A collaboration blog with Ray Shortridge
The city of Matsumoto reconstructed the all wood district court building of the Edo period as the center of a regional historical museum. The law court has a familiar layout, with the panel of judges sitting on a raised dais, lawyers on a lower dais, and the public at ground level.
Deeper in the complex, a room is set aside as a memorial to Yoshiko Kawashima, a Japanese spy executed by the Nationalist Chinese government in 1948. Her remains are interred in Matsumoto, where she lived as a child for awhile.
In the 1930s, she led a counter insurgency cavalry troop that rounded up anti-Japanese forces in Manchuria. A Chinese princess, she was an influential member of the Manchukuo imperial court, featured in the movie The Last Emperor. She was called the Joan of Arc of Manchukuo and the Asian Mata Hari.
Travels with Owen 