{"id":200,"date":"2016-09-09T17:51:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T17:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentvoices.bli.lsa.umich.edu\/?p=200"},"modified":"2020-07-23T13:36:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T13:36:14","slug":"darian-razdar-tokyo-yokohama-kyoto-and-hiroshima-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.lsa.umich.edu\/studentvoices\/2016\/09\/09\/darian-razdar-tokyo-yokohama-kyoto-and-hiroshima-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Darian Razdar – Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, and Hiroshima, Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Darian Razdar<\/p>\n\n\n

Early this summer (well, technically spring), I had the opportunity to travel to four of the largest cities in the nation of Japan. \u00a0Specifically: Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto and Hiroshima. \u00a0During the month of May, I traveled between these cities with a class from the University of Michigan, investigating postwar cultures of Japan. \u00a0The course during the winter semester looked at histories, literature, film, and studio arts produced during the years and decades prior to the end of the Pacific War. <\/span><\/p>\n

Elaborating upon our lengthy academic knowledge of these cultures, my class traveled to Japan to delve into different topics\u2014those we could only explore through touch, sight, personal relation, and immersion. \u00a0For three and half weeks I learned about cultures of urban development and war memory in the hearts of Japan\u2019s major cities. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Picture
Senso-ji, in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood, is a large Buddhist temple and site of many community events and a shopping area.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now even though this course was strictly academic, I pursued the study abroad portion because its syllabus clearly reflected my major passions, namely local-global struggles for social justice and peace. \u00a0As we made our way through Japan, we continued to come face-to-face with legacies of the war. \u00a0Those which most interested me, which we fortunately spent a majority of our time studying, were legacies working themselves out on the political-economic-cultural field of Japan\u2019s urban landscape. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In Yokohama, the 2nd largest city in Japan and neighbor to the larger Tokyo, we met up with a group of University students from Wako University with their professor\u2014a professor of politics and English who has been involved in radical leftist politics for the past few decades. \u00a0In Yokohama, we were given a tour through an urban terrain that expresses dichotomies that we are far too familiar with in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"
Yokohama is populated with massive buildings that denote the wealth concentrated in its downtown.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Wako professor guided us between the downtown populated by massive skyscrapers and well-developed harbor promenade, \u2018slums\u2019 home to historically Chinese populations, a touristy Chinatown, and a gentrified boutique district eerily similar to Brooklyn streets I\u2019ve spent time on. This professor educated us on what most tourist, and even students abroad, don\u2019t have the opportunity to engage with. He and his students spoke of the changing nature of the neighborhoods and parks we saw\u2014painting a fluid, rather than stagnate, portrait of the city. \u00a0Here, in a city I hadn\u2019t heard of before departing for Japan, I found connections to dynamics with which I have become familiar in college. \u00a0The gentrification going on in US cities must be tied to what\u2019s going on in Yokohama. \u00a0There must be a common cause. \u00a0The trends toward globalization here and in this city, too, must be related. \u00a0As someone intent on engaging with issues of capitalism, I found this experience enlightening, to say the least. <\/span><\/p>\n

As far as Yokohama led me to make connections regarding global capital and common struggles for equity, our time in Hiroshima stoked my interest in global efforts for peace. \u00a0Arriving in this beautiful city, tucked between mountains and sea, I could not help to think, \u201cThe worst event ever experienced by humanity happened <\/span>here.<\/span><\/i>\u201d \u00a0Civil and military experts expected no organic life to grow in the city for 75 years after the A-Bombing. \u00a0However, visiting the city 71 years after the bomb dropped, I was astounded by the vitality of Hiroshima. \u00a0Over 1 million people populate it still, and it\u2019s full of plant life despite what experts predicted.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hiroshima's
Hiroshima’s Peace Park. A photo looking across the memorial park from the museum toward the Atomic Bomb Dome.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Hiroshima our group was lucky enough to stay in the World Friendship Center, a pacifist co-op which formed in the years directly after 1945 with the intent of providing housing and peace-based education to visitors, and English language courses to Hiroshima residents. \u00a0Here our class discussed the re-building and branding of Hiroshima and its famous Peace Park. \u00a0Importantly, we spent time learning about legacies of grassroots anti-nuclear and pacifist activism in Hiroshima since the bombing. \u00a0Thanks to the World Friendship Center we were given a tour of the Peace Park by city residents\u00a0and met with a survivor of the attack. \u00a0I think of this as a cultural and political exchange where our class and the Japanese volunteers shared our experiences learning about the A-bombing and aspirations for future realities. \u00a0Hearing from the A-bomb survivor\u2014<\/span>hibakusha <\/span><\/i>in Japanese\u2014placed what happened there in human terms. \u00a0<\/span>There are still people alive who experienced this attack.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0There is potential that nuclear fallout will occur in the future. \u00a0Peace, though, I believe, is still attainable. \u00a0If this woman\u2014a hibakusha\u2014can believe peace is possible, then why shouldn\u2019t I?<\/span><\/p>\n

Learning in these cities, from and among their residents, was an experience that certainly grew my leadership skills and added to my interest in local-global struggles for equity and peace. \u00a0In the Barger Leadership Institute, we learned how to hone our leadership goals and sharpen our understanding of what it means to be a \u2018leader\u2019 on campus and in the world. \u00a0The word \u2018leader\u2019, in all honesty, is pretty null\u2014a buzzword usually. \u00a0BLI worked to give back meaning to this role, and my experience in Japan\u2014and my drive to truly have both an academic and leadership experience\u2014revealed to me more of what I consider leadership to be about. \u00a0Leadership, I think, is a process of knowing the world (or some of its parts) and working with others to solve problems that arise with acquiring that knowledge. \u00a0Certainly, I was faced with political and ethical problems in Japan: nuclear proliferation and gentrification, for example. \u00a0Back at school, now, it\u2019s my job to put the pieces back together so that I can begin to affect that change.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
A post from Hiroshima’s world Friendship Center. “May Peace Prevail On Earth” is written in several languages on its sides.<\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Darian Razdar Early this summer (well, technically spring), I had the opportunity to travel to four of the largest cities in the nation of Japan. \u00a0Specifically: Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto and Hiroshima. \u00a0During the month of May, I traveled between these cities with a class from the University of Michigan, investigating postwar cultures of Japan. 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