On Monday 16 April, snow drifts did not block the square at Stratford Place and the Oriental Club doors were mercifully free from sea ice. Inside the Garden Room however, the temperature soon dropped, as Hilary Shibata recounted the harrowing tale of Lt. Nobu Shirase, Japan’s first polar pioneer, to a packed house.

Hilary, with her daughter Lara Dagnell, have recently completed an eighteen-year project, translating the century old official account of Shirase’s 1910 – 12 Japanese Antarctic expedition into English. Hilary began by likening the South Pole in 1910 to the moon in 1960; a final frontier and the absolute limit of what people believed to be humanly possible.

Hilary Shibata with the crew of the Kainan Maru

In planning the venture, Nobu Shirase was motivated by dual desires; his own love of adventure and an ambition to bring Japan greater recognition on the international stage. The audience were amazed to learn that the Japanese expedition boat, the Kainan Maru, was a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared to the dreadnought icebreakers employed by Amundsen and Scott’s famous parallel ventures. At just over 200 tons and propelled by a staggeringly small 18hp engine, this minnow of Antarctic exploration actually penetrated as far South and further East around the continent than its competitors. In spite of the ship’s diminutive size her captain maneuvered her through sea ice that other vessels had found impenetrable. As well as a virgin landing on King Edward VII Land’s jagged coastline, the Japanese vessel managed to sail several kilometers further East than Scott’s expedition had charted, following narrow channels in the interlocking ice until the open water dwindled to nothing.

Apart from the indomitable figure of expedition leader Shirase, another character central to Hilary’s account was the seemingly superhuman Captain Naokichi Nomura. Most of the audience had developed a case of posthumous hero worship for the Kainan Maru’s captain by the end of the evening. Aside from his world-beating navigational skills, Nomura was a proficient draughtsman and many records of the voyage exist through his paintings and drawings, and the black and white paintings of one of the young sailors, Yukihiko Miyake. Art from the expedition ranges from the amusing, a landscape of sea ice painted to resemble Japanese mochi, to the terrifying, the ship’s prow disappearing in the vast waves of the infamous ‘Roaring Forties.’ The full awe of the expedition’s first encounters with towering ice shelves and bottomless icebergs is also revealed in these records. Hilary observed that accurate scale was often abandoned to give a more emotive impression of  how insignificant the crew felt in this new and endless southern wilderness.

There were many other highlights of the talk, from learning of the expedition’s ‘flat-pack’ hut abandoned on the shores of Sydney harbour to the spartan regime of the young Shirase and his boyhood ambitions. The Japanese expedition did not achieve the international acclaim it had sought but, in spite of being under-provisioned and badly timed, the ‘shoestring’ venture set many new records, not least of which was the longest Antarctic distance achieved in a day’s dog sledging, a feat which smashed previous records set in the frozen continent.

Hilary Shibata and her daughter have done a great service to the history of Antarctic exploration by painstakingly resurrecting Shirase and his men from obscurity, both in Japan and abroad. These explorers clearly deserve their place in the pantheon of ambitious and obsessive men and women who have ventured to the edge of the known world.

The English translation is likely to find as big an audience in Japan; the original account has been out of print for many years, and is written in an antiquated style, which makes it exceptionally hard for the modern Japanese reader to decipher.

The book, which includes rare expedition photographs of ice-locked decks and Ainu huskies as well as many of the crew’s own sketches and diary extracts, is now available to buy from the following sources:

The Museum Shop
Scott Polar Research Institute
University of Cambridge
Lensfield Road
Cambridge CB2 1ER
Telephone: 01223 336548
E-mail: shop@spri.cam.ac.uk

The Erskine Press Ltd.
The White House
Sandfield Lane
Eccles
Norwich NR16 2PB
Telephone: 01953 887277
E-mail: books@erskine-press.com

Bluntisham Books
Oak House
East Street, Bluntisham
Huntingdon
Cambridge PE28 3LS
Telephone: 01487 840449
Email: contact@bluntishambooks.co.uk

‘And now, dear reader, permit us to transport you without further ado to the wonderful realm of Antarctica, where the wild ice of mountains towers high into the sky and the rising sun now shines in splendour by both night and day, and shall never set.’ – from the prologue to The Japanese South Polar Expedition 1910 – 12: A Record of Antarctica, Bluntisham Books and the Erskine Press, 2011.

Sunday 22 April 2012                                  11.00am

(Visitors are encouraged to arrive from 10.00 am)

The Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery
238 Kariba-cho
Hodogaya-ku
Yokohama-shi
Kanagawa-ken

Phone – 045 731 4208
Transport – Train to JR Hodogaya station, then 4 kilometres by bus or taxi

On 22 April a memorial event will be held at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Yokohama for Len Harrop, the former Supervisor of Commonwealth War Graves in Japan, who died in 2011 aged 95.

Len Harrop devoted many years of his life to making the Hodogaya Cemetery into a beautiful resting-place for the war dead of all the countries of the Commonwealth and a unique showcase for trees and plants from around the world. He escorted the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Diana and many other distinguished figures on visits to the cemetery. He had many friends and associates from the worlds of horticulture and business, and contributed much to the postwar reconciliation and friendship between the peoples of Japan and the UK.

Further details and a map of the location can be found here.

Students from Orikasa Elementary School in Iwate exchanged gifts with pupils from Seafield Primary School in Elgin following a ceremony at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on 2 April.

The two schools had exchanged letters in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 and had an opportunity to meet face to face when students, Anri Minato and Taichi Kon,  visited London to present to the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew seeds native to the Tohoku region. The ceremony, which was led by Professor Stephen Hopper, Director of Kew Gardens, also included an address by the Japanese Ambassador, who joined the students in planting two young zelkova serrata trees next to the Japanese gateway.

The children at Seafield Primary School sent their messages and cards for children in Tohoku through the Japan Society’s Messages for Japan project. In all, some 6000 messages were translated by our team of volunteers and forwarded to schools throughout the affected region. The messages from Seafield were sent to Orikasa Elementary School in Yamada-cho, Iwate.  Hazel McLauchlan, teacher at Seafield Primary School, is keen for the two schools to stay in touch.

To read a Japanese article written before the children left for London, follow this link.

Click here for full details of the competition, entry rules and the great prizes on offer. £200 worth of book tokens for the winner and a chance to buy reduced airline tickets to Japan!

A selection of  entries will be published in a Haiku book and winners will each receive a copy.

Sponsored by JAL Foundation and Co-Sponsored by Japan Airlines:

Suave, debonaire, chic – all these labels apply to the man whose own label continues to proliferate throughout the world of fashion design. On 28 February, A Conversation with Paul Smith, at SJ Berwin’s London headquarters, was a resounding success, largely due to the inspiration and insights provided by the man at the centre of the show.

Throughout Smith’s talk there was plenty of advice on offer for budding entrepreneurs and would-be designers alike. Focusing on the difficulties but also, remarkable opportunities, of taking your business and brand abroad, Smith emphasised originality of design and the importance of engaging with local techniques and trends.

Paul Smith’s own engagement with Japan is a fascinating story. When he first opened a store in the heartland of 1980s Tokyo, the streets were decorated with a legion of white-shirts, a uniform choice for the working man. Very gradually, Smith has helped turn this obligatory white into a rainbow of other hues, with his company now operating over two hundred outlets across the archipelago. Not by force, but through a measured introduction of new and innovative ideas, Smith’s designs offered small and subtle alternatives, from patterned linings to odd-one-out buttons. The Japanese business model for Paul Smith is the antithesis of the garish individuality promoted by so many fashion designers today.

Perhaps a highlight of the talk was Smith’s demonstration of the different techniques used in the production of a men’s jacket. Getting to his feet on the podium, he proceeded to give a very acrobatic exhibition, highlighting the discrepancies between ‘fused’ and ‘all canvas’ jackets, a subtlety few outside the tailoring world would have remembered were it not for the entertaining fashion in which Smith manipulated his own attire.

A lively Q & A session concluded with admirers gathering round to share a few words with a man who has made an indelible impact in Japan, and left a lasting impression with his audience.

A compelling introduction to the multiple forms of visual material published in Japan for mostly European and American consumption, this carefully researched book is a much-needed addition to this rich and yet surprisingly under explored field.

Published by: Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture 2011.

£7.95 + P&P