Photo/Illutration An actual size replica of the Akishima whale is on display in the atrium of Akishima-Ensis education and welfare center in Tokyo’s Akishima. The skeleton is about 12 meters long. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

I look down at the ground that I’m standing on (well, the carpet, to be precise), not in an idiomatic sense, but literally. I stomp, and it doesn’t budge, so it’s firm, I say to myself.

Then, the fossilized bones (OK, so it’s a replica) of the whale hanging from the Akishima-Ensis ceiling whisper to me, “Not so quick, that ground might actually be pretty shaky.”

Its span: the life-size skeleton is a whopping 13.5 meters long. It took 15 steps to get from head to toe, uh, I mean skull to tail. And, I thought of another span--time.

Akishima, the name a blend of Showa town and Haijima village, is in western Tokyo. I suspect that for many people, the city seems not that different from other burbs in the area. For me, Akishima conjures up images of our blue planet.

Now, here’s an exercise in imagination for you. Zoom out and imagine yourself floating above the Japanese archipelago. See the ocean. It’s sparkling blue. The land, green with varying shades of brown. Breathtakingly beautiful, isn’t it?

Find the Kanto area. Next, use the scroller in your mind’s eye to travel back in time and see the paleoceanographic history of Japan. A hundred years ago, thousand, 10 thousand, a million, two million. ... The country is shaped quite differently. Much of Tokyo was under the ocean, including Akishima.

One fateful day in the summer of 1961, a local father and son were walking along the Tamagawa riverbed when they found some bones. Excavations revealed the world’s only fossil of the species, and it was named the Akishima whale.

It’s all due to multiple fortunate coincidences. First, the bones were buried in sediment, relatively quickly fossilizing them. They were not affected by the Earth’s crustal movement, temperature changes or pressure in the strata for 2 million years.

Then, the fact that the pair laid eyes on the fossil precisely at the moment when part of it was revealed and recognized it as significant was nothing less than amazing.

Had it been raining, the fossil might have been washed away by the erosion of the river, or if the wind had been blowing from a different direction, it would not have been exposed.

Like the ocean waves, everything is always in a state of flux--even the ground under our feet. Perspective dictates time drifting slow or quick. Akishima makes me mindful of our shape-shifting planet and everything on it.

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(At present, facilities at the Akishima-Ensis are temporarily closed or open for shortened hours due to the new coronavirus pandemic.)

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Feb. 7 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s In and Around Tokyo," which depicts the capital and its surroundings through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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