Shiro Shinono's "Pilgrimage to Armenia: 12 Lively Labyrinths" Overview and Impressions - A world too dark and deep! A great book to get a feel for the atmosphere of Armenia after its independence from the Soviet Union!
We are pleased to present "Pilgrimage to Armenia: 12 Lively Labyrinths" by Shiro Shinono, published by Sairyusha in 2019.
What is frontier Christianity?
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Another Christianity nurtured at the "crossroads of civilization."
12 photos that could be called Devil's Dawson.
The process of formation: a 20-year field survey.
This is a unique travelogue about the restoration of a "M".
In the desert, in the middle of the mountains ......, many people have abandoned their rides.
A great number of "stone ark ships" were left stranded
The unknown climate and architecture of Eastern Anatolia.
And the people who live there. ......
This work is a travelogue, an essay, and a research book on a large scale that cannot be described in a few words, in which Shiro Shinono, an expert on church architecture, looks back on his 20 years of research in Eastern Anatolia and talks about his research at that time and church architecture.
The photo above is the back cover of the book, and here is the table of contents.
As the title of this book suggests, the author has selected 12 photographs from his many years of research and will discuss his research and memories of the time.
However, as you may have noticed, the places selected here are not half as maniacal as you may think. The capital city of Armenia, Yerevan, is among the places selected, but it is not from the perspective of a normal tourist guidebook.
So far I have read Shiro Shinono's book and have come to know a little about Eastern Anatolian church architecture, but I am still surprised at how maniacal this book is.
This book tells the story of a very deep world that those who are not interested in church architecture in this area will not see in their lifetime.
So is this book totally boring to those who are not interested in the area or church architecture?
No, no, no, that's not it.
I would rather venture to say that this book is worth reading if you have never been interested in this region or church architecture at all.
With apologies to the author, who is an expert on church architecture, it seemed to me that the highlight of this book was the opportunity to learn about the dark and deep world of Armenia, which became independent from the Soviet Union.
So far I have seen through various books what kind of hardships the former communist bloc has been going through since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The reality in the Communist bloc countries at the end of the Soviet Union was disastrous.
Government organizations are corrupt and industry is in tatters. Not even everyday goods are available.
In such a situation, people thought that they would be free to prosper once they gained independence from the Soviet Union.
But the reality only got more dire...
Such realities were discussed in various books.
And when it comes to the former communist bloc, Central and Eastern Europe is often mentioned. Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and so on. Even though these countries are in the former communist bloc, they have shown rapid growth and are very crowded as tourist destinations.
Armenia, which is featured in this work, is a former communist country, just like those countries.
However, compared to Poland and the Czech Republic in the same former communist bloc, Armenia is by far the economic laggard.
The former communist blocs are all very different from each other.
After reading this book, I even thought that this is the country where the atmosphere typical of the former communist bloc remains the most. In this book, you will see the situation in Armenia as if time has stopped.
One of the most memorable passages is presented here. This passage begins with the words of a local guide, whom the author calls "the writer" in this work.
In this country, more than 90 percent of the population is suffering from poverty, and there is no hope for the country. There is no hope for this country," the writer would always exclaim after the year 2005. The man who made it his daily routine to take a leisurely walk through the deserted streets of Yerevan early in the morning, loved the old, dirty, deserted streets, but loathed the glamorously prosperous redeveloped streets and the successful Armenians and their children who hung out there. Injustice was a matter of economics; corruption was a matter of the heart. The difference was indistinguishable to many successful people and their children.
Sairyusha, Shiro Shinono, "Pilgrimage to Armenia: 12 Lively Labyrinths," p. 199-200.
The "writer," who once had a positive outlook on life, eventually came to despair, saying, "There is no hope in this country. In another part of the book, the "writer" says, "Kono kuni wa rotte iru" (The country is rotten). The life of the "writer" and Armenia, which has been changing over the course of the author's 20-year relationship with the "writer"...
As the above passage indicates, capital flowed into the capital city of Yerevan, and some people were economically enriched.
However, most of the church buildings studied by the author are located in remote areas that could be described as ruins. Most of Armenia has lost its liveliness and is sinking like a ruin... This book conveys such an atmosphere anyway.
There is another passage that made a strong impression on me. It may be said that this passage is the most symbolic of the current situation in Armenia as perceived by the author. This part of the story takes place in Goris, a town close to Nagorno-Karabakh, where the author stayed overnight. It is a bit long, but it gives a good sense of the atmosphere of the book, so we will read it carefully.
It was a white RC building with about 10 floors, which was unusual for a local city. The first floor had a store, or perhaps a large single pane of glass filled the space between the pillars, but most of the glass was more than half gone. The upper floors were occupied by Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan, and since the building was originally a hotel facility, there were basically no facilities other than sleeping quarters, so the white walls from the fourth floor up were completely covered with soot from preparing meals on the veranda.
The stairs and floors were somehow tilted, and as I walked, my body scraped against the walls, severely disturbing my sense of balance. Of course, each room had no toilet seat and no running water, but the bathrooms were lit by reddish lighting, as often seen in horror movies, and the bathtubs were filled with dirty water with floating debris. It was the kind of water you flush out with a ladle when you use the toilet. Strangely damp beds, as usual, were placed in hooks along the walls of the room.
The first thing to do was clear. The first thing to do was to block the exit of the rats by putting duct tape over the gaps in the walls, floor, and ceiling where they meet. Again, the light was so bright that I could not even read a book, but I remember being painfully moved to understand my connection to the world by the sticker of Misha the bear, the mascot of the Moscow Olympics, on the bulb's umbrella.
Around 10:30, a small table was gathered around and a dish of onions, potatoes, and bacon was placed on the table, probably in a pot, and each person ate silently with a spoon, without speaking. The writer, too, was indeed rotten from this disaster.
Karabakh is a favorite place. I remember the words of an architect who went to stay at his aunt's house in a flying house, perhaps in anticipation of this devastation, and who said to Ro after going through customs in Karabakh: "I don't like Karabakh. It was a strange war. Karabakh belonged to Armenia, most Armenians told Ro, but I seldom met an Armenian who said he liked Karabakh. Whether Azeri or Armenian, the reporters who covered the Karabakh conflict reported that they felt closer to the nearby different ethnic groups than to their own countrymen in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In Yerevan, as in Goris, many refugees from Karabakh were living in hotels and abandoned apartments, causing no small amount of animosity among the Armenians living there. These feuds had nothing to do with our research, but when we returned to Armenia from Karabakh, we experienced the bitterness of the Karabakh conflict in Goris, even though we had seen rusted armored vehicles and tanks with blown-up turrets lying on the roadside and had no other impression than the scars of war. I ended up experiencing the grimness of the Karabakh conflict at the hotel. Throughout the meal, no one spoke a word. I poked potatoes from the pot and poured them in water, keeping the sound of the kettle boiling in my ears like noise in a hotel with a tilted floor. I felt the heavy breathing of the refugees living on the floors above me.
The institutional dilapidation and deficiencies were blinding, but nowhere else in the region was there the spirit-cramping heaviness of Gorris's hotel. At the Writers' Guild resort on Lake Severn, where I pitched in after Gorris, I suffered from electric shock and hypothermia, but the pain was limited to the physical body.
The power must be turned off in front of the shower building, and the water heater is leaking. The writer pointed to the water heater next to the shower and advised me to turn it off. I did as he told me, turned off the water heater, and took a shower, but while holding the metal handle of the shower, I felt pain in my hand, and for some reason I could not stop my body from convulsing as I bathed in the hot water.
In 2003, at the same facility, I first properly applied soap all over my body, including shampoo, so that I could take a quick shower no matter what happened, and when I tried to take a shower, the water heater itself was broken, and only water spurted out. The temperature was around 10 degrees Celsius. I crawled into the bed naked, my teeth clicking together, and shivering for an hour or so.
After that, I stayed in hotels in Turkey, Syria, and other countries of considerable level, but compared to that hotel in Goris, I felt that I could cope with the physical pain with my spirit, and I felt somehow forgiven.
Sairyusha, Shiro Shinono, Pilgrimage to Armenia: 12 Lively Labyrinths, p. 247-249.
Some line breaks have been made.
The aging of the hotel and the episodes of the hotel being electrocuted are horrendous, but we too will feel the gravity of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through the author's words.
This is not a book about an obvious touristy destination. There is a dark atmosphere in the book that is distinctly different from that of Armenia as a fun and sparkling destination. This may be attributed in part to the author himself, but I believe that the reality of the world and the people with whom he became involved gives this very impression.
G. Poghosyan to be introduced in the next article.Twenty-Five Stories Around Armenia."will be the very counterpart of this book.
The book says: "Armenia is a nice place! Please come visit us!" It is a sparkling work of art that says "Armenia is a great place!
I could not help but be puzzled by the gap between Shiro Shinono's work and this one. To be honest, I am still puzzled. Which is true? No, I am sure that both are true. However, depending on one's point of view and the circumstances in which one is placed, there may be a completely different world out there.
In my opinion, "Pilgrimage to Armenia: 12 Lively Labyrinths" is the best work to understand the former communist bloc that was left behind after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Infrastructural conditions that would be impossible in Japan keep coming up. It was so otherworldly that I was quite shocked. I quoted the story of the hotel earlier, but other surprises keep coming up.
Of course, this book is also an excellent reference for learning about church architecture in Armenia. I was interested in the Christian culture of the region, so I really appreciated this book in that aspect as well.
However, there is a sense of ruins and dark old Soviet Union in this book that overwhelms it. I was overwhelmed by the impact of this book. I became extremely interested in Armenia through this book. I don't think I would have been if it had only been about church architecture.
Even if you are not interested in church architecture, I highly recommend this book. It is a marvelous work that will acquaint you with a new world.
However, as the reviews on Amazon indicate, the author's narrative is quite unique. At first, some readers may find it "annoying. At first, I too was amused by the author's unique narration, but as I got used to it, it became a "taste" of the book. I found myself being drawn into the author's narrative without realizing it. So I don't think you need to worry about the readability at all as much as the reviews say. You will get used to it, so don't worry.
This book is just so intense. We hope that many people will read this work.
The above is "Shiro Shinono's "Pilgrimage to Armenia: 12 Bustling Labyrinths" If you want to feel the overwhelming sense of ruins, dark and deep of the former Soviet Union, this is the book for you! A recommended book on Armenia! That's it!
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