the tall blond guy goes to japan

First Impressions

Hiroshima

How to deal with Hiroshima?

There's a kind of morbid prettyness about this place. I'm sitting in a big park in the centre of town- rather, what was the centre of town until that... forced urbal renewal project... happened in the mid-40's.

Roof go bye bye.

I'm growing up in a generation that has never seen war, all we've seen are the remnants of other people's wars. Right now, I'm sitting on a park bench looking across a pretty reflective river at a pretty/morbid structure. The atomic bomb was exploded about 400m directly above this building. The surprising thing is that it's still recognizable as a building. Much like the famous cathedral in Berlin, this is being kept in one piece as a reminder of what happens when things go boom in the sky.

The cleaner gnomes (similar to those found in Tokyo) are over there, sweeping and cleaning the pathways, people are biking around the area, going to school, going to work, passing this wreck of a building -- this UN-designated world historical site wreck of a building -- seemingly oblivious to its meaning. Does it even have meaning to the people living here?

Article 9, Chapter II of the Japanese Constitution, brought into effect a few years after the war ended. I quote (emphasis is mine):

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a soverign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.