Hello everyone, this is Chang Liu from the
Kawasaki group. At the beginning of this month, me and Leon-san went to
Nagasaki City to join the water resource annual conference. As the schedule is
fully occupied with meetings (especially with over 100 professors sitting in
the same room), most of my time is spent in the conference venue.
But we still managed to have a short trip
around Nagasaki City, covering some of the most popular places of interests: 1.
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum; 2. Nagasaki Museum of History & Culture; 3. Site
of the Former Dutch Factory on Dejima; 4. Glover Garden; 5. Mt. Inasa night
view.
1.
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
The residents of Nagasaki consider
it their duty to make sure the horrors which they experienced due to the atomic
bombing are never repeated. Because of this, the museum is designed in such a
way that the audience can see just what effect the bomb had on the city, the
reconstruction, and the lasting effects of the atomic bomb. The museum opens
with a room dedicated to the city as it was just before the bomb decimated
Nagasaki. A clock which stopped at 11:02, the precise time the bomb hit the
city, is also on display to demonstrate how so many people were killed in an
instant.
The final room in the museum
contains videos and documents related to the Nagasaki bombing. We can also find
answers to their questions and documents like Nagasaki's Peace Declaration. The
most impressing part is the description of atomic bomb result and the reason
behind it, especially the invasion war against China.
1.
Nagasaki Museum of History
& Culture
The museum holds 48,000 items in its collection, including
historical documents and arts and crafts, that tell the story of Nagasaki as
the sole window opened to foreign countries during the period of national
isolation. The museum also contains a reconstruction of part of the Nagasaki
Magistrate's Office called bugyōsho, a local agency of the central government
in the Edo period.The permanent exhibition features exhibits dealing with
exchange with the Netherlands, China and Korea, and shows artifacts brought to
Japan by foreign traders. It also focuses on "Nanban" (Portuguese and
Spanish culture) and the introduction of Christianity. The museum shows the
role Nagasaki played in post-restoration Japan in the diplomatic sphere, as
well as being at the forefront of modern medicine, printing, ship building and
industrial technology.
1.
Dejima
Spanning 120 m × 75 m (390 ft × 250 ft) or 9,000 m2 (2.2 acres),
Dejima was created in 1636 by digging a canal through a small peninsula and
linking it to the mainland with a small bridge. The island was constructed by
the Tokugawa shogunate, whose isolationist policies sought to preserve the
existing sociopolitical order by forbidding outsiders from entering Japan while
prohibiting most Japanese from leaving. Dejima housed Portuguese merchants and
separated them from Japanese society while still facilitating lucrative trade
with the West.
Following a rebellion by mostly Catholic converts, all Portuguese
were expelled in 1639. The Dutch were moved to Dejima in 1641, albeit under
stricter control: the open practice of Christianity was banned, and
interactions between Dutch and Japanese traders were tightly regulated. Until
the mid-19th century, the Dutch were the only Westerners with exclusive access
to Japanese goods, and, to a lesser extent, society and culture. Dejima
consequently played a key role in the Japanese movement of rangaku (蘭學, "Dutch learning"), an organized scholarly effort to
learn the Dutch language in order to understand Western science, medicine, and
technology.
After the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, which fully opened Japan to
foreign trade and diplomatic relations, Dejima was abolished and later
integrated into Nagasaki city through land reclamation. In 1922, the
"Dejima Dutch Trading Post" was designated a Japanese national
historic site, and there are ongoing efforts in the 21st century to restore
Dejima as an island.
1.
Glover Garden
The Glover Residence is noted for its blend of Western and Japanese
elements and is an example of treaty port building. This type of architecture
closely resembles one-story bungalows used by foreigners in Hong Kong or
Shanghai and imported to Japan by British traders. Rather than following
contemporary Victorian styles, this type of building more closely reflects the
Georgian aesthetic popular in Britain during the previous generation.
The stone-floored verandas, latticed arches, and French windows are
several of the distinctive foreign elements included in the residence, while
Japanese influence can be seen in the tile roof with its demon-headed tiles
intended to ward off evil. The roof was modified by adding unmistakably British
chimneys.
The house was built by a Japanese carpenter, Koyama Hidenoshin. The
plan for the house, which is still preserved, is unsigned. The plan uses feet
instead of Japanese measurements. The basic construction of the house is
Japanese, despite its foreign elements. It consists of traditional Japanese
roof supports and post-and-beam frames set down on boulders.
1.
Mt. Inasa
Mount Inasa (稲佐山, Inasa-yama) is a hill to
the west of Nagasaki which rises to a height of 333 metres (1,093 ft). The
Nagasaki Ropeway allows visitors to travel to the top from Nagasaki. A short
walk from the cable car station are several buildings that house transmitters
for TV and radio stations that serve Nagasaki and the surrounding area.
There is an observation platform that is popular with tourists as it
provides extensive views of Nagasaki's "10 Million Dollar Night View"
(1000万ドルの夜景, Issenmandoru no yakei).
The rest of the trip is full of meetings
and discussions. Among those findings, Prof. Sayama’s investigation of RRI
model performance on Japanese mountainous areas is most interesting to me. As
he improved the mechanism of lateral flow to correct the bias of overestimating
accumulation time in his model.
Apart from that, the presentation of
Leon-san is also quite interesting, attracting a lot of attention and discussions.
Finally, I would also like to include my
little findings at Nagasaki Station.
As it’s always suffered by inland flooding
during Monsoon season, the government is now working on building a new sewage
system (huge pipe as you can see from the picture). While the meeting took
place, the working site is fully covered and we might see the effect the next
year.
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