The World & I Magazine

Issue Date: January 1997

Nevertheless, Tobu World Square presents an extraordinary overview of many of mankind's most remarkable accomplishments, cultural centers, palaces, and temples. The respectful attention of the park's visitors suggests the thoughtful curiosity of the modern Japanese in the world about them.

Samurai village.A different escape from the confinements of modern Japan is found in the Nikko Edo-Mura Village. Perhaps the most impressive theme park that I visited, it is a massive and elaborate reconstruction of a traditional historic town of the Edo period of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Here, ninja lurk in trees, samurai warriors and feudal warlords stride through the streets, geisha demurely scurry past, and merchants operate a variety of stores.

An escalator passes through an enormous fish tank at Yokohama's Sea Paradise

The town stretches several blocks and features an extensive samurai museum and a variety of performances. One morality play, called a geisha show, features the conflict between two local warlords for the favors of a court prostitute. After much posturing and threatened violence, the demands of shame and honor are met as the main protagonists commit, or are honorably released from the obligation to commit, hari-kiri (ritual suicide).

Audiences happily applaud the play's events and toss coins, wrapped in small sheets of paper, onto the stage. The players smile and bow graciously, as if overwhelmed by the reception. The play is a fascinating insight into the ideals of social order and propriety that shape the Japanese sense of cultural and historic identity, as well as the serious consequences incurred by flaunting those codes. It offers an escape into a past that was glamorous and fantastic. In the Edo period, daily existence was rooted in the certainties of moral and social absolutes, and yet tenure in life was often fragile and uncertain.

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