Takefu International Music Festival June 9-16
The 'Takefu International Music Festival 2002' will be held on June 9-16 in Takefu City, Fukui Prefecture, and other places, with internationally renowned artists and groups taking part. Sponsored by the Takefu International Music Festival Board and the Takefu Foundation for Culture Promotion, the event is supported by Takefu City, the Takefu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Nanjo Town, Ota Town and Kono Village.Until last year, the music festival has been held 12 times as the stage for music and cultural interchanges in the area centering on Takefu City so that music performances and friendship will be promoted. This year's event features Beethoven and Alban Berg, who played active roles in Germany and Vienna, respectively. During the event, the world-famous Arditti Quartet (UK) will perform in a concert, and other artists will perform works composed by Beethoven and Alban Berg.
At Takefu International Composition Workshop (June 8-16), which was inaugurated last year, young composers from Ukraine, Mexico, Spain, the United States and Japan, and trainees will create the world's latest music under the direction of music director Toshio Hosokawa.
Late S. Korean given Kwangaku diploma
Kwansei Gakuin University (Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture) has decided to give a special graduation certificate to the late South Korean student, Kim Gyuwon, who entered Kwansei Gakuin Higher Commercial School but failed to graduate because he was imprisoned on charges of violating the Maintenance of Public Order Law during World War II. The certificate will be handed over by President Kazuo Hiramatsu to Kim's wife in a ceremony to be held in Seoul on July 6.Kim entered the high school in 1943. But he was arrested by special political police in connection with his participation in an independence movement in his country. In March 1945, Kwansei Gakuin removed him from a list of its students. During the closing days of the war, he returned to South Korea and finished a graduate course at Seoul University and then served as a professor at the university. In January this year, he asked Kwansei Gakuin University through his classmate So Wonsu in Nishinomiya for a graduation certificate as a way of recovering his honor. Kim, however, died abruptly soon afterward.
The university decided to accord the certificate to him, respecting his strong wishes and hoping such an unfortunate incident will not be repeated. It is the first time for Kwansei Gakuin University to give such a special graduation certificate.
Int'l business symposium on environment
The nonprofit organization Recycling System Center (RECSYS; headed by Masakazu Okubo), Osaka City's Chuo Ward, will hold an international symposium on corporate management and the environment on June 10 at Osaka International Convention Center in the city's Kita Ward under the theme of 'Corporate Management in the Environment Century.' Supporters include the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Environment, the Kansai Economic Federation, the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Kansai Association of Corporate Executives.The symposium will bring together representatives of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which has made a host of recommendations on corporate management and the environmental problem, top executives of Japanese businesses, which are playing leading roles in the area of environmental protection, and policy-makers of governments.
Participants will discuss ways to cope with the globalization of environmental problems. On June 10, Bjorn Stigson, president of the WBCSD, who is also widely known as a financial analyst, will make a keynote speech titled 'The Aim of the WBCSD.' Subsequent panel discussions will be attended by Noriyuki Inoue, president of Daikin Industries, Ltd., Sumio Sano, an adviser to Sony Corp. and Yasuo Tanabe, director of the Recycle Division at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Simultaneous Japanese-English interpretation is available.
RECSYS was jointly established in 1992 by the business community, administration and academics to realize a resources recycling society in the Kansai region. Founded in 1995, the WBCSD has about 150 excellent companies as its members.
Software to simulate concrete piling developed
Nara Prefectural Institute of Industrial Technology (NIIT) has developed software to simulate the piling up of concrete blocks, using the Internet. Actual concrete blocks weigh dozens of kilograms to several hundreds kg per block, making it impossible to show the method and process of piling up blocks ahead of the start of construction by using actual blocks.The newly developed software employs a wide array of three-dimensional display methods of the Internet, enabling users to freely carry and pile up concrete blocks on a personal computer screen. It also makes it possible for users to introduce concrete products and easily understand how to arrange blocks for a retaining wall.
Historic Kansai:Last 'scene of revenge' now becomes hiking course on Mt. Koya
By Junzo TanakaToday, international conflicts are going on in various parts of the world for a number of reasons. In some cases, disastrous incidents are repeated like the swing of the pendulum as radical activities stir a feeling of revenge.
Nowadays, the Japanese look free from such a feeling. In old days, however, the 'katakiuchi' (or 'adauchi') practice of blood revenge for the killing of an elder relation or a feudal superior flourished right up to the opening of Japan to the West. Those who killed persons were not subject to punishment if their actions were justified as katakiuchi.
Looking back, more than 100 incidents were recognized as katakiuchi, among them the Soga Brothers' revenge at the foot of Mt. Fuji in 1193 and the 47 ronin incident in 1703 in Edo, currently Tokyo. Katakiuchi was beautified and taken up as themes in such traditional performing arts as Noh and Kabuki. It is also one of the subjects of today's literary works and dramas. Ako ronin's 'Chushingura' has become a hit a number of times in movies and TV dramas.
The practice of katakiuchi is of course not tolerable under the current legal system. Those who killed others are charged with murder. In 1873, a government decree, issued by then Justice Minister Shimpei Eto, declared blood revenge to be illegal.
The legal action was prompted by the incident that occurred in Kamiya in the town of Koya, Wakayama Prefecture, in 1871. The incident took place in the Banshu (Hyogo Prefecture) Ako-han (domain). The han's senior statesman Murakami Shinsuke was killed by a group of opponents in 1862. Four children were left. Nine years later, the Murakami brothers, who got information about the band of six assassins on their way to Mt. Koya, ambushed and killed them.
Years before the incident, the han system had been abolished, and the practice of blood revenge was prohibited. The Murakami brothers were sentenced to death. But the penalty was reduced to life imprisonment and the brothers were released five years later.
The scene of the Murakami brothers' revenge is located on a narrow road away from the main road to the summit of Mt. Koya. The notice plate there says 'Japan's last blood revenge' together with an extract from Tatsuo Yuki's novel titled 'Adauchi in Koya.'
The road, though dim and empty today, was busy in old days as one of the main highways linking Nara and Osaka to Mt. Koya. 'History-loving hikers sometime visit here,' said an employee at Kii-Kamiya Station of the Nankai-Koya Line, who gave me a map, which shows the location of blood revenge is within the Kamiya-Mt. Kudo hiking course, which takes two hours and 50 minutes.
The practice of katakiuchi did not stop, however. Some historians say the 1880 Rokuro Usui incident marked Japan's last blood revenge. The father of Rokuro from Fukuoka was killed when he was 6 years old. Rokuro exacted revenge at age 22 in Tokyo. Once a radical samurai, the opponent who killed his father had successfully become a senior government official. Rokuro was sentenced to life in prison.
Kansai in Focus: Kusatsu River, nation-widely known as a ceiling river, to be reclaimed in June
The fork of the two old-time highways-Tokaido and Nakasendo Highways, the Kusatsu River is famous as a 'raised bed river' and a symbol of Kusatsu City, Shiga Prefecture. Local municipalities, environmental researchers and residents are showing increasing interest in the river.It is because the 6-kilometer section of the river's downstream toward Lake Biwa is scheduled to be reclaimed in June in an extremely rare move in Japan. Generally, the reclamation of a river is focused on changing meandering streams into straight ones. Indeed, the case of the Kusatsu River is also drawing keen attention from the viewpoint of civil engineering and city planning.
To be reclaimed is the section of the 15-km Kusatsu River, which runs through the center of Kusatsu City from east to west. The train bound for Hikone from Osaka and Kyoto on the JR Tokaido Line arrives at Kusatsu Station minutes after running through the Kusatsu River Tunnel. The Kusatsu River runs over the short tunnel. A five-minute walk from the station takes you to the river banks on a 10-m high hill. Since the Edo period (1600-1868), the river has been dividing Kusatsu City into north and south.
Passing through a commercial street from the station, you can see the stone Oiwake Guidepost beside the southern exit of the Kusatsu River Tunnel, which shows that the place is the fork of the Tokaido-Ise route (right) and Nakasendo-Mino route (left) highways. Beyond that guidepost, there is Kusatsu-juku Honjin, which, built in 1635, served as one of the town's two official inns for daimyo (feudal clans). Retaining its Edo-period form, the road still serves as the main road in Kusatsu City with a number of stores on both sides.
In the Edo period, it was the traffic fork of Tokaido and Nakasendo linking Edo (nowadays Tokyo) to Kyoto and Osaka-Japan's old-time main highways. Therefore, the ceiling river referred to in school textbooks and widely known in Japan. Along with the Oiwake Guidepost and Kusatsu-juku Honjin, the Kusatsu River is a symbol of the city and a cultural asset.
Then why does such a cultural asset need to be reclaimed? This is because the central government is being urged to cope with frequent floods and traffic congestion. The areas in and around Kusatsu City along the river have seen one of the highest growth rates in population in recent years in Japan, prompting local municipalities and experts to point to the danger of the raised bed river.
The river's higher-than-ground level also caused a curious situation, in which cars and trains now run through the tunnel under the river, a condition that has forced authorities to refrain from widening main roads such as national highway Route 1.
This in turn caused traffic jams. In order to remedy the situation, the Kinki Regional Development Bureau at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport established a drainage canal, or a new Kusatsu River, at about 2 km south of the Kusatsu River. On June 14, the 6-km downstream section of the river is to be reclaimed.
Drawing strong interest now is how to use the reclaimed land of the river. Local municipalities, communities and citizens have set up a panel to study how to utilize the reclaimed plot of land and made recommendations since the spring of last year. Specific proposals include constructing parks on the river banks and building new roads.
Local municipalities and residents share the view that the areas around the Oiwake Guidepost and Kusatsu-juku inns as well as the Kusatsu River are 'important areas' as historical and cultural assets that have been created through the crossbreeding of nature and humans. But details of how to preserve and develop the areas have yet to be threshed out. Kusatsu -juku is a post-station town with remnants of old-time highways and the river that we want to preserve forever. (J)