Chennai: “Why Chennai?” was the first question that Sakutaro Tanino, press secretary to the Emperor of Japan, had to field at a dinner he hosted for the city's newspaper editors in the course of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko's visit. “Culture, ancient culture,” Tanino said while explaining how Chennai was the other stop on the Japanese royals' India visit.
“The Emperor and empress have no role in fixing which country they will visit each year. The government decides that,” Tanino elaborated. Apparently, the choice of Chennai as the second stop after the India visit had been finalised came about on the royals' wish that they go to the city they had not visited 53 years ago when they were in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, having come here then as the crown prince and princess.
“Tamil culture is ancient, so too Japanese, Chinese and Indian cultures,” Tanino pointed out. As a career diplomat who had once been Japan's Ambassador to India, the Tokyo resident is knowledgeable about the country of his posting. He pointed out that Bengaluru, a possible alternative choice for a stopover, is not as old as Chennai and that it is seen as an IT city rather than a cradle of culture that Tamil Nadu is as the base of a continuous tradition of the ancient Tamils.
“The warmth of the people is unbelievable,” the diplomat gushed as he described the reaction of the royal couple to the city they visited for the first time in their lives. Talking in detail about the royals' fascination with India, Tanino revealed the coincidences of the day on which the royals saw the banyan sapling they had planted in New Delhi 53 years ago now growing up as a mighty tree.
As a four-course meal was winding down, Tanino spoke at length about Rash Behari Bose, a revolutionary leader against British Raj, who he referred to as the 'other famous Bose from India' who had sought refuge in Japan from 1915. Behari Bose had gone on to marry the daughter of Soma Aizo and Soma Kotsuko, owners of Nakamuraya restaurant in Tokyo above which Bose had been living in hiding.
The 'second INA Bose', after whom the famous Rash Behari Avenue is named in Kolkata, was also instrumental in introducing Indian-style curry in Japan. India-Japan links, of the culinary type too, go back a long way then even though the tale of the more famous Bose — Subash Chandra — is incomplete as yet.
“The priest in the temple would like to send Bose's ashes to India but they won't accept it because some claim he is not dead,” Tanino explains. By his account, air crash over Taipei in Taiwan was real but then Tanino would not like to say it publicly in case those who believe in ‘Bose-da’ being alive take offence.
