Mysterious Hilltop Shrine ---- In A Place One Might Find Tottoro

Hidden forest shrine.

Fushimi Hakuseki Inari Shrine

Up the hill from Taura Station .... hard to believe this ancient quiet holy spot is located only a twenty minute walk from all the concrete urbanized areas below....

Yokosuka Power Spot No. 3 --- The Fatal Price Of Loyalty

Yokosuka's "Verny Park" rightfully ought to be called "Verny-Oguri Park."

"Tadamasa Oguri was a controversial Tokugawa government official whose efforts contributed to the modernization of Japan at the end of the shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji Period and whose insistent calls for resistance against the forces of Satsuma and Choshu would cost him his life."

Good/short biography is here.

In the mid-1860s, Tadamasa Oguri teamed-up with the French naval engineer, Francois Leonce Verny, to build-up the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal.

A real nice bilingual explanation about Verny is here.

So, Oguri, who actually ran the Tokugawa's finances at one point, was a pretty powerful government official, and intensely loyal to the Shogun --- and he used his power to build-up Yokosuka.

And in the central part of Very Park, the busts of Verny and Oguri are displayed together, as such:

  












But, taking a closer look, in the middle and behind the statues is a small rock formation, which looks like this:

It turns out that these stones were taken from a spot along the Karasu River, in Gunma Prefecture, where Ogura was beheaded by samurai from Choshu & Satsuma.  The stones were donated to Yokosuka's park in 1953.

I had walked an jogged past the Ogura and Verny statues for many years, and only recently became aware of these quiet, strange, & powerful stones which lie in the background --- wow!

The Black Ships 黒船

In 1720, a office headquarters & administrative complex was set-up in Uraga ---  It was called the Uraga Magistrate's Office, and it reported up to the Tokugawa Shogun government in Edo (Tokyo.)

At that time, Yokosuka City did not yet exist (it was just a small fishing village) --- so, even until today, the people who live in the Uraga section of Yokosuka have a sense of being the oldest and historically most important part of the City (local pride!)

The job of the Uraga Magistrate's Office, due to his location near the mouth of Tokyo Bay, was to monitor and manage the entry of boats and ships into the bay --- i.e., to make sure no one could sneak-up and surprise the Shogun in Edo.

So, in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry and his squadron of U.S. Navy warships showed-up to "open" Japan, it was the Uraga Magistrate who had to deal with the situation.

Yokosuka City has produced an excellent summary of what happened between Uraga and the "Black Ships" --- and here it is:

Matthew Perry and Yokosuka

The Birth Of Japanese Naval Aviation -- 1912, Yokosuka (Oppama 追浜)

One of Nissan Automobile Corporation's main manufacturing and test plants is located in the northern part of Yokosuka City, called: Oppama (追浜).

Nissan built its factory there in 1961, on "wide-open" property which had formerly been used as U.S. Naval Air Station Oppama, and before that, as the Japanese Imperial Navy's Yokosuka Air Base.

It has been mostly forgotten that the birth of Japan's naval aviation occurred at Yokosuka Air base in 1912.  Here is a relevant quote from the book "Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy" (by David Evans & Mark Peattie, pgs 179-180):

"(Japan's naval aviation) began with the decisions of the Commission on Naval Aeronautical Research to purchase foreign winged aircraft and to send junior officers abroad to learn how to fly and maintain them.  In consequence, the navy purchased two seaplanes from the Glenn Curtis factory in Hammondsport, New York, and two Maurice Farman seaplanes from France.  To establish a cadre of naval aviators and technicians, the navy dispatched three officers to Hammondsport and two to France for training and instruction.  Upon their return to Japan at the end of 1912, two of the newly trained naval aviators made the first flights in Japanese naval air history at Oppama on Yokosuka Bay, one in a Curtiss seaplane, the other in a Maurice Farman .... Within a year, the navy had begun operational use of the aircraft, and within two, Japanese naval aircraft had undertaken their first combat missions."

          

Yokosuka's "Statue Of Liberty"

On the bluff overlooking Yokosuka City's downtown & naval port area, a park called: "Chuo Ko-en" (横須賀中央公園 -- Central Park) is located on what used to be a Japan Imperial Army training area.

It was an excellent location for looking out at Tokyo Bay, and the Japanese Army's Yokosuka Heavy Artillery Regiment would conduct canon firing practice from that spot/facility.  (Subject for a different post in the future.)

Yokosuka's museum and cultural center/civic auditorium are located within the Central Park grounds.

Of interest, there are also some statues located on a green area next to the museum.

And one of them is called "The Statue Of Liberty," and looks like this:

        












This statue was built in 1960, by a famous Japanese sculptor Seibo KITAMURA, and was moved and erected in Yokosuka's Central Park in 1977, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the City's foundation.

KITAMURA-san, who passed-away in 1987, is most famous for a large statue he built for the Atomic Bomb Peace Park in Nagasaki City, which most people have seen, and looks like this:

  














Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Yokosuka's political leaders (and many citizens of the post-World War II generation,) never wanted Japan's military to become powerful again, and they were intent on developing Yokosuka into a "Peace City" -- and lessen its dependence on the naval harbor complex, from which the U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self Defense Force operated (and also served as the City's largest employers.)

KITAMURA's "Statue Of Liberty" -- built on a base of stones from Hiroshima -- was intended to send a message of "love and happiness" to the people of Yokosuka.

(Note:  There is another, more notorious, Statue of Liberty, which is located on top of the Love Hotel "Goddess," located right across the street from (and facing towards) Yokosuka U.S. Navy Base --- It has been there for decades, and I am not sure what it is intended to mean ... ?)