Gavan Reilly: Some lessons for living on Micheál’s jaunt to Japan

In a way, Micheál Martin owes his political career to Japan. His first bid to become a TD, in the election of 1987, fell short – but the snap election called by Charlie Haughey in 1989 gave young Micheál, then 28, an unexpected early opportunity to make it into the Dáil.

Opinions differ as to why Haughey called that election.

Certainly the opinion polls had suggested a rise in Fianna Fáil support, which held open the prospect of the party being able to drop the Progressive Democrats as a coalition partner.

There was also the prompt of defeat on a non-binding Dáil motion about haemophiliacs and infected blood products.

There might also have been the chance to hold the begging bowl out to donors.

But there is one other theory about why the then-Taoiseach might have been so emboldened as to collapse his own government, and to allow the country illustrate its gratitude: Haughey had just come home from Japan, where he had been feted like a king, and might have come home with an element of Emperor Complex.

Haughey and Martin have very different personalities: Martin is such a health nut that he considers grapes to be mere ‘balls of sugar’; Haughey had such an ego that he used to insist that the grapes in his office be delivered pre-polished. But having been with Martin on his own trip to Japan last week, it’s easy to see how a vulnerable ego could fall for it.

It’s partly because the Japanese culture is one of kindness, unfailing politeness, and utter deference.

Last Friday on a visit to Hiroshima, the Taoiseach crossed paths with a group of about a hundred schoolchildren on a school tour – and was mobbed as if Taylor Swift had just walked into their company.

Such was their enthusiasm, one could be forgiven for thinking the group had travelled halfway across the world deliberately to meet him, rather than it being the other way around and a happenstance encounter.

A curious thing about the Japanese is how they bend over backwards to make visitors feel at home, while themselves living in relative modesty.

It’s not that Japan is a poor country – far from it; it’s the third biggest economy in the world – but rather than there are few signs of outward wealth. You might pass the occasional luxury car, but there are no luxury mansions.

Two-thirds of the territory is uninhabitable, so the rest is used efficiently. The cities are high-rise; suburbia is two-storey houses and low-rise apartments.

Gardens are simply not the done thing.

From outside, therefore, the buildings are nothing much to look at. The risk of earthquakes means nobody over-invests in making their homes look too outwardly palatial.

Inside, no doubt, people make their homes more homely. But from the outside, everything is plain – not quite austere, merely functional.

Why would you ever bother with the faff of a curved wall? Just stick up your rectangular house and get on with your life.

Yet in this densely populated country with such scarcity of liveable land, as you take the ‘shinkanzen’ bullet trains from one city to another at 280 kph, you still notice the undeveloped land banks on either side of each river.

No matter how desperately this growing country might need more living space, they still won’t build on a flood plain.

The acute shortage of land doesn’t need to be met at any price.

It’s a microcosm of how Japan is a country of contradictions.

The cities can be a sensory blitzkrieg; the ‘scramble crossing’ at Shibuya in Tokyo is a mass of chaos, of noise, of lights, of bodies… and yet those same cities will have their own oases of serenity.

The Meiji Shrine in the centre of Tokyo, a city which just seems to go on and on and on, might as well be on the side of an abandoned mountain.

On a similar note, Hiroshima is simultaneously grim and uplifting at the same time.

There’s no getting away from the reason people visit the city, or from its ignominious place in world history as the first place an atomic bomb was ever used in war.

Micheál Martin spent some time – in front of cameras – with an 88-year-old who survived the blast in August 1945, and who has learned English in her later years to gain a wider audience for her firsthand testimony of horror.

Yet, away from the peace park that houses a cenotaph with the names of all 140,000 people who died in that bombing, the city is thriving, busy and bustling, visibly no different to any of Japan’s other major metropolises.

Its dark past is a carefully curated memory which is never forgotten, but doesn’t linger over the city or its 1.2 million current inhabitants.

It’s a mix to aspire to for anywhere with a background of horror: respect your past, but don’t be shackled by it.

There’s good reason to bear that in mind as a memory, because the trip also illustrated just how interconnected we all are.

The 88-year-old bombing survivor has an Irish son-in-law named Conor.

As the Taoiseach left the meeting, he crossed paths with another group of visitors – a family of three tourists, from Meath, with the daughter wearing her Kepak jersey.

“Up the Royals,” I shouted, in too much of a rush for the train to be able to talk any further.

“We’re going to win the All-Ireland!” came the enthusiastic reply.

It really is a small world.

- Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent with Virgin Media News and Political Columnist with the Meath Chronicle. Column appears first in Tuesday's paper!