CAGE TRIP ALERT: Kyushu Kansai JAN2012

Mcdroid wrote: Thanks again WP for the photos...but I have a question on Nagasaki...was the part of town you photographed damaged in WWII? Nagasaki was one of the two nuclear strikes in WWII.

If you look at the sixth picture in the Nagasaki post, taken from Glover Gardens and overlooking the bay, you can see a hill at the upper right, about where the waterway ends. The bomb exploded just on the other side of that hill. Not to belittle or trivialize the horrendous damage inflicted on Nagasaki and its residents by the bomb, but speaking strictly from a cold-hearted military battle damage assessment perspective, that explosion was a failure. The bomb either exploded too low or was a ground burst, I forget which. Plus, Nagasaki as you can see is a hilly city, so much of the resulting pressure wave's force was deflected upwards. However, again strictly from a cold-hearted military psychological warfare perspective, the Nagasaki bomb was a success as it proved to the Japanese military government the nuclear threat was repeatable.

Hiroshima, in contrast, was a successful air burst over a largely flat city.

Thanks once again for another of your reports. Very interesting. The Japanese architecture, particularly the stone work, is really something.

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martin_csr wrote: Thanks once again for another of your reports. Very interesting. The Japanese architecture, particularly the stone work, is really something. For anyone interested, you can take a virtual tour of some of the locations. Go to Google maps & enter Kumamoto Castle, find the basic location, zoom in, then drag the little orange man to the roadway for a street view. You can "drive" down a street by using your pointer to navigate the roadway... kinda cool. Take a street view ride around Nagasaki & you'll see why the Japanese are so good at making small cars... plenty of narrow, winding roads. I was able to find a couple of the spots featured in WPBill's photos, including a nearly identical view of the Kumamoto castle moat in his pic below.

I recommend doing this for Himeji Castle. Not only is it widely acknowledged to be the most graceful of the Japanese castles (nicknamed the "Egret" castle), but it is also one of the few fully authentic castles dating back to the early 1600s, when most of these castles were made. It is not a modern-era reconstruction. Hopefully the google-cam-van showed up before the start of the ongoing restoration project. For the past year or so Himeji Castle has been completely shrouded by a scaffolding/tarpaulin "box." Otherwise I would have stopped there to take some pix during this last trip.

Himeji castle is also the site of a very famous Japanese ghost. She is a very jealous ghost, and if any couple shows up to visit the castle they are pretty much guaranteed to break up in the near future. Never take a date to Himeji Castle!

Also, if you look at all the momuments/memorials at Nagasaki Peace Park which were donated by foreign countries, you'll see huge ones and small ones. Pretty much all the huge memorials were donated by Communist-bloc countries. Gee I wonder why...

Thanks! I just checked it out. I guess the vines & lichens n stuff growing in the rock walls are the clues that it's old construction. I've been scouring various Japanese cities for other castles & found a few nice ones, but didn't stumble upon the Himeji. It's kinda interesting that they all seem to have used the same basic architecture. The one in Osaka looks impressive, but unfortunately, the street views aren't as good as others & the google cam/van wasn't used inside the castle grounds, so there are only photos... still cool to see, though. The castle in Nagoya has some good views.

I was wondering about the Hiroshima castle. It looks to be in the blast zone. Was it flattened?

The big ugly blue/green statue is the official park centerpiece, funded by the Govt of Japan. All of the donated memorials are in a plot of their own, leading up to (IIRC, its been over 25 years) that central statue.

Of all the hundreds of castles in Japan today, only about dozen or so are the original structures dating back to the 17th century. Most were razed by Imperial Proclamation shortly after the Emperor was restored to power in 1868. The rest are all reconstructions, a few pre-WW2 but most are post-WW2.

Himeji Castle was almost destroyed by US Forces during WW2. A stray bomb landed within the main structure, but fortunately was a dud.

Thanks
Matsumoto Castle is another good one I just perused... The "Black Crow", as you probably already know. The story about that one is interesting as well as the others. It's a neat contrast to the "White Egret". I'd hate to pay for the upkeep on all of those. hee.

Matsumoto Castle. Wikipedia image. Someone should have cued some black swans.