First trip to Nagasaki City

 

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.

Fig. 1. Time line during the WWII

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The museum holds 48,000 items in its collection, including historical documents and arts and crafts, that tell the story of Nagasaki as the sole window opened to foreign countries during the period of national isolation.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.

Fig. 2. Cargo transported at Nagasaki port

Fig. 3. Places of trade investigation

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.

Fig. 4. Inside view of Dejima

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.

Fig. 5. Sightseeing of Glover Garden

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.

Fig. 6. Culture Park inside Glover Garden

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).

Fig. 7. Night view of Mt. Inasa

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.

Fig. 8. Poster discussion at JAHS

Apart from that, the presentation of Leon-san is also quite interesting, attracting a lot of attention and discussions.

Fig. 9. Presentation of Leon-san

Finally, I would also like to include my little findings at Nagasaki Station.

Fig. 10. Inundation countermeasures taken around 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.