Taisha Station Interiors – Shimane Prefecture

This is the interior of the wonderful but now disused Taisha Station in Shimane Prefecture on the northern coast of Japan. The constructions is a combination of western post and beam and Japanese finishing details and exterior roofing, giving it a strangely familiar feel. It does not feel like a typical countryside station but more like a proper waiting hall. It is easy to imagine groups of people and families gathering here to pick up relatives coming to visit over the holidays or to see of young people leaving for university or work in the big city! Take a look at the destinations list and you will see that this station was unusually well connected, there are fares to most places in western Japan and all the way to Tokyo on local train routes. It must have been an interesting journey in the time of steam powered locomotives.

Economists might also find the fare table quite interesting, as it shows us a little bit about how much inflation Japan has had in these 24 years since the table was last updated. Practically zero. This corresponds to one of the stupidest foreign language media hoaxes about Japan, the myth of “the lost decades”. I am old enough to remember back in the day when inflation was something universally detested and governments won elections on their “promises” to fight inflation. These days it is the complete opposite and governments fight to establish some sort of inflation, and they often point to the example of “the Japanese lost decades”. Here is an interesting article debunking the story. Or as my Dutch friend mentioned upon visiting Japan for the first time: “for a country two and a half decades into a recession, there sure seems to be a lot of construction going on”. Indeed.

Taisha Station Building – Shimane

In the sleepy little town of Izumo, in western Shimane Prefecture on the north coast of Japan you’ll find one the most beautiful examples of train station architecture in Japan. The Taisha station was inaugurated in 1912 as the first stop of the JR Taisha Line. The original station was much humbler and in 1924 the present station building was completed to better reflect the important national status of the town of Izumo and the grand Izumotaisha shrine. It is said that the station was designed by a young man, Mr. Sota who was only 25 years old. The station has three tracks and two platforms that are unusually long for such a minor station, the reason being that the station had to accommodate special long distance trains all the way from Tokyo and even chartered private trains. There was a direct line to Tokyo running regularly in the 1950s, and special direct trains well into the 1980s. It must have been a very interesting, and slow, journey! In the peak of its use, 1960, the station saw about 2000 passengers a day, but it was gradually superseded by other train lines and on the last of March in 1990 the last train pulled into the station. Townspeople and visitors to the shrine shifted over to the 1930 Izumo Taishamae station about a 10 minute walk from the Taisha station (which I blogged about last year).

The station is designed in the style of a shrine and as such does not fit into any contemporary style of architecture, which makes it look absolutely timeless, coming as it did between the Japanese Neoclassical style of the Meiji Period and the Imperial Style of the 1930s. It is no wonder it was declared a national building treasure in 2004 and 2009. The building is ecologically designed using local materials of wood, clay infill, lime, glass and stone, a far cry from the energy intensive modern concrete buildings.

The Coconut Miracle

First off, a disclaimer. I don’t know if this amazing story is true or if it is actually possible for a coconut to spend 31 years in the ocean without disintegrating, but I post this story anyway, as it is widely accepted as true with good documentation and physical evidence.

In a shrine not far from the castle in Matsue City in Shimane Prefecture, on the northern coast of Japan there is a relic of the Second World War that has a remarkable story to tell. Tucked away in the main hall of the shrine is a small plaque and a photo of a weather worn cold oconut. According to the story, this coconut spent 31 years traveling on the ocean from The Phillipines to a beach in the small town of Izumo City, Shimane Prefecture.

In the summer of 1944, as US forces were preparing the liberation of the Phillipines from the Imperial Japanese army two young men in the Japanese military met by chance in occupied Manila. The two young men, Yamanouchi (山之内辰四郎命) and Iizuka (飯塚正一 or 正市), were both from the same little town (now Izumo City) in Shimane and quickly formed a bond, becoming good friends. As the US was preparing a land invasion and stepped up bombing campaigns the situation was soon becoming desperate and it was decided to evacuate as many wounded Japanese soldiers as possible from the islands while there was still a chance that they would be able to leave. That autumn the last remaining hospital ship left Manila and Iizuka who was a combat medic in the army was forced to leave his friend behind to face certain death.

In 1975 a carpenter out fishing on the beach of Izumo City noticed an odd looking coconut washed up on the sand and took it home, where he discovered writing – the name and details of Combat Medic Iizuka – and inside a message written from Yamanouchi that just says: “We are going into the jungle to fight”. The carpenter located Iizuka, who was now a farmer still living in the same city, and gave the coconut and its message to him. The coconut itself is now on display at the Yasukuni Shrine war museum in Tokyo.

Now this is a story just waiting to be made into a movie, in my humble opinion.