The landscape has aged 50 years, but I imagine it is much as Donald Richie notes in his Inland Sea. The industry never lets up, and it also takes me an hour to get from Uno to Shimotsui. But unlike him and his bus, I have a car, and therefore mobility. My daughter is with me, and as it's her school vacation, I want to treat her to a little beach holiday. We stay over in Tamano, close to a pair of water parks, which serve as a prescription against the killing heat, which has taken the lives of 80 people already this summer.
As I drive west toward the great bridge, I felt pretty fatigued, especially in my shoulders, after a morning chasing my eight-year-old around a system of inflatable docks that allowed one to engage in some low-risk mountaineering, hoisting oneself up and over a series of obstacles, with nothing more to worry about than a mere meter drop into the refreshing sea. My legs too are heavy, as we slog up to the peak of Washuzan. I am a little worried about my daughter in the heat, but she is in playful good spirits, and the climb should only take about 15 minutes.
Richie was funny here, saying that he wasn't interested in ascending heights on what was intended to be a sea journey, but then he goes on for five pages about a previous visit. What most certainly had not been here then was the Seto Ōhashi Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world when it was opened in 1988. I feel an almost sentimental connection to it, as I arrived in Japan a handful of years later, and many of my initial rambles had me continually heading down in its direction. I remember lots of museums and displays on the then-new bridge, and those that still exist are rusting and look neglected. Hopefully the same can't be said for the bridge itself.
It looks pretty sound from up here, stretching away from island to island before disappearing into the industrial clouds of Shikoku beyond. One of those islands has an interesting parking area, where the traveler is led to food and shopping down a spiraling off-ramp, a necessity as the land itself isn't ample enough for a longer ramp. It is funny how the nearest tower keeps reappearing at every vantage point, as we climb toward Washuzan's true peak. We rump from boulder to boulder awhile, then sit with to drink our cold water. A train rumbles over beneath us, and from further below comes the whine of small engines, from the boat race course we'd passed on the drive in. We watch a couple of races, trying to pick the winners. Then the heat defeats everything, and we descend.
Shimotsui lies in the shadow of the bridge, cut off now from the water by a dogleg of concrete built to protect the harbor. These walls had gone up with great haste after the 2011 tsunami, forever severing the people for the waters that had always provided sustenance. Even the sky is gone, under the great span. Not much is moving, but for a handful of travellers on this, the first day of the long Ōbon holiday. We've all converged upon the old Shipping Agent's house, whose white and grey wattle-wall stretched for an entire block. It is a courtyard more than a house really, a half dozen two story structures interlinked.
We climb up and down the stairs in each, exploring this extended folk museum. I love these kind of places, with their physical manifestations of a time long gone. The old warehouse has been converted into a restaurant that bills itself as Italian, but aside from a single aglio e olio pasta, the menu is all Japanese. I settle in to a nice pile of sashimi, and the heat of the day makes me unapologetic about the accompanying beer.
I drive cautiously through the town's narrow lanes, before winding up and over the castle ruins to Kojima. I had been here a couple of weeks ago, leading a family of clients who wanted to daytrip from Kyoto to get custom-made jeans. It is amazing what I learn from my foreign guests, and how there seems to be an entire Japanese subculture of things famous abroad that don't touch the lives of myself or anyone else I know here.
To call Kojima sleepy would be generous, and unfortunately that slow speed is impinged upon by heavy and unattractive industrial progress. Oddly enough, the fading shopping arcade had been colonized by young jeans designers, and there must be three dozen shops spread over a few blocks. I have no interest in jeans (much preferring khakis), but I am interested in this new life.
I park in front of the visitors center, which proves a delightful surprise. The day after I first arrived in Japan, a group of us were in Okayama for teacher training for AEON, and having a day off, decided to go to Kurashiki. Being newbies, we got on the wrong train, an express bound for Shikoku, and realizing our mistake, detrained in Kojima. We wandered around, and eventually wound up on top of this building, whose arched staircases mimicked the span of the Bridge. Since then, I've been wondering about this place, and for 25 years have been curious where/what it was, assuming it long ago destroyed.
But no. It has faded and the roof is now off limits, and what I hadn't seen that long ago Sunday was the interior, which contains an entire antebellum Southern plantation of sorts, beneath of checkerboard of murals lit in neon.
The sunlight outside is harsher, and keeps the number of visitors down. Shop begat identical shop, but a couple of older Meiji period structures stand proud, their former incarnations once banks or public offices. In one I find a series of photographs from the mid-60's, hung alongside those more recent. The main difference today is that everything looks tidy, but there are no people there.
Beyond all this is the Nomura house, with the usual array of empty tatami rooms that at least offer a bit of shade. The family made its fortune on salt, and it is the kilns and the kitchens out back that provide a bit of variety on the theme. Amongst all the usual kitchen implements seen in all old houses of this type, this one has a tall wine rack that resembles a trebuchet. (Intriguing possibilities!)
While a nice glass of white would later bring relief to the heat, to a child's palate only a shaved ice will do. Thus we forego the denim soft cream, though the color of her Blue Hawaii is of a similar hue, and brings to mind a certain entertainer whose fame with the Japanese began at the very same time as the jeans industry that still flourishes.
On the turntable: The Charlatans, "Live at Delamere Forest"
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