Sun Tiger Pump

I recently found a water pump just down the road from our apartment. It’s on a small path leading to a couple of houses. I hadn’t really noticed or taken note of it before. But recently I noticed a woman using it. She was cranking the pump handle up and down and filling a bucket. I haven’t seen a pump like this in Tokyo before, and in countryside perhaps only once or twice. So what is it doing here? Where does the water come from is there a spring under there or does the pump connect to the main water supply? The woman was filling a bucket with water so I think she was going to use it for cleaning or watering her plants, not for drinking.
It looks fairly old, 20 or 30 years or more. It has the name Sun Tiger Pump as part of the iron mold in three places, so there is no mistaking the name. I had a look on the Internet but couldn’t find any definite reference. I found just a single reference to “Sun Tiger Pump” on Google, a link that lead me to a very long list of report titles, the papers dealing with water management in Malaysia. This was on the web site of the Department of Irrigation and Drainage. The name Sun Tiger is used these days in connection with some kind of software and as the brand name for sunglasses.
I guess this water pump has stood there for at least 30 years or more and seen things come and go. I get the feeling though that it’s days are probably numbered. Kita Machi and the neighbourhood have been changing more in the last 10 years than the previous 50 I would say. When the owner of the building next to the pump dies or decides to sell the building will come down and the pump will go. It will probably go to the scarp yard, but if I had anything to do with it, it would go to a museum or be incorporated into the building some how as a link to the past.
The Japanese who is many ways are an emotional people are not very sentimental about the past, at least not the recent past. They happily demolish and clear buildings in Tokyo and throw taller and more non-descript anonymous glass hulks. Well, actually it’s the large building corporations who do the demolishing and throwing up, the average citizen of the city and country has absolutely no say in what the city looks like or the direction the city is going. They are not consulted and their opinion is not wanted.
There are the occasional protests at a proposed destruction. Last year it came to light that the Empress’s childhood house, where she lived before marrying the then Crown Prince and now Emperor, was to be demolished. Quite a little crowd gathered to try and stop them. Mostly middle aged women and men. Needless to say they didn’t succeed, but it made the TV news and no doubt made some people think about the issue.
City government all over the world does the same though. There must be something about being on a planning committee that shuts down the common sense centres of the brain. People start to have grand ideas and forget that they are supposed to be making a better environment for the people who live in the city. Ah well.
Back at the water pump another bucket full is being drawn up and a bucket filled. It’s pretty solid piece of equipment. Looks like cast iron, and while there is a little rust here and there it looks like it could easily keep working for another hundred years or more.
I wonder if we can buy this kind of pump any more? I’m sure we can but not in any shop I know.
These kinds of pumps are also known as Pitcher Pumps, the kind you see on Little House on the Prairie. You can still buy them. I found a couple on the Net from companies in the USA. According to the details it was made of cast iron, weighed 64 pounds, would pump up from a maximum depth of 75 feet and cost $350.
Tokyo is all in the details, just like this pump. Tokyo is the opposite of Mt. Fujji – it should view close up and in detail. From a distance Tokyo is a sprawling ugly mess. Impressive, yes it’s impressive, but then I remember the scene in Jurassic Park when they stumble across the huge dino shit; that was impressive as well.
Tokyo from the 40th floor of City Hall looks impressive but it’s deceptive. You are impressed simply by the scale. Like a dog walking on its back legs, we are impressed by the novelty and not the substance. But when you look a little closer you see that it is just mile upon mile of ugly buildings, stretching into the distance. You have get down from the 40th floor and into the streets and look around, then you will start to notice the little details, like an old water pump. That pump is a kind of OPO, an out of Place object. The kind of objects people sometime think were put there by aliens or the technology too advanced for their age objects. Except in this case it’s the other way round – an old object in a contemporary setting; an out of tie object. Like finding gas lights, or a telephone with a dialing disc with the 10 holes, or Pac Man. Objects that have somehow survived in a bubble and drifted along the currents of time unscathed. When they were first created there would have been thousands like them but slowly as the years passed the others disappeared, were destroyed, lost, melted, taken apart, buried. But a few found quiet corners, undisturbed corners were the swirls and eddies of time didn’t not operate, and there they stayed. They cannot last forever, nothing does, but it’s nice that some of them do and surprises us by their existence, keeping life in the city interesting. When the city is made up of only new, mass produced ubiquitous objects it will not be a pace fit to live in; it will be a sterile place. But I think Tokyo is far from there and will never get there, it’s too big and there are too many nooks, crannies and little corners for things to fall in and hide and be left alone.