Let me introduce myself. My name is Ayumi Hamada. I was born in Kochi Prefecture, Japan on October 11, 1984.
I am a first year student at Kagawa Junior College. My major is Infant Education.
My hobbies are listening to music, watching TV, and using my mobile phone.
My home page address is:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/CollegeLife-Labo/4001/2004/503041.html
Directories: Yahoo! Japan bNTT goo
Visiting or living in Shikoku is something special, for this island has always been the spiritual sanctuary of the Japanese people. No other place in Japan has been visited by so many generations of people from all over the country.
They have of ten spent more than 60 days walking along the whole circuit of the eighty-eight temples than compose the longest, oldest and most popular pilgrimage in Japan.
Even those who have arrived here in weariness of life, in unhappiness or weak health, have usually left the island with ayjuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu lighter heart, more enlightened, and in many cases in improved health.
Though today theisland is quite accessible and traveling around it can be very easy, some of the eighty-eighttemples still remain very hard to reach.
This pilgrima circling the islqnd is quite accessible and traveling around it can be very easy, some of the eighty-eight temples still remain very hard to reach.
This pilgrimage circling the island is nationally knownb as 0-Shikoku-san, showing that "Dear old Shikoku Pilgrimage" is synonyamous whis this island and provides sanctuary to the soul of Japan. The scenes along the Shikoku Pilgrimage correspond well to what Shikoku offers - the Seto Inland Sea, the Uwa-kai Sea, the Pacific Ocean, the green mountains that crown a large part of the island, cosy little towns and middle-sized cities that fringe the coasts.
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Quoted from the Shikoku Bilingul Guidebook by Akiko Takemoto and Steve McCarty
Kochi City - Castle, Sunday Market, Igosso people - Especially Noted Products: row and dried boni to,coral crafts, long-tailed cocks, Tosa native dogs and Tosa fighting dogs.
Especially Noted Cuisine: Sawachi-ryori and katsuo no Tataki (boni to seared only onthed on the surface)
Kochi, the largest city on the Pacific coast, is the capital of Kochi Prefecture, especially known for its marine products, forestry and greenhouse culture of vegetables. The fishing ports dotted along the Pacific coast are usually busy with small boats that bring in boni to and mackerel from the warm current offshore, and sometimes with big boats that have made six- or seven-month voyages after tuna into the Indian Ocean, the Tasman Sea, even the Atlantic.
Men in this prefecture have long been known for a trait called igosso. When a man is called igosso, it means he is gallantly generous, obstinately independent, carefree and passionate in his usually unpredictable actions. Women of the same type are called hachikin.
Kochi was also a castle town. The approach to the castle gate is liveliest on Sundays as the 3-century- old Sundays market is held there, the 1.2 km avenue lined with hundreds of stalls stocked with every king of local product imaginable -vegetables, fruits, flowers, trees, raw, dried or cooked fish, coral creafts, toys, knives, antiques, old clothes, china, earthenware, kittens, puppies, granny's pickles, cookies, candies, rice cakes, pancakes and sundry items.
5 minutes' walk from JR Kochi Station to the en-trance of Sunday Market.
Kochi-jo Castle
Kochi-jo Castle came into being in 1588 when Chosokabe Motochika, who once subjugated the whole of Shikoku, built his castle here on top of the hill. In 1600 Yamanouchi Kazutoyo took over the castle, rebuilt it, and 16 generartions of Lords Yamanouchi reigned until 1869 when the Province was officially returned to the Emperor Meiji.
The Otemon Main Gate built in 1603 still stands. The statue seen on entering the gate is that of Itagaki Taisuke,leader of japan's popular right movement. The other buildings -the highest donjon, turrets and gates -also retain their original style, thouth they were rebuilt around the middle of the 18th century.
The donjion houses a museum exhjbiting a large collection of mementoes of the Yamanouchi Family and historical assets of the province, with one wing dedicated to local people who in the 1860's became a driving force in overthrowing the Shogunate and restoring imperial rule.
Tosa was at the vanguard when Japan was at this critical turning point in her histry. The 15th lord of Tosa Province, Yamanouchi Yodao for his part presented the Shogun a petition for the peaceful restoration of imperial rule. As the Shogun accepted it in 1867 a bloodless transference of the reins of government was tentatively achieved though its aftermath, the Boshin Civil War, was far from bloodless.
At the entrance hall of the museum, there are some exhibitions concerning twe of the favorite sons of Tosa Province -Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro.
One of the captions is quoted from the postscript to Vol.1 of Ryoma ga yuku, a biographical novel of Sakamoto Ryoma, written by a leading novelist of conteporare Japan, Shida Ryotaro:
Sakamoto Ryoma can rightly be called a miracle in the history of the Meiji Restoration. All the heroes who appeared in those days can be classified into categories.Only Ryoma cannot. He stood alone even among thousands of revolutionaries in that period.It was a miracle in itself, too, that Japan happened to have this young man at that turning point in histry. If thf Unseen Hand had not been so timely, japan might have had a different history.
Indeed, only a few Japanese have been admired so much as Ryoma. He was the archetypical igosso, who was born in 1835 in downtown Kochi as a son of a wealthy samurai (goshi).
At 19 he went up to edo (Tokyo) to sharpen his swordsmanship. But in July of that year (1853) , Edo and its vicinity were thrown into chaos: Commodore Perry of the United States States arrived at Tokyo Bay, demanding the Tokugawa Shogun sign a policy for over twe hundred years. The confusion that time.
In 1858 he returned to Kochi as an acknowledged swordsman. Then he met Kawada Shoryo, an artistscholar, who was already well-informed adout foreign affairs through acquaintance with Jhon Manjiro. shoryo inspired against a vision of modern Japan as a nation fortified against Western colonialism.
In 1862 he returned to EDo after disenfranchising himself of goshi status in his home province. Soon he came to know Katsu Kaishu, the Shogun's Commissioner of the Warship Department. Katsu was among the most knowledgeable of internal and external affairs at that time. Twe years earlier he had been to America as the captain of the first Japanese boat to cross the Pacific, when the Shogun sent a delegation to Washington to conciude a treaty of friendship and commerce with the U. S. A. Hewas a man of foresight, too, curiously unselfish and detached from the Shogunate he served.
Ryoma offered himself as katsu's assistant and learned under him Western navigation and studies including political science, philosophy and law.
Katsu also introduced Ryoma to his colleages and friends. Some of them were progressive scholars or thinkers; others were politically influential. The latter turned out to be instrumental when Ryoma began to carry out his revolutionary plans.
First he started a trading corporation whis some of the former students of the Navy Training Institute, established by Katsu in 1864 but closed the next year when it was suspected of being "a den of redicals" and Katsu was dismissed.
Now Ryoma knew ships were his passion and that the future of Japan was on the sea - in trading. To being with, Ryoma approached the Satsuma Clan for a schooner, setting up a corporation in Nagasaki with the Satsuma's first joint stock company.
His second plan was to include the Choshu Clan as another shareholder. Satsuma and Choshu had been hostile to each other, but if united, they could a formidable power to overthrow the Shogunate, which was now turning to a European colonialist to subjugate Choshu first and then other revolutionaly clans.
Ryoma, with his trading company uniting them, made Satsuma and Choshu into allies. from a merchant marine, the company thus developed into the first de fact o modern navy in Japan.
His next idea was to have someone bring forward a motion to the Shogun for the Restoration of Imperial Rule. Ryoma brought his Eight-Point to Goto Shojiro, Chief Secretary of Lord Yamanouchi Yodo in Tosa, his home province. Goto felt in could be acceptable not only to the Emperor but also to the Tokugawa Family if not the Shogunate itself.
In fact, his plan, slightly revised by Goto, did prove to be acceptable to all sides including Lord Yamanouchi who agreed to present the motion in his own name. On October 15, 1866, the Shogun Yoshinobu adopted it to avoid a great deal of further bloodshed.
That very night Ryoma planned how to organize a provisional government for the new era to come. The next day he produced a list of cabinet personnel. Both were agreed upon by all concerned.
At first they were surprised not to see the name of Ryoma himself on the list. Wasn't he the leader of this revolution? When asked why, Ryoma simply answered, "I am not interested in working in an office. I think I'll go back to sea -the seas of the world."
Yet he stayed busy guiding the Meiji Restoration and planning the new government. But a month later, on November 15, on his 33rd birthday, Ryoma was assassinated in Kyoto.
Before his untimely death, however, Ryoma seemed to have done everything he thought he had to. the administive policy he had prepared was willingly adopted by the new government.
The Five-Point Imperial Oath delivered by Emperor Meiji in 1868, in effect the first constitution of modern Japan, was derived from the Eight-Point Plan Ryoma had made twe years before.
Here comes another igosso, I tagaki Taisuke (1837-1919). During the Bothin Civil War, Itaga led his Tosa le-gion to subjugate the pro-Shogunate clan of Aizu (Fukushima Pref.).
During the battle he keenly felt the necessity for the equality of people, when he saw only the privileged class of warriors upholding the Aizu cause in that test of Ioyalty. The other classes, who had long been left in the cold, simply fled. Itagaki said to himself, "It's only natural; only where there are rights is there duty."
A few years later when Itagaki retired from the cabinet in Tokyo, he started working to implement the First Article of the Imperial Charter Oath delivered by Emperor Meiji - "Deliberative assemblies shall be established on an extensive scale, and all measures of government shall be decided by pudlic opinion.
"In 1837, he and other members of the Aikoku Koto Party - the first political association of he Meiji era - presented a resolution to the government, requesting the establishment of a parliamentary government, but without success. He returned to Kochi and establied the Risshi-sha society to propagate democratic principies, a pioneer among political societies emerging at that time.
By 1881 the national movement for democratic rights had reached its zenith and finally obtained the government's pledge to inaugrate a National Assembly in 1890.
But when the first Deliberative Council was finally assembled and the Liberal Party was reorganized, it had already lost its original spirit. To the frustration of Itagaki, it was difficult for liberalism, especially in politics, to take root in Japan.
Yet Kochi is regarded as the birthplace of Japan's Movement for Democratic Rights. It was also in this prefecture, in the townof Kamimachi in 1880, that women first acquired suffrage, 65 years earlier than women in the rest of the country, who attained it in 1945 only after World War II.
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