'Japan at Last!' - By Kit Villiers

We finally arrived at Haneda Airport, Tokyo, at about 2am after what turned out to be a 6 hour delay in Hong Kong. In those days of prehistoric communications we'd failed to notify Robin Pocock, who'd been designated to meet us, of our late arrival, and he didn't therefore welcome us with exactly open arms when we finally emerged at the old Haneda Airport terminal building at something like 3am.

We were to stay for what remained of that first night in the New Grand Hotel, Yokohama. As we drove through the silent streets my fears were somewhat confirmed as nothing whatsoever was written in English; there was nothing even in western script. Robin warned us that we were so late getting to our rooms that we'd probably enjoy a sweaty night as the air-conditioning would soon go off. I'm not sure quite why. It's possible that the hotel wanted to save money and thought nobody would notice if they went to bed at a normal hour. Of course if he hadn't told us this I wouldn't have given it a thought as I was so tired. But as it was I found myself wide-awake waiting for the dreaded switch-off  moment and hardly slept at all - not the best start to my new career!


The year was...well I won't tell you exactly, but it was precisely 100 years after the Meiji Restoration. That is, 100 years after the Emperor, who had been dozing for a couple of centuries in Kyoto, the old capital, found himself recalled to 'power' in Tokyo when the Shogun proved unable to deal with the sudden invasion of 'foreign devils' who had penetrated Japan's isolation about 15 years earlier.

One of the first things the Japanese did was to isolate the foreigners into three what might best be called compounds, the most important of which were on the sites of what have become Kobe and Yokohama. It is perhaps no coincidence that these two small settlements of 100 years ago have grown into two of the world's major ports, and hence P & O, together with other old British companies such as HSBC and Jardine Matheson, still kept their Japan head offices in Yokohama a hundred years later even though with the opening up of Japan after the 2nd World War everyone else was moving into what had become the world's biggest and most vibrant city, Tokyo.

Japan was a strange mixture of old and new. John Farmer, the other newcomer and I, were told we'd never find the office and that we'd be picked up at 9am sharp by the office driver. "He'll be late, I'll bet you" said John, who had had experience of the Third World. He was wrong - the driver came spot on time. That was the first surprise; the second was that that Japan had no street names! No wonder we wouldn't have been able to find the office. Addresses without street names were very strange, and appeared to be based on a system of concentric circles. Taxi drivers never seemed to know where they were going, and I found later that you had to give them a map to have any chance of getting anywhere; even then you never really knew if you hadn't gone wrong. "Was that really the 4th turning on the right?" you would wonder. Without a street reference you had no way to check. On the other hand if you liked Bach or Mozart it was quite pleasant getting lost - taxi drivers seemed to love western classical music and played it all the time. Mind you, even in those days you could clock up quite a taxi fare so you didn't dare relax too much.

Anyway the driver knew where the office was, and so began our new life. The staff bowed deeply to the 2 new expat managers, although I was a bit disappointed that nobody was wearing a kimono. John was assigned to some frightfully important position in Yokohama almost immediately, while I was to be transferred to Kobe, and next time I'll relate how I got there. Meantime I was stay in the hotel: John told me later the street name thing bugged him for days: he and his wife could never find their house without help, and goodness knows how they coped with shopping. There was almost nothing recognisable in the shops, and, incredibly polite and charming as the shop assistants were, nobody spoke English.  I expect a few other of the British wives were roped in to help. We had around 6 British managers in Yokohama and 2 in Kobe, out of a staff of several hundred.

I'm sure you're wandering what happened to the poor old Shogun. He was called Mr Tokugawa and the Tokugawa Shogunate had ruled Japan for centuries. I'm sure in most 'emerging'  countries there would have been bloodshed at this sudden change of regime, but not in Japan: apparently the Shogun just quietly retired to private life. Took a house in the suburbs, I expect, and lived happily ever after....

The 4.50 from Paddington - by Kit Villiers

As I'm sure you all know, this is the title of one of Agatha Christie's murder mysteries. Miss Marple's friend catches the 4.50pm train from Paddington Station to some fictional place in the country. It's winter and it's dark outside. The friend, an old lady like Miss Marple, is travelling alone.  She's quietly reading. Gradually she becomes aware that the 4.50 is slowly overtaking another passenger train. She can see the passengers eating, chatting or snoozing as she passes each compartment of the other train. In those days you had first class compartments with six seats (3 opposite 3) and third class with eight (4 opposite 4). None of these open plan coaches you get nowadays. So if you were lucky and the train wasn't crowded you could get a whole compartment to yourself, as had the friend.

After a little while the old lady gets a bit bored of eavesdropping on the humdrum lives of her fellow travellers opposite, and goes back to her 'Woman's Own'. But then the two trains start to run at the same speed. Something makes her look up. In the compartment exactly opposite her something not at all humdrum is taking place. There are two people there, and there seems to be a struggle going on. A very violent struggle. The old lady slowly realises that what she is witnessing is a man strangling a woman. Just as the woman slumps down obviously dead the other train starts to slow and the old lady sees no more.

After witnessing this terrible real-life melodrama, the old lady is then faced with the problem of what to do about it. I don't recall if she considers pulling the alarm cord: anyway she certainly tells the guard. Naturally he doesn't believe her. And when she gets to the fictional town where she is to stay with Miss Marple, neither she nor Miss Marple can persuade the local police to take it seriously either.

To cut a long story short, Miss Marple with the help of the railway timetable first works out where the body was thrown out of the train, and of course later she discovers who the victim was and who bumped her off.

What interested me was that my father and I several times had a similar experience to Miss Marple's friend. Well, to be honest witnessing a murder we didn't, but everything else seemed to fit. My father often spent the day in London. In those steam-train days we lived in a village called Leafield, near Witney, and our nearest station was Finstock, or Finstock Halt as it was called then. Occasionally I was taken to London as a treat. We always caught the 4.40 back as this went on past Oxford, stopping at Finstock Halt. There was another train though, the 4.45, also for Oxford. Although this was an express train, it was no good for us as we would have to change somewhere to get home. Every time we took this journey the two trains somewhere around Reading would run along together. I remember my father telling me it was because the two drivers wanted to have a chat. When the trains were going exactly the same speed you had the illusion that they'd both stopped. This was always a big thrill for a small child - the highlight of what otherwise seemed an interminable journey.

I'm sure Agatha Christie must have made the same journey, and what would be more natural on a dark night for somebody with her imagination to build one of her murder mysteries around it.

OK, I know there's a 5 or 10 minute difference, but I'm not going to let that spoil a good yarn....

Cricket - Apartheid Fashion

Another 25 hour day of endless blue sea and sky stretched ahead, with nothing more exciting in prospect than the Captain's Cocktail Party on the quarterdeck at 6 bells, following a spot of deck tennis with that bunch of pleasant Australian girls I'd met at the Syndicated Quiz the evening before, if one felt so inclined. 6 days out of Fremantle and life on board had settled into a very pleasant routine.

 

Following a large buffet breakfast (one always seems to be so hungry at sea), I was lounging in a deck-chair idly perusing the ship's newspaper when I became aware of a chap glued to a transistor radio nearby. Faintly irritated at the crackling, I politely enquired as to what was apparently absorbing my sun-tanned neighbour. "Aw, don't you know, mate, the Capetown Test has just started, and the South Africans have won the toss and decided to bat."

 

"Oh really?" I tried to show interest.

 

"The ship'll be alongside in Capetown before the last day, and me and a few of the blokes from 'C' deck are thinking of grabbing a cab and nipping along to watch," my new friend continued enthusiastically but somewhat ungrammatically. Although I wasn't really bothered who won - the test appeared to be between S. Africa and Australia - the Aussie's remark had given me an idea. I would try and get to Newlands, but it would I thought be a lot more interesting to travel on public transport.  

 

A few days later I strolled down the gangway and boarded the bus for Capetown station. It appeared that Newlands, Capetown's sports stadium, was a bit out of town and S. African Railways was the way to go. The bus journey was pretty uneventful: the ship's Purser had told me that whites could sit anywhere, but that other races had to sit in the rear half. I did less well on the train: in short I had a Gandhi experience except in reverse, and, unlike Gandhi, I didn't argue: I realised too late that compartments alternated between black and white, and I naturally got in the wrong one....After the guard put me right, the compartment I ended up in was occupied by a large white man. I was about to tell him of my mistake when he unfurled his paper. It was in Afrikaans. Somehow the words somehow stuck in my throat. I can't quite recall the reasons for my hesitation (it's a long time ago), but I had read that the Boer War lived on in the minds of some, and that some Afrikaners resented the fact that English speakers never bothered to learn their language.

 

I had no problems identifying the whites only entrance to the ground. I'd like to be able to confirm that it really was true that the non-whites tended to support the opposition, but when I strolled along to the partition they all went silent. I now think that they must have thought I was a policeman, as in general the 2 groups sat as far as possible from each other and I felt a bit of a fool stuck in a kind of no-man's land.

 

I'm afraid I also can't recall who won: but as it turned out this S. Africa/ Australia match has gone down in history as it was one of the last games S. Africa played before the sporting ban, inspired by protesters led by Peter Hain and others, put a stop to it all. So I was present when a little bit of history was made.

Oxford's Peculiar Pitt Rivers Museum

This approaching weekend as part of our Cultural Programme we are going to the Pitt Rivers Museum.  Here is some handy details regarding this great museum.

Oxford is home to a wide variety of intriguing museums, amongst them the impressive Ashmolean and the ancient Museum of the History of Science. But tucked away behind the spectacular Museum of Natural History lies a treasure trove of obscure delights. This is the Pitt Rivers Museum, founded in 1884 by Augustus Pitt–Rivers, a military man with a bristling set of side whiskers and a Victorian thirst to discover and understand the empire and the world.

During his research into firearm development, Augustus discovered some ancient flint tools which sparked an obsession with collecting artefacts, past and present, from a plethora of cultures. He later donated his 22,000-piece collection to the University of Oxford, thus establishing the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The museum’s collection has now grown to 500,000 items, many of which have been donated by travellers, scholars and missionaries and includes fascinating anthropological and archeological artefacts from all over the world. Shrunken heads, tribal costumes and masks and even a witch in a bottle are just a few of the gems that attract visitors to the museum.

Fiona Bruce, presenter of BBC 1’s popular programme Antiques Roadshow recently wrote the following in a review of the museum:

‘If Indiana Jones created a museum, this Oxford institution would be it. A collection of half a million objects from all around the world crammed in glass cabinets, packed into drawers, mounted on the walls and hanging from the ceiling in a galleried hall illuminated beneath a soaring neo-gothic roof created from 8,000 individual glass tiles.’

For more details, visit the museum’s website: www.prm.ox.ac.uk

Source: 'Fiona Bruce's Britain: The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford', www.telegraph.co.uk 

10 buildings that changed the face of England

The head of English Heritage, Dr Simon Thurley, chooses his top ten most important buildings in England’s architectural history.

1. Westminster Abbey (c.960)

Coronation church and mausoleum of kings and queens since the 960s, it was here that Edward the Confessor developed the style known as Norman and Henry VIII started a gothic refurbishment which took nearly 3 centuries to complete.

2. Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire (1147-67)

England’s most beautiful ruin, built in a remote valley by Cistercian monks and one of the first built in the gothic style with pointed arches.

3. King’s Bench Walk, Temple, London (1677)

A prime example of a new type of house developed in James I’s London, first known as a “row house” and later a terrace. This housing style became the backbone of the city after the Great Fire of London.

4. The Peckwater Quadrangle, Christ Church, Oxford (1707)

Designed by Dean Aldrich, this courtyard was built to house rich undergraduates in a style rigorously faithful to ancient Roman buildings. The style was taken up by the circle of the royal court and was adopted for houses, public buildings and churches everywhere.

5. Ditherington Flax Mill, Shrewsbury (1797)

The world’s first incombustible iron-framed building and ancestor to every large building with a steel frame today, from supermarkets to skyscrapers.

6. A&G Murray Mills, Ancoats, Manchester (1801)

A&G Murray’s mills were the first in which manufacturing processes were all powered by steam and look, at a distance, like a Georgian street, but behind the iron casements, they drove the largest economy the world had ever seen.

7. Liverpool Road Railway Station, Manchester (1830)

The world’s first passenger railway station is a modest but reassuring-looking building. By blending Avant-garde engineering with reassuringly familiar architectural styles, architects managed to create an atmosphere of confidence.

8. No 6 Slip, Chatham Historic Dockyard (1847)

Naval engineers pushed the limits of technology to build and equip the Navy, and one of the most important advances was the construction of massive free-standing iron sheds called “slips”, under which ships were built. These were the first wide-spanned metal structures in the world.

9. All Saints, Margaret Street, London (1849)

It was here that architecture and engineering first fused to create a new language for the Victorian era. William Butterfield saw the possibilities of coloured and engineered brick for making modern buildings that were both decorative and functional.

10. Bedford Park, London (from 1877)

This mix of brick-built semi-detached and detached Victorian houses in wide streets with deep gardens became the aspiration of millions. Such suburbs, and cheaper imitations of them, were built all over England from the 1880s.

For the full article and pictures, visit:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/architecture/10549001/englands-best-buildings-top-ten-best-buildings-britain-english-heritage-simon-thurley-westminster-abbey.html

The Controversy of the Meadow Road

by OISE Oxford Tutor Kit Villiers

When the weather is good (it does sometimes happen even in the UK!) it's nice for workers, shoppers, students, etc., to take lunch outside, e.g. a nice sandwich in the park. Unfortunately
Oxford is a bit short of city centre parks or indeed open spaces of any kind within walking distance of Carfax.  

One of the nearest is Christ Church Meadow. This large water meadow, unspoilt since the 14th century, provides a welcome haven for office workers and tourists alike; although it's a bit short of benches and you have to watch out for geese droppings if you've time to venture as far as the river and plan to sit on the grass watching students training for Eights Week, it's still a wonderful way of getting away from the rush of the city for a few moments.

Astonishingly this oasis of relative peace was almost lost to us for ever some 50 years ago.

In those days the centre of Oxford, like most other towns along the A40, was a terrible traffic bottleneck. Cars choked the High - one of the most beautiful streets in Europe - and Cornmarket. With very few pedestrian crossings, you took your life in your hands even trying to cross the road; as for gazing in peace and quiet at the famous skyline - forget it.

The current solution is to ban cars from the city centre almost completely, as belatedly happened under the Oxford Transport Policy a few years ago. But, incredible as it seems now, the thinking of transport planners in the 50s and 60s was that the car was king: the aim of transport policy should be, they thought, to try to ensure that private cars, clearly the mode of transport of the future, should be enabled to travel as fast as possible, and blow the consequences.

The solution to the problem in the High was, they decided, to by-pass it completely by building a road from St Aldate's to St Clement's, i.e. right across Christ Church Meadow. Various versions of the scheme were put forward over a number of years, but they were all perfectly ghastly, and all based on the premise that the car was the best mode of transport to get around, even in an historic city like Oxford.

Fortunately the tide turned. Modern planners believe cities are to be lived in, and are not places that can simply be concreted over to speed up traffic. In fact the emphasis now is on slowing down the car by speed humps, etc. and encouraging people to walk, cycle or to use public transport - exactly the opposite of earlier days. In these changed circumstances the Meadow Road was doomed, and it finally bit the dust in around 1970, although there was a rearguard action for a time in favour of an alternative route through where the Four Pillars hotel now stands.

What is amazing now, looking back, is the power these planners had: Christ Church itself considered the scheme 'repugnant and offensive' and both the university and the Oxford Preservation Trust opposed the road, but despite this the scheme very nearly went ahead, such was the power of the car lobby and the general belief that the car represented modernity and everything else should bow down before it.

Good riddance, I say. Bench or no bench, rain or shine,  I'm off to feed the ducks, who quite possibly don't realise what a reprieve they had...

Poppy Day

Over the last few days, you may have noticed flashes of red appear on people’s lapels and in shop windows. To many, the significance of the poppy needs no explanation, but others of you may be less familiar with its symbolism.

Today is Remembrance Day, (also known as Poppy Day or Armistice Day), the day when we remember those who lost their lives during the two World Wars and other conflicts. On this day in 1918, the hostilities of World War I formally ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

The poppy has long been associated with Remembrance Day, but how did this distinctive red flower come to be a symbol of remembrance of the sacrifices made in past wars?

Scarlet corn poppies grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers.

In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as World War I raged through the heart of Europe. Once the conflict was over the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields.

The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War One and later conflicts. It was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk/remembrance/how/poppy.shtml

Do you know enough about Britain?

A new version of the UK citizenship test, with a greater focus on history, has been recently announced by the Home Office.

The test will have more questions on British culture, history and traditions. The Life in the UK handbook, described by the Home Office as “essential reading” for migrants sitting the new test, has been updated.

Out go politically correct sections on how to complain about being arrested and “mundane information about water meters”, and in come “the events and people who have helped make Britain a great place to live”, ministers said.

While some historical information was included in the old handbook, there was less focus on history, the Home Office argues.

Christopher McGovern, director of the History Curriculum Association, reflects that the old test was too focused on access to welfare provision, such as free prescriptions, free legal advice, free healthcare and free training opportunities.  Whereas the new focus on the identity, history and culture of Britain, will help migrants to integrate more successfully, he believes.

Similarly historian Andrew Roberts believes it will help people appreciate "the long and splendid history of Britain".

But Iain Aitch, author of We're British, Innit!, says while learning about history may be useful, it would be more relevant to learn what rhubarb or mushy peas are, as well as pub etiquette - like the custom of ordering a round of drinks in a bar.

"Britishness is something that comes with time. You learn to queue, not complain about your poor lunch and to be able to talk about the weather at length without saying much at all. Some things are nuanced and not really testable," adds Aitch.

Applicants for British citizenship will be expected to answer 75% of 24 questions correctly, based on material in the new guide.

Test yourself here.