Tokyo is a Kind of Sad Place

[unforth]

It's very sad. Reading about important buildings in Tokyo almost always follows the same pattern. "This beautiful Jinja dates back to 1200, when it was founded to protect the (blank) clan. It was moved to Tokyo to protect the (direction) and welcome pilgrims. However, it collapsed in the Kanto Earthquake in the 1920's, and then burned down in the fire bombings of 1945. The current building dates to the 1960's, though there's one gate that goes back to the 1700's." This is the case for pretty much every building. It's getting depressing. Ah well. :(

Comments

[drydem.livejournal.com]

you get the same thing in England. The first thing was burnt down by the fire, the next was blown up in the blitz.

[unforth.livejournal.com]

Yeah. :( I hadn't thought of it, but of course that makes perfect sense...though I don't think quite as much of London was destroyed in the blitz as was destroyed in the fire bombing in Tokyo...still...

Why must we destroy beautiful, historical things that have little to do with the conflict at hand? :(

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

OTOH, my impression was that the Japanese re-built a lot of the beautiful historical things (like that Jinja) the way they were. No?

Then there's the Ise shrine, IIRC, which they rebuild every 20 years as ritual policy.

[unforth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they've rebuilt almost all of the temples, based off of memory, old blue prints, and photographs, often out of poured concrete. I'm very curious about how well this actually works as a reproduction. Don't know about Ise, I haven't gotten that far. :)

It was funny, during my lunch I found one (the one and only one so far) that is it's original building (making it almost 400 years old) and I celebrated.

[mistress-sin.livejournal.com]

hey you!

after careful consideration funding wise, the boy and i will be driving over and up for gen con and we'll most likly leave when you leave which means there must be crazy funess on sunday . . . whatever that means . . .

miss you! *huggles*

[unforth.livejournal.com]

oh yeah!! Crazy funness rocks!!! There goes any chance I'll get sleep before my flight (I intend to be at the airport at about 5 AM as it is...)

So when are you guys coming? Like, what day?

[guiniveve.livejournal.com]

Wow that sounds sort of like here..every 20 years or so we have to tear something down and rebuild it-of course there's really no ritual about it. We built it out of cheap crap the first time around so we gotta tear it down and rebuild it out of cheaper crap. Ahhhh...history in America.

[unforth.livejournal.com]

lol. true, true...