The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong is a close cousin to Extinction Rebellion, both are premised on pushback to an encroaching effacement of other cultures, other minds. In HK’s case, one reason is to inject a patriotic education curriculum into the syllabus. Umbrellas in these situations were deployed to shield from tear gas and pepper spray. This inaugural movement for basic human rights for the citizens of HK took place in 2014, and was over with in 79 days.
TEAR GAS
Nighttime faceoff between police and citizens in the Mong Kok neighborhood, October 17. foto: ed jones agence france-presse getty images
• citizens figured out how to defuse incoming tear gas: first cover with traffic cone, then pour water into hole at top.
VIGIL 4 TIANANMEN
There has been a candlelight vigil held in Victoria Park every June 4, in memory of 1989 Tiananmen. In 2021, Kayla Chan, 25, showed up.
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In 2014, police showed up at the candlelight vigil and released tear gas. In 2023, Victoria Park taken over by a jigsawed carnival and bazaar combination, featuring foods from different regions in China.
Place of Dead Roads
Gear via nakedcapitalism 10.22.2019: Dr Wong Tsu @HongKongHFF
... an example of what sets apart HKers from other protesters around the world. [L]eaflets are left on "refurbished" shops to explain the reasons behind these targeted actions. Also note: *no looting*. #antiELAB #HongKongProtesters #HongKong.
2018 TRIAL
Nine defendants stood trial for disturbances caused by the Umbrella Movement: Lawmakers Tanya Chan and Shiu Ka-chun; veteran democrat Lee Wing-tat. Founders of the movement pastor Chu Yiu-ming, sociology professor Chan Kin-man, law professor Benny Tai. Activist Raphael Wong; student leaders Eason Chung and Tommy Cheung.
I have nothing to plead. The person you’re prosecuting at this moment is not me [speaker is Eason Chung, i.e., Defendant 7], nor is it D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D8 or D9.
Today, you are prosecuting anyone and everyone who participated in the Umbrella Movement. You are prosecuting all who cherish HK. So, your Honour, what you need to know is not D7’s background, or why he joined the movement. What your Honour needs to know is the background of everyone who joined the movement.
Those who willingly gave their time, their effort, their past, their future (gore lui, mei loy), and their lives for the people of HK. Why do they stay in this city without giving up, even when hope is as faint as the light of a firefly?
Your Honour, if you wish to seek the answers, you won’t simply find them in written statements, a few letters, or some impassioned speeches. We refused to be subservient to provisions, to authority, and to institutions.
We want to venture into an unknown world. A world where history and the present are entangled, where individual endeavours interact with unanticipated turns of events. We are about our world, not our position in it. In this process, there is no saint to follow, to lead. We are confused. We worry about the self that we strive to construct will collapse and be obliterated. Yet, we will someday rise from ashes. This belief is all we can hold on to right now.
Whether you are a judge, a barrister, a teacher, a pastor, a journalist, a correctional service employee, a legislator, a student, an assistant, a supporter or an opponent – before these identities, we are first of all human being.
If this holds true, if we indeed are human beings, I have no need to make an appeal. All of us, sitting here today, have a responsibility to step out of a courtroom, out of the legislature, out of the media landscape, to leave all intermediaries, and get to know the world in person. To experience the world ourselves. None of this can be explained in this courtroom.
Practising handwriting, students spray on school walls: Rioting > 10 years in prison. But we have no choice., and wear Guy Fawkes masks to graduation. foto: tyrone siu reutersfoto: tyrone siu reuters
S.O.S. U.S.A.
2019 was a turning point. The U.S. had passed a ‘HK human rights and democracy act’ that year; citizens mostly were jubilant. They had also been paying scant attention to other human right protests; when Black Lives Matter coalesed in 2013, in response to the death of George Floyd. Then the head of Human Rights Watch was denied entry in January 2020.
ASYLUM
Citizens show support for Edward Snowden by carrying signs: Stop Human Rights Violation; Protect Privacy and Liberties; Stop Surveillance Operations; Big Brother Is Watching You; HK Hero Home; No Extradition. Minor at a rally carried a sign in one hand and a mask of Snowden in the other.
HK LENNON WALLS
Citizens, especially students, took up the practise of mounting lennon walls: large assemblages of post-it notes scribbled with political thoughts. The first john-lennon wall was in then-communist Prague, where paint was, still is, the pen of choice.
SLAVE Efforts in Hong Kong to halt the selling and buying of young Chinese girls into bondage, as was common in China, resulted in the hiring of Phyllis Harrop to be the government’s liaison.
In 1938, legislation to abolish the mui-tsai system was signed into law, and PHYLLIS HARROP was appointed assistant secretary for Chinese affairs. When Phyllis answered the ad in 1937, she thought that she was being hired as a secretary. She had gone to Shanghai from England in 1929 to see the world. There she worked as a secretary until an ill-fated marriage to a German baron in 1934. Leaving him, she worked in Japanese-dominated Manchuria and had some contact with the world of the secret service. Now, in Hong Kong, she was given an assignment to protect young girls.
One raid that Phyllis had conducted in person had discovered seventeen transferred girls who were about to be shipped abroad. Phyllis set about preparing herself for her real job, becoming as soon as possible proficient in Cantonese and the relevant laws of Hong Kong. She built up a staff of Chinese women not afraid to work hard, and two police inspectors and a sergeant were seconded to her. As well as that team there were about one hundred Chinese detectives. It was not easy. The police department, instructed to refer to her all cases concerning women and children or family affairs, objected to having to deal with a woman. She found that notice of a forthcoming raid on a “sly brothel” (i.e. illegal) was leaking out so that any evidence of law-breaking had disappeared by the time the police arrived.
Subsequently she made a practice of going on raids and was seen as quite a character, as well as a friend, among the Chinese. Phyllis took her work seriously but she did not take herself seriously, laughingly describing her job as “protecting wayward girls”. Phyllis gives her formal title in “Hong Kong Incident” (1942) as “nui wa man dai yan”. It meant, literally and inaccurately, the lady secretary for Chinese affairs’. But it meant colloquially “big lady”.
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A twenty-mile wide gulf in South China is home to Canton, Macao and Hongkong. The river flowing into it is short, being a coastal convergence where three other rivers meet. Banks were once lined with banana and sugar-cane groves, with orange trees and rice paddies.
European sailors came and before long had given a name to where the delta begins and the river ends: Bocca Tigris, mouth of the tiger, to denote the dangers going upriver.
Halfway to Canton was an island, and where a warehouse with a wharf was situated. Business was conducted in Canton, where a stretch by the Pearl River was turned into an on-site compound for European and American companies, in the business of making trade here, in the golden triangle of China.
SOUTH CHINA SEA +
More than two hundred species of fish call the Pearl River Delta home. Bream, herring and dace. Anguilla Marmorata and ratmouth barbell. The mandarin, the bighead and four varieties of carp – silver, grass, golden, common.
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Hongkong was founded as a British colony in China, “neither a settlement nor an acquisition of natural resources,” but to trade in the Far East. Government was to serve the interests of merchants, and the first to make use of the opportunity was Jardine Matheson & Co. Followed soon enough by Dent & Co., Lindsay & Co., Dodwell & Co., and John D. Hutchison. There was also a cargo-&-passenger shipping company, Butterfield & Swire, which had an office in Shanghai, opened in 1866. Now they came to Hongkong, began to diversify, went into the sugar refining trade. Then the partnership with Richard Shackleton Butterfield was severed, and the firm’s remaining two partners, brothers John Samuel and William Hudson, rebranded the company as Swire’s. After the Second World War, they opened up an aircraft repair shop at Kai Tek Airport, as a springboard into the emerging commercial airline field.
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Lion Rock has watched over the rehabilitation of Hongkong’s original aerodome to become an international airport, now is keeping a safe distance as the Pacific Air Maintenance and Supply Co., is conducting a test.
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1899 photograph of the sugar refinery works located dockside, between Hongkong Island and Lamma Island, and facing the South China Sea.
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Figurehead recovered from a wreckage at sea belonging to Jardine Matheson & Co.
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In 1828, Scotsmen and “country merchants” William Jardine and James Matheson became partners, buying Malwa opium in Bombay from a Parsee merchant named Framjee Cowasjee to sell in Canton. Organized and efficient, they soon controlled approximately one-third of foreign trade with China, most of it in opium.
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The men who worked Jardines Matheson were expected to be disciplined sailors, yet like all Europeans would have been familiar with a bar room drink of alcohol, tobacco juice, sugar and arsenic called a “canton gunpowder.”
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Here is James Matheson’s verdict for one of his ship masters: “The Gazette was unnecessarily delayed at Hongkong in consequence of Captain Crocker’s repugnance to receiving opium on the Sabbath. We have every respect for persons entertaining strict religious principles, but we fear that very godly people are not suited for the drug trade.”
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William Jardine’s recruitment letter to a European missionary who can speak Chinese: “We have no hesitation in stating to you that our principal reliance is on opium. Though it is our earnest wish that you should not in any way hinder the grand object you have in view [distributing the Bible translated into Chinese], by appearing interested in what by many is considered an immoral traffic; yet such traffic is so absolutely necessary to give any vessel a reasonable chance of defraying her expenses that we trust you will have no objection to interpret on every occasion when your services may be requested.”
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In 1868, William Jardine was a wealthy man, and built a home w/ landscaped grounds.
(1868-1952)
Hong Kong Hotel, Queen’s Rd at Pedder St, is the first world-class hospitality house in Hongkong, where management has provided a special launch to meet ship passengers and ferry them to the hotel’s pier. A six-storey north wing facing the waterfront opened in 1893, but was consumed in a fire in 1926.
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(1892-1951)
Beginning around 1892, entrepreneural brothers Sam and Marcus Samuel began to ship kerosene in bulk to China, where they found a ready market. Then partnering with Royal Dutch Petroleum for a joint venture, they became Asiatic Petroleum Co. Today it is whatever Shell Oil’s latest brandname is called.
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The end of Pedder St runs into the Asiatic Petroleum Co. building, where a clock tower once stood. On the right (not shown) is Jardine’s headquarters. On the left (also not shown) is the Hong Kong Hotel, making the two-block long Pedder St the “financial district of Hongkong, China.”
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More ancient than Harrods, Lane Crawford Department Store was founded by one Thomas Ash Lane, formerly a butler in the East India Co. factory at Canton, who went to Hongkong in the early 1840s and, together with Ninian (Norman) Crawford, went into business carrying goods. They opened their doors in 1846.
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More ancient than Harrods, Lane Crawford Department Store was founded by one Thomas Ash Lane, formerly a butler in the East India Co. factory at Canton, who went to Hongkong in the early 1840s and, together with Ninian (Norman) Crawford, went into business carrying goods. They opened their doors in 1846.
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Waglan Island, on the eastern entrance into Hongkong harbor, plays host to a meteorological station, a saluting battery, and a lighthouse. These are navigational aids for guidance through a channel into a well-lit harbor “singularly free from submerged dangers.”
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Opening on New Year’s Day 1920, greeting guests from the Central District on a newly built road over the mountain, the “old lady on the Riviera of the East” could offer comfort already on “a well-made road, leading to the main steps, in front of which is a miniature Italian garden, artistically laid out and provided with a fountain.”
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From the main steps guests reach a spacious balcony which runs the entire length of the facade. There is a 3,500 sq-ft hall with its own verandah. Each bedroom measures twenty-foot square, and comes with its own white-glaze tiled bathroom featuring hot and cold water.
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Located on the Island side facing the sea, this “hotel without its like in the East” provided living quarters in the back for staff, and was originally conceived as a self-contained “pleasure resort.” During the war it was used by the Occupation, partly as a hospital, partly as a recuperation center.
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The first distributor of the Model T by Henry Ford in Hongkong was Alex Ross & Co., with headquarters in Prince’s Building, Central District.
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Maintenance happened in the garage on Salisbury Rd in Kowloon, next to Star Ferry and the Kowloon Canton Railway terminus. Vehicles on offer were capable of 25 miles to the gallon and could be ordered in any colour as long as it was “blue or grey.”
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The typhoon of August 20 1927 damaged the garage, which had at the time twenty motor cars and six motor cycles.
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In the beginning, there were very few movie houses wired for sound. The Majestic (1928) on Nathan Rd was one of the first, and their New Year’s offering for 1930 was technicolor Hollywood musical Paris, now a lost film. The Peninsula Hotel hosted casual tea dances by day and formal balls by night.
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Monthly magazine published by the Peninsula Hotel’s parent company, Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd.
REBEL REBEL TEAR GAS
Nighttime faceoff between police and citizens in the Mong Kok neighborhood, October 17. foto: ed jones agence france-presse getty images
• citizens figured out how to defuse incoming tear gas: first cover with traffic cone, then pour water into hole at top.
VIGIL 4 TIANANMEN
There has been a candlelight vigil held in Victoria Park every June 4, in memory of 1989 Tiananmen. In 2021, Kayla Chan, 25, showed up.
•
In 2014, police showed up at the candlelight vigil and released tear gas. In 2023, Victoria Park taken over by a jigsawed carnival and bazaar combination, featuring foods from different regions in China.
Place of Dead Roads
Gear via nakedcapitalism 10.22.2019: Dr Wong Tsu @HongKongHFF
... an example of what sets apart HKers from other protesters around the world. [L]eaflets are left on "refurbished" shops to explain the reasons behind these targeted actions. Also note: *no looting*. #antiELAB #HongKongProtesters #HongKong.
2018 TRIAL
Nine defendants stood trial for disturbances caused by the Umbrella Movement: Lawmakers Tanya Chan and Shiu Ka-chun; veteran democrat Lee Wing-tat. Founders of the movement pastor Chu Yiu-ming, sociology professor Chan Kin-man, law professor Benny Tai. Activist Raphael Wong; student leaders Eason Chung and Tommy Cheung.
I have nothing to plead. The person you’re prosecuting at this moment is not me [speaker is Eason Chung, i.e., Defendant 7], nor is it D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D8 or D9.
Today, you are prosecuting anyone and everyone who participated in the Umbrella Movement. You are prosecuting all who cherish HK. So, your Honour, what you need to know is not D7’s background, or why he joined the movement. What your Honour needs to know is the background of everyone who joined the movement.
Those who willingly gave their time, their effort, their past, their future (gore lui, mei loy), and their lives for the people of HK. Why do they stay in this city without giving up, even when hope is as faint as the light of a firefly?
Your Honour, if you wish to seek the answers, you won’t simply find them in written statements, a few letters, or some impassioned speeches. We refused to be subservient to provisions, to authority, and to institutions.
We want to venture into an unknown world. A world where history and the present are entangled, where individual endeavours interact with unanticipated turns of events. We are about our world, not our position in it. In this process, there is no saint to follow, to lead. We are confused. We worry about the self that we strive to construct will collapse and be obliterated. Yet, we will someday rise from ashes. This belief is all we can hold on to right now.
Whether you are a judge, a barrister, a teacher, a pastor, a journalist, a correctional service employee, a legislator, a student, an assistant, a supporter or an opponent – before these identities, we are first of all human being.
If this holds true, if we indeed are human beings, I have no need to make an appeal. All of us, sitting here today, have a responsibility to step out of a courtroom, out of the legislature, out of the media landscape, to leave all intermediaries, and get to know the world in person. To experience the world ourselves. None of this can be explained in this courtroom.
Practising handwriting, students spray on school walls: Rioting > 10 years in prison. But we have no choice., and wear Guy Fawkes masks to graduation. foto: tyrone siu reutersfoto: tyrone siu reuters
S.O.S. U.S.A.
2019 was a turning point. The U.S. had passed a ‘HK human rights and democracy act’ that year; citizens mostly were jubilant. They had also been paying scant attention to other human right protests; when Black Lives Matter coalesed in 2013, in response to the death of George Floyd. Then the head of Human Rights Watch was denied entry in January 2020.
ASYLUM
Citizens show support for Edward Snowden by carrying signs: Stop Human Rights Violation; Protect Privacy and Liberties; Stop Surveillance Operations; Big Brother Is Watching You; HK Hero Home; No Extradition. Minor at a rally carried a sign in one hand and a mask of Snowden in the other.
HK LENNON WALLS
Citizens, especially students, took up the practise of mounting lennon walls: large assemblages of post-it notes scribbled with political thoughts. The first john-lennon wall was in then-communist Prague, where paint was, still is, the pen of choice.
SLAVE Efforts in Hong Kong to halt the selling and buying of young Chinese girls into bondage, as was common in China, resulted in the hiring of Phyllis Harrop to be the government’s liaison.
In 1938, legislation to abolish the mui-tsai system was signed into law, and PHYLLIS HARROP was appointed assistant secretary for Chinese affairs. When Phyllis answered the ad in 1937, she thought that she was being hired as a secretary. She had gone to Shanghai from England in 1929 to see the world. There she worked as a secretary until an ill-fated marriage to a German baron in 1934. Leaving him, she worked in Japanese-dominated Manchuria and had some contact with the world of the secret service. Now, in Hong Kong, she was given an assignment to protect young girls.
One raid that Phyllis had conducted in person had discovered seventeen transferred girls who were about to be shipped abroad. Phyllis set about preparing herself for her real job, becoming as soon as possible proficient in Cantonese and the relevant laws of Hong Kong. She built up a staff of Chinese women not afraid to work hard, and two police inspectors and a sergeant were seconded to her. As well as that team there were about one hundred Chinese detectives. It was not easy. The police department, instructed to refer to her all cases concerning women and children or family affairs, objected to having to deal with a woman. She found that notice of a forthcoming raid on a “sly brothel” (i.e. illegal) was leaking out so that any evidence of law-breaking had disappeared by the time the police arrived.
Subsequently she made a practice of going on raids and was seen as quite a character, as well as a friend, among the Chinese. Phyllis took her work seriously but she did not take herself seriously, laughingly describing her job as “protecting wayward girls”. Phyllis gives her formal title in “Hong Kong Incident” (1942) as “nui wa man dai yan”. It meant, literally and inaccurately, the lady secretary for Chinese affairs’. But it meant colloquially “big lady”.
█Namib Sand Sea became a world heritage site in 2013 because atmospheric conditions provide exceptional visibility of landscape features by day and the dazzling southern hemisphere sky at night. Essentially uninhabited except for several small villages, this much sand is an ideal laboratory to track dune types and elevations reach, monitor how playas are formed, and study the totality’s behavior to air currents.
Gazelles prance across Namib
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Founded in the 1400s and developed to be a desert destination, Agadez was the southern gateway to the Sahara desert, the last town before reaching distant Tripoli, on the Mediterranean sea.
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Taking on its iconic form thousands of years ago, when the shinto school for ascetic buddhism was beginning to stir, Mount Fuji stands alone in the middle of Japan, showing superb symmetry no matter from which side the extinct volcano is viewed. Designated a sacred space in 2013.
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The Basque historic whaling station in the fishing village of Red Bay, Labrador, together with other nearby whaling stations, helped turn whale-oil production into a large-scale business. This 2013 world heritage site is the earliest, most complete, and best preserved example into european whaling practices in the 1500s, a dangerous 80-year period of prosperity. Whaling crews would end up transporting millions of barrels of whale oil, from Newfoundland and Labrador, to Europe - a treasure then as valuable as gold brought home by conquistadors.
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Two adjoining parks in Lesotho’s tundra country became an ecological landscape recipient in 2013 and now is one: Maloti Drakensberg National Park, home to endemic plants - tropical to alpine, birds, lakes, and interesting rocks.
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eight polish tserkvas:
Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Chotyniec)
St Michael the Archangel (Turzańsk);
St Michael the Archangel (Smolnik);
St James the Less (Powroźnik);
Virgin Mary's Care (Owczary);
St Paraskevia (Kwiaton);
St Parskevia (Radruz);
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eight ukrainian tserkvas:
Birth of the Theotokos (Nizhny Werbiaz);
St Archangel Michael (Uzak);
Ascension (Jasin);
Holy Spirit (Rohatyn);
St George (Drohobych);
Holy Trinity (Zolkiew);
St Demetrius (Matkow);
Pentecost (Potylicz).
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Children living in this oysterland treat pearls as toys, and play 'turtles and pearls'. The game takes place underwater, and players hold a pet turtle and jump in. The turtle is used as a projectile to hit at a colored pearl, on a game-board, among bowls of different-colored pearls: the aim being to hit another pearl of the same color out.
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The university in Coimbra was founded in 1290, the second oldest continuous institution of higher learning in Europe (the University of Paris is older).
In 2013 the town was deemed ... an integrated university city, with a specific urban typology, as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions.
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Part of the vast Eastern Mindanao Biodiversity Corridor, Mount Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sanctuary is in a pristine peninsula and home to an aboriginal pygmy forest, an endangered eagle (left) and a threatened cockatoo (right).
The Inquisition came to Portugal in 1567, and Coimbra was one of the three places tasked to conduct it. Afterwards, the University re-established freedom of research, strengthened their statutes, reorganized the syllabus to re-establish freedom of research, and put emphasis on an education in the vernacular.
⇞ UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA
The University originally taught law, rhetoric, mathematics, theology, medicine, grammar, Greek. Seventy or so professors and lecturers manage five faculties: direito (law), mathematica,
medicina,
philosophia, theologia. The ordinary degree resulting in the title licenciado (graduate) will take five years. The degree of douto (learned) takes one more, plus a second examination. Medical students study for eight years. Semester starts in autumn and ends when spring is over. The university system is city-wide, and hosts sports and theater events for its citizens; participates in nurseries and kindergartens, botany and preservation.
Academic seasons are marked by rituals, originally symbolized as colors. End of semester is celebrated in the noisy Festa das Latas. The oldest is Queima das Fritas (Burning of the Ribbons), a totality that takes eight days to play out. The ribbons are
❚❘❚ light-blue = science [art];
❚❘❚ dark-blue= letters [mind];
❚❘❚ yellow = medicine [body];
❚❘❚ purple = pharmacy [body].
⇞ LIBRARY
⇞ STUDENT BODY
The estudantes (students) make up about a third of the town's inhabitants, and their graduation ceremonies take up the whole of May. A localized form of fado (sad song) is performed, by male students only, and only at 10pm on the steps of the Old Cathedral, with lyrics more intellectual and romantic than the genre requires: love songs tuned to passions and sentiments, perfuming the air with student lamentations until dawn.
⇞ FRATERNITIES
⇞ LUíS De CAMõES
⇞ CITY OF CULTURE
Up until the middle of the 20th century, Coimbra was largely inaccessible to travellers passing through. Sacheverell Sitwell visited in the 1950s, and found fault with the new:
UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE Konohanasakuya-hime, the shinto spirit of Fujisan, is a volcano goddess, and presiding deity for the prevention of fires.
Fujisan
Taking on its iconic form some five thousand years ago, becoming the locus for ascetic buddhism of the shinto school (because blessed by superb symmetry?), Mt Fuji stands alone in the center of Japan, and has inspired artists for many centuries. Recognized as a “sacred space”, in 2013 Mt Fuji became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Each item, unto the crest of a wave, in cosmological Japan is imbued with its own kami “spirit”. The kami of Mt Fuji is a princess, her name is Konohana-sokuahime.
Mt Fuji, in shinto cosmology, is occupied by a kami “spirit”. The Japanese have imbued the world, unto a blade of grass, each with its own kami. Princess Konohanasakuya-hime is the kami of Fujisan, present wherever cherry blossoms are found on Mt Fuji: Fujisan-konohana-sokuahime “Fuji causing the blossom to brightly bloom”. The fujiko branch of shinto adds to the mountain a soul, endowing it with existence. Meanwhile, buddhists regard the volcano as a gateway to another world. The summit is ringed with eight peaks, and a hike to visit all of them can take about half a day.
While her husband Astraeus “dawn wind” teases primeval goddess Nyx “night” to leave the Sky, winged dawn goddess Eos “aurora” arrives in her twin-horse chariot to announce the advent of the Sun over Mt Fuji.
Hiking to the summit to greet the morning Sun is a common occurrence, and for as long as anyone can remember, there is and always has been, a choice of only four trails leading to the top. There is a term, as in “My goraiko was obscured by clouds and rain blotted out the horizon”. For lucky ones, though, the alpine sight of morning peeking over the horizon, the departure of night, can trigger a palpable shift, “something we all know happens regular, see but not see ...”
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goraiko, shinto speak.
A macabre fourteen square mile pine forest at the base of Mt Fuji, where it is dark on the ground and light at the top.
There is an immense pine forest, a lethal leafy labyrinth, ringing the north-west base of Mt Fuji. Aokiga-hara-jukai “the sea of trees” is alarmingly dark during daytime, and likened to a walk on the sea bottom. The forest floor still and silent, the treetops swaying and musical – leaves playing with wind and sunlight. Thought to be haunted, the forest is a suicide destination spot.
The village of Yoshida resides on the slopes of Mt Fuji, and plays host to an annual two-day fire festival, in honor of Kamuy-huci, the kami of fire.
The shinto embodiment of fire, hearth goddess Kamuy-huci, visits Mt Fuji once a year, wearing buddhist beads for a powwow with the kami of Fujisan. They meet at a trail stop on the way to the summit, in the village of Yoshida, rife with rustic rumors of interesting insights into a psychoanalysis of fire. Yoshida hosts an annual autumn fire festival, which is over and done with in one night and following day, involving practises to conclude the climbing season, and there is festival footage.
Mt Fuji has starred in numerous scifi scenarios, featuring hybrids as well as mutated Japanese beings born after the Second World War.
As a stand-in for the future-perfect landmark, Mt Fuji has has been featured in numerous scifi movies. “The X From Outer Space”(1967) begins with a helicopter landing in full view of the mountain, whose peak has also served as a staging ground for countless mutants born after the Second World War, beginning with Godzilla the fire-breathing giant lizard. Ready to fight and best them are supermen and superwomen in battle-suits, or else heroic beings from other planets, time travelers, as well as a legion of cyborgs and robots. The first to show up was Golden Bat aka Phantaman, who was sent forward in time to the year 1930 by Atlantis science. A few were born with fire powers: siblings Shiro and Leyu Yoshida; buddhist Izumi Yasunari. Tetsuo Shima (Akira) came to light in 1988, harboring the seeds of destructive psychic powers, while Iron Man (aka Tetsuo) was an 1989 cyborg with a tragic sex life.
The top image shows Mt Fuji in 2019, aboard the International Space Station.
Fujisan is a relatively young and active volcano, sixty-two miles south-west of Tokyo. It sits on a slab of rock at the “triple junction” position, radiating tectonically down towards the Filipino Plate, west towards the Eurasian Plate, and east to meet with the North American Plate – the Okhotsk. There have been twenty-one recorded eruptions, the last was an 8.4 on October 26, 1707, destroying seventy-two houses and three buddhist temples; powerful enough to blow a scoop out at the tip, forming a new crater on the eastern flank. A meteorological reading, from February 4, 2013, is typical of current times:
The volcano remains calm. However, an increased number of small quakes near and under Mt Fuji are visible on our latest data plot of nearby earthquakes (within 30 km radius). While all of these are very small and the number is certainly not alarming, the volcano remains interesting to watch. ...
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