Japan Pictoureal

Grasping a steel spear in his right hand and the fin of a dolphin (obscured by tarpaulin) in the other, a fisheries worker smiles as he prepares to sever the animal's spinal cord in the bloody waters of 'killer cove' in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, in September 2009. ROB GILHOOLY PHOTO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I have neglected this blog of late — always seem to have too many other things to do. So I shall attempt to play  a bit of catchup.

I had a story published in the Japan Times here about a peer-reviewed study that contests a previous (non peer-reviewed) study claiming that the method used to kill dolphins in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, was more humane than the method used previously.

A woman walks through the snow in Tokyo on 14 Jan 2013. Rob Gilhooly photo. All rights reserved.

Jan 14 saw the first snow fall of the winter in Tokyo and it was pretty treacherous. From my apartment I got a view of people passing along the street blow and dozens of vehicles struggling to climb the icy road that runs past on the other side. Cars were basically stopping at lights and then sliding back down the hill – a couple of minor accidents resulting. The meteorological agency estimates more than 40 cm will have fallen around Tokyo by 6 pm today. I’m staying in!

Injuries were reported in Japan Friday after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake jolted the northeastern region that was devastated by  last years quake and tsunami.

The meteorological agency immediately issued a tsunami warning in the area around Ishinomaki, one of the cities that was flattened by 20 meter waves during the March 2011 disasters.

Tsunami warnings were sounded throughout the area urging people to flea to safety on higher ground. Several cities in Miyagi, including the region’s capital, Sendai, urged residents in coastal areas to evacuate. Sendai Airport was immediately shut down, and flights headed for the airport from domestic destinations were ordered not to land. The tsunami eventually reached Ayukawa at 18:02.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said no abnormalities had been detected at nuclear plants in the area, including Tepco’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, site of the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster last year, and Tohoku Electric Power Co’s Onagawa plant.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency reported that a tsunami measuring 1 meter in height had hit the Ayukawa area on Ishinomaki’s Ojika Peninsula. Further tsunami were anticipated, a spokesman said.

Television images showed violent shaking in Miyagi, Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures. In Tokyo the shaking continued for more than a minute. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda cancelled appointments and immediately returned to his offices, telling reporters he intended to “thoroughly” respond to the quake.

The M7.3 quake hit at at 17:22 local time some 237 km off the Pacific coast of the Ojika Peninsula at a depth of 10 km. The biggest tremors, estimated at around 5 in the Japanese scale of 7, could be felt as far away as Hachinohe in Aomori and Hitachi in Ibaraki.

Some high-speed bullet train services were suspended while minor injuries were reported in Ibaraki and Miyagi.

Japan is estimated to experience 10 percent of the world’s earthquakes and has been stricken by 2 major quakes in the past 17 years, killing a total of 25,000 people.

A prototype of the Eco-Ride, an energy-saving urban transportation system developed by the University of Tokyo and Senyo Kogyo Co., is demonstrated at the university's testing facility in Chiba, Japan. Photographer: Robert Gilhooly

I tried out the Eco-Ride “train” recently — a transportation system being developed by the university of Tokyo and an amusement ride developer. It’s basically a roller-coaster — there’s no engine or motor to propel it along the elevated tracks, which are designed to utilize and control the vehicle’s potential energy to maintain comfortable speed levels. I have uploaded a video on YouTube here

There’s talk of it being available commercially as early as 2014, and municipalities in the Tohoku region affected by last year’s tsunami are showing an interest in using it for shuttling residents from newly created residential areas on high ground down to their workplaces on the coastal plains.

I wrote a story about this for the New Scientist, an abridged version of which is available of the magazine’s website here

Zaha Hadid has won an international competition to build the new National Stadium of Japan, adding to the practice’s pretty impressive portfolio, which includes the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games and the Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain. She was selected ahead of 45 other internationally renowned architecture firms for what is a $1.62 billion development.

During the announcement in Tokyo, celebrated Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who chaired the judging panel, said: “The entry’s dynamic and futuristic design embodies the messages Japan would like to convey to the rest of the world.” He also complimented the fluidity and innovation of Hadid’s design and how it complements Tokyo’s landscape.

The competition rules specified the stadium must be able to seat 80,000 people; have a retractable roof, be environmentally efficient and complement the surrounding landscape. It must also be up and ready by 2018 to host the Rugby World Cup the following year.

I interviewed Ms, Hadid a couple of years ago and have included most of it below for your enjoyment. She really is a unique and fascinating woman.

Zaha Hadid is one of the world’s most celebrated architects. The Baghdad-born Briton has won numerous international competitions and in 2004 became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Her works range from a fire station in Germany to a ski jump in Austria, and she was commissioned to design the Aquatics Center for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Yet, more frequently than not she is remembered for the sheer quirkiness of her creations, many of which never actually came to fruition. Her unique ideas and determination to achieve them in a male-dominated profession led her former teacher and business partner Rem Koolhaas to once describe her as being “a planet in her own orbit.” The architect talks to Rob Gilhooly.

Were your family and upbringing in any way influencial on your desire to become an architect?

British architect Zaha Hadid at the Praemium Imperiale, a global arts prize, in Tokyo in 2009. Photographer: Robert Gilhooly

I was born in Baghdad and had a very enjoyable childhood in a liberal setting. We lived in a large house and my father was a forward-looking man with cosmopolitan interests. In those days, Baghdad was influenced by Modernism and it was a very progressive city. Both Frank Lloyd Wright and Gio Ponti had designed buildings there. At home, mixed in with the more traditional artifacts, the furniture in my room was angular and Modernist, too. I remember as a child really wondering why these things looked so different, why this sofa was different from any regular one. There was an asymmetric mirror as well, which really was the start of my love of asymmetry.

People of my father’s generation were sent to study abroad. My father, who was a political figure, went to the London School of Economics, so there was incredible social reform everywhere. I went to a catholic girl’s school and the teachers who taught sciences were all from Baghdad University, so the standard of the science lessons was really incredible. The headmistress, who was a nun, was very interested in the education of women, so in a way she was a pioneer in that part of the world.  We were girls from many different religions – Muslim, Christian, Jewish – we had no ideas what our religions were!

I knew I wanted to be an architect from about 11 or 12, but I took math at university because I would have been the only woman in the engineering department of which architectural study was a part.

You majored in mathematics at university. How did you become an architect?

I became interested in geometry while studying mathematics. I realized there was a connection with the logic of maths to architecture and abstraction. Geometry and mathematics have a tremendous connection to architecture – even more so now with the advanced computer scripts used in many of our designs.

2. So computerization has had a big impact on your work?

Actually right from the 1970s we did drawings that were in a sense more complex than those done on a computer. What I think is interesting about computing is of course that it deals with complexity in a much more interesting way and efficient way. It advances the material tremendously. And it’s not necessarily only about saving time. There is much more precision and in the realization of projects it makes a big difference. It enables you much more to manipulate the project from every aspect so in that sense one can achieve much more variety and complexity than one could before.

3. Your work seems to be almost cinematographic. Has cinema influenced you?

I’ve always been interested in how movement affects architecture. As in the frames of a film: not seeing the world from one particular angle, but having a more complex view. We view the world from so many perspectives – never from one single viewpoint – and now even from the air and satellites – our perception is never fixed. So the concepts of fragmentation and abstraction have been central to my work of de-constructing the ideas of repetitiveness and mass production – moving away from all the ideas we inherited from the industrial societies of the 19th century.

Read more »

A slideshow of photos taken at 47 Dining, a restaurant in Tokyo specializing in produce/cuisine from Fukushima. The photos were taken during an assignment for the Guardian newspaper and correspondent Justin McCurry’s excellent story about the place appeared in the newspaper on Nov. 17.

The online version can be found here

Of course it was mandatory to sample some of the fare on offer, which was excellent, especially the “ji-zake” including from the excellent but little-known Aizu Sake Brewery in Tajima

More photos can be found on my Photoshelter website here

It’s interesting that while people in Tokyo are slowly warming to the idea of purchasing and consuming produce from Fukushima, friends of mine in Fukushima and in most of the Tohoku region affected by last year’s disasters remain skeptical of foodstuffs that originate there.

That being said, my local supermarket often sticks produce from Fukushima but if the same item is available from another part of the country there is little doubt as to which is more popular with customers. One Fukushima grape grower I interviewed for a story said that despite there being no evidence of contamination in his part of central Fukushima he has his produce scanned both by the government and through an independent company in Saitama, which neighbors Tokyo to the north. The scans reveal nothing of concern, but his sales are down 30% compared with before the disasters. Other farmers have resorted to other means to try and regain consumer confidence, but admit it is going to be a long time before their produce is fully accepted on a wider level. If ever.

The cover of David McNeil and Lucy Birmingham's "Strong in the Rain"

One of my photos was used on the cover of a book (and several more inside) about the 2011 Tohoku disasters, authored by the Independent’s David McNeil and Lucy Birmingham of Time magazine. As part of a wider article, Ian Buruma takes a look at the book for the New York Review of Books here and an excerpt can be found here

The title of the book comes from a celebrated poem by early 20th century writer Kenji Miyazawa, who was, coincidentally, born in one of the affected cities In Iwate Prefecture.

The authors kindly sent me a copy of the book and I am looking forward to getting stuck into that very soon. Fingers crossed for both of them that it does well – David and Lucy are remarkable journalists so I’m sure it will.

I recently covered the 3-day Retaisai grand festival in Kamakura, which climaxes with the impressive “yabusame” mounted archery ritual. I have covered this before, but without such good access, including permission to shoot rituals inside the inner sanctuary of the main hall at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine and watching the archers prepare themselves and their mounts for the yabusame ritual. Enjoyable but tiring 3 days in intense heat. Only downside was the main procession, which was curtailed due to rain! I have included a selection of the photos from the 3 days with a couple of older shots thrown in.

Reports this morning  including this one in the Yomiuri Shinbun about the Japanese government reaching a deal to buy Senkaku islands from the current owner, who lives in Saitama.

The agreement between the Saitama man and the government is reportedly worth 2.05 billion yen and will include three of the chain’s five main islands — Uotsuri-jima, Kitako-jima and Minamiko-jima islands.

The islands fall under the administration of Okinawa, but are part of an  ongoing territorial dispute with China.

In a desperate attempt to protect the islands, Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda had entered  a heated battle to buy the Senkaku Islands, which are located in the East China Sea between Okinawa and Taiwan, from the current landowner, who runs a real estate business and is now in his 70s.

The efforts to secure ownership of the islands has been stepped up in recent weeks following the landing on the island in August by a group of Pro-China activists from Hong Kong. The 14 activists were detained and later released, though not before a spate of anti-Japanese street protests broke out in China with regards to the islands, which are also claimed by Taiwan.

A group of Japanese nationalists has subsequently made an illegal landing on the island chain.

Tokyo Gov. Ishihara has met the landowner on a number of occasions over the past 9 months and has openly expressed his confidence that the islands will be sold to the metropolitan government, even though the landowner has turned down an application by Tokyo to land on the islands in late August.

The metro government has since conducted aerial surveys of the islands, a move that was criticized by China.

With reference to Ishihara’s attempts to buy the islands, the state-run Xinhua news agency said: “The Japanese government should not let a right-winger take hold of the reins.”

Solar-powered lights are left out on the roof to recharge at a temporary evacuation shelter in Kama elementary school, Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture Japan on April 11, 2011. Photographer: Robert Gilhooly

Story published in New Scientist magazine about Japan’s moves in the solar energy industry here.

WITH nuclear power on the ropes in Japan, it could be solar power’s time to shine. Minamisoma City in Fukushima prefecture has signed an agreement with Toshiba to build the country’s biggest solar park. The deal comes weeks after Japan introduced feed-in tariffs to subsidise renewable energy – a move that could see the nation become one of the world’s largest markets for solar power.

Parts of Minamisoma are around 10 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and land there has been contaminated by radiation fallout. “Moving away from a dependency on nuclear is of course involved [with the agreement to build the solar park],” a city official said.

Both Minamisoma and neighbouring Namie have called for the cancellation of plans to build a nearby nuclear power plant – although Minamisoma has received $6.4 million over the past 25 years for initially agreeing to host the facility.

A number of Japanese municipalities have started solar projects in recent months. Plans have been drawn up for large-scale solar parks in Hokkaido and Kyushu, while SB Energy began operating two megasolar facilities, in Kyoto and Gunma, on 1 July.

“New solar projects are being generated day by day,” says Toshiba’s Yuji Shimada.

Solar, wind, biomass and geothermal energy still account for just 1 per cent of Japan’s power capacity, however, so Japan has introduced a tariff to encourage investment. Utilities will pay solar energy firms around $0.5 per kilowatt-hour – triple the standard industrial electricity price. The extra money will come through a rise in electricity prices.

Some estimates suggest the move could help Japan leapfrog Italy andbecome the second-biggest market for solar power after Germany – although business groups fear that Japan’s economic recovery will slow as a result of the electricity price rise.

Meanwhile, Japan’s nuclear power industry will continue to provide competition. A reactor at the Oi nuclear facility in Fukui prefecture was brought back online as the tariffs were introduced.