My Second Journey to Japan

My Second Journey to Japan (2016)

My first visit to Japan was in 2002, when I travelled there under a JICA programme on gender equality in fishing-community development. I was then relatively early in my career and looked at Japan largely as a visitor and a participant in a training programme. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Japanese railway system left a deep impression on me. I had called that experience “Love in Tokyo.” Fourteen years later, in May 2016, I returned to Japan. By then I had travelled to many countries and had spent more than three decades in public administration. I was therefore seeing Japan with a different pair of eyes. I was still a tourist, but I was also an administrator, and almost everything I saw raised a question about how societies organise themselves. I looked not only at monuments and landscapes but also at trains, roads, schools, markets, waste, tourism, agriculture, food, public behaviour and the small habits through which a society reveals its values.

Our second journey began in Osaka. The city, situated around Osaka Bay and the mouth of the Yodo River, is one of Japan's great commercial centres and is popularly known as the “Kitchen of Japan.” The name seemed particularly appropriate because food is woven into the character of the city. Restaurants, food streets, markets, traditional Japanese preparations and international cuisine were everywhere. Yet my first encounter with Osaka was not about food but about transport. The workshop organisers had not arranged our airport pickup, and we had to find our own way to the hotel with luggage and very little Japanese. At the airport transport enquiry counter, we sought help, and I was impressed to see local university students volunteering to assist tourists and elderly people. English was not always sufficient for communication, but their willingness to help was genuine. After some confusion, one young student took responsibility for us and helped us negotiate the succession of trains and changes required to reach our hotel near Osaka Bay. With luggage, unfamiliar stations and a language barrier, what should have been a simple journey became an adventure of nearly two hours. I actually enjoyed it. Travel becomes memorable when everything does not go according to plan. Later, the hotel apologised for the failure of communication. The incident also reminded me of a lesson from administration: when two institutions fail to communicate, the citizen should not be made to suffer for it.

Osaka made a particularly strong impression on me because of its cleanliness. I learnt that the city had not always been as clean as it appeared to a visitor in 2016. Over several decades, public education, civic behaviour and consistent effort had gradually changed the habits of the people. The experience of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 had also provided a strong national motivation to improve public cleanliness and presentation. What interested me was that cleanliness had not been left entirely to municipal workers. It had become part of education and public behaviour. I later saw a beautiful example of this at Osaka Castle, where a primary-school teacher reminded a group of six- or seven-year-old children that they should not leave until they had picked up their own waste. The children, wearing yellow caps, quietly followed her instruction. That small scene stayed with me. We often ask why our cities are dirty and whether we need more sweepers, more vehicles and more money. Japan made me think that the deeper question is what we teach children about public space. A city cannot be kept clean if citizens continually dirty it. The cleaner's work is necessary, but the cleaner cannot be the first line of defence against careless public behaviour. The first line must be education and civic responsibility.

This observation became even more meaningful when, during my visit to Naha Airport in Okinawa, I saw a woman cleaning the men's toilet. She wore gloves and carefully cleaned each part of the urinal by hand, spending several minutes on each. There was no visible embarrassment or feeling that the work was beneath her. She was simply doing her job properly. I thought about India, where sanitation work has historically been associated with particular social groups and where Gandhi repeatedly tried to give dignity to cleanliness and manual work. We often maintain good personal hygiene but are less careful about community hygiene. We may keep our own house clean while throwing waste outside it, expecting somebody else to take care of the consequences. In many Indian cities I had seen sweeping that merely moved dust from one side of the road to another, encroachments occupying public space and public places being neglected because everyone assumed that somebody else would clean them. Japan strengthened my belief that cleanliness is ultimately a matter of behaviour and work culture. We can employ cleaners, outsource services and improve technology, but unless people learn not to dirty public spaces, the problem will continue. If I had to identify one place from which a clean India could realistically begin, I would choose the anganwadi and the primary school, because habits learnt at that age can remain for a lifetime.

One evening in Osaka, a Japanese acquaintance, Tsukuda-san, took us to the Umeda area. The transformation from the traditional image of Japan was striking. Around Hankyu Umeda and the railway station, offices, shopping centres, restaurants and commercial buildings rose one above another. Thousands of people were moving through the station, yet there was remarkably little dependence on private cars. The railway was not merely a means of transportation; it was the organising spine of the city. People travelled to work, shopped, ate and returned home through an interconnected public transport system. For an Indian administrator, the lesson was immediate. As our cities grow, we cannot expect every additional citizen to travel by private vehicle. Roads alone cannot solve congestion. Mass public transport has to become the backbone of urban development. I was less interested in whether the railway was government-owned or had subsequently been reorganised and privatised than in the fact that the system continued to serve the citizen efficiently. Ownership is important, but performance and accountability are ultimately what the citizen experiences.

That evening we had dinner at a restaurant on the thirty-second floor, overlooking the city. The menu was entirely in Japanese, so Tsukuda-san helped us order. There were vegetables, seafood salad with seaweed, clams cooked in rice wine, tuna and avocado rolled in tofu skin, tofu preparations, grilled fish and boiled green vegetables. There was also non-alcoholic beer and grape juice. I selected mostly vegetarian items, along with garlic bread and tea. The meal was beautifully presented and served in several courses. Sitting high above the illuminated city, I began thinking beyond food. Japan's traditional diet is closely connected with rice, fish, vegetables, soy products and seasonal produce, but urbanisation and globalisation are changing the eating habits of the younger generation. Convenience foods, packaged meals, toast, meat, salads and international cuisines have become increasingly common. The same transformation is visible in India. Economic development changes not only income and housing; it changes what people eat, how they travel, how they shop and, ultimately, how much waste they produce.

The discussion also turned towards Japanese agriculture. As young people move towards cities and modern occupations, farming faces a labour challenge. Mechanisation, consolidation of agricultural land and new forms of agricultural enterprise become increasingly important. I could not help thinking of India's future. We still have a very large agricultural population, but there is no guarantee that the next generation will remain on farms in the same numbers. The question will therefore not merely be how to keep young people in agriculture; it will also be how to make agriculture more productive when fewer people are willing to work on the farm. Japan offered an early glimpse of a problem that India may increasingly face.

From Osaka I travelled to Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital. The journey through the green landscape and mountains was itself a pleasure. Kyoto felt completely different from Osaka. Osaka was energetic and commercial; Kyoto was reflective and historical. At Sanjusangen-do, the long wooden hall and the extraordinary collection of Kannon figures made a deep impression on me. I was especially interested in the presence of figures associated with Buddhist traditions that had travelled across Asia and whose names and iconography have connections with ancient Indian religious traditions. As an Indian standing in a Japanese temple, I experienced a curious sense of cultural familiarity. Civilisations influence one another quietly. Ideas travel through monks, teachers, merchants, travellers and scriptures, often long after political boundaries have changed.

We then visited Kiyomizu-dera. The approach to the temple was crowded with visitors and lined with shops selling handicrafts, sweets, tea and souvenirs. Green-tea sweets could be tasted before purchase, which seemed to me a very practical Japanese way of combining hospitality and commerce. The temple, standing on a wooded hillside, offered a magnificent view of Kyoto. Its traditional wooden construction and surrounding greenery created an atmosphere in which history seemed alive rather than preserved behind glass. At Otowa-no-taki, visitors drank water from three streams while making wishes. Nearby, two stones associated with love were separated by some distance, and tradition said that a person who could walk from one to the other with closed eyes would have his or her wish for love fulfilled. I smiled at the idea. Love is truly blind, even in Kyoto. We spent several hours walking through the city, tasting sweets and looking at traditional shops before returning to Osaka. After a full day of Japanese food, I cooked khichadi. However sophisticated the country or cuisine, there are moments when the taste of home has its own authority.

Japan's religious and cultural life also fascinated me. Shinto and Buddhism coexist in ways that do not fit neatly into the Western idea of belonging exclusively to one religion. Shinto is deeply connected with nature, ritual and the sacred presence associated with natural places and objects, while Buddhism has a particularly strong role in funerary traditions. Many Japanese people participate in different religious customs at different stages of life. This coexistence reminded me of India, where religious practices often overlap in everyday life rather than remaining confined to separate compartments. I was also struck by the way tradition and technology coexist. A young Japanese person may be absorbed in a mobile phone while living within a culture that still respects centuries-old rituals. The mobile phone itself seemed almost like a modern oracle. If someone did not know an answer, the phone was consulted immediately. We once depended on elders for knowledge; the younger generation increasingly asks the internet.

A foreign visitor can make a small beginning in Japan by learning a few Japanese words: konnichiwa for hello, arigato gozaimasu for thank you, sumimasen for excuse me, migi for right and hidari for left. Even a few words make one feel less foreign. I also noticed the cultural significance attached to certain numbers. Four is traditionally avoided because its pronunciation can be associated with death, while nine has an association with suffering; seven and eight are regarded more favourably. Such beliefs reminded me that technological sophistication does not necessarily eliminate traditional beliefs. Modernity and tradition live side by side.

I also noticed the changing social life of Japan. The older generation seemed more attached to traditional customs, while the younger generation appeared increasingly individualistic and global in outlook. Young people were conscious of fashion, technology and friends, and the culture of eating and drinking after work was visible in the cities. One evening at Otemachi station I saw two intoxicated people holding each other's shoulders and struggling down the steps while railway staff helped them. For a moment the scene reminded me of an old Hindi film comedy. It was a useful reminder that even a disciplined society is made up of ordinary human beings with ordinary weaknesses. Japan had efficient systems, but it had not abolished human nature.

Another subject that occupied my mind was waste. Japan's modern lifestyle is a highly packaged lifestyle—bottles, cans, plastics, packets and containers accompany everyday consumption. At the same time, Japan has developed detailed systems for waste segregation, collection, incineration and recycling. Households separate different categories of waste, collection follows schedules, and large or special items require separate arrangements. The system is impressive, but it made me think about the economic and ecological chain behind a simple bottle. Raw materials are extracted, processed, packaged, transported, stored, displayed, purchased, carried home, discarded, collected and finally recycled or destroyed. A small consumer product therefore generates a surprisingly large chain of economic activity.

This led me to what I called the “Bottled Economy.” Consumption creates employment and economic activity, but consumption also creates waste. The world's population continues to grow, and billions of people understandably want better homes, better food, better transport and a better quality of life. Yet natural resources are finite. How long can we continue inflating the balloon of consumption? Can we improve the quality of life of billions without destroying the ecological system that sustains them? Japan, with its extraordinary capacity to organise waste, nevertheless showed me that even the best waste-management system is ultimately dealing with a problem created much earlier—in the way we produce and consume.

Tokyo, when I returned to it, was both familiar and new. The Metro initially appeared complicated, but the colour-coded lines, numbered stations, maps and clear signs made it possible for a foreigner to navigate the city. The real achievement, however, was not merely the railway technology. It was the behaviour of millions of passengers who knew where to stand, how to queue, when to change lines and how to move through crowded stations without creating unnecessary disorder. During rush hour the trains could become extraordinarily crowded, yet the system continued to function. The lesson was larger than transportation. A complex system becomes manageable when millions of participants understand their small roles and perform them consistently. Administration is often the same. Efficiency rarely comes from one spectacular innovation; it comes from thousands of small things being done correctly every day.

We also walked through Ginza, one of Tokyo's most prestigious commercial districts. The world's leading brands displayed their finest products, and the price tags often encouraged me to admire rather than purchase them. But what interested me more was the process of urban redevelopment. Older low-rise structures were gradually being replaced by modern buildings. I wondered why our Indian markets could not also be systematically renewed while preserving their character. Urban redevelopment should not mean simply constructing taller buildings. It should mean better roads, drainage, pedestrian movement, parking, fire safety, accessibility and commercial infrastructure while retaining whatever heritage deserves to survive. A market is not merely a collection of shops; it is a living urban institution.

The Tokyo railway experience also reminded me of the Shinkansen. I had travelled on Japan's famous high-speed railway during my earlier visit, and it remained a symbol of Japanese systems thinking. The impressive feature was not simply speed. It was the network of tracks, signalling, maintenance, scheduling, station management, reservation systems and trained personnel that made the speed possible. The train is only the visible part of the achievement. The larger lesson for administration is that spectacular outcomes are usually built upon invisible routines.

One small aspect of everyday Japanese life that amused me was the care given to cats. I often saw elderly women accompanied by well-fed cats, treated almost like members of the family. Some of the cats were so comfortably nourished that their leisurely walk seemed to suggest that they had no intention of missing a meal. These small observations may have little administrative significance, but they are what make travel human. We remember the temple, but we also remember the cat.

And then came the journey to Renkoji.

There was a personal reason why this visit mattered to me. During my first trip to Japan in 2002, I had wanted to visit Renkoji Temple in Tokyo and pay homage to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, one of India's great freedom fighters. The desire had remained with me for fourteen years. On this visit, after an unexpected delay at the airport, we left our luggage at the hotel reception and hurried to the Nishikasai Metro station. We travelled by the Tozai Line to Otemachi, changed to the Marunouchi Line and reached Higashi-Koenji, from where we walked through a quiet residential area.

An elderly Japanese man on a bicycle stopped when he saw us. Through our limited communication and an interpreter, we understood that he knew that Indians came to the temple to see the remains of a great man from India. He did not know much more about Netaji. His simplicity touched me. To Indians, Netaji is a towering figure of the freedom struggle; to this ordinary Japanese man, he was simply a great Indian whose remains were preserved in the temple.

We entered the temple precinct with deep respect. A statue of Netaji stood near the entrance. Nearby were plaques recording visits by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Smt Indira Gandhi and Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee. I stood before them with a sense of history. But the temple itself was closed. We tried to contact the priest and requested that it be opened, but our request was declined. We were told that the urns were normally opened for viewing only once a year. Through the glass and grilled door, however, I managed to glimpse the shrine-like interior. I could see the white urns traditionally believed to contain Netaji's ashes, along with photographs and other objects arranged respectfully.

I folded my hands and saluted from outside.

My fourteen-year-old desire had been fulfilled only halfway.

Perhaps that is why the experience has remained so vivid. Some journeys end when we reach the destination; some remain alive because something is left incomplete. I had finally reached Renkoji, but I had not been able to stand directly before the ashes. I promised myself that if another opportunity came, I would try once again.

From Renkoji we went to Asakusa and Senso-ji. The contrast was fascinating. A short while earlier I had been standing before a shrine connected in my mind with India's freedom struggle; now I was amidst one of Tokyo's most famous Buddhist landmarks, surrounded by pilgrims, tourists, shops and the colourful Nakamise street. The temple's history of destruction during the Second World War and subsequent rebuilding seemed symbolic of Japan itself. Earthquakes, fires, war and rapid modernisation have repeatedly disrupted the country, yet Japan has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to rebuild while retaining memory.

Looking back at my second visit, I realise that I had returned to Japan for one personal purpose but received many lessons in return. Osaka taught me about public transport, food, urbanisation and civic education. Kyoto taught me about heritage and the movement of ideas across civilisations. Okinawa taught me the dignity of work. Tokyo taught me about mass transportation, urban redevelopment and the discipline required to make complex systems function. Waste management made me think about the ecological cost of prosperity. Japanese food and agriculture made me think about the changing relationship between tradition, labour and modern life. The temples reminded me that technological progress need not erase cultural memory.

Yet I did not return believing that India should become Japan. Every society has its own history, temperament, strengths and weaknesses. We should learn selectively. I often express this philosophy in a phrase that comes naturally to me: “Mitha mitha gap gap, kadava kadava thoo.” Take the good; leave the rest. We can learn from Japan's cleanliness without copying its lifestyle, from its public transport without copying every aspect of its society, from its tourism management without turning our heritage into replicas, and from its work culture, punctuality, waste management, disaster preparedness and civic education while retaining our own strengths—our diversity, warmth, family bonds, entrepreneurship, flexibility and ability to live with complexity.

My first visit to Japan had been “Love in Tokyo.” The second was different. I returned fourteen years later with a more experienced eye, and Japan became a lesson in how ordinary behaviour, institutional discipline and long-term public policy can together shape a society. I had gone as a traveller, but I came back also as an observer of administration and human behaviour.

And yet, despite everything I saw—the bullet trains, temples, skyscrapers, markets, food, cleanliness and extraordinary organisation—my strongest memory of the journey remains a closed door at Renkoji.

I had gone there to complete an old desire.

I had only partly succeeded.

Perhaps that is fitting. Life itself is rarely a collection of completed journeys. Some desires remain unfinished and continue to accompany us. They become part of our inner landscape.

The first time Japan gave me Love in Tokyo.

The second time it gave me something more enduring—a deeper understanding of people, systems, development and myself.

And perhaps that is the greatest gift of travel: we go to see another country, but return seeing our own country with new eyes.