners in Japan apart from the Dutch for several decades, all foreigners were still referred to as "Dutch". 

Lower Class

There are still some old residential buildings in which the "simple" foreigners, i.e. the craftsmen, ship crews and shipyard workers, lived. The "upper class" lived further up!

Upper Class

Take the Glover family, for example. Mr Glover from Scotland worked his way up from a lowly clerk to become one of the wealthiest men in Kyushu. He became a consultant for Mitsubishi, made millions from the coal trade and was the founder of the KIRIN brewery. You can visit his home and get an idea of the family's wealth. Like all sensible foreigners, he married a Japanese woman. His son ruined the company and committed suicide in 1945. 

Nagasaki is also the centre of Christianity in Japan. There were countless churches in the city before the war. Today, an archbishop (!) looks after the faithful. Even the Pope visited the city and the Oura Church, where Japanese priests were trained. 

A beautiful museum explains the painful history of the Christians, who were persecuted for centuries and killed for their faith.
In their honour we visit the memorial to the 26 Christians - foreign missionaries and Japanese believers - who were crucified in the city in 1626 because they would not renounce their faith.

We take a tram, which was probably taken from the transport museum, to the "Peace Park" and remember the more than 70,000 people who lost their lives here senselessly and in a fraction of a second during the last days of the war in 1945. We walk silently past the "Point Zero" of the plutonium bomb explosion. What hit it there? The largest Catholic church in the whole of Asia at the time.

”Ground Zero”

Exhibits and films are shown in the museum. The images are gruesome. Piles of corpses piled up all over the city. It must have been hell. You are not allowed to take photos inside. I am therefore copying the famous picture of the unknown boy here, which says everything about this catastrophe:

The photograph was taken by Joe O‘Donnel, an American soldier, then working for the United States Marine Corps a few days after the bombing and the surrender. He kept the picture in a trunk and did not publish it until 1989.

"I saw a boy about ten years old walking by. He was carrying a baby on his back. In those days in Japan, we often saw children playing with their little brothers or sisters on their backs, but this boy was clearly different. I could see that he had come to this place for a serious reason. He was wearing no shoes. His face was hard. The little head was tipped back as if the baby were fast asleep. The boy stood there for five or ten minutes.
The men in white masks walked over to him and quietly began to take off the rope that was holding the baby. That is when I saw that the baby was already dead. The men held the body by the hands and feet and placed it on the fire. The boy stood there straight without moving, watching the flames. He was biting his lower lip so hard that it shone with blood. The flame burned low like the sun going down. The boy turned around and walked silently away."
Joe O'Donnell

第七日 唐津 - 長崎

 

有田

今日も朝から日差しが強い。日に焼けることこの上なし！３日の徒歩旅ですでに手の甲、顔はかなり焼けて褐色になっている。１日８－９時間屋外なのだから農家の人にも負けないだろう。

午前中、唐津の洲の部分である虹の松原をドライブしてから、駅近くにある旧唐津銀行本店を見る。銀行が今のように薄っぺらくない（？）まだ重厚さのある時代の建物で、それなりに外部も内部も美しい。

辰野金吾さんという人の設計によるものだが、彼の「作品」は現代まで数多く残っている。有名なところでは東京駅、日本銀行。建築家という職業が確立したのも彼のお陰であるらしい。

唐津焼の展示と唐津くんちというお祭りの際に曳かれる山車の展示も見る。年季が入っているはずの山車であるのに手入れが良くて、その様にはとても見えない。

好印象の唐津を後に、磁器の町―大川内山、伊万里、有田を通過しー様々な磁器を見るが、これが同じ伊万里？

これが同じ有田？と思うほど、作家さんによって違うので、判別が私には難しかった。何しろ実家の片付けで、大量の磁器、陶器を捨てたばかりの私。とても買う気になれずに、見るだけになった。

土曜日で道が混むかもしれないからとワルターは西の端の海辺の道を選んで長崎にむかうことにしたが、小さな島が浮かんでとても風光明媚なところだった。五島列島までが見える視界もあった。途中フランス人の神父さんが建てた小さな教会の近くにあった珈琲店で店主（女性）と話したところ、彼女は東京の出身だそう。冬も薪ストーブ一つで十分凌げる寒さで、氷が張ったりすることはなく温暖な気候だそうだ。近辺には現在もカトリック信者がとても多いという話だった。

今日明日は長崎泊。中華街にあるホテルで、夜はさっそく長崎ちゃんぽんと皿うどんを試す。スープがどちらもコクがあり、私がこれまで食べていた長崎ちゃんぽん、皿うどんは何だったの？と思うほど一味も二味も味が違う。やはり本場のせいか！？

Before we leave Karatsu, we visit an old bank building from the beginning of the 20th century. It was built by the "Father of Japanese architecture", a certain Mr. Kingo Tatsuno.

He was allowed - or forced - to study architecture in London for three years in 1880, became a professor in Tokyo and founded the first Japanese architects' association. At some point, however, he was probably fed up with being a civil servant and built many large buildings with his own office, including the Japanese Central Bank.

Right next door, in a more modern building, 14 ceremonial floats (dashi) are on display, which are paraded through the city every year at a big festival (kunchi matsuri). Depending on the float, 150 - 300 (!) men have to manoeuvre the house-sized monstrosities through the narrow streets. In the process, something probably gets broken from time to time, because trolley No. 4 is missing. They have to refurbish it by November. There are also plenty of injured people!

From Karatsu we drive further south to a remote village known for its excellent porcelain factory (Okawachiyama). The production of the goods was so secret that the village was hermetically sealed off from the outside world. Anyone who wanted to enter or leave was subjected to a "security check" by soldiers of the daimyo. 

Today the village consists mainly of shops. A few artists have probably survived. However, the prices for their art are well above the limit we would expect to pay to buy a "piece of art".

A few kilometres further on is Arita, another town famous for its porcelain.　We have already seen enough porcelain today. So we look for and find the famous "stone walls" of Arita. They stretch around the part of the town where the factories existed and where hundreds of hard-working women were employed. Their husbands toiled in the nearby quarries from which the material for production was extracted. I ask a local about the purpose of these walls. His answer: "It's waste from the production. Too expensive to dispose of. So we built walls with it. There's no point, but it looks nice!"

To round off the day, we drive along the coast to Nagasaki. There we take a short walk to Dejima, the artificial island where the Portuguese had their first trading centre. After falling out with the Shogun, he threw the Portuguese out and settled the Dutch. 

They were more interested in trade than in proselytising the Japanese. In their wake, five doctors from Germany also came to Japan, which established the Germans' long-standing good reputation in Japan. A quick trip to "China Town" to finally eat the original of my favourite dish (katayaki soba). It should taste just like that in Amagi!

第六日 篠栗八十八ヶ所 (3)

 

クリック

今日はホテルの窓から見ると、朝からお日様がでていて、暑くなりそう、と思った。

案の定、夏の日差しの中をせっせと歩く。幸い４分の３ぐらいの行程は木漏れ日の中で、最後の４分の１だけがアスファルトの駅に向かう道だった。朝８時から約４時間で約２００００歩強、山道を１６ｋｍ歩いた。私達の今回の歩き旅は、遍路旅というよりトレッキングというニュアンスが強い。

自分の体力でどこまでできるか試している。毎年「まだ出来るかな？」と思いながら歩くが、やはり自分のバランス感覚が悪くなっているのを山道の上り下りで感じる。

山道は特に降りるとき、怪我をしないように、一瞬の間にどこに足を着地すれば安全かを判断する訳だが、それを一目見て頭で瞬時に判断する人間の能力を―我ながら？！―素晴らしいと思う。

（特に）徒歩旅に怪我は禁物、足を怪我したが最後、旅は即時中断の憂き目にあう。今回も無事、徒歩旅の部を終えられたのも、千手観音さま、十一面観音さま、薬師如来さま、大日如来さま等々に頭を下げて歩いたお陰なのでしょう。

12時０５分に徒歩完了！万歳！（ワルターが四国の旅でさんざんお世話になった？ジョイフルというチェーン店で）まずは腹ごしらえをしてから、大宰府天満宮にむかう。こんなに一度に沢山の人に会うのは久しぶりと思うほど、観光客でごった返している境内。この大宰府人気はどこからきているのか？なんと本堂は修理中で、面白い（屋根に木々の生えた）仮の本堂がその前に建てられており、本堂の修理が終わった暁には取り壊されるようだ。

修学旅行の学生もたくさんいて、とても落ち着いてみられる雰囲気ではないので、早々に引き上げ、唐津にむかう。夕方から夜にかけて、ホテルから見える唐津城まで往復したら、今日の歩数はやはり30000歩を越えた。唐津の海に面したところに建つお城の景色は昼も夜もとても魅力的だ。

The last day of our hike begins with the same old ritual: The train pulls out in front of us. This only makes us even more determined to complete the last 17 kilometres. The first few kilometres are up the same route and then we take a different route up to around 600 metres. As we ascend, we look at the mountain on the opposite side, which we climbed the day before yesterday. On the way we saw a new retirement home (see picture). I'm thinking about booking a place here 😁

As we walk, we wonder who chiselled the thousands and thousands of Buddha statues out of the hard granite. It must have been a job for countless stonemasons over the centuries. On closer inspection, however, you realise that the brand new statues are made by some kind of "copying machine". They look the same down to the smallest detail.

Despite the many beautiful moments in the last three days, we are glad that we have successfully completed our first JOINT pilgrimage. Stop! To my shame, I have to confess that I made a serious mistake as "chief navigator". In the eagerness of our hike, we completely overlooked Temple No. 22. Something like that shouldn't happen to a professional pilgrim, should it? But walking another 6 kilometres there and back was a bit too much for us.

We drive to Dazaifu, about 40 minutes from Sasaguri. The shrine is famous for its beautiful building - which can only be glimpsed in disguise for another two years due to renovation work.

There is also a huge plum tree that is over 1,000 years old and a statue of an ox whose horns have been rubbed clean by all the visitors. Back then, 1,000 years ago, he drove his master to his grave on a cart and refused to go. He lay down on the grave and waited for his own death. A kind of "Hachiko" from Shibuya.

From Dazaifu we drive along a lonely country road over high mountains to Karatsu. There is supposed to be a beautiful castle there that we haven't seen yet. We'll have to make up for that today, won't we?