Opinion Kamakura and the 'real' Japan By David Parmer	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
「本当の」日本はどこにある？ 芸者や侍に代表されるような「本物の」日本の姿は幻想の中にしか描けないが、 鎌倉という魅力に満ちた街は確かに存在する。

Kamakura is only 50 minutes away from Tokyo but you may feel that time slows down a bit when you go there. Until Ofuna Station on the Yokosuka Line, the scenery looks more or less the same: urban sprawl, factories and crowded roads. Then at Kita Kamakura things change. Hills flank the rail line and single homes with a bit of garden line the track. From the train you can see a temple roof here, and a hawk lazily floating above the green hills over there. Get out at Kita Kamakura and you can begin exploring. Two grand Zen temples await you, Enkakuji (1282) and Kenchoji (1253).

In June you can take a leisurely 10-minute walk to Meigetsu-in, a temple famous for its hydrangea, which bloom in the rainy season. You can also have lunch at a famous vegetarian restaurant not far from the station. Kita Kamakura is really just the genkan or entrance hall to Kamakura. And it gets even better.

From Kita Kamakura you can walk, in about 20 minutes, to Kamakura Station, or get back on the train and ride there in five minutes. On the east side of the station is a plaza that is a bus terminal. Here is the entrance to a long shopping street housing restaurants, antique shops, souvenir shops and assorted other shops. Go one more block and you will find the main street of Kamakura, Wakamiya-oji, which runs from the beach to the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine built by Minamoto no Yoritomo in 1180. If you go out the west exit of the station you can take the Enoden, an old, single-track railway, along the coast to Hase Station and then stroll up to the crowning jewel of old Kamakura, the Great Buddha (1252).

What a day you would have visiting these places! And there are many more temples, shrines, gardens and museums to visit - so many that you would have to spend several days exploring this remarkable Japanese town. And some might be tempted to say that they had finally found the "real" Japan. And I would ask: What's "real?"

This charming, historical town, is it more real than Tokyo, Yokohama or Kawasaki? Are Tokyo's packed trains, incessant noise, concrete valleys and glass structures not Japan? Of course they are.

So where does "real" exist? It exists in the imagination. It is, in short, a fantasy. There is no more a "real Japan" than there is, say, a "real Paris." And recently we have heard of many Japanese becoming depressed, nay, even suicidal, when they found that their dreams of the "real Paris," the City of Light, did not match up to the Paris that they found. The name given to this condition is "Paris syndrome."

I have yet to hear the term "Kamakura syndrome," but it may come to pass. Geisha and samurai are all gone. In their place are iPod-wearing teens in baggy pants and old ladies with purple hair.

The "real" Japan doesn't exist, but Kamakura does. It has its own magic, and it is just 50 minutes away. (511 words)