“We are surrounded by the sea and therefore vulnerable at every point.” [1]
In 1957, the Japanese film company Shochiku released Yorokobi mo Kanashimi mo Ikutoshitsuki or Times of Joy and Sorrow. Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita, and starring Keiji Sada and Hideko Takamine, the film is remarkable in that it features no fewer than ten Japanese lighthouses. These edifices form unusual backdrops to an otherwise unexceptional romantic drama that spans a 25 year period beginning in 1931 with Japan’s occupation of Manchuria. The film also commemorates the work of lighthouse keepers, including those killed when their workplaces were targeted by US air and naval forces during WWII. Kannonzaki Lighthouse is prominently featured, and mention is made of it being the first modern lighthouse built in the Meiji era. However, the fascinating broader history of Japanese lighthouses is largely overlooked in this film.
Like the British Isles, Japan comprises over 6,000 islands and a long and treacherous coastline upon which a multitude of shipwrecks have occurred over centuries of seafaring. The Japanese islands are burdened by seasonal typhoons, some of which have wreaked havoc on coastal communities and those cities situated near the sea. Tsunamis no doubt have added to the casualty lists of ships and sailors, a fact hinted at in Hiroshoge’s Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Unsurprisingly considering these geological and meteorological phenomena, lighthouses have been deployed in Japan since the earliest times. However, owing to the “Sakoku”, the country’s long period of isolation from 1639 until 1853, these ‘todai’ were primitive mechanisms that were ineffectual in protecting local shipping. In addition, no modern surveying of Japanese coastal waters had been undertaken during this period, shipbuilding technology had stalled, and vessel size had been restricted by military edict to just 75ft in length. Although there is no record of how many vessels were lost at sea during the Sakoku, the figure is likely to have been enormous.
The Sakoku came to an end after the arrival of US Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his intimidating squadron of ‘Black Ships’ in Tokyo Bay in 1853. A repeat of this US naval posturing the following year culminated in the Convention of Kanagawa, at which the Shogun-led “Bakufu” reluctantly consented to the opening of two treaty ports, Shimoda and Hakodate, to American trade. Other Western countries soon followed suit in demanding their own favourable trading concessions. A further act of American gunboat diplomacy in 1858 led to the Harris Treaty and the opening of five more ports, including the development of Yokohama, then a mere fishing village, located only 30km from the capital Edo.
Perry’s warships measured up to three times the length of feudal Japan’s largest ‘wasen’. (The paddle-wheel steam frigate USS Mississippi displaced 3,000 tons.) Likewise, US commerce ships were much larger than the comparable ‘bezaizen’, which the Japanese used for coastal trading. The prospect of American merchant vessels and those of other Western nations having to negotiate unfamiliar waters, possibly at night, without modern navigational aids was daunting. Unsurprisingly, the matter of lighthouses was soon added to the list of foreign treaty demands.
However, ten years would elapse before any of these buildings would be realised. During the 1860s, the southern feudal fiefdoms of Satsuma and Choshu, responding to an imperial edict to expel all foreigners from the country, would clash with foreign gunboats at Kagoshima and Shimonoseki. The same forces would subsequently battle those loyal to the Tokagawa Shogunate, resulting in the latter authority’s collapse and the restoration of direct rule through the young Emperor Meiji. Finally, imperial land and naval forces would defeat the short-lived Ezo Republic, made up of samurai loyal to the former Shogun, at Hakodate, uniting Hokkaido with the rest of Japan under one modernising banner, the ‘Hinomaru’.
Construction of the first batch of modern lighthouses was in accordance with the demands of the ‘Tariff Convention’ signed between Japan, France, Great Britain, Netherlands and the United States of America on June 25, 1866. Article 11 specified that Japan would ‘provide all the Ports open to Foreign trade with such lights, buoys and beacons as may be necessary to render secure the navigation of the approaches to the said Ports.’
Of the eight lighthouses initially authorised, the majority were to be situated in the Kanto region surrounding Tokyo Bay: at Shinagawa, a shore-point just outside the capital; Kannonzaki, on the Miura Peninsula overlooking the Uraga Channel; Jogashima, at the southern tip of the Miura Peninsula; Tsurugizaki on the same Peninsula’s southeastern tip; and at Nojimazaki, on the southern tip of the Bozo Peninsula. The remaining three were destined to be built further west at Mikomotoshima, an island that lies south of the Izu Peninsula about 11km from the treaty port of Shimoda; at Shionomizaki, the southernmost point on Honshu in the region of Kansai; and at Iojimazaki, an island that guards the entrance to Nagasaki on Kyushu. As the term ‘zaki’, meaning ‘cape’, suggests, most of these lighthouses were to be constructed on headlands. (‘Shima’ or ‘Jima’ refers to ‘island’.)
With the pacification of the country largely accomplished, work could finally begin. But who was to build these lights? The Japanese themselves lacked the necessary technical expertise to build modern lighthouses. Consequently, the Meiji government turned to one of its ‘hired foreign experts’. These ‘O-yatoi gaikokujinhad’ first been recruited, somewhat reluctantly, under the Shogunate administration. Among the first crop was the French engineer Léonce Verny (1837-1908. A graduate of the École Polytechnique and Cherbourg’s Institute of Applied Maritime Science, Verny had arrived in Japan in 1865 to begin work on the country’s first naval arsenal at Yokosuka. In addition to possessing the necessary technical skills for constructing modern lighthouses, the Frenchman was also based close enough to be able to survey the locations and oversee the construction of those that were to overlook Tokyo Bay.
Verny’s first completed lighthouse, at Kannonzaki, was first lit on 11th February 1869. It was a four-storey construction with the light-room situated centrally above a square western-style building. Nojimazaki, a 30m octagonal tower, was lit in December of the same year. The lights at Kanagawa and Jogashima followed in March and September of 1870 respectively.
All four of Verny’s lighthouses were made of brick. This proved to be an unfortunate choice of building material for all excepting the diminutive edifice at Kanagawa were reduced to rubble by the Great Kanto Earthquake in September 1923, and had to be rebuilt using reinforced concrete. These rebuilt lighthouses are still extant. However, the original Kanagawa structure has since been relocated to a park in Nagoya. Kannonzaki is the first to be featured in Kinoshita’s film. It is where Sado’s character ‘Arisawa’ introduces his timid young bride ‘Kiyoko’ (Takamine) to his fellow lighthouse-keepers and their families.
[1] A remark reportedly made by the Tokugawa Shogun to the Mikado (Emperor) in 1853, shortly after the arrival of Commodore Perry’s ‘Black Ships’.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 