Only a Blockhead

A Japanese Thanksgiving

The other day, a friend asked me what I like about living in Japan. On reflection, I came up with the following list. It's long, and slightly overlaps the Japanese culture list in my last post.

To consider this bounty is particularly appropriate at this time of Thanksgiving.

• safety and predictability: most people are conditioned to behave as you’d expect them to (and I, now conditioned, behave as a foreigner is expected to)
• few Christians or other religious extremists
• that we are beholden to our communities, which puts a brake on antisocial behavior
• the outsider position: (a) in exchange for never being allowed to belong, I’m allowed the freedom to be who I am; (b) being an outsider here sensitizes me to the culture I was born into.
• the excitement of summer: heat, humidity, cicadas, high school baseball
• crisp, blue-skied winters
• bamboo groves: pure; vertical; green
• temples and shrines, and the giant rocks and trees bound with sacred ropes
• the way we mark the passage of the year by the flowers that bloom: the cherry blossom; the azaleas, the hydrangeas…
• taking off my shoes in the house
• the culture of the everyday: tatami mats; shoji paper screens; deep baths; kotatsu heated tables in winter; redolent mosquito coils in summer
• old porous wooden houses and living with the elements: heating yourself and leaving the air cold in winter; electric fans in summer
• the food: raw fish, noodles and all else
• hot spring baths and the public nudity there
• superb public transportation: plentiful, punctual trains, buses; short and long distance
• international convenience: Tokyo’s comprehensive record and book stores to browse in
• almost any food is available (except Branston Pickle)
• no weird diseases or Delhi belly
• dog owners pick up after their pets
• public places are relatively litter free; some citizens actually go about picking up litter
• convenience stores: sustenance and necessities almost anywhere in cities and hinterland, 24 hours a day
• the washlet
• public restroom in convenience stores and everywhere else, always with paper and often spotless; when the need is desperately immediate, I offer silent benediction to a society that offers a place of clean relief to anyone needing it, anywhere, anytime.
• relative equality of income

The friend suggested I let Marco Polo have the last word: The people are “fair-complexioned, good-looking, and well-mannered. They are idolators, wholly independent and exercising no authority over any nation but themselves."

The friend added: "May it always be so."

Amen to that.

--Julian

Illustration: Rokujo by NC Tate

most Japanese

A recent internet survey asked Japanese people what activities and situations make them feel most Japanese. I revel in my outsider status in Japan, but I did relate to many of the items of the list. The following survey responses are the ones that, if I’m self-aware, make me feel a part of this culture:

falling asleep on tatami mats

having rice with natto on top, and miso soup for breakfast

drinking hot sake

taking an onsen hot spring bath

when getting into a hot bath (at home or at an onsen), saying “Aah.”

enjoying cherry blossom viewing with others

feeling put out when a toilet doesn’t have a washlet function

using culture-bound formulaic phrases like “yoroshiku onegai shimau” (used e.g., after making a  request), “otsukaresama” (e.g., to someone who has finished working) and “okagesamade” (when someone asks after my health).

bowing when I use the phone

waiting in line without complaining or even feeling irritated

if dealing with a difficult or unreasonable situation, keeping my true feelings to myself

 And—not on the survey but perhaps most telling of all—the feeling on returning to Narita Airport from the land of my birth, “Ah, I’m home.”

--Julian

Should Have Stuck to Skating

The five stories that constitute Hans Brinckmann's "The Tomb in the Kyoto Hills" are all competent. The prose seldom obtrudes on the reader's consciousness; the characters are sometimes slightly implausible, but never enough to be awful. The focus on men at loose ends, and the manner in which women exist in some of the stories primarily as vehicles to aid men in their quest for whatever it is they're questing for, is tiresome, but not unusual. If the author displayed a sensibility that was profound or a vision of life that was startling and fresh, his stories might transcend mere competence, but unfortunately, though Brinckmann is neither insensitive nor dim, one sees little evidence in these stories of superlative sensibility or insight.

That's from my review of The Tomb in the Kyoto Hills by Hans Brinckmann.  Read the rest here.

—David

A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard

One is certain that more than a few reviewers of Levy Hideo's "A Room Where The Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard" will trot out Samuel Johnson's oft-quoted line: "A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Levy Hideo is reputed to be the first Western author to publish a novel in Japanese.  Read my review of that novel (now in English translation) here.

—David

 

Song of summer

Cicadas

Deafening under the oldest trees

Accompany summer

 

I grew up in Britain where heat and humidity were not unknown, but not until a visit to Greece did I encounter cicadas. Now, here in Japan, the sound of these insects has become an ecstatic part of the hottest weeks of the year.

 (Photo: Bruce Marlin, Wikimedia Commons)

Hearing cicadas

My being vibrates to

The sound of the summer heat

 

There are several species, but here in lowland Kanto, my untrained ear can distinguish three.

 Hiss of abura-zemi (the rhythm section);

Buzz of min-min-zemi (the melody);

And gradually taking over from those, the trill of higarashi announcing the cool of late afternoon.

 

As the last light leaves the sky, the cicadas fall silent. And the gentler tones of the crickets, drowned out during the day, come to the foreground in the still of the evening. 

--Julian

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Here's something I posted on Facebook a few days ago:

For those not in this odd situation, it's probably difficult to imagine the polarization setting in between those of us who've decided to stay in our Japanese homes with our Japanese brothers and sisters, and those who feel the risk of radiation poisoning, even as far from Fukushima as Tokyo, is so great that they have to uproot themselves and say goodbye to loved ones lacking the means, will, or desire to flee.

It occurred to me later that this polarization, though the disaster has shoved it into the spotlight, is nothing new.  Among foreigners in Japan there have always been those who view Japan as home, who entertain no serious thoughts of "going back," and there have always been those who never don't plan to go back, if not this year then next: just as soon as they make enough money, learn enough about tea ceremony or Japanese dance, master the language, eat enough sushi, have enough fun, or whatever.  

That anyone would suggest that one group or the other is somehow more moral, loyal, prudent, or wise than the other is just silly, particularly since most of us who do decide to make Japan our homes don't usually make that decision until at least a few years into our stay here.  That is, we move from one group to the other.

Neither choice is more moral than the other.  Both are dictated by personal circumstances and predilictions.  To my foreign friends in (and recently departed from) Japan, whichever group you're in, may you make the right choice for you.

 

—David