A Long Path of Immigration from Japan to Paris

 

Alexi runs a small Japanese restaurant on a narrow street with ten Asian restaurants just off Boulevard Saint-Michel near Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.  Although Alexi is ethnically Japanese, he does not speak Japanese. He is a native speaker of Russian who also speaks French and English.  

He came to Paris from Moscow twenty years ago with his mother when he was fifteen years old. He finished high school in Paris and went to university. He studied finance and worked in banking for a decade. Then several years ago, he decided to leave banking and open a restaurant. I have had Ramen, Donburi, and Curry at his restaurant. He is a really good cook. 

Soviet Flag, 1917-1923

In 1920, Alexi's great-grandparents left Japan and settled in Vladivostok. In the 1930s, they were sent from Vladivostok to Kazakstan. They were, in effect, pioneers. They had to build their own home and the town they lived in. Alexi's grandparents were born in Kazakstan. In the 1960s they moved to Moscow where Alexi's parents met and married.  

Soviet Flag 1930s to 1991

Alexi is about the same age as my daughters and his parents are both in their early 60s.  His mother still lives in Paris. His father still lives in Moscow. 

Russian Federation Flag

Alexi is worried for his father and about the war, but his father has no plans to leave.  

The path people take in life through different cultures at different times fascinates me.  Four generations of Alexi's family emigrated to very different cultures and set up a new life. Their path from Japan though Russia, Kazakstan, back to Russia and now to France is a saga of overcoming difficulties. 

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[Although I have lived in three countries outside of the US, it was with the Army on active duty in West Germany, Iraq and Kuwait. Even within the US, I have lived in seven states, but only in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania as a civilian. I lived in Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kentucky on active duty with the military.]  

 

Passage du Grand Cerf: "Passages" in Paris are Small Malls with Small Stores Between Large Buildings

The long hallway and skylight in Passage du Grand Cerf.

In Paris, especially in the area of north of the Louvre toward Montmarte, are more than a dozen shopping areas called Passages. They are actually passages between buildings, sometimes straight, sometimes turning corners.  Some of Passages have high ceilings and skylights, some have ceilings no more than the height of a storefront.  

Small restaurants and food stands are in most of the Passages.  The typical business is a boutique selling clothes or shoes or jewelry or crafts.  

Here are the businesses I saw in Passage du Grand Cerf.

 

"Jewish Politics" by Hannah Arendt. Published in 1942. So Relevant Now.

 

Hannah Arendt

In 1942 Hannah Arendt, philosopher, historian and refugee of Nazi Germany wrote the following essay.  As I read it, I felt myself sitting up straighter to pay better attention to what Arendt was saying about the Jewish people in the midst of World War II and why we need democracy and now always.  

I love Hannah Arendt's writing and thought.  This essay is among the best 900 words in all the millions of words she wrote.

Jewish Politics 

If the horrible catastrophe of European Jewry and the difficult, sad struggle to form a Jewish army and to gain recognition of the Jews as an ally of the United Nations result in our finally realizing that despite our millionaires and philanthropists we Jews are among the oppressed peoples of this earth, and that our Rothschilds have a better chance of becoming beggars or peddlers than our beggars and peddlers of becoming Rothschilds-if in other words this war politicizes us and pounds it into our heads that the struggle for freedom is tantamount to the struggle for existence, then and only then will our grandchildren be able to remember and mourn the dead and to live without shame. 

Those peoples who do not make history, but simply suffer it, tend to see themselves as the victims of meaningless, overpowering, inhuman events, tend to lay their hands in their laps and wait for miracles that never happen. If in the course of this war we do not awaken from this apathy, there will be no place for us in tomorrow's world-perhaps our enemies will not have succeeded in annihilating us totally, but those of us who are left will be little more than living corpses. 

The only political ideals an oppressed people can have are freedom and justice. Democracy can be their only form of organization. One of the most serious impediments to Jewish-and not just Jewish-politics is the fact that in our current intellectual world those ideals and that form of organization have been corrupted and dragged through the mud by an uprooted bohemianism. For almost fifty years now one generation after the next has declared their disdain for "abstract" ideas and their admiration for bestiality. Freedom and justice are considered concepts for feeble old men. The French Revolution's egalite, liberte, and fraternite are taken as signs of impotence, of an anemic will to power, and at best a pretext for better deals to be made. The so-called young generation--which ranges in age from twenty to seventy--demands cunning of their politicians but not character, opportunism but not principles, propaganda but not policies. It is a generation that has fallen into the habit of constructing its weltanschauung out of a vague trust in great men, out of blood and soil and horoscopes. The politics that grows out of this mentality is called realpolitik. Its central figures are the businessman who winds up being a politician convinced that politics is just a huge, oversized business deal with huge, oversized wins and losses, and the gangster who declares, "When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver." Once "abstract" ideas had been replaced by "concrete" stock market speculation, it was easy for abstract justice to give way before concrete revolvers. What looked like a rebellion against all moral values has led to a kind of collective idiocy: anyone who can see farther than the tip of his own nose is said to live in a fantasy world. What looked like a rebellion against intellect has led to organized turpitude-might makes right. 

Disdain for democracy and the worship of dictatorial forms of organization are especially fatal for small, oppressed peoples, who depend on the firm commitment of each individual. They least of all can forgo a democratic frame of mind, by which, as Clemenceau put it during the Dreyfus affair, the affairs of each individual are the affairs of all. In a dictatorship the individual has no political meaning-no matter how many of them wear uniforms because the individual no longer has any sense of responsibility for anything beyond staying alive himself. Once the order from "higher up" is given, any number of SA men marching in ranks can be shot on the spot without bringing the parade to a halt. Each man is ready and willing to step over the corpse of his neighbor and march on. And once the businessman's opportunism has suffocated peoples and nations by atomizing them in a politics of cliques and clans, despotism takes this atomization to its logical conclusion, until finally sons denounce their own fathers, neighbors and friends denounce one another, for the sake of their careers or personal security. 

Almost across the board, Jewish politics, to the extent that it exists at all, is run by people who have likewise grown up-without ever growing powerful!-worshipping power and opportunistic success. Their abhorrence for principles, their fear of betting on the wrong horse, their admiration of those who hold power on this earth, and their reluctance to mobilize the energies of their own people have cost us the deployment of a Jewish army. In the midst of the monstrous turmoil the world now finds itself in, those who are unwilling to take any risks are certain to lose everything. The time for compromises is past. Those who think they can live on their knees will learn that it is better to live and die standing up. We do not need any opportunistic practitioners of realpolitik, but we certainly do not need any "Fuhrers" either. The trouble is, first, that a great many organizations and bureaucracies are working to prevent radical democrats from speaking to our people; and second, that our people-those who are not yet behind barbed wire-are so demoralized by having been ruled by philanthropists for 150 years that they find it very difficult to begin to relearn the language of freedom and justice.

From the book The Jewish Writings, pp 241-3

The Arts Tunnel--Jardin Tuilleries, Paris

 

Several years ago, Paris closed a tunnel for cars that is more than a mile long on the north bank of the Seine. The tunnel runs between Pont Neuf and Jardin Tuilleries. The city government opened the tunnel 21 July of this year to bicycle and pedestrian traffic. 

Before the tunnel opened artists were given forty-meter long stretches of concrete wall four meters high to paint--whatever. Street artists were also given forty-meter wall sections for their art. 

The result is hundreds of strange and beautiful and vivid works of art lining walls. My late afternoon walk through the tunnel was noisier than I expected because nearly all of the bicycles going though the tunnel were commuters on electric bikes. I counted five pedal bikes in a half hour.  Bikes were also far more numerous than pedestrians. 

Jardin Tuilerries  entrance at the west end of the tunnel

The ends of the tunnel are beautiful parts of the Paris landscape. Musee D'Orsay is on the south side of river opposite the Jardin Tuilleries entrance. Ile de Cite and Pont Neuf are at the east end of the tunnel. 

Pont Neuf at the east end of the tunnel

 

Visiting the Castles of Saint Louis (a tarnished saint) East and West of Paris

 

The tower of Chateau de Vincennes

Today I was in small cities with large castles east and west of Paris.  Ten kilometers to the east is Chateau de Vincennes. Twenty kilometers to the west of the City of Light  is Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.  

 

Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye 

Each of these castles was built or expanded during the life time of King Louis IX in the 13th Century.   

Saint Louis, King Louis IX, of France

Le Chateau de Vincennes covers several acres of walled grounds. A beautiful church is at the center of of the rectangular walled area opposite the main tower. 

The castle grounds include the palace of Anne of Austria who was Queen of France from 1615 to 1643.  She was married to Louis XIII. Her name is known to people who know little of France and its rulers because she is part of story of The Three Musketeers (Les Trois Mousquetaires) by Alexandre Dumas.  

Another resident of the castle, although not happy to be there, was the Maquis de Sade. He was imprisoned in the tower for seven years from 1777 to 1784. He would spend the rest of his life in various prisons and insane asylums until his death in 1814.

After visiting Vincennes, I went across Paris to the west end of the RER A train line to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.  I wanted to walk to the far end of the royal garden next to the castle where there is a circle of trees. 

Two views of the circle of trees

A corner of the royal garden

Two views of the 2-km walkway above the Seine

The view back to Paris from the wall on the east side of the royal garden

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Back to Saint Louis. He is the only French monarch to be made a saint. Louis IX ruled from 1226-70. Along with the Christian character of his reign, he robbed and persecuted Jews after he decided usury was wrong--the Jews suffering for a sin he permitted, then changed his mind about. He set up a show trial called the Disputation of Paris in which four rabbis defended the Talmud. They lost. Louis IX caused 24 wagonloads of Jewish holy books and other writings to be burned in Paris in 1242. This was long before printing, so all of the books were hand copied.  

Louis IX continued his persecution of Jews throughout his life. He is certainly not unique, or even unusual, as a king persecuting Jews, but sainthood makes him a persecutor and burner of holy books with a halo.

And speaking of sainthood, the beatification of Pope Pius XII is still on hold after the Vatican opened his archives in 2020. The complicity of Pius XII with the Nazis and his refusal to condemn the Holocaust during the entirety of World War II, make put him in the top ranks of Jew Haters. This book makes the evil of Pius XII very clear,