Word: okichi
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...like North Korea" today. Now there's a sobering thought. It helped to explain the Perry and Harris-mania that grips the town. By that I mean the "black ship" manholes in the streets, the Perry Aqua Dome at the Shimoda Aquarium and the dramatization of the Harris and Okichi story in tourist literature. The place even celebrates a black ship festival every May. Town officials are busily planning for 2004 celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Perry's landing in Shimoda Bay and there is also an annual ceremony at Ryosenji temple recreating the May 25, 1854 treaty opening...
...Okichi's specter lurks throughout Shimoda, and you can sense her troubled soul best at Anchokuro, the restaurant she ran after Harris left for America, and at Hofukuji, where her bones lay in repose. The consul gone and reconciliation with her former lover Tsurumatsu failed, Okichi drowned herself like an Asian Ophelia in a river near Shimoda in 1892. "She persevered for Japan," said bus driver Kaoru Okabe. "But it must have been tough...
...Those wishing to see Okichi's grave, Gyokusenji or any other Shimoda site will not be alone. Groups of middle-aged tourists pack Shimoda, belying the town's, and Japan's, current economic slump. You won't see any orange-haired punk city kids, though; little Shimoda feels about as removed from the Babylonian crush of Tokyo as one can get. And yet, perhaps because of its special history, Shimoda is no Japanese hick town. There are English and Portuguese buttons on the atms. No one yelled "gaijin!" at me as I walked down the streets. There are funky bars...
...Life and Times of Okichi (ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/et/shimoda/s4.htm)...
...JAPAN'S OPHELIA If you are curious about the legend of Okichi, this site, put out by Japan-based academic Kathleen Kitao, discerns fact from fiction and gives a web view of all the spots dedicated to Shimoda's most famous daughter, including where to find her grave...