25th October 2013
Yet again, the blog has been otherwise occupied for so long it almost can’t remember what it feels like to obsess about obscure topics of interest to perhaps a select and slightly disturbed half-dozen souls spread across multiple continents. Almost.
This week, however, has provided a sufficient range of coincidences to provoke a burst of prose. The reasons were a visit to an academy, a reception in London, and a college tour in Cambridge, and how the present provoked a re-appreciation of the past and contrasts with our ever so peaceful present. In an age when we are anxious about energy, radiation, costs of living, economic performance, and whether we are being monitored by allied authorities or potential terrorists a return to the past seems a cosy retreat. However, when that past was an age dominated by world war and destruction it provides perspective within which to consider contemporary concerns and reconsider those of previous ages.
Monday and Tuesday were spent at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the training centre, academic college, and finishing school for British Army officers that has existed in slightly different forms from 1741, and from 1800 at Sandhurst. The RMA is an eclectic mix of Georgian stone, Victorian brick, Cold War concrete, and post-Cold War chic, and the overall atmosphere is of a busy, focused but relatively relaxed, jolly, and astonishingly polite place. The reason for my visit was to deliver a lecture to the War Studies Department on the suitably obscure subject of Japanese soldiers in conflict 1945-1954, covering the period when most people, Japanese included, would have imagined that no Japanese soldiers would have been engaged in any combat after August 1945.
However, while I was given a wonderful reception by the audience, including the alarmingly engaging and youthful commandant, Major-General Stuart Skeates, who I think is only a couple of years my senior but outranks me on every possible level, other than density of grey hair, the reconsideration of history was provoked by a future event. Later in the week RMA was preparing for a more distinguished and attractive visitor. Aung San Suu Kyi, the formerly imprisoned dissident, opposition leader, and daughter of Burmese independence founder, who was on a five day visit to Britain and wished to visit Sandhurst. Her desire was perhaps a little odd, as her father had organised resistance to the British before the war, and then spent time in Japan before being installed as the leader of Burma National Army, fighting (in the broadest terms) against the British, until in the spring of 1945 he decided to turn the BNA against the Japanese. In this rather disloyal way he was able to curry favour and pave the way for Burmese independence. Aung San Suu Kyi perhaps desires a future arrangement whereby RMA Sandhurst trains the future BNA in the ways of civilian control, rule of law, and non-interference in political affairs, but her visit raised a few issues of protocol. There are several terms used for buildings and companies that were to kept well off the planned visitation tour. These included buildings like the Slim Mess (where I stayed, and named after the General who most frustrated the BNA), and Kohima/Imphal (a pair of major battles directed by Slim), not to mention Burma Company (seemingly most appropriate, but named after the campaign to reclaim the colonial asset that her dad was fighting against the British to keep within the Japanese ‘sphere of influence’). Anyway, she seemed to appreciate her time there. And no-one mentioned the war.
http://www.bfbs.com/news/aung-san-suu-kyi-visits-sandhurst-64816.html
However, as Channel 4 News reported, she also seems increasingly unwilling to mention or visit human rights activists and groups as they have become increasingly critical of her comments regarding escalating attacks upon Muslims in Myanmar. Her recent interviews have included comments about Buddhist fears of global Islamic threats, and seemingly distributed blame equally, despite the unequal control of media and security in the country. Her gilded crown as the world’s favourite Nobel Peace Laureate seems have slipped and been slightly tarnished, but this perhaps rather raises questions of our judgement regarding such individuals and complex national issues.
http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/aung-san-suu-kyi-falling-grace/26332
The second inspiration for a reappraisal of history was the Japan Self-Defense Forces commemorative event on Thursday 24th October at the Embassy of Japan, Piccadilly, London, opposite Green Park. A wonderful piece of real estate, and the event was wonderful. The most interesting things were being able to meet a few old friends, such as the Japanese Defence Attaché, Captain Kitagawa and his charming wife, whom I’ve known for many years now and who in Japan live down the road in Zushi (fellow ‘Shonan Boys’), and Tsuruoka Michito of NIDS (National Institute for Defense Studies, Tokyo), now visiting RUSI (enough acronyms yet?), and meeting many new and not so new people.
Among the most interesting encounters was with Gareth and Alison Derrick. I had met Gareth only once, very briefly, in Tokyo where he was the British Defence Attaché, but on Thursday night I met his wife first, who was lots of fun and very interesting, and it was Alison who told me what happens to Royal Navy Commodores after the navy and after Japan. The answer could well be what others have done, such as work for a defence contractor, set up a consultancy, or lecture at length, but they decided that they wanted to live and work in Devon, so none of the obvious patterns seemed practical. Therefore, they followed a path less commonly trodden by senior naval officers. They made cheese. They also now teach others to make cheese, and in particular have a niche skill in luring Japanese residents and visitors to London out south and west to Devon, and then teaching them how also to make wonderful cheese. If only more people would make such careers. Blessed are the cheesemakers, I can hear Monty Python fans parrot (dead parrot? Let it stop! Please). Please follow their progress: www.ermeriverdairy.co.uk
This encounter was thought provoking, but so was the building we were within. The Embassy had only been based there since 1989, but Anglo-Japanese relations in London had been active since November 1863, when five Choshu clan members of western Japan arrived in London as the newly-opened (from three centuries’ seclusion, not like a West End show or a department store) nation’s representatives. http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/event/2013/choshu/index.html The current building has had a previously interesting history, and during the Great War served as the headquarters of the British Imperial General Staff, the first war in which Britain and Japan were allied and cooperated, with Japanese destroyers coming under RN command in the Mediterranean. Reference to this was made by Ambassador Hayashi, as well as current security problems, the cooperation of the JSDF and British armed forces, and the statement by PM Abe that the UK-Japan relationship of friendship and close cooperation was a priori, something that could be instinctively assumed. While he is a gracious man, successfully praising his host country, there is a kernel of truth in there that contrasted so clearly with widespread perceptions of Japan from the early 1920s through to at least the 1960s. Even such a youthful type as I (shuffle of feet, strangled coughs, tumbleweed…) grew up with the predominant perception of Japan coming from the pages of Warlord and Victor comics rather than an appreciation of the motorbikes, cars, colour televisions, and cameras that I saw in the real and TV worlds, let alone that mysterious mix of kimono, sushi, and samurai. Tojo, Mitsubishi Zeros, and ‘Banzai!’’ were more familiar than Sony, Nikon, and Toyota, at least until the 1980s, and then we all fell for the allure, what we would have to wait more than a decade to know as the ‘soft power’, of Japan.
The last time I had been at the Embassy was in 1993, prior to my first departure for Japan, clutching my guidebook, passport, and five Japanese words, but I had not known of the building’s history then. Nor did I know of the history of St John’s College until this morning. That was corrected by Sibella Lang, the wonderful and gracious Chair of the Newcomers and Visiting Scholars Group, who together with the equally remarkable Liz Hodder, NVS Director, took it upon herself to educate us about St John’s College, even though she is the wife of the Master of Corpus Christi College. That is Cambridge for you.
The College was founded by another remarkable woman, Lady Margaret Beaufort, a woman depicted in the recent White Queen TV series (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018sxqp ) as a rather unpleasant, power-obsessed woman, as most historical women of consequence tend to be characterised. The second court, one of the most impressive such Tudor constructions, was constructed by another powerful (and rich) woman, Mary Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, and contains the Long Gallery or Combination Hall, the longest room in any Cambridge college, and so apt that in 1944 the plans for the Normandy invasion, Operation Overlord, were arranged along its length. Most visitors will not be aware of this, nor of King Charles I's marriage agreement being signed there, but will be far more conscious of the college’s old boys, such as the leading slavery abolitionist William Wilberforce (somewhat cantankerous), three British, two New Zealand, and one (the current) Indian Prime Ministers, the poet Wordsworth (old Tory), photographer Cecil Beaton (dapper), and Sid Waddell (son of Alnwick miner, and darts commentator: “Look at Jocky Wilson! What an athlete!” And, “The atmosphere is so tense, if Elvis walked in with a portion of chips, you could hear the vinegar sizzle on them.”). They will also be aware of the famous Bridge of Sighs that spans the Cam and is for College members only, except that the nice Porters allowed us to cross it today. Odd to think what and who rise to fame and remain in such prominence throughout time, while Pascal added, "how many kingdoms know nothing of us."
A week of historical inspirations and reconsiderations. Alliances and enemies. Japanese conflict and fraternity with Britain. Buildings used for education, international relations, and war planning. How we perceive our heroes and enemies, and how changes in recent history can surprisingly alter our long term perspectives. Are we all guilty of lionising and demonising men and women alike? A priori, surely.
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