Zoshigaya cemetery
I visited Zōshigaya Cemetery in Minami-Ikebukuro, Toshima, Tokyo, about 800 meters south of JR Ikebukuro Station on Sunday, January 7th. Zoshigaya is a public, non-sectarian cemetery founded by the Tokyo Metropolitan government in 1874 and is maintained by the Tokyo Metropolitan Park Association today. A number of famous people are resting there.
(1884 - 1948)
Japan’s 40th Prime Minister 1941-1944
Hideki Tojo was Japan’s Prime Minister and Minister of War during much of World War II in the Pacific. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941 occurred under his administration. Later, he was hanged as a Class A war criminal in December 1948.
Chinese and Koreans make a big deal about Yasukuni Shrine, the National War Shrine, in Chiyoda-ku, central Tokyo, because it enshrines Class A war criminals, including the wartime Gen. Tojo. It does not contain any human remains, however, because “enshrinement” and “internment” are two completely different things.
I tend to try not to take a position on Pacific Theater of Operations war crimes trials, because I feel some affinity with Japanese people. I know the U.S. entered the war after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but I know a lot more about Japan’s prosecution of the war than about the build-up to it. There is some lack of credibility to the notion that America could have been “surprised” by an attack two years into a global war.
During the war, Hideki Tojo was hated by American media, public and troops with a vicious, racist vitriol. I doubt that most people at the time actually knew who Tojo was, or what his role was. They may even have been confused between the Prime Minister, Tojo, and the Emperor, Hirohito, and wrongly thought that Tojo was the emperor.
Anyway, here is Gen. Tojo’s actual grave in Zoshigaya Cemetery, just a few hundred meters from where he was hanged inside Sugamo Prison. The Sugamo Prison site today is the Sunshine 60 tower and the adjacent Higashi Ikebukuro Chuo Koen park.
(1867 - 1916)
Famous Meiji Era novelist. Natsume is a giant of modern Japanese literature. From 1984 to 2007, he adorned the D Series of the ¥1,000 banknote. In 1900, at the age of 23, he was sent abroad to the U.K. for two years by the Japanese government as a scholar to study the ways of the West. He suffered an infamously rough time of culture shock, homesickness and ill health. Returning to Japan, he continued to suffer ill-health until dying prematurely at age 49.
His writing features a common theme of early-modern Japanese literature - the struggle between duty and desire. It’s a theme that grew from Japan’s exposure to Western cultures.
(a.k.a. Koizumi Yakumo)
(1850 – 1904)
Irish-Greek-American writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the West. His writings offered unprecedented insight into Japanese culture, especially his collections of legends and ghost stories.
Hearn failed in a career as a writer in America. He irritated people because he bucked social conventions all over the map: he married a black woman when it was illegal in most place; he unhesitatingly advertised his atheism, etc. So, he came to Japan where he succeeded because of his novelty status. In Meiji Era Japan, foreigners enjoyed star power commensurate with their rarity - a phenomenon that persisted right up until yesterday. Nevertheless, his writings about Japan offered in the Western world greater insight into a culture that was still unfamiliar to it at the time.
He almost failed in Japan, as well, but with the help of British academic and Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850 - 1935), Hearn scratched out a life here teaching English, and jumping around from one teaching job to another all over the country until he finally died.
Hearn’s reputation is so great that it’s surprising to know that he only lived in Japan for 14 years, from 1890 to 1904 - not very long at all compared to my own life here and the lives of many male foreign residents I know.
He was a really hard worker (a great Japanese virtue) and persistent, which contributed to his success. But he was actually a bit of a doofus.