Kioto and Takao

Off-subject and off-record. It takes about 60 pages to start and feel familiar with the correspondence of Ernest Satow. Familiar like family. Images form out of personal reminiscences. Kyoto, written "kioto" is too generic to stir anything sensible, but when Satow refers to Takao, on the Western side of Tokyo, it kind of lights up a sense of "hey, me too, I've been there!", although Satow refers of his never been to Takao. Despite Yedo being part of each letterhead, unless he wrote from other places, names of locations withing Tokyo are strangely scarce and I wonder why as it seems that Satow was nothing like a couch potato. The sens of place is nurtured by spelling the name of places. Learning to be familiar with a place is also learning the names of that place, districts, communities, blocks, stations, major buildings and features, etc.

But Satow was a diplomat and for the few I have known here, there knowledge of places is limited to destination's name. They are not walkers and are whisked between the embassy and destination, then back, without much than glimpses of the city that seems an ever moving target from the car's windows. Even if speed was not on par with today's sedan, I suspect Satow was a diplomat to boot (and a scholar). These people don't walk, and when as Satow they refer to their next or last trip, it's never next door or the neighborhood close by. Of course, the letters of Stow to Aston usually deal with Foreign Office personal issues and lost of scholarly concerns, writing seemingly large quantities of papers for some Asian academic associations reviews. But the fact is that Satow's letters so far are devoid of Japanese life. Only when in Bangkok, regretting Yedo, does he cover local food and drinks to mark these as ugly. A few mango fruits only get the honor. Satow is no Nicolas Bouvier, but you can't get them all.