Today, after finishing a chore in a city north of here, I drove up to Nikko, the area famous for the shrine deifying the first Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa who started the era of Edo in the 17th century. Nikko is further north of here located among mountains.
A road named the Reiheisi Highway leads form south to Nikko. They say some religious missions have been sent to that shrine on regular basis. The name of this Highway means that. There are beautiful cedar trees along the road in some portion of the Highway. They are hundreds years of age.
I used to work at a hospital in Nikko as a part time doctor when I became a doctor in 1980s. Sometime, I ran this road on the way to and from that hospital. In the winter, the road was often frozen and slippery those days. When I finished my duty for a whole day at the hospital early in the morning, I used to purchase freshly baked bread for souvenir to my family at a bakery near the hospital and hurried to the dorm at the med school hospital. It has been sometime since I drove there.
I forgot bringing my camera. In stead, I found this video clip in Youtube. It was taken in a morning early in spring. There was sunray shining through those cedar trees planted on each side of the road. It looked almost the same today even though sunray came in from the opposite side. It was late afternoon today. Not much traffic exactly in the same way as this video shows.
Ieyasu Tokugawa was deified by his family and the government because such a being to unite the people was needed for governance of the country. There have been examples of such deifications of leaders all over the world in the history. Politics necessitates such deification anywhere as well as any time in the history. So is it applied to the present world. I was thinking of such a thing listening to the hollow address of our Prime Minister at the Congress through a radio program. We don't need a dictator but a real leader. In the world populism dominates, is it possible for us to have a real leader? It is not the problem of the capability of the leader candidates but rather a question on our side. Could we evaluate a leader properly and esteem him as a real leader?
I am intrigued with your thought processes my friend. Your description of the forested roadway truly shows its beauty, not unlike many places in both Oregon and Washington here in the USA. I especially think of the area in Northern California where the Redwood trees grow North of Eureka, CA. Your political comments intrigue me also, and give me much think about.
ReplyDeleteW7AYN
Bob,
DeleteI am sure the roads in North Calif., Oregon or Washington must have much larger scale of view. I really would like to see them sometime. This road is famous for its historical meaning. The rows of cedar trees are still grand while things out of them are not remarkable at all.
In Japan, the conflicts with the neighbor countries are seemingly activating the right winged politicians. They could appeal to the people due to their clear cut propaganda. Some of them take advantage of mass media. I am afraid these could lead our country to a wrong way. A true leader, flexible and persistent in diplomacy, is needed here. So far, there is no one among those new right winged ones.
See you on 40m soon.
Shin