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Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives.
In the previous article, I described a trip to the northeastern coast of Hokkaido to inquire about the mysterious “Okhotskers,” an oceanic fishing tribe.This time, we will travel to Ireland. The trip started in London. It seems that this was because he wanted to enter Ireland after feeling the inseparable relationship with England. In London, he recalls the melancholy of Soseki Natsume, who was studying in London at government expense, and takes a walk around Charing Cross Station while thinking about Sherlock Holmes. Later, he travels to Liverpool, where about 40% of the population was Irish at the time, and ponders the Irish in the Beatles, visits the Anglican Church and the Catholic Cathedral, and describes the conflict between Britain and Ireland that has lasted for over 800 years.
History of Great Britain. The Celtic tribes invaded Great Britain, the main island of the United Kingdom, from around the 9th century B.C. to the 5th century B.C., as described in “The Roads of the Southern Barbarians (2): Spain and Portugal” which led to the Iron Age and the establishment of Celtic tribal states throughout Britain.
Later, in 55 B.C., Julius Caesar of Rome invaded Great Britain, and in 43 A.D., the Roman Emperor Claudius conquered most of the island of Britain, and Roman Britannia became a world where the Romans reigned as the ruling class over the Celtic population. Even today, there are many Roman ruins in Britain.
Furthermore, when the Western Roman Empire was disrupted by the invasion of Germanic groups in the 5th century, the Romans abandoned Britannia, and with the Roman legions gone, Britannia became subject to Germanic invasion. The Germanic Anglo-Saxon tribes invaded Britannia and conquered the southeastern part of Great Britain, resulting in the establishment of a group of small states in the region that would come to be known as the Seven Kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon. The Seven Kingdoms are said to be the model for the popular drama “Game of Throne,” which aired from 2011 to 2019.
The region of England was gradually formed out of the small states in the southern part of the island of Britain. Incidentally, the name England is derived from the Angles among the Anglo-Saxon tribes. On the other hand, the Germanic tribes did not penetrate into Wales, and the Celtic inhabitants left behind by the Romans entered the medieval world, while Scotland and Ireland, which will be discussed next, were not conquered by the Germanic tribes and continued to be Celtic tribal states. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were divided into nine kingdoms.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were politically united at the beginning of the 9th century by Alfred the Great of Wessex, one of these kingdoms, and at about the same time the invasion of the Danes became active. England was incorporated into the North Sea Empire and ruled until 1042. This story is also the setting for the popular manga “Vinland Saga.
The Anglo-Saxon kings were temporarily restored after this, but were conquered by the French Duke Guillaume of Normandy (who became William I) in 1066, and the ruling class of England was replaced by the Norman French nobility. As a result, England was strongly influenced by French culture. The historical history of the Normans and their successors, the Plantagenets, made the relationship between France and England very complicated, which led to the loss of England’s continental possessions in the course of the Hundred Years’ War and its reorganization into a kingdom essentially complete on the island of Britain. Hawkwood’s cartoon set during the Hundred Years’ War tells the history of the period.
The Reformation movement that began on the continent in the early 15th century spread to the island of Britain and had a great impact, and in addition to the ethnic, historical, and cultural differences that had existed to date, religious differences were also added to form the characteristics of the various regions that later formed the “United Kingdom.
The Reformation in England began with the divorce of Henry VIII, a completely non-religious cause, but the Church of England that was established as a result of the divorce helped to strengthen the royal authority in England. Although Catholic revivals were later attempted, the dominance of the Church of England became definite during the reign of Elizabeth I. The life of Henry VIII is recounted in Shakespeare’s history plays.
The country experienced two major civil revolutions, the Puritan Revolution and the Honorary Revolution, and around 1700 (the era of the 5th shogun Tsunayoshi in Japan, when ukiyo-e prints were popular and the Genroku culture matured, as described in “Ukiyo-e and New Prints: The Onmyoshin of the Art World“), a parliament was established and the country became a full-fledged civic society. As described in “Kaido yuku Nanban no Michi (2): Spain and Portugal” the period of exploration began, replacing the downfall of Spain and Portugal, and many colonists were sent to India and the North American continent. According to Ryotaro Shiba, this is because Spain and Portugal, which were Catholic-based nations, were vertically integrated and their social development was not sustainable and reached a plateau, whereas Protestant countries such as England and the Netherlands emphasized the independence of their citizens, which led to greater social development. It is said that in Protestant countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands
As described in “On the Road to Karatsu, Hirado, Sasebo, and Nagasaki” the Spanish-Portuguese replacement also occurred in Japan, and the Nambans (Spanish-Portuguese) who had initially introduced guns and traded with Japan gradually disappeared. The redheads (Dutch and English with light-colored hair) began trading with Japan during the period of national seclusion.
Even at the opening of the country to the outside world at the end of the Edo period, the British had a great influence. Take, for example, the famous Namamugi Incident in late Bakumatsu history. The incident took place in Namamugi, Yokohama (where Kirin’s beer factory is now located), where the Satsuma clan in Kyushu, as mentioned in “Kaido yuku – Hissatsu no michi“, fought and killed an Englishman and fought a war with the British demanding compensation. As a result, the clans that played an active role in the Meiji Restoration, such as Satsuma and Choshu, changed their isolationist thinking and accelerated the Meiji Restoration.
The United Kingdom became a country with which Japan had a close relationship, as evidenced by the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902. The British system, with its long-established civil society, was seen as a role model for the transition from the medieval shogunate and domain system to the modern society of the Meiji era, and many foreign students, including Kikunae Ikeda and Soseki Natsume, as mentioned in “Kaido yuku Hongo kaiwa” were sent to the country at government expense.
we visited the footsteps of Natsume Soseki, including the Roseki Memorial Museum in London and the ruins of Soseki’s lodgings.
They also stayed at the Waldorf Hilton London, a Grade II listed English Heritage hotel built in 1908, which they affectionately refer to as the “Whale Village” hotel.
He then left London and headed to Liverpool to go to Matthew Street, where there were clubs where the Beatles played live and pubs where they hung out.
We will also visit Liverpool’s most famous tourist attraction, the Albert Dock in the city center.
The trip ends with a visit to the Metropolitan Cathedral, a Catholic cathedral completed in 1967 after five years of construction, and the Anglican Cathedral, which took 74 years from the start of construction and was completed in 1978.
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In the next article, we will continue our journey to visit Ireland.
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