Naruto Doitsukan — Bandō camp museum

photo by そらみみ · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by そらみみ (Soramimi) · CC BY-SA 4.0

On 1 June 1918, German prisoners here gave the first performance of Beethoven's Ninth in Japan.

In the Bandō camp, opened in 1917 for almost a thousand German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners captured at Qingdao, the commandant Matsue Toyohisa imposed unusually humane treatment: workshops, a newspaper, concerts. So on 1 June 1918 the prisoners' orchestra gave the first complete performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ever played in Japan, the start of a tradition that is repeated every December across the country today. A short walk away, inside Ōasahiko Shrine, the small stone bridge that the same prisoners built still stands.

From April 1917 to April 1920 the Bandō prisoner-of-war camp held about a thousand German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers captured in the siege of Qingdao (1914); 63 chose to stay in Japan when it closed. National Historic Site since 2002. The museum, opened in 1972 and rebuilt in 1993 in a style recalling Lüneburg town hall, preserves its memory.

ℹ️ Open 9:30–16:30, closed on the fourth Monday of the month (the following day if it is a public holiday) and from 28 to 31 December. About 10 minutes on foot from JR Bandō Station; the original camp site is now the ‘Doitsu-mura’ park (German village), a short distance away.

🚉 Bando · 22 min walk

Sources: ja.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · ja.wikipedia.org

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