Tokyo station is situated at the heart of capital Tokyo with its Marunouchi-side leading to the carriage-drive way for the Imperial Palace, formerly known as “Edo castle”. The restored red-brick building on the Marunouchi side of the station is around 35 meters high with modest three stories above and two under the ground, stretching 335 meters along a north-south axis. With more than 4,000 trains coming and going every day, there are 14 railroad lines originating at Tokyo station, including the Tokaido and Tohoku Shinkansen Bullet Trains. From here you can go almost anywhere in Japan as you want.
The station also provides tourists with the preserved classical style hotel which can accommodate 150 guests and with the huge shopping mall of total 220 shops on its 1st floor and basements, including many take-outs which sell about 170 of varieties of “Eki-ben” coming from various parts of Japan for your lunch, dinner or breakfast on your train seat.
But that's not all that it has to offer. Before you rush through a ticket gate for a platform, take a glance up, for example, to the ceiling of the South Dome at Marunouchi-side. You will notice its unique cathedral-like dome look of octagonal shape, which was designed by the first Japanese architecture, Dr. Kingo Tatsuno, a century ago. One of his masterpiece, Tokyo station building was burnt down by the U.S. air force raid during the world war 2, but in 2012 it was restored to its original style after a five-year renovation effort. The building is not just a convenient and modernized facility for transportation, but it also presents itself as an historical monument which remind us of the old Meiji era's spirit when Japanese had kicked off toward the modernization after 300 years national seclusion.
On Dec.20 2014 last Saturday, Tokyo station celebrated the 100th anniversary of the opening. The station was so crowded and I saw a lot of people flocking to buy various items as souvenirs like the specially designed Suica prepaid IC cards to commemorate this event. I'm completely indifferent toward such souvenirs, but in a sense it shows that many people love and be proud of this historical building. I felt like exploring more about this historic and cultural heritage of Japan, which stands with dignity amid a bunch of tall contemporary commercial buildings surrounding it.
(to be continued)
While those ancient Sicachi-Alyan artists had been carving their imaginary creation on the rocks along Amur between 12,000 B.C. and 500 B.C., the ancient inhabitants in Japan were making the so-called "cord-marked" potteries with the decoration of impressing cords into the surface of wet clay. This entire period is called as Jomon which literally means "cord-marked" in Japanese. Was there any intercourse between the two ancient neighboring people? And could we prove it in a scientific manner or by identifying some similarity in their cultural archaeological remains?
Prehistoric culture in Japan
The Jomon culture in Japan is classified as Neolithic and divided into five phases. The earliest phase of this culture developed in Hokkaido and Tohoku, the northern parts of Japan, which is considered to have begun about 12,000 B.C. when Japan was linked to continental Asia as a narrow peninsula. Some scholars believe that the early Jomon culture was brought from Siberia via Sakhalin and the people of this culture were the ancestors of the present-day Ainu. If so, the ancient culture of Sycati-Alyan could have been carried in some extent to the Japanese Archipelago by them. Could we recognize any similarity between the various design patterns found on Sikachi-Alyan's rock carvings and those of Ainu or Jomon people in Japan? This is a mystery.
Jomon Pottery
Jomon pots are the oldest ones in the world. Pottery was first invented by hunter-gathers living in Japan, China and Korea during the last Ice Age about 14,000 years ago. Take a look at some photographs of Jomon potteries with seemingly snake or vortex designs, which I found on Internet although their exact creation dates were not specified. Is it possible to connect these design patterns with those found in Sycachi-Alyan petroglyphs from the artistic view?
The late Prof. Hourai of National Institute of Genetics, who happened to be my senior at the mountain trekking club in the university, had sought for the root of Japanese by analyzing mitochondrial DNA. He claimed that;
- the contemporary Japanese are of mixed Jomon and Yayoi parentage.
- the Yayoi people came from the mainland China through the Korean Peninsula during the periods from 300 BC to 300 AC.
- the Jomon people came from the north in the Jomon era, the time dated back to Prehistoric Japan from 14,500 BC to 300 BC, when the Japanese Archipelago was connected to the Eurasian continent.
I also find the interesting description on the web site by the NPO "Amur Region Historical Heritage Fund". It suggests that there existed some cultural contacts between the inhabitants of the lower Amur and Ains' ancestor in pre-historic era. Let me cite this below;
"In ancient times there were contacts between the culture carriers of the Amur river, Ains' ancestors and tribes of Indonesia and Polynesia. A witness of such links is a wide spread of the vortex ornament, that has the Snake cult as a basis. Presumably, this was further spread out and in remote Australia and Vietnam. The culture of the Lower Amur neolithic tribes is strongly expressed in the Sycachi-Alyan rock drawings and, most likely, had the influence far bound the frontier of this region."
It's a nice experience for us to realize how we've come a long way.
References;
(1) The web site of "Amur Region Historical Heritage Fund"
(2) "Down The Amur from Khabarovsk to Nikolaeusk-na-Amure"
(3) "Ancient Art of the Amur Region - Rock Drawings Sculpture Pottery"
by Alexei Okladnikov
(4) "Jomon period" from Wikipedia
(The End of this series "Rock artists in Sycachi-Alyan, 12 Millenniums ago ".)
