Japanese Airport Named After Hero

November 16, 2003

Japanese Airport Named After Hero
Straits Times, Singapore

KOCHI (Japan) - The United States has JFK and Ronald Reagan airports,
France has Charles de Gaulle, Italy has Leonardo da Vinci while
Liverpool's commemorates John Lennon, but until now, Japan had never named
an airport after a national hero.

That changed on Saturday when the airport here became Kochi Ryoma Airport
in memory of a local-born 19th century samurai who sported traditional
robes and swords but also packed a six-shooter and wore Western-style
elastic-sided boots.

'Ryoma Sakamoto is a very romantic figure, I admired him for his bold
spirit and broad vision of the need for Japan to become international,'
said Ms Miyuki Kato after the naming ceremony at the airport 610km
south-west of Tokyo.

Ms Kato, 49, a former air stewardess from Tokyo, was a guest of honour as
she was the first to have the idea of naming the airport after a man she
has regarded as a national hero and role model since she learned about him
at school.

'I flew for 10 years for Japan Airlines and I knew of Charles de Gaulle,
Leonardo da Vinci and JFK, but in Japan, no airport was named after a
person,' she said.

'I think Ryoma Sakamoto is as important for modern Japan as those people
were to their countries.'

It took two years and a 70,000-name petition to Kochi Governor Daijiro
Hashimoto to achieve her goal.

Unlike those other world- famous names immortalised in airports, Sakamoto
is hardly known outside Japan, but in his native land he is revered as a
revolutionary who played a crucial role in ending the feudal rule of the
shogun, or military dictator, allowing Japan to modernise.

A poll by the influential daily Asahi Shimbun once named him the most
popular leader of the past 1,000 years.

He was a romantic figure, not only as a revolutionary who died young - cut
down by assassins on his 33rd birthday on Nov 15, 1867 - but also as a
husband.

Sakamoto is celebrated as the first Japanese man to take his wife on a
honeymoon, establishing a practice for which the nation's tourism industry
has reason to be thankful.

He married Oryo, a maid at an inn where he once stayed, after she saved
his life by raising the alarm when attackers sneaked in to kill him one
night.

He was also a pioneer of maritime trade, an advocate of insurance and the
author of a seminal Eight-Point Plan which formed the blueprint for modern
government under the emperor Meiji, who was restored to primacy over the
shoguns in 1868. -- AFP



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