Japan, 1954 and Before

It will take us several days to catch up with Fanny Holt Ames' tour around the world. She spent May 9-May 14, 1954 in Japan. Japan had been opened to the world by Commodore Perry in 1853. The Commodore was distantly related to the Perry's of Easton Furnace. While researching the LaFarge windows at Unity Church, I learned that John LaFarge had married into the Perry family. Installation of the Angel of Help window was delayed when LaFarge joined Henry Adams on a trip to Japan in 1886. LaFarge was in the first wave of American tourists to visit Japan and we can follow his steps through his own excellent watercolor sketches and a wonderful series of 19th century photos collected at the New York Public Library. Fanny, on the other hand, was among the first wave of post-World War II American tourists. How had tourism changed? LaFarge spent several weeks drifting through the same area that the determined Fanny "covered" in two days!

After arriving in Yokohama on May 9th Fanny's group set up shop in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

The second Imperial Hotel was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1918 and 1923 in "Maya Revival Style." It became instantly famous for surviving the great 1923 earthquake that reached 8.3 on the Richter scale and destroyed much of Tokyo. That was the earthquake that allegedly prompted the ultimate headline to Bostonian insularity-TOKYO DESTROYED BY EARTHQUAKE-HUB MAN FEARED DEAD! The hotel also managed to survive the fire bombing of Tokyo during World War II. It was demolished in 1968 to make way for a high rise although elements of the building are preserved in a museum at Inuyama.

LaFarge and Adams avoided the big cities of Japan due to an epidemic that was raging at the time. They found congenial quarters at Nikko and also visited the Great Buddha at Kamakura, and, of course they also saw Mt. Fuji. Here are pictures and paintings from that era.

Henry Adams' wife had committed suicide and LaFarge had been made the artistic executor of her gravesite which was to be executed by Augustus St. Gaudens. Adams and LaFarge were partly in Japan to seek artistic inspiration for that statue the idea for which, according to Adams was the "acceptance of the inevitable." It is said that LaFarge found his inspiration in the Great Buddha, and that the image haunted him throughout much of his later work including the figure of Wisdom in his second window at Unity Church. The beautiful watercolor reflects the unchanging repose of the Buddha among the windblown leaves and clouds.

Fanny visited the same and saw the same things as LaFarge. Here is the commemorative photo at Kamakura taken for Fanny's group of tourists.

There's no indication in Fanny's diary that she saw this as anything other than a tourist photo op. Her take on Nikko was somewhat more sophisticated as we'll see tomorrow