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The Citizen, 1997-02-05, Page 5Arthur Black THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5,1997 PAGE 5. The charm of cable cars To be where little cable cars Climb halfway to the stars... Famous song lyric There is only one town in the world where you can truly savour those lyrics. That town is San Francisco, California. I made my first visit just a couple of weeks ago. And I brought back a ton of souvenirs, none of which I mentioned when I cross the border into Canada. No need to. The souvenirs were all in my head. I'd like to declare them now. San Francisco is one of the newest old cities in the world. That's because they had to build it again from scratch just 90 years ago, after a devastating earthquake and fire reduced the town to a little more than rubble and snuffed out 3,000 citizens. But San Francisco rose again. And it stands today a remarkable city, quite unlike any other metropolis I've ever seen. For one thing it has Alcatraz, a menacing knob of rock and scrub that looms in the mist just a little over a mile from your cafe table on Fisherman's Wharf. Like Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz is just a tourist stop now, but in its day, it was one of the most famous and feared prisons on the continent. Just a mile from downtown San Francisco, but bone­ chilling water, murderous tides and threat of sharks kept the populations of the city and Rock from mingling. Fisherman's Wharf? Niagara Falls without the warterworks. Fisherman's Wharf is gaudy and flashy and glitzy and trashy. Great place to go if your idea of travelling is shopping for dopey T-shirts and munching on foot long hot dogs of dubious ancestry. My advice? Buy the T-shirts if you must, but pass on the red hots. There are so many ^International Scene By Raymond Canon Suppressed Christianity It should come as no surprise to some readers that Christians are not exactly in great quantities in Japan. The vast majority of the one hundred million inhabitants of the islands that make up the country, belong to one or another of the Oriental religions. But out of the history of Christianity comes one of the most fascinating of tales. It was Francis Xavier who introduced the religion to the Japanese at about the time of the Reformation. It was so successful, at least in the eyes of the Japanese government, that the latter felt the 400,000 or so believers might have what could be described as dual loyalties. Such a thing was not to be tolerated. As a result Christianity was banned in 1612 and to make sure that the ban was effective, Christians were killed in a wide variety of ways. Most of those who managed to escape the killings gave up on their faith. But not all! A number decided to go underground and carried on their faith by selling up a secret organization which used Buddhist rituals as a cover for Christian ones. As they went about their work they daily passed signs offering 100 silver pieces to anybody that would turn in a Christian; if a priest was turned in, the reward was five times as great. great restaurants in San Francisco it would be a criminal offense worthy of incarceration in Alcatraz to waste any appetite on a lowly red hot. And then there are the cable cars. They are tiny - about one-third the size of a city bus. They are old - antique, even. They rattle and they're drafty and they're slow and often so packed you can't find a space on the hard wooden benches that pass for scaling. But oh, they are magical. And at one time crucial for any kind of mass transportation in San Francisco. It's the streets, you see. Imagine a series of towering lodgepole pines, all of different heights, growing in a field, say 10 miles square. Imagine throwing a 20-square mile shower curtain over those poky trees. Now imagine taking a paintbrush and painting black lines from one side of the shower curtain to the other, up peak and down valley, east to west and north to south. Those black lines would be the streets of San Francisco. You might think you've seen steep hills in St. Johns, Montreal, or Vancouver. No. You go to the San Francisco to see steep hills. The hills are so steep that early horse and wagon combinations couldn't climb them safely. Then an English inventor by the name of Andrew Hallidie came along. He invented a system of steel cables that ran under the city streets. The cables were guided by a system of grooved pulleys, so that they were constantly in motion. The way a cable car works is that the car operator activates a grip handle on board the car, which runs through a slot in the street and pinches the moving cable below. The cable car is then pulled along until the gripman releases the handle. Cable car operation is a little more complicated than that, but not much. The beauty of the system is its simplicity. The Small wonder that, during the 250 years that the religion was outlawed, the probable number of Christians never rose above the 50,000 mark, considerably lower than the figure quoted above, which existed before the ban. However, when Christianity was made legal again in the late 19th century, two things happened. A majority of those who had practiced underground returned to a traditional service. However, a sizeable minority opted to go on as they had before the ban, meeting secretly in their homes and using the rituals which they had developed. It is at this point that the really fascinating part begins. Remember that all the clandestine Christians could do was pass down verbally what they had learned; there was also next to no chance of verifying the accuracy of their teaching since they were thousands of miles away from the mainstream of the Christian religion. Over 250 years some changes inevitably crept in. One story tells of Jesus debating with Buddhist priests; another relates all children of five and under. Mary also gives birth to Jesus in a stable but the innkeeper, who had originally rejected her, then takes her in and arranges for her to have a hot bath, a truly Japanese touch. The Lord's Prayer stayed close to the original but the Japanese Christians had difficulty with Latin words and, due to the cable cars arc - oh, Joy - uncompulcrizcd. They have no engines to break down or hydraulic systems to go AWOL. They are really like big fishing lures being hauled through the streets on a large wire cable fishing line. They troll for passengers. And the passengers bite with enthusiasm. Cable cars started hauling San Franciscans up and down the hills of their hometown a century and a quarter ago, and the same cars arc doing the same job today. Oh, the Progrcss-At-Any-Pricers tried to get rid of them once. Back in 1947 they claimed cable cars were obsolete and old- fashioned and the city would be belter served by gas-guzzling, fume-farting buses, but the cable-car-loving public raised such a hue and cry that the internal combustion fans backed off and haven't uttered a peep since. And a good thing too. Not only is the rackety, clackety cable car San Francisco's entree as an international city, it's a hit at home as well. Everybody loves the cable car, tourist and city denizen alike. The toughest thing about them is trying to get aboard. There's no room! You wait at the stop and hear the familiar conductor's bell, but all you can see is a slowly moving wad of humanity coming at you along the track. On a cable car you can sit inside and outside and you can stand inside and outside. But really outside - hanging on to a strap and hanging out into the traffic and hoping other drivers are paying attention. They usually are. Those drivers have had plenty of time to practice after all. Cable cars have been rolling up and down the hills of San Francisco since 1873. Looks like they won't disappear any time soon. Ten years ago each and every cable car was taken out of service, one at a time, and completely refitted. And, say the experts, "The system should work safely for the next 100 years". lack of priests, most of lhe Catholic sacraments disappeared totally. Even with the re-emergence of Christianity of 1873, there was not a rush to return to a pure form. Many Japanese Christians felt comfortable with lhe practices they had known since childhood and refused to alier them in any way. A Christian church built in 1914, 41 years after the removal of the ban, shows this reluctance to a remarkable degree. The altar has a rice bowl and water; an image of Buddha is draped with pears. Other churches have crosses of Jesus or Mary but these are portrayed as simply one of lhe Shinto Gods to whom many Japanese pray. Shinto is, by the way, an ancient religion of Japan; it was originally a form of nature worship but was influenced over the centuries by both Confusianism and Buddhism. In some circles in Japan it is believed that lhe Japanese emperor is descended from one of the Shinto Gods. Overall there is a reverence of ancestors and great importance attached to the worship of departed heroes. In short, the religion of the kakure Kirishitan, or hidden Christians, even as practiced today, appears to be Shinto in form with a thin veneer of Christian symbolism. Due to a number of factors, this form or worship seems to be dying out since there is little to distinguish it from other religions in Continued on page 25 Words, music, action / Gravity may be pulling me down, and my kids and I don’t always see eye to eye, but when it comes to music at least, lhe gemation gap in our family is a little more on lhe same level. I have always been able to find the silver lining in a lol of musical forms, particularly if I can sense a modicum of talent went into it. I enjoy much of lhe alternative music (loosely defined as that which doesn't follow the popular mainstream) that my kids lend to favour. But while a sense of poetry, of intellectual reflection or a catchy beat can entertain me, I do get a yen now and then for yesterday's songs of yearning. When this happens, I figure equal lime is only fair, so any kid in the house is going to have their teenage angst exposed to melodic invasion without aggression, to messages of simplistic, but passionate feelings for a time. It was just the other evening after hearing the infamous Beck crooning to a group of young music enthusiasts (?) at a concert, Oh, oh from head to toe, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me, I had a desire to engage in this type of sensitizing. Oh it's too bad, and it's too sad Cause I'm in love with you First you love me, then you snub me But what can I do, I'm still in love with you? See the angst and the pain are all there, but it's so much prettier, isn't it? And I hope that exposure to the differences will, through osmosis, bring my children to appreciate the power in all its forms. Music when in harmony with poetry is energy and emotion. Its ability to appeal to our primitive nature has also made it a format on which to carry a message, one, which regardless of its subtleties, insinuates its intent into your psyche. It can stimulate, lift or restore. Music has the power to empower. It provokes and questions. And young people listen, sometimes to the concern of the older generation, who, for decades now haven't always been sure their kids should be hearing what they're hearing. Even though I enjoy a good deal of today's music, sometimes I do just have to shake my head at the cacaphony on stage and lhe flinging of bodies below, as they do what they refer to as moshing. (This was slam­ dancing in lhe 80s. Prior to that lhe closest thing would be rumbling in lhe 50s) But while cynicism, ambivalence and aggression seem to have always made up a part of the young music scene, there is an aspect that is often overlooked. That teens are moved by what they hear is obvious in their reactions, silly as they may be, to those of us with less energy. That they are often hearing these bands at concerts held for a cause is something that gets lost in the mayhem. Beck was appearing with a number of other artists, in part, to bring attention to and raise money for Amnesty International's efforts. Over the years, musicians have promoted world peace, fought famine and added their voices to those in opposition of issues like apartheid. The melody and the muse have lhe ability to impact the listener. But, the performers, while their voices may inspire feelings, can by their presence, show all generations that they care.