The 6th Floor Blog: An Alternate View on Monuments to War

Posted on 17th February 2012 in The monuments of world

It’s always a pleasure to browse the shelves at Dashwood, an independent bookstore in downtown Manhattan dedicated to photography. David Strettell, the owner and a former cultural director of Magnum Photos, carries a carefully curated collection of international publications as well as books that he co-publishes — collaborations with artists like the magazine contributor Ryan McGinley and Ari Marcopoulos.

On a recent trip there I purchased “Spomenik,” a book by the Antwerp-based photographer Jan Kempenaers of photographs he took on a trip through the mountainous regions of the Balkans. Published in 2010, the book contains images of monuments to World War II that were built in the 1960s and 1970s. Kempenaers’s photos of these little-known sculptural additions to the desolate landscape of the former Yugoslavia are so stunning that it’s easy to get caught up in their monumental scale and beautiful geometries without considering their cultural history. The accompanying text points out that this is a strength of the photographs and that it also presents a quandary for the viewer.

Kempenaers has a new book out, “Picturesque,” which further explores the idea of landscapes altered by man and delves into what he calls the “contemporary picturesque.”

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Scientists revive sacred sounds

Posted on 17th February 2012 in The monuments of world

Stanford University

A researcher sounds a note on a conch-shell trumpet as part of an experiment to re-create the ceremonial calls heard by ancient Andeans in the Chavin de Huantar ceremonial center in Peru.

By Alan Boyle

Ancient peoples around the world seem to have designed their sacred spaces not only for ceremonial sights, but for ceremonial sounds as well, archaeologists say.

In Peru, for example, a 3,000-year-old Andean ceremonial center’s design was optimized for the blare of a priest’s conch-shell trumpet. In Mexico, the Chichen Itza temple site features a staircase that can make hand claps sound like the chirp of a quetzal bird. And one of the best-known ancient monuments of all, England’s Stonehenge, has a layout that’s acoustically pleasing as well as astronomically significant.

The big question is, did ancient societies really have acoustics in mind when they built their monuments?

“That is a challenge,” said David Lubman, a California-based acoustical scientist and consultant. Much of the evidence is circumstantial, or based on interpretations of ancient myths. But when the acoustical resonances fit so well with the purpose of a ceremonial space, it’s hard to resist making a connection.

“Whether or not you have historical evidence, you have another form of evidence,” said Miriam Kolar, a researcher at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.

Theater for the ears
Researchers discussed their efforts to unravel the mysteries of ancient acoustics today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Vancouver, British Columbia.

For the past few years, Kolar and her colleagues have been focusing on Chavin de Huantar, a pre-Inca site in Peru that served as a regional religious center. People apparently came to a circular plaza to worship, and to hear an oracle’s pronouncements issuing from a stone gallery.

The acoustic musicians of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics help archaeologists unravel the mysteries of the pre-Inca Chavin temple complex – and the ritual role given to the conch.

The Stanford team conducted a detailed acoustical study of the gallery’s cross-shaped passageways. They found that the central duct between the gallery and the plaza would serve as an acoustic filter system, accentuating the tones produced by the priests’ ceremonial conch trumpets, known as “pututus.”

“There was theater going on,” Kolar said. The thrilling effect of the trumpet calls and the oracle’s words may well have been heightened by the psychoactive effects of the San Pedro cactus that the Chavin people consumed during their rituals.

The chirping staircase
There are theatrical touches as well at Chichen Itza, a Maya temple complex going back more than 1,000 years, Lubman said. One of the most prominent monuments is the Temple of Kukulkan, also known as El Castillo: Some researchers have argued that the temple’s staircase was constructed so as to create a “feathered serpent” shadow during the spring and autumn equinoxes. Lubman says the staircase can produce an aural as well as a visual effect: When you clap your hands at just the right spot, the echo comes back sounding much like the chirp of the quetzal bird, which was sacred to the Maya.

The acoustician played an audio clip demonstrating that the bird’s chirp and the clap’s echo sounded remarkably similar. He speculated that a priest might have clapped his hands loudly to seek counsel from a quetzal. Worshipers would have been impressed to hear the chirp of a spectral bird, apparently coming from inside the temple. “Only priests were trained to interpret what the quetzal said,” Lubman said, half-jokingly.

Lubman has been studying Chichen Itza’s acoustics for more than a decade. That’s such a long time that the quetzal research “should be old news,” he said. “But the darn bird keeps chirping.” He noted that Chichen Itza has another interesting acoustic feature: Its ball court is designed like a “whispering gallery,” so that a low utterance in one corner of the court could be heard clearly in another corner.

The bottom line? Maybe the ancient Maya were more in tune with sacred sounds than we are today. “Now, many things go through our eyes before they get to our minds, but that wasn’t true in the ancient world,” he said.

The Stone Age and Stonehenge
Steven Waller, a researcher at California-based Rock Art Acoustics, theorized that acoustics may even have had something to do with the placement of the stones at Stonehenge, a monument that’s at least 5,000 years old. “What struck me was that the layout of Stonehenge reminded me of an interference pattern,” he told his AAAS audience.

Waller said he was even more intrigued when he considered the legends of ancient Britain. One legend suggests that Stonehenge was created when two pipers lured maidens into a circle with their magic tunes, and then turned them into standing stones. He noted that some of Stonehenge’s monoliths are sometimes called “piper stones.”

Steven Waller walks around two English flutes (recorders) to illustrate how the sound changes due to wave interference. He suggests that a similar effect might have guided the placement of stones at Stonehenge.

Could ancient acoustics have been behind some of these legends? To find out, Waller conducted an experiment in which he put blindfolds on experimental subjects and had them walk around an open field in a circle while two flutes played an identical tone (1100 Hz, or C-sharp). The sound waves from the two flutes interfered with each other in such a way that the sound alternated between loud and soft in different locations. When the walkers were asked to map out the area, they came up with a pattern of obstacles and archways much like an ancient stone circle.

“It’s as if there was something blocking the sound … a ring of invisible objects, massive objects, blocking the sound,” he said.

Waller also analyzed the placements of stones at Stonehenge and other neolithic stone circles, and found the acoustic parallel he was looking for. “The pillars actually cast acoustic patterns that mirror an interference pattern,” he said.

The leading hypothesis about Stonehenge is that it served as a religious center that was laid out to mark the astronomical alignments for Earth’s seasons, and Waller doesn’t take issue with that. “My theory doesn’t necessarily conflict with the solar alignment theory,” he said. But is there any evidence to show that Stonehenge’s designers really did have acoustics in mind? Waller can only point to the circumstantial connections — for example, the fact that cave paintings were often put in the locations that had the best acoustics for ceremonies, or the fact that some ancient peoples thought echoes emanated from spirits inside stones.

“They didn’t know about sound waves reflecting,” he said.

Waller said the important thing is to be mindful of the contributions that acoustics can make to the study of sacred spaces. Some of those spaces are already in danger of disappearing. For example, Waller worried that some of the modern-day renovations aimed at making cave paintings in France more accessible to tourists may actually destroy the acoustic qualities that led the painters to those spots in the first place.

“Nobody has been paying attention to the sounds,” he said. “We’ve been destroying the sounds.”

More about the sounds of science:

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com’s science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by “liking” the log’s Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log’s Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out “The Case for Pluto,” my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

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Pieces of a puzzle

Posted on 9th February 2012 in The monuments of world

Manjula Padmanabhan, author, illustrator and playwright, leads her young readers on an exciting trip around the world

Award-winning author and illustrator Manjula Padmanabhan has come out with her latest book for children – “The World Tour Mystery”, brought out by Tulika Publishers. “The World Tour Mystery” is about a family of six, who, through their clue-bearing diary jottings and pictures, take the reader on an exciting journey to monuments and sites around the world.

Manjula’s love for puzzles finds expression in this book as well as in many others she has written. In an e-mail interview, Manjula Padmanabhan speaks about “The World Tour Mystery” and children’s literature in general. Excerpts from the interview:

Who do you enjoy writing for the most — adults or children?

Adults. I don’t really write for children — I create picture books and then add text.

How and when did you decide to start writing for children?

I worked as a cartoonist and illustrator for magazines from my late teens onwards. Some of my ideas were better suited to children, so I looked for publishers who were interested.

What kind of books did you read as a child? Can you name some of the books that have had a profound influence on you? Who are your favourite children’s authors?

I read everything that came my way, as a child, including a lot of fairy tales, fantasy literature and comics. “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass” were early favourites. “The Wind in the Willows”, “The Water Babies”, all of Enid Blyton and also E. Nesbit.

Tell us about your love for puzzles, and about writing and illustrating picture-puzzle books.

Drawing picture-puzzle books is an extension of doing puzzles — I am sure many people who really like puzzles eventually think about creating their own! The pleasure comes from being immersed in a purely abstract dimension for a short while — and when you return to the world, you feel refreshed.

Writing or illustration — which do you prefer of the two?

I am often asked this! But there’s no question of preference — sometimes I want to write and sometimes I want to draw. That’s all there is to it.

How did the idea for your latest children’s book, “The World Tour Mystery”, come about?

When I was a child, we used to play a party game that I loved, called Around The World — we lived in a big house with lots of stairs and doors, so there was a great deal of running and shouting — and the aim was to get a list of countries in the correct order.

My book is a quiet little two-dimensional version of that game (without the house and the running around) and the “mystery” is about getting a list of countries in the right order.

What are your comments on the children’s literature scene in the country?

It’s improved a great deal. There are many more authors and publishers than when I was struggling to earn a living as an illustrator.

If you were to recommend three must-read contemporary Indian children’s books, what would they be?

Oh dear — that’s difficult! I usually just give away my own titles as gifts so I don’t exactly look around. My publisher is Tulika, and I think their books are wonderful. Come to think of it, of all the books I’ve ever read about India and Indians, the one that towers above the rest is Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”! Isn’t that amazing? And of course “Jungle Book”. Jim Corbett’s wonderful stories about being a hunter are also some of the most inspiring and authentic stories set in India.

THE LARGER PICTURE

Manjula Padmanabhan’s book for children, “Same and Different” was selected for The White Ravens 2011, as the Outstanding International Book.

Her multilingual picture book, “I am Different” was chosen to be one among the Outstanding International Books of 2012 by the Unites States Board on Books for Young People.

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Fending off the stone snatchers

Posted on 7th February 2012 in The monuments of world

By BRIAN TILLEY

Last updated at 10:06, Tuesday, 07 February 2012

S TRIDING from coast to coast across the neck of Britain for the best part of 2,000 years, Hadrian’s Wall is rightly regarded as one of the country’s most important ancient monuments.

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Description

It’s a World Heritage Site, which every year pulls in hundreds of thousands of tourists from across the globe.

Yet it is only in the last 75 years that this majestic relic of the glory that was Rome has been treated with such reverence.

How the Wall was saved, with letters to the Times from such notable personages as Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan and how its future was almost gambled away by the son of one of its saviours, is at the heart of yet another book on the Wall.

Saving the Wall – the Conservation of Hadrian’s Wall 1746-1987 may sound a trifle dull, but in fact it’s a rip-roaring soap opera involving rapacious land owners, feckless gamblers, noble campaigners and lots of things about the Wall you never knew.

Once the legions had taken their short, stabbing swords and military genius back to the Mediterranean, the Wall and its surroundings became a very handy quarry for anyone who needed an abundant supply of dressed stone.

Parts of Hexham Abbey, much of Corbridge and scores of farms are built from stones pilfered from the rugged boundary of the Roman Empire’s northern frontier.

But the biggest stone snatcher of all was Field Marshall George Wade, who was tasked with improving cross country communications in the wake of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s unimpeded march from Scotland as far south as Derby in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.

He was the man responsible for the building of the Military Road, not the Romans.

But the road certainly owed its foundations to Rome – he ripped up large sections of the Wall to provide the foundations for his 18th century motorway for troops.

The plunder continued unabated, with a 78-year-old man from Birmingham appalled in 1801 to find a large section of the Wall being demolished at Planetrees to build a farmhouse for a Mr Henry Tulip.

Mr Tulip happily confessed that he had already demolished 95 yards of the Wall, but still needed more.

The saviour of the Wall as we know it was John Clayton, owner of Chesters Fort near Chollerford, who was becoming increasingly distressed at the sight of large portions of Wall stone being carried away by the cart load for building purposes.

Fortunately a wealthy man, he began buying up farmland in the central section of the Wall, including Housesteads in 1838, and put a stop to the plunder.

However, he could only affect the sections he owned, but the depredations continued apace elsewhere.

One of the biggest threats was quarries, with the operators anxious to get their hands on the hardwearing stone of the great whin sill.

A previously unknown turret was discovered at Walltown near Greenhead in 1883, but it was threatened from the start by operations at Walltown Quarry.

Its destruction was predicted by Wall historian John Collingwood Bruce in 1883 – and a couple of years later, he was proved right.

Ironically, one of the reasons for the demand for stone was the increasing numbers of cars on the road, demanding more roads in order to visit attractive places like the Roman Wall…

Although quarries might not directly affect the Wall, the workings often came so close to the structure that landslips were induced.

By the 1930s, there was a general feeling of unease about the destruction of the Wall and the weight of public opinion demanded that the iconic structure be preserved at all costs.

The efforts of John Clayton to preserve the Wall were placed in jeopardy in 1928 when the 20,000-acre Clayton estate – which included the glorious central section featuring Housesteads, Carrawburgh, Carvoran, Vindolanda and Chesters – was inherited by Jack Clayton.

He was an inveterate gambler and built up such debts over the gaming tables of Whites of Piccadilly that the estate was put on the market to square his creditors.

It went under the hammer in a great two-day sale in 1929 at the Assembly Rooms in Newcastle, at which a youthful Eric Birley bought Vindolanda.

The historian George Trevelyan of Wallington Hall “persuaded” the feckless Clayton to gift Housesteads to the National Trust, along with a stretch of Wall – but there were dark clouds ahead.

News broke in the Times in 1930 of proposals for extensive quarrying operations in the central section of the Wall, which would ruin the setting of the structure forever.

There was a call for the Wall to be taken into state ownership and maintained by HM Office of Works.

The threat came from land owner Sir Hugh Blackett and quarry engineer John Frederick Wake, who had an interest in the existing quarry at Cawfields.

A lease was signed giving Wake the mineral rights to the central section of the Wall, including the right to quarry within 10 feet of the Wall itself.

It later transpired that Wake had spent two years and £30,000 on planning his rape of the Wall.

There was a spontaneous outcry against the proposals, with the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne calling for the central section to be made a national park and for the Rockefeller and Carnegie Trusts to be called in to save the Wall.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons and the author Rudyard Kipling – who is believed to have written his Roman story Puck of Pook’s Hill while a guest of the Straker family at Stagshaw House near Corbridge – also railed against it.

The Government’s First Commissioner of Works, future leader of the Labour Party George Lansbury, was despatched North by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, to see for himself.

Not everyone was opposed to quarrying; he was met at Housesteads by R.J. Taylor, chairman of Haltwhistle Labour Party, who pointed out at the time of the Great Depression, such a quarry would provide work for 500 men.

It later transpired the quarry would have yielded 200,000 tons of stone per year, but only employed 200 men.

Mr Lansbury concluded that quarrying should be allowed, but not in sensitive sites.

This provoked another flurry of letters to the Times, signed by Kipling and Buchan as well as prominent historians, including Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

Finally, the Ancient Monuments Act of 1931 was passed, giving the First Commissioner of HM Works the power to veto planning schemes and pay compensation to those affected.

However, it could not be applied retrospectively, and Wake’s leases ran to 1949 – with an option for another 20 years.

Some 300 yards of the Wall were destroyed by quarrying at Walltown and a further half mile faced imminent destruction.

It wasn’t until 1938 that a preservation scheme for the central section of the Wall was agreed and compensation of £16,000 paid to the land owners and quarry firms.

However, the hard facts of war meant that in 1943 a demand for whinstone for surfacing RAF airfields saw Walltown quarry once again advancing threateningly on the Wall.

The resulting furore led directly to the formation of Northumberland National Park.

Prior to 1931 and the introduction of the Ancient Monuments Act, the Wall was a vastly different place to what we know and love now.

The only places open to view were Clayton’s Housesteads, Peel Crags and Steel Rigg.

Familiar sections such as Birdoswald, Willford, Walltown, Cawfields, Winshields and even the iconic Sycamore Gap were buried beneath the soil, under trees and topped by drystone walls and wooden fences.

Thus it was that following the enshrining of the Wall’s protection in law, the massive task of consolidating the remains had to begin.

Much of the work was initiated by another Man from the Ministry, Charles Anderson, who spent 40 years nurturing neglected sections of the Wall.

He found Roman coins which had dropped through cracks in the floor at Corbridge, and rescued a temple at Benwell which was being used as a rubbish tip and was covered in trees.

At Heddon, the Wall was covered by a high mound of soil and rubbish and at Carrawburgh Mithraic Temple, Anderson made imitation columns of concrete which were so realistic visitors starting breaking bits off as “original” Roman souvenirs.

At Sewingshields, there was no exposed Wall to be seen at any point, while at Cawfields, the Wall was completely below ground level, with a drystone dyke on top.

Anderson also carefully demolished some sections of Wall and rebuilt them with the original stones, using lime mortar brought to the site by wheelbarrow.

Saving the Wall – the Conservation of Hadrian’s Wall 1746-1987, by Stephen Leach and Alan Whitworth, is published by Amberley Press, of Stroud, Gloucester, at £12.99, and is available from local bookshops.

First published at 09:05, Monday, 06 February 2012
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk

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City's pride at Charles Dickens

Posted on 4th February 2012 in The monuments of world

4 February 2012 Last updated at 04:50 ET

Charles DickensDickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and died in Kent in 1870

“I was born at Portsmouth, an English seaport town, principally remarkable for mud, jews and sailors,” wrote Charles Dickens in 1838.

The world famous author may have moved to London at the age of three, and later to Kent, but his family’s links to the south coast are undeniable.

With the 200th anniversary of his birth on Tuesday the city is gearing up for a host of events to celebrate one of their most famous sons.

And plans are in place to erect a statue of the great man in the summer, sparking a debate over whether he would have approved.

The story of Dickens began when he was born in a house in Mile End Terrace on 7 February 1812, where his family paid an annual rent of £35.

‘Intimate city’

This showed they were “quite well to-do”, according to historians, but not at the top of the social ladder.

Dickens’ father managed the Royal Navy pay office between 1807 to 1815 and it would be the navy which would link future generations of the family.

The family moved twice within the city before moving away, eventually settling in Kent where he would become synonymous with Rochester.

But a number of Dickens’ descendants would later join the navy and live in homes across Portsmouth and its neighbouring towns.

Ian DickensDickens’ great great grandson has moved to Portsmouth like many of his ancestors

While Dickens’ first love Maria Beadnell and his mistress Ellen Ternan are buried at the city’s Highland Road Cemetery.

Ian Dickens, the writer’s great great grandson, has also been drawn to the city.

“Work brought me here, but instantly I felt at home,” he said.

“It is a very intimate city, maybe because it is on an island, and it is a city with a huge amount of personality and pride.”

The area where Dickens was born has since been renamed the Charles Dickens ward by the council, listed as one of the most deprived areas as Portsmouth.

But as Ian, whose lists his favourite Dickens’ book as The Pickwick Papers, admitted: “I think he would much prefer to have his name put to a ward like that than to be associated with some grand regency facade of multi-million pound apartments.

‘Unassuming person’

“He wasn’t a pompous person, he was a very self-effacing, an unassuming person and cared passionately for his fellow man.”

Tuesday will see a host of events in Portsmouth, including a procession of school pupils and readings by actors Sheila Hancock and Simon Callow.

But it was the plans for a statue which caused a stir among Dickens fans.

In his will the Victorian author requested that no statues or monuments of him should be built.

The winning Dickens statue designA statue of Dickens will be unveiled in Portsmouth in the summer

But as Ian explained: “Within that passage he says I don’t want anybody to make a monument for me, he is clearly talking about his grave.

“I can’t believe he would be so arrogant to say that my work is so phenomenally successful that people in generations [to come]… will put up a statue and I will write now that I don’t want that.”

Portsmouth may not have as big a claim to Dickens as the likes of Rochester, where he based many of his novels, but it has always felt a true bond.

And this was never demonstrated better then in 1928 over a novel by Carl Roberts’ depicting Dickens.

A Sunday Times review said it painted the author as a “hypocrite, philanderer, selfish, an egoist, vulgar, morose, and avaricious”.

The portrayal offended Portsmouth so much that the city decided to ban the book from its library.

But ahead of the anniversary, the council decided the time was right to reinstate the novel and focus on the legacy of Dickens, who only wrote about his birthplace once – in his Nicholas Nickleby novel.

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10 of the best books set in Tokyo

Posted on 3rd February 2012 in The monuments of world
  • Malcolm Burgess
    • Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo
    “No book or film had prepared me for the million-coloured veinwork of Shibuya,” writes Jonathan Lee in Who Is Mr Satoshi?. Photograph: Patrick Batchelder/Alamy

    Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility), 1966


    Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

    Tokyo, 1912: the first in Mishima’s tetralogy is set in what was once a beautiful city suburb, where old meets new Japan.

    “There were several pavilions used for the tea ceremony and also a large billiard room. Behind the main home, wild yams grew thick in the grounds … a path climbed a small hill to the plateau at its top where a shrine stood at one corner of a wide expanse of grass. This was where his grandfather and two uncles were ensrhined … the wisteria was always in full glory when the family gathered here for the services.”
    • Shibuya

    David Mitchell, Number9dream, 2001


    David Mitchell, number 9 dream, Tokyo

    In search for his father, Eiji Miyake arrives in the surreal and frenetic world of modern Tokyo.

    “I have an across-the-street view of the PanOpticon’s main entrance. Quite a sight, this zirconium gothic skyscraper. Its upper floors are hidden by clouds. Under its tight-fitting lid, Tokyo steams – 34C with 86% humidity. A big Panasonic display says so. Tokyo is so close up you cannot always see it. No distances. Everything is over your head – dentists, kindergartens, dance studios. Even the roads and walkways are up on murky stilts. Venice with the water drained away. Reflected airplanes climb over mirrored buildings … Pin-striped drones, a lip-pierced hairdresser, midday drunks, child-laden housewives. Not a single person is standing still.”
    • Omekaido Avenue

    Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup, 1997


    Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup, Tokyo

    All the darkness, claustrophobia and confusion of today’s city in a searing and stylish thriller.

    “It was still early in the evening when we emerged onto a street in Tsukiji, near the fish market. From the top of the pedestrian overpass we caught a glimpse of Hongan-ji Temple … The road leading to Kachidoki Bridge was wide but dimly lit, with few shops or restaurants and only the occasional passing car. I’d never been here before. This was a very different Tokyo from places like Shibuya or Shinjuku. Wooden bait-and-tackle shops with disintegrating roofs and broken signs stood next to shiny new convenience stores, and futuristic highrise apartment complexes rose skyward on either side of narrow, retro streets lined with wholesalers of dried fish.”
    • Kachidoki Bridge

    Haruki Murakami, After Dark, 2004


    After Dark, Tokyo

    In one night in seedy downtown Tokyo, dreams and reality collide in typical Murakami style.

    “They call this place an ‘amusement district’. The giant digital screens fastened to the sides of buildings fall silent as midnight approaches, but loud-speakers on storefronts keep pumping out exaggerated hip-hop baselines. A large game centre crammed with young people; wild electronic sounds; a group of college students spilling out from a bar; teenage girls with brilliant bleached hair, healthy legs thrusting out from micro mini-skirts; dark-suited men racing across diagonal crossings for the last trains to the suburbs.”
    • Shinjuku

    Jonathan Lee, Who Is Mr Satoshi?, 2010


    Jonathan Lee, Who is Mr Satoshi?<br /> Who is Mr Satoshi?<br /> who is mr satoshi?

    A funny and moving journey into the urban maelstrom of Tokyo by a major new voice in British fiction.

    “The wastes of the airport were behind us and the taxi was pulling through roads flanked by buzzing neon shapes. Glittering skyscrapers were randomly marshalled across the skyline, sheets of sunlight shattering across their glass walls. These crystal buildings looked so delicate set against the fuming road, freighted as it was with the rattling metal of cars and buses and lorries, that it was difficult to believe that they belonged in the same world.
    “No book or film had prepared me for the million-coloured veinwork of Shibuya. Its lights blazed incredibly brightly, dimming only when the taxi was sucked down into a tunnel. When we resurfaced seconds later, I felt like a disgorged newborn unable to take in the world outside the womb. Fluorescence poured down from street signs bearing strange lettering, filling the porches of shops and seeping under the arches of alleyways.”
    • Shibuya

    Yasunari Kawabata, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, 1930


    The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa

    A tour de force from a Nobel-Prize winner, set in what was Tokyo’s traditional entertainment district before the war.

    “Let’s now suppose it’s past three in the morning and even the bums are sound asleep, and I am here walking through the grounds of the Senso Temple with Yumiko. Dead ginko leaves flutter down, and we listen to the crowing of the cocks … Just at the neck of the gourd-shaped pond there is this little island, wisteria-trellised bridges extending from either bank. There, next to the fatsa bush under the weeping willow in front of the Tachibana fish stew shop, a large man is standing eating the wheat crackers that have been thrown to the carp in the pond.”
    • Asakusa

    The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan, 2001


    The Donald Richie Reader

    From culture and travel to people and style, this Tokyo-based author has been writing about Japan for half a century.

    “What I find as I walk and walk and walk is a whole city with its very own bus station, its stories, its monuments and buildings. Though right in the middle of Tokyo, it is suburban and there are trees everywhere, even a park within this park, a glen with a lke. Sanshiro’s Lake, I read. This must refer to Ozu’s Natsome Soseki hero who came up from the country to go to what was then Tokyo Imperial University … The style is late Thirties – art deco. And as I look at this pre-war city I remember Tokyo in 1947 when everything – everything that was left – looked like Todai does today.”
    • Todai (University of Tokyo)

    Kafu Nagai, Geisha in Rivalry: A Tale of Life, Love and Intrigue in the Shimbashi Geisha Quarter, 1917


    Geisha in Rivalry, Tokyo

    No one has written so insightfully or beautifully about Tokyo’s geishas as this master writer.

    “Her hair was done in a low shimada style with an openwork silver-covered comb and a jade hairpin. She had changed into a kimono of light crepe and with a fine stripe. The effect was quite refined, but perhaps fearing it would seem too old for her, she had added a colour with elaborate embroidery. Her obi was made of crepe in the old-fashioned kaga style, lined with black satin, and it was held together with a sash of light blue crepe dyed in a bold pattern.”
    • Shimbashi

    Angela Carter, Flesh and the Mirror from Fireworks, 1974


    Flesh and the Mirror from Fireworks

    An Englishwoman wanders the streets of Tokyo searching for her lost lover in one of Angela Carter’s brilliant short stories set in Japan.

    “I walked under the artificial cherry blossoms with which they decorate the lamp standards from April to September. They do that so the pleasure quarters will have the look of a continuous carnival, no matter what ripples of agitation disturb the never-ceasing, endlessly circulating, quiet, gentle, melancholy crowds who throng the wet web of alleys under a false ceiling of umbrellas … The city, the largest city in the world, the city designed to suit not one of my European expectations, this city presents the foreigner with a mode of life that seems to him to have the enigmatic transparency, the indecipherable clarity of a dream.”
    • Yoshiwara

    Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, 2010


    Hare with the Amber Eyes

    Edmund de Waal first encountered his family’s netsuke carvings in his uncle’s Tokyo apartment. In his book he describes several visits to the city.

    “And one afternoon a week I spent with great-uncle Iggie. I’d walk up the hill from the subway station, past the glowing beer-dispensing machines, past Senkaku-ji temple where the forty-seven samurai are buried, past the strange baroque meeting hall for a Shinto sect, past the sushi bar run by the bluff Mr X, turning right at the high wall of Prince Takamatsu’s garden with the pines … His desk held an empty blotter, a sheaf of his headed paper, and pens ready, though he no longer wrote. The view from the window behind him was of cranes. Tokyo Bay was disappearing behind forty-storey condominiums.” • Shinagawa

    For more information go to the Japan National Tourism Organisation’s website: jnto.go.jp/eng

    • Malcolm Burgess is the publisher of Oxygen Books’ City-Lit series featuring some of the best writing on the world’s favourite cities

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    U.S. skating legends still outshine current stars

    Posted on 30th January 2012 in The monuments of world

    SAN JOSE – The monuments stand in a park beside HP Pavilion, five solitary pillars each portraying one of the great figure skaters in U.S. history. The eye moves from one to the next, from Kristi Yamaguchi to Rudy Galindo to Peggy Fleming to Brian Boitano to Debi Thomas. If there were such a thing as an all-time fantasy league in figure skating, the San Francisco Bay Area’s team might just be untouchable.

    • Michelle Kwan hugs Brian Boitano during a ceremony for her induction into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame during the U.S. Championships on Saturday in San Jose.

      By Ezra Shaw, Getty Images

      Michelle Kwan hugs Brian Boitano during a ceremony for her induction into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame during the U.S. Championships on Saturday in San Jose.

    By Ezra Shaw, Getty Images

    Michelle Kwan hugs Brian Boitano during a ceremony for her induction into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame during the U.S. Championships on Saturday in San Jose.

    All week here, spectators streamed past the monuments to get inside the arena for the 2012 U.S. figure skating national championships, but, in an odd, somewhat demoralizing twist, what they saw inside could never quite match what they had just passed outside.

    To be sure, Jeremy Abbott’s third men’s national title in four years was worthy of serious acclaim, even if no other male skater was able to raise his game to give Abbott a real challenge. Outspoken Ashley Wagner’s breakthrough performance might, in hindsight, be just the kick-start U.S. women’s skating needs. North Americans have commandeered ice dancing in the past several years, with U.S. reigning world champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White winning their fourth consecutive national title here. And, in pairs, another in a long series of new U.S. duos, Caydee Denney and John Coughlin, won their first national title. Here’s hoping they’re still actually together by this time next year.

    But here’s the problem for American figure skating. The skaters outside the building are still better known than all those skaters inside it.

    Those grand old names — Olympic gold medalists Yamaguchi, Fleming and Boitano, and U.S. national champions and world medalists Galindo and Thomas — also represent a different time for figure skating, a time when arenas were full and TV ratings were high and people couldn’t get enough of the sport.

    Coming here only accentuated the contrast between what once was and what the sport has now become. That’s because San Jose hosted what is considered to be one of the most memorable nationals ever, the 1996 championships. Michelle Kwan, who was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame this week, won the first of her nine national titles that year. She watched the women’s event Saturday night from a suite, but she might as well have been right there on the ice, such was her presence with the women who are trying to somehow follow after her.

    “You say figure skating to anyone who doesn’t know figure skating,” Wagner said, “and they know who Michelle is. The audience felt it could rely on Michelle, and I think that’s something we really need to work on getting that back here. I think it’s a reasonable goal, and we can achieve it.”

    But as much of a launching pad as San Jose was for Kwan in 1996, her victory that evening was overshadowed by the greatest upset in U.S. skating history, which occurred earlier the same day.

    Galindo, then 26, had retired from his sport to begin coaching, but because the nationals were coming to his hometown, he decided to come back for one more try. Many skaters were shocked to see him in practice that week. His photo and bio weren’t even in the media guide.

    Galindo had been a two-time national pairs champion in 1989 and 1990 with Yamaguchi, but when she decided to split with him and focus on singles going into the 1992 Albertville Olympics — a superb move that led to the women’s gold medal — Galindo never quite recovered. He was so poor that he rode a bicycle to practice because he didn’t have enough money to buy a car. In an interview for my book, Inside Edge, he became the first American male skater to publicly say that he was gay. He also was the rare Mexican-American in a sport with a strong blue-blood past.

    With everything going against him, Galindo skated brilliantly and won the national title, then, two months later, the bronze medal at the world championships. It was as if he were living a dream, Galindo said later. He almost couldn’t believe what had happened to him.

    Like Kwan, Galindo was a nominee for the Hall of Fame here this week, but stunningly did not get enough votes to get in. I asked him if he thought his sexuality and background might have had something to do with the vote.

    “It’s always in the back of my mind,” he said. “It always comes to the forefront when I don’t get nominated or selected to do something. Is that why? You know, that was my whole life growing up in amateur skating … (not being) the all-American. … So it’s always in the back of my mind. It will always be there, so I’m not going to say no.”

    Ironically, Galindo’s bizarre exclusion made way for a fitting solo tribute to Kwan, the most decorated U.S. figure skater of all time. She became the lone entry into the Hall of Fame this year.

    “That’s what hurt the most, because I thought, ‘Oh, it would have been perfect, and this and that,’ ” Galindo said of the possible pairing with Kwan, “but then when I saw the tribute to her, I was like, ‘That was beautiful. That was just beautiful honoring her by herself.’ “

    Galindo, now 42, figures that someday he’ll be recognized by U.S. Figure Skating. His life certainly has become a testament to all that is good in the sport. He’s coaching skating in the Bay Area despite having both of his hips replaced and being HIV-positive for 12 years now.

    “That’s totally in control,” he said, adding that his medication simply is two pills a day.

    In the past two months, Galindo has taken on a new little pupil, a 6-year-old girl from the area whose parents know a bit about skating. It’s Emma Hedican, whose father is retired NHL player Bret Hedican and mother is none other than Galindo’s old pairs partner, Yamaguchi.

    “She’s just starting on cross-overs,” Galindo said of Emma.

    So far, he says he’s having absolutely no problems with the parents.

    “Kristi,” Galindo said, “is a very good skating mom.”

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    The Death of Mao by James Palmer

    Posted on 29th January 2012 in The monuments of world

  • Rana Mitter

    • Earthquake-Torn Tangshan
    Tangshan City in Hobei province after the 1976 earthquake. Photograph: Bettmann/CORBIS

    On 12 May 2008, a devastating earthquake ripped apart Wenchuan county in Sichuan province, southwest China. Military and civilian rescuers arrived swiftly at the scene, saving countless lives. Although more than 68,000 people died, the number of fatalities could have been much higher.

    1. The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China

    2. by

      James Palmer

    4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

    1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

    An indication of how much higher had been made clear on 28 July 1976, when the nondescript mining city of Tangshan in northern China was hit by an earthquake which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and killed some 250,000 people. At the time, many Chinese regarded the disaster as a portent of great change. Already that year two major Chinese leaders, premier Zhou Enlai and senior marshal Zhu De, had died. And just two months later, on 9 September, Mao Zedong, the man who had led China for more than quarter of a century, himself went to meet his maker – Marx, of course.

    James Palmer’s book weaves together these two narratives of natural disaster and elite political intrigue to provide a lucid account of one of the eeriest moments in modern Chinese history. Palmer takes us inside Zhongnanhai, the party complex formerly inhabited by the emperors in the heart of Beijing, and brings to life the personalities jockeying for power as Mao lay dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. On the left, the cultural revolution group radicals were led by Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, who once declared “Sex is engaging in the first rounds, but what really sustains attention in the long run is power.”

    The Chinese (and western) prejudice against powerful women has tended to give Jiang a uniquely demonic quality, and Palmer does well to remind readers of the role of figures such as the venal and overpromoted Wang Hongwen who whiled away the time during Mao’s deathwatch by riding his motorbike and watching imported Hong Kong movies (although not simultaneously). On the right, the dying Zhou, stricken with cancer, sought to promote Deng Xiaoping, whose economic reforms he thought essential to rescue China from the inward-looking xenophobia of the cultural revolution. Yet this was not a melodrama of evil and good, or even radicalism versus reform. Even Zhou had plenty of blood on his hands, voting for all Mao’s decisions to deepen the cultural revolution; in Palmer’s telling phrase, he “saved more monuments than people”.

    Just a few hundred miles away from the chairman’s deathbed, thousands of ordinary Chinese were about to meet a sudden and much more horrific end. The earthquake hit Tangshan with the force of 400 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, and its effect was felt as far afield as Beijing. Yet the help that arrived was patchy and almost all concentrated on the city, where the economically vital industrial equipment was located, rather than the rural areas. There were many heroic tales of people rescuing each other. There were also numerous cases of rape and looting. Palmer has interviewed survivors of the earthquake, some of whom had never before had a chance to tell their stories of struggling to survive in a city whose streets were lined with corpses and where help seemed very far off. One theme emerges clearly: the state was distracted by the crisis of succession and unable to deal with a more immediate and unexpected shock.

    Palmer’s account is written in enviably elegant prose. The narrative never flags and its judgments are humane and nuanced. The book argues that 1976 marks a moment of transition; after Mao’s death, a swift series of internal coups and arrests brought the Gang of Four low and set the stage for Deng to take power within two years of Mao’s death. The concentration on human stories means, however, that some of the factors that complicate the transition between the cultural revolution and the China of Deng Xiaoping are underplayed. We tend now to think of the era since Mao’s death as the emergence of China into a capitalist world (in which Beijing has become one of the most skilled players). But during the first decade of reform, immediately post-Mao, the aim of Deng and his faction was to create a more market-oriented socialism in a world where they would engage with the USSR as well as the United States. In addition, important legal and economic reforms had already begun in the early 70s, along with the opening to the US. The death of Mao was a moment when China sought to rethink the cold war, rather than escape it.

    Yet the significance of this book is reflected in the fact that a book entitled “The Death of Deng” would hardly have the same impact. Mao was the last Chinese leader whose death would unleash a personalised factional battle that could end in violence. In 2011, Hong Kong news sources wrongly reported the death of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. The moment was embarrassing but not politically relevant. Yet just four decades ago, leaders did not retire and die peacefully. Former president Liu Shaoqi died as a prisoner in agony from medical mistreatment in a basement in 1969. Mao himself hung on as chairman to the last possible moment. Deng’s achievement after Mao’s death was to use his own force of personality to create a regular changeover of distinctly uncharismatic leaders.

    Palmer ends with a reflection on the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. There, effective rescuers arrived within hours, unlike in Tangshan. But the aftermath of 2008 has been just as murky as in 1976. Locals who have tried to investigate official corruption that might have allowed substandard construction that caused buildings to collapse have been arrested and intimidated. The artist Ai Weiwei, who has spoken out on behalf of the earthquake victims, has been subjected to a (still ongoing) cat-and-mouse strategy by the authorities. This account of the links between natural disaster and elite politics in China is a fine work of history. But its real relevance may be that it shows how much has changed in China, and yet how little, since 1976.

    • Rana Mitter’s Modern China: A Very Short Introduction is published by OUP.

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    In the Picture: Self-Portraits 1958-2011 by Lee Friedlander – review

    Posted on 22nd January 2012 in The monuments of world

  • Sean O’Hagan

    • lee friedlander
    Self-Portrait 339, Lake Powell, 2009 by Lee Friedlander.

    Lee Friedlander first came to public attention in 1967 when his work appeared in the New Documents exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York alongside that of Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand. Like his fellow iconoclasts, he operated in that long self-questioning moment that began with the publication of Robert Frank’s The Americans in 1958. He has been an often provocative presence in American photography ever since, shooting the world around him in what initially seemed like a haphazard fashion, but soon became an inimitable style.

    1. In the Picture: Self-Portraits, 1958-2011 (Yale Art Gallery)

    2. by

      Lee Friedlander, Richard Benson

    4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

    1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

    Friedlander once called his subject “the American social landscape”, a place that, in his pictures, comes across as both everyday and oddly chaotic. Sometimes, as with the series in which his own reflection is caught in shop windows, or his shadow on pavements and walls, he seemed to be playing with, or sending up, the conventions of “good photography”. Likewise, when he employs strange angles or shoots through windscreens or uses car mirrors to frame a photograph within a photograph, all of which can disorientate the viewer.

    At other times, when he turned his attention to, say, public monuments and statues, he captured a makeshift America that was so ordinary as to be drab. There is humour aplenty in his photographs, but it is knowing, at times almost cynical. One of his most famous photographs is of his own shadow falling on the back of a blonde woman in a fur coat, an image that says much about the often predatory nature of street photography. It is, I guess, a self-portrait of a kind, albeit a metaphorical one.

    This new book collects more than 400 self-portraits spanning just over 50 years, many of which have never been published before. The oldest, taken when he was young, are the most straightforward and a few are even traditional family portraits. The mirrors, shadows and reflections appear pretty early too, though, as do the odd angles. There is even a male version of the metaphorical shadow portrait mentioned above, wherein Friedlander’s silhouette appears on the back of an unknowing gentleman in a hat hurrying down a New York street in 1968.

    Amid all the mischief, the book is also a narrative of a man ageing before our eyes, the young, lean Friedlander gradually giving way to a more jowly – and scowly – presence. Among the most recent self-portraits is a series of him in hospital, before and after his quadruple bypass surgery. In one, he bares the long scar that runs down his torso, the mischievous tone replaced by a more sombre one that caught me unawares. A life laid bare, then, but slyly and with a self-questioning smile.

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    Clooney to write, direct and star in ‘Monuments Men’

    Posted on 10th January 2012 in The monuments of world

    George Clooney will co-write, direct and star in ‘The Monuments Men’. — AFP picture

    LOS ANGELES, Jan 10 — George Clooney’s next project will be The Monuments Men, a big budget film about art and war, which he will co-write, direct and star in, the actor revealed at the Palm Springs Film Festival on January 7, where he accepted an award for The Ides of March and The Descendants.

    Monuments is a suspense during World War II, following a group of art experts, museum directors, curators and historians who scoured Europe retrieving artworks confiscated by Nazis.

    Based on the book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, by Robert M. Edsel, the book follows the unarmed operation behind enemy lines.

    “I’m not opposed to doing a commercial film, I’m just opposed to doing a commercial film that doesn’t feel organic to me,” Clooney told Hollywood website The Wrap. “We thought, ‘Let’s do something that seems fun and actually have something to say.’“

    Clooney will co-write the screenplay with producer Grant Heslov, who he teamed up with for other social/political-themed films, including Ides of March, Good Night and Good Luck, and Men Who Stare at Goats, a caper about the US military in the Middle East. — afprelaxnews.com

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