JOINING THE K4NTO-MON

Three and a half years after arriving in Kobe I was transferred to Tokyo. The branch was smaller than Kobe but more prestigious, since it was the headquarters for Japan.

I accepted my transfer with mixed feelings. I had learned to love the Kansai — the area of Kobe and Osaka and Kyoto — and in almost equal measure to grow suspicious of everything that had to do with Tokyo and the Kan to region. Kansai people were proud of their history, which goes back to the very beginnings of Japan as a nation in the fifth and sixth century. By comparison Tokyo, then called Edo, was little more than a village when the first Tokugawa Shogun decided to make it his capital and build a castle there in 1603, after beating off his Kansai rivals.

And then there were the differences in lifestyle, morals and culture. Kansai people prided themselves on their frugality, soberness of dress, support for traditional theatre and music, and — because we are what we eat — exquisite taste in food, Japanese food of course. They also pointed to their greater homogeneity, contrasting it with the Tokyo hotchpotch of people ‘from the sticks’ drawn to the capital for love of money, power or fame. They took a dim view of what they regarded as the profligacy of Kantomon — the Kanto folks -, with their flashy dressing habits, spendthrift ways, affected speech and blind adoration of everything foreign. Besides, earthquakes, large and small constantly rocked Tokyo. Clearly the Kansai was not only a better place, but a safer one as well. Most important of all, the Kansai people had roots as deep as their history, and the spirit to go with it.

The Kobe branch staff commiserated with me over my transfer. I was told it would be more difficult to make fnends in Tokyo because the people there were ‘cold’. Their concern was as heart-warming as their expressed hope that I would soon return to the Kansai. I left with a heavy heart.

In Tokyo I was invited to join the mess of two Dutch shipping company managers, bachelors like me, a few years my senior. The mess was a rather gloomy old English style house in the leafy suburb of Omori with modest gardens front and back.