Mirror reflects the gaudy glare of a subterranean café on the Ginza. The Albion, a favorite of foreign visitors, features frantic jazz blared over loudspeakers, with house lights that blink eerily to the rhythm. Waitresses in white-satin toreador pants dance, rather than walk, about their chores.
This is part three exploring the words of William Graves, and photos of Winfield Parks, staff of the monthly magazine National Geographic. Graves and Parks spent weeks, if not months in Japan, uncovering the insight that would make Japan in 1964 comprehensible to the West.
In the pictures in this post, Graves and Parks try to help us understand the “leisure boom” of the times, and to show us how Tokyoites played. As (the predominantly male) Western journalists at the time often did, they focused on the night life. Graves tracked down a woman named Reiko, who worked as a hostess at a nightclub called Hanabasha.
In Tokyo nightclub slang, Reiko is what is known as a toranshista garu – “transistor girl” – one who, as the name suggests, is small, compact, and full of energy.
The dance floor resembled the platform at Shinjuku Station in rush hour, so Reikko and I settled for a napkin-sized table in a corner. We talked of Tokyo’s reija boomu – the “leisure boom” – and the city’s fantastic wealth.
“This year, most richest one,” Reiko began. “Japanese call this Year of Tatsu – Year of Dragon. Dragon stand for rich.”
Tokyo at play invades Asakusa, a vast neon-trimmed amusement and shopping district that rivals the famed Ginza. Stalls sell everything from cameras to Buddhist funerary images. Advertisement beneath a merchant’s shop sign offers bargains in suits.Stately chorus line strikes a graceful pose of Shichi-go-san Café in the Asakusa amusement district. Low-priced restaurants in this area serve as an inexpensive substitute for geisha houses, where dinner, rice wine, classical dancing, and song can cost $100 a person. These dancers, who double as waitresses, perform beneath a canopy of artificial maple leaves.Head down, spike heels set, a lunch-hour golfer tees off at the three level driving range in downtown Shiba Park. Tokyo’s fastest-growing sport, gorufu counts fanatics among corporation presidents and salesgirls. Post-war American influence on women extends far beyond fashions and golf links. From voteless status before 1947, Japanese women have risen to fill presidencies of colleges, cabinet posts, and seats in the Diet.Breathtaking leap lifts a Tokyo schoolgirl twice her height on Japan’s high-flying version of the seesaw. Instead of straddling a plank, young enthusiasts grasp the bars and soar in standing position. Like many Japanese, these pupils enjoy freedom from prewar uniforms and taboos against coeducation.Start of a mighty swing promises a hit in a dock workers’ lunch-hour game. During spring and summer, noon whistles signal pick-up games in parks, dead-end streets, and eve on rooftops.
“Sumimasen – very sorry….” Railway guards in a Tokyo station pack rush-hour cars to bursting with hapless commuters. Skyrocketing population threatens to cripple the Japanese capital; even now its 10,500,000 residents make it the world’s largest city. Long-suffering Tokyoites joke grimly about their city’s “crush hour.” Miraculously, scenes such as this morning jam a the Shinjuku Station produce few injuries.
Tokyo is not a city. Tokyo…is an explosion.
The crowds, the traffic, the lights, the smog, the noise, the peace, the plenty, the interplay of East and West, the exotic…. William Graves, staff writer for the monthly magazine, National Geographic, stayed in Tokyo for weeks if not months with cameraman Winfield Parks in an attempt to paint a picture of Tokyo in 1964 with words and photos.
Tokyo is not easy to love at first sight. In daylight, from the air, it resembles an enormous coffee stain, blotting the green velvet of the surrounding farm country. Seen from the ground, it lies blurred under layers of smog – a city wrapped in soiled cotton wood.
At night, however, Tokyo bursts through its somber wrapping. Then the city is aflame with neon, its low hills pulsing like great beds of coals, with crimsons, lavenders, greens, and golds of flashing electric signs announcing nightclubs, coffee bars, truck tires, television sets, cameras – everything that Tokyo owns or makes in some 57,000 factories.
Here are a few of the pictures and words from that National Geographic article, a portrait of an explosion.
Gone are wooden clogs and traditional kimono. Among Japanese young women, high heels and chic-knee-length dresses are everyday attire. Tokyo’s huge Ginza department stores tempt shoppers with top European designs. Copies in inexpensive Japanese cottons and rayons have all but driven classic styles from sight. Young Tokyo saves the conservative kimono and sashlike obi for ceremonial days or family occasions. Sign beneath American fashion magazines advertises a gift shop called “Yours.”Curtain of smog over Tokyo Harbor gives a coppery cast to the waterfront, one of many centers for the Japanese shipbuilding industry, now the world’s largest. Desperate for living space, Tokyo dumps its fresh trash into the bay and covers it with soil to create new land.Like immense cinder blocks, low-cost apartment houses rise amid factories and oil-storage tanks. Danchi, as Tokyoites call the developments, ease the crushing pressure of Tokyo’s housing shortage. Families with moderate incomes may rent a bedroom, kitchen, and living room for $20 a month.Husband enjoys his ease, just as his father did, while wife clears the dishes I their three-room apato. Tokyoites call them and their neighbors danchi zoku – “apartment-house tribe.”Grill-to-bumper flood chokes a Tokyo street. During rush hours it may take half an hour to negotiate a downtown block. Beginners’ tests are strict but, once licensed, drivers develop an individual style. A sharp horn blast signifies, “Look out! I am about to do something extraordinary.”
Evasive Action lifts a pedestrian clear of the pavement in his dash for safety. Tokyo traffic – dodging risks are high: on the city’s streets, a thousand die in a year.
It was 1999 and the two premier national teams in women’s soccer were facing off in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena California to determine the champions of the second FIFA World Cup Championship.
The United States and China were locked in a scoreless draw through regular and extra time, with victory coming down to a penalty shootout. After goaltender Briana Scurry stopped a shot in the third round, victory rested in the left foot of Brandi Chastain. And when she rocketed the ball into the upper right hand corner of the net, Chastain immediately ripped off her jersey, fell to her knees, her arms extended in ecstatic triumph, and her black Nike sports bra exposed for the entire world to see.
Lisa Lindahl was at home in Vermont when her phone rang and her friend told her to switch on the TV. Lindahl was an entrepreneur who established the market for sports bras in the late 1970s, so when she saw Chastain raise her arms in victory, she said was astonished, and proud. “It was her confidence, her preparation and her long journey that came to fruition in that moment,” said Lindahl in this 99% invisible podcast. “And that is perfect because I could say that about my journey of the jog bra.”
One of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible, is not about sports, but about design. And strange as it may seem today, the sports bra was non-existent before 1977. No sportswear or sports equipment manufacturer ever imagined why women would ever need a sports bra.
Dr. LaJean Lawson, who is the Sports Bra Science and Marketing Consultant to Champion Athleticwear, and has been shaping the design of the sports bra for three decades, said that the environment for women in sports when she was growing up was very different.
When I started high school we weren’t allowed to run full court because there was the assumption that girls were too weak, and we couldn’t run any races longer than 400 meters. So women participating in sports having/needing a sports bra is so recent.
The more Lawson promoted the sports bra and the idea of better fitness for women, she even got hate mail.
This letter said “If God had intended women to run he would not have put breasts on them.” There was a whole socio-cultural stereotype of how women should behave, and it wasn’t vigorously and badly. It was more calm and sweet, and how to comport yourself with more steadiness, and not the sort of enthusiasm and passion you see with sport.
But in the 1970s, circumstances were conspiring in the United States to make it easier for women to participate and compete in sports.
In the United States, a section of the United States Education Amendments of 1972, famously called “Title IX,” was created, and subsequently had a huge impact on American society. While the overall goal was to ban gender discrimination within federally funded schools and universities, encouraging greater access for women to higher education, protecting pregnant women and parenting students from being expelled, and challenging gender stereotypes about whether boys or girls were strong in a particular academic category like math and science, Title IX has had a tremendous impact on women in sports.
According to this article, “the impact of Title IX on women’s sports cannot be overstated: the NCAA says the number of female college athletes is at an all-time high, and the numbers of girls playing high school sports has swelled from fewer than 300,000 in 1974 to more than 3.1 million in 2012.”
Additionally, getting into shape and staying fit became a huge part of the American pop culture in the 1970s and 1980s. With bestselling books like The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx, which came out in 1977, and Jane Fonda’s Workout, published in 1981, women were running and working out more.
And the more women ran, the more obvious it became that they had a problem men did not. Here’s what Lindahl had to say about that:
My whole generation started exercising, and I had a friend introduce me to what was then called “jogging”. When you have at-shirt over bouncing nipples, you get chafing. So the answer to that is to put a bra on. Because I did try running without any bra. And then of course I got a lot of comments from passing motorists, and certain male runners. So you wear a bra and that poses problems of different sorts, like the straps that fall off your shoulders so you’re always jigging them back up, hardware can dig into your back, and they’re hot and sweaty.
One day, Lindahl’s sister, who also ran, called to ask this obvious, painfully obvious, question: “‘What do you do about your boobs? I am so uncomfortable when I’m running! Why isn’t there a jock strap for women?’ That’s when we really laughed. We thought that was hilarious.”
But Lindahl couldn’t get the idea out of her head, and started to think about the ideal bra for female runners – a bra with straps that wouldn’t fall off the shoulders and wide enough so they wouldn’t dig in. Lindahl recruited a friend, Polly Smith, who was a seamstress and costume designer. And they worked through multiple prototypes for this bra, but could not hit upon the design that made it easier for her to run. Then one day, Lindahl’s husband came down the steps with a jock strap not where it was supposed to be – over his head and across his chest – and said playfully, “Hey ladies, here’s your new jock bra!”
The three of them had a great laugh, and Lindahl thought to continue the joke by pulling the jock strap off her husband and putting it on herself….except that when Lindahl put the jock strap over her breast, she had an epiphany. “Oh!”
The next day, Lindahl went running in a contraption that featured two jock straps sewn together, and realized she had a design that would work. Lindahl, Smith and Smith’s assistant, Hinda Schreiber decided to build a business. Schreiber’s father lent them $5000, the team built a relationship with an apparel manufacturer in South Carolina, and by 1978, they were distributing the “Jog Bra.”
Despite the initial reaction of sports retailers, who thought that the jog bra should go in a lingerie department and not in a sporting goods store, sales of the $16 bra took off. Jog Bra had annual sale increases of 25%, and created an entirely new market. More importantly, it enabled women to enjoy their sporting activities more fully and freely, whether it was taking part in a Jane Fonda workout, playing point guard on a high school basketball team, or running a marathon. The sports bra that Lindahl, Smith and Schreiber created liberated a whole generation of women athletes.
That feeling of liberation came to fruition that moment Brandi Chastain ripper off her jersey in 1999. But that vision was in Lindahl’s head in 1977.
It should be modest enough I could take off my t-shirt on really hot summer days because I had a running partner who would do that. He would take off his shirt in the middle of his run, pull it over his head and tuck it in the back of his shorts. I was so jealous because I couldn’t do that.
Today, millions of women can and do, thanks to the Jog Bra. Happy 40th!
Three-time Olympian Alex Ovechkin of Russia won’t be there.
They all play for the National Hockey League (NHL) and in April, 2017, NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman ended any sliver of hope by stating unequivocally:
…in an effort to create clarity among conflicting reports and erroneous speculation, this will confirm our intention to proceed with finalizing our 2017-18 regular season schedule without any break to accommodate the Olympic Winter Games. We now consider the matter officially closed.
The NHL, in the end, did not want to take the 17-day break required in the NHL schedule, during a period when the American football and baseball leagues have no games on the schedule. Thus, the break would take revenue out of the franchise owners’ pockets. Despite the passionate player interest in playing for their nations, as they had done since the 1998 Nagano Olympics, and despite the IOC funding the travel and insurance costs of NHL players, we will not be seeing the very best ice hockey players from the NHL in PyeongChang in February, 2018.
So who will play, and who will win? National teams will look to universities, retired NHL players and members of their own ice hockey leagues, which are not going to suspend play for the Olympics. Chief among them is the Kontinental Hockey League, or the KHL.
Formed in 2008, the KHL is made up of teams from Belarus, China, Finland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Russia and Slovakia, and is currently the second biggest professional ice hockey league after the NHL. So of all the national teams, Russia, via players in the KHL, will likely have the most NHL experience at the PyeongChang Winter Games. Based on this article from NBC Sports, here are some of the celebrated names who are in the KHL, and thus will likely play in the coming Olympic Games:
Pavel Datsyuk: two-time Stanley Cup champion, four-time Olympian, Russia’s team captain at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, 15-yer veteran of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings, and currently member of the SKA Saint Petersburg club of the KHL, age 39
Ilya Kovalchuk: four-time Olympian for Russia, last played for the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, and currently member of the SKA Saint Petersburg club of the KHL, age 34
Andrei Markov: three-time Olympian for Russia, and two-time all-star with the Montreal Canadiens, now playing for Akk Bars Kazan of the KHL, age 38
Slava Voynov: a two-time NHL All-Star from Russia, Stanley Cup Champion with the Los Angeles Kings and Sochi Olympian, now playing for the SKA Saint Petersburg in the KHL after pleading no contest to a charge of domestic violence, age 27
Max Talbot: a Canadian who played on the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburg Penguins and three other NHL teams for 12 years before moving to the Lokomotiv Yaroslavi club in the KHL, age 33
Ben Scrivens: a Canadian goalie who has over 140 games of NHL experience, and currently plays for the Salavat Yulaev Ufa of the KHL, age 31
Does an edge go to the Russian ice hockey team in PyeongChang? Does age and experience go before youth and enthusiasm? Will we re-visit those days of yesteryear when college students in the West went up against professionals in Russia?
Without the NHL players, ice hockey at the Olympic Games could prove very exciting.
Lourdes University, a small mid-western school in Sylvania, Ohio, announced in January 2017 that the “Gray Wolves” of Lourdes intends to field three teams to compete in two eSports leagues – the National Association of Collegiate eSports and the Collegiate StarLeague, and that scholarships are available for game gamers.
Lourdes’ President Mary Ann Gawalek explained that “Competitive video gaming requires students to possess excellent critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork skills – which are transferrable to their academic pursuits. In addition, these individuals must follow a strong fitness regimen and have a healthy mind and spirit.”
It’s also possible that institutions are picking up on what gamers already know – eSports is becoming big business. Estimates stated in Business Insider and Newzoo indicate that advertising and sponsorship monies dedicated to eSports ranges from USD440 million to USD700 million, with expectations of growth to anywhere from USD800 million to USD1.5 billion by 2020.
The IOC has seen this trend, and eSports aligns with the committee’s desire to continuously draw in the youth market. Recent additions like surfing, skateboarding, sports climbing and three-on-three basketball to the 2020 Games are a direct result of that strategy. And so, the organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics are studying the possibility of including eSports. However, when IOC president, Thomas Bach, was asked for his views on eSports, he provided a point of view that was a shot across the bow of the gaming industry.
“We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people,” Bach said to the SCMP, an Alibaba-owned paper. “This doesn’t match with video games, which are about violence, explosions and killing. And there we have to draw a clear line.”
Fans of eSports pointed out the hypocrisy, in their view, of the IOC saying no to eSports while awarding medals in boxing, shooting, fencing, judo and wrestling, for example.
While eSports includes games of explicit violence, like Counter-Strike or Overwatch, Bach and the IOC may be open to non-violent eSports that actually mimic sports in the more traditional sense, like soccer or basketball.
But when I first heard this story, my personal skepticism sensor didn’t tick up because of the violence. I simply couldn’t see eSports as an Olympic event because it doesn’t feel like a sport. To me sports are acts of intense physicality. I love chess, but I don’t view it in the same way as running, jumping, swimming throwing or a whole host of similar actions.
I could be biased. I had an original Atari game counsel, and an early Nintendo Fami-con way back when. But I would never consider myself a gamer. Watching people play electronic games is impressive, but beyond incredible hand-eye coordination, I haven’t yet reached the conclusion that eSports are more sport than game.
eSports enthusiasts may counter that Dressage or prone rifle shooting are more game than sport, and I’d have to agree that there is a range of physicality in such tournaments as the Olympics. But I still can’t shake the feeling that eSports are not truly sports.
In the end, my opinion doesn’t matter.
As Around The Rings notes, the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou will award medals in eSports. And if the organizers of the 2024 Paris make a more specific recommendation for non-violent games for the eSports category, the IOC may have to consider its inclusion.
Airbnb helped find accommodations for 85,000 people during the 2016 Rio Olympics. That is, according to Fortune Magazine, 17% of the approximate 500,000 local and foreign tourists who visited Rio during the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Handling spikes in tourist traffic during big-tent events like the Olympics, World Cup, or industry conventions is a challenge, even more so in cities like Tokyo that are already at high occupancy rates during normal weeks. Services like Airbnb have business model which connect travelers with individuals who commonly offer up their own apartments or houses and sometimes more personalized service, for fees often lower than the hotel chains.
As the “Official Alternative Accommodation Services Supplier” of the 2016 Rio Olympics, Airbnb can argue that it put cash directly in the hands of Brazilian citizens, and helped the government and organizing committee deal with room over-capacity during the Olympics. According to this Fortune article, 421,000 arrivals stayed at Airbnb rooms in Brazil in 2015. In 2016, the year of the 2016 Olympics, the number of arrivals doubled to more than 1 million.
When the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee decided to renege on its agreement to Zaha Hadid to build the National Stadium for the 2020 Olympics, the decision resulted in a second search for an architect, and a plan that had a year lopped off the timeline.
So while many people have faith in the Japanese construction industry to make heroic efforts to get the stadium ready in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it comes with an extra challenge – the fact that unemployment is at its lowest unemployment rate since 1995 – 2.8%. While politicians in America and Europe are looking for easy ways to produce thousands if not millions of new blue-collar jobs, Japan cannot find enough people to keep up.
The aftermath of the 2011 tsunami, aka 3.11, is still impacting Japanese society today, as construction work in the Tohoku region of Japan sucks up a large percentage of the construction worker pool. So construction companies are rushing ahead with the talent they have. In the productivity equation, that should mean longer hours for the workers.
But Japanese corporations have been warned by the government that they cannot work their people to death. Compensation claims for cases of “karoshi” (worked to death) have been steadily increasing over the years as the public realizes there are limits to the loyalty one can show one’s company or one’s leaders.
Recently, Olympic Minister Shunichi Suzuki was at the construction site of the National Stadium and said that while the work is continuing as scheduled thanks to the workflow efficiency, he warned that “working conditions must meet legal standards.”
He cited the case of a 23-year old worker who had been working on the construction site of the National Stadium, and who had committed suicide in July. According to the Mainichi, he was working well over the limit of 80 hours of overtime per month, although the records showed that he was under the limit. According to this article, the worker’s mother said that her son would routinely wake up at 4:30 am and get home at 1 am. The Japan Times stated that the suicide note of the worker stated he was “physically and mentally pushed to the limit.”
The rock of the 2020 deadline. The hard place of the worker shortage. Is there a way out of this squeeze?
The majority of Japanese have considered themselves middle class for decades, speaking to the highly meritocratic nature of Japan’s society. This is part three of Faces of Tokyo, a series of posts on how Dentsu explained the Japanese to the rest of the world, in a book called “Tokyo Olympics Official Souvenir 1964.” They did so with a collection of profiles of people, who represented a wide variety of professions.
These profiles represented the average person in Japan, who served the growing Japanese population during Japan’s greatest economic expansion – the 1960s.
Taxi Driver:Taxi drivers had a reputation for reckless driving habits – often labeled kamikaze drivers by the foreign press. But it was a living, and not such an easy one. As the profile explained, “the traffic jams of Toyo are among the world’s worst. Day and night 930,000 taxi drivers suffer from bad roads, long labor hours and other inconveniences. But if you’re lucky, maybe you get in the back of the cab of Mr Tadashi Yamamoto, who was recognized as an “Excellent” driver.
Stewardess:As Dentsu wrote, becoming an actress, stewardess or a fashion model “form the triumverate of the modern Japanese teenager’s dream.” Hisako Miki, a 24-year-old stewardess for Japan Airlines, was living that dream. Taking care of passengers on the international routes, conversing politely in English with foreigners, bringing back gifts to her family and friends from the world over, Miki was enjoying a life of relative glamour, that likely would lead to the right marriage – a pilot perhaps.
Traffic Guard: Tokyo in the 1960s was crowded, dusty and noisy. But someone had to stand in the middle of the roads so that children could cross the roads safely and get to and from school. Teruko Yokote was a 45-year old traffic guard, whose whistle, hand gestures and stern looks kept impatient drivers at bay. Traffic guards, as the profile explains, were a recent addition to the work force, an attempt to diminish the problem of car accidents involving children.
Student: Dentsu tells us that all those young boys walking around in black slacks, jackets and hats looking like military men are actually students. Student uniforms for both girls and boys, for some reason, are based on 19th century Western European naval designs. The interesting political commentary regarding the Waseda University student aside, the Japanese student is the shining example of middle class meritocracy in the country. Students take tests, and the better the scores, the better the school, the better the job, and hopefully the better the life.
The American government, yet again is trying to sell American cars in Japan. But a reputation of poor quality and poor mileage (unfounded perhaps) result in poor re-sale value. No matter what the government does, Japanese citizens do not want to buy American cars.
In fact, the people who used to buy the long, sleek American cars were the Yakuza, or at least that was the perception.
Chevrolet Impala
But when I look at the ads for cars in the weeks of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, me – a non-driver without a license – I do admit, I lust.
Above and below are the ads from October 10 and 17 editions of The Saturday Evening Post, the weeks of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. George Lucas’ film, American Graffiti, portrayed the youthful car culture of 1962 Modesto California, which showcases automobiles primarily from the 1950s and 1960s. And again, I’m no car expert, but you get a sense that in 1964 cars were getting longer and sleeker – rounded edges giving way to sharper angles.
Take a gander at the American cars of ’64, as seen through the eyes of the readers of The Saturday Evening Post. Which one gets your motor running, makes you wanna head out on the highway, lookin’ for adventure, and whatever comes your way…..
Buick Electra 225Pontiac Grand Prix
Ford Galaxie 500, Fairlane 500 Sports Coupe and Mustang Hardtop
Chinese Cultural Minister Luo Shugang Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and South Korean Culture, Sports, and Tourism Minister Do Jong-hwan
Think about it. The next three Olympic Games will be held in Asia:
2018 Winter Olympics: PyeongChang, South Korea
2020 Summer Olympics: Tokyo, Japan
2022 Winter Olympics: Beijing, China
In the history of the modern Olympiad, the majority of host cities selected for both Summer and Olympic Games have been in Europe. In the period of 1896 to 1952, only three of the first 20 Olympiads were held outside Europe, the others in the USA. From 1956 to 2016, the diversity of host cities improved, with only 50% of the Olympiads held in Europe.
But for the first time, three Olympiads in a row will be held in Asia. In the world of diplomacy, that smells like opportunity. So when the culture ministers of Japan, China and South Korea met in Kyoto for their annual meeting of minds in August, 2017, they announced that they will organize joint events to spread the depth and beauty of East Asian culture within the three countries in connection to the upcoming Olympiads in Asia.
While the specifics of the plan are to be determined by an “experts’ body” to be set up, it was agreed that five cities in each of the three countries would be identified as locales for these cultural exhibitions and exchanges. In fact, according to this Japan Today article, this is an expansion of an initiative called the Culture Cities of East Asia Program, that had started in 2014. China’s Changsha and South Korea’s Daegu are already hosting such events. Next year, Japan’s Kanazawa will be host.
Efforts to strengthen copyright protections for cultural products
Continued trilateral dialogue on preserving the intangible cultural heritage of all three countries.
Support of UNESCO’s International Research Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region, which works to protect, preserve and promote intangible culture such as traditional music, dance, performing arts and craftsmanship.
Examples of “intangible cultural heritage” in Japan would be noh, washoku (traditional Japanese food), and washi (traditional hand-made paper).
With so much geo-political tension in the region, exacerbated by the sabre-rattling of North Korea, there is a belief that diplomacy, through the promotion of the respective nations’ cultural heritage, can promote the cause of peace, according to Kyoto mayor, Daisaku Kadokawa.
The East Asian region shares a long history of exchanges. Here in Kyoto, you can see and feel the cultural elements of the region. The power of culture can help bring the region together, and lead to peace.
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