Memories last longer

A journey into the landscape of a past era

In one of many storage rooms at the Natural History Museum in London, there lays several wooden boxes. Heavy but not unusual in appearance they contain 500 memories from around the world. Each memory is a numbered glass plate bearing a photograph of yesteryear from such diverse places as Bermuda, Canada, South Africa, The Antarctic, New Zealand and Hong Kong. How could such a collection come together? Well, in contrast to the imageready world of today, early photography was no easy feat

Equipment was often heavy and the process - requiring many rather hazardous chemicals - was lengthy. These factors alone would have made such a collection a valuable resource even if it were quite a challenge to put together. Fortunately, photographers of the 19th century were explorers, risk-takers and visionaries with great patience and a keenness for documenting the world as it is. As world-tours would later become popular amongst the upper classes of the western world, it was only a matter of time before a collection would appear.

In 1872, a British ship called the HMS Challenger voyaged around the world with the purpose of measuring the depths of the oceans. Provisioned as a Royal Naval vessel it was the first to be dedicated to the pursuit of science under the guidance of civilian scientists. Cannons were removed from her hull as she was fitted out with laboratories for experiments and specimens, and a dark room for the processing and printing of photographs. As the mission had a second aim to record the cultures and landscapes they encountered, the ship was one of the first to have an official onboard photographer. Being at sea for four years though, took its toll on the crew and likewise the photographer - the first of whom absconded in South Africa. A second photographer was recruited but made it only as far as Hong Kong where he likewise disappeared and a third man by the name of Jesse Lay was recruited in 1874 for the final legs of the journey. It was Lay who completed this set of magnificent windows to the world and yet few to this day have seen them.

The challenger arrived in Yokohama on the 11th April 1875 and according to the crew's journals was the most enjoyable two month stay of its entire voyage. Japan had steadily generated curiosity around the world with its voluntary isolation and by the ship's arrival the Meiji restoration had ensured the country's opening for trade and therefore visitors. The photographs taken by Jesse Lay in these two months are indicative of a country caught up in change and must have pleased the Victorian British public for this was a world that most of them would never ever see and to this day never will.

The Japan of today has experienced two great earthquakes, two world wars, American occupation and in all, 132 years of progress since the ship's arrival. To expect any of the places in these photo- graphs to still exist would be foolhardy but to look would require journeying deep into the workings behind the Japanese landscape. With only vague captions, loose and inaccu-rate notes and various journals of the crew to go on, the odds of finding them seemed even more so stacked against us. Curiosity though is a powerful engine.

A convenient (and somewhat safe) distance from Edo, Yokohama is home to the celebrated Iseyama Jijna. Since 1869 this shrine - dedicated to Amaterasu and purposely built to emphasize State Shinto - has stood in the same place. Originally titled by Lay as a 'Japanese temple, Yokohama', three photographs show how in 1875, space for a shrine to breathe was important. One hundred and thirty-two years later and a wooden rendition still stands in its place, albeit cramped for space by a now concrete Torii gate and a wonderfully convenient two storey car-park.

Trek south of Yokohama and we come to Yokosuka, a city endowed with historical figures and events. Home of the first ever dry-dock to be built in Japan (with French assistance) the Challenger sailed here for repairs, staying for about four days. The dockyard itself was of great interest to the British (being a seafaring nation), and Lay photographed it from three places. Having been the site of an iron foundry and ship building facilities, the site was an obvious US military target during WWII and later became the US Navy base that still remains. A once hilly headland, providing good shelter from the sea and any potential attacks, the site had at some point been flattened. Who would do such a thing? The romantic assumption would be to blame the current residents. However, the headland was levelled merely a year after the Challenger's departure, long before the US Navy ever arrived.

In the hills of Yokosuka we come to Tsukayama Park and the Tomb of William Adams - the first Briton to enter Japan (better known to the Japanese as Miura Anjin) - and his wife. Still standing, the memorial has been clearly cared for in salute of a man who, spared from the hands of Jesuit Priests by Ieyasu Tokugawa, did much to forge relationships between England, Holland and Japan. An iron fence and gate have been erected around the tomb to protect it but who switched Adams's and his wife's tombstones around the other way?

From Yokosuka, the Challenger made her way down to Osaka bay where she docked in Kobe harbour. A view of the city of Kobe from the water appears to have changed only in surface value with the only exception being the odd chunk cut out of the mountain range behind. However, travel around the region and we find some things that perhaps it's better not to know. Behind Shin Kobe station sits Nunobiki waterfall and thankfully no one has considered moving it. Yet, controlling the flow of the water is not beyond our consideration. Situated even higher above the waterfalls is Nunobiki Dam and this would appear to have a say in how impressive the waterfall is on a particular day. It used to roar in view of teahouses and parties and yet the flow of water now is merely a trickle.

If moving a waterfall seems inconceivable, try a river. The area of Minatogawa, west of Sannomiya, used to be exactly what the name suggests. The banks of the river had been built up to six meters high above the surrounding area to protect housing but it afforded a nice view of the city and the mountains. It was deci- ded, however, to redirect the river, fill in the top end and cut away a gentle slope down to sea level. A marvellous piece of landscape engineering which one can appreciate whilst walking down from the north end of the Shotengai. Why not spend a little more time absorbing the atmosphere by popping into one of the pachinko parlours there. The path of the river does continue on past the Shotengai and becomes a high street where the river's presence can be seen in the decorative wave pattern built into the road itself. Charming but the real might have been better.

Scaling the heights of Japan with a 19th Century camera wouldn't have been easy and yet Jesse Lay and some of the other crew braved Mount Maya to reach a temple called Tenjoji (so lovingly referred to by foreigners at the time as The Moon Temple). One of the ship's crew wrote about 200 or so stone steps that opened into a small plateau on the side of the mountain with a view like no other and one of the most picturesque temples in the area. Getting there is by no means any easier these days. After taking the first cable car, one can make their own way up the mountain encountering a gateway that would appear as old as the surround- ing trees. Pass this and you will come to the stone steps. Still there and still as steep as the crew described. Making our way to the top, the trees began to clear and to our amazement: no temple. Where did it go? Building a temple on the side of a mountain is no easy feat and one would have to assume that moving it would be even harder. Plaques denoting the site reveal that it was razed to the ground by a fire 30-odd years ago. Other than the missing buildings, little else had changed. Even the same trees were there.

In all of the ten different locations visited by Jesse Lay, only one speaks truthfully of its own past. Whereas so many of the other locations had been adapted, moved, rebuilt, replicated, modernized, interfered with or removed completely, the moon temple had been lost to natural causes and left as a memory. With the costs of building on that site being probably close to astronomical, perhaps it was its geographical location that spared it from redevelopment? Saved only by it being an inconvenience. If so, then, what should we make of the 'new' pristine white-walled Tenjoji situated at the very peak of the mountain? Like the storage room in the Natural History Museum, it is possible for some things to be simply forgotten about and perhaps it's better that way. The 'old' Tenjoji is a kept wonder; a living 19th Century photograph in a storage room disguised as a mountain, and it makes me wonder: are there any more storage rooms out there in the Japanese landscape just waiting to be found?

Text & photos: Gary McLeod