To Mickey, with love...
There are moments when I look around at Japan and things Japanese and I recognize the sheer beauty of it all. Much of it has been shipped off and is now world-reknown-- Ikebana (art of flower arranging), Chado (tea ceremony), Washi (paper making), Origami (paper folding), Ukiyo-e (Edo period printmaking), Shoji (Japanese screens), Kimono (literally "wear thing") and other forms of the Japanese Wabi Sabi (the truth that comes from the observation of nature)--simple, elegant, neat; a sense of balance and harmony where less really is more.
There are also the lively arts that every culture now knows: Kabuki (literally "song-dance-art"), Taiko (Japanese drumming), Shamisen (literally "three taste and touch" strings) and Koto music. There are the the marital arts: Judo (literally the "soft way") Karate (literally "empty hand"), Kyudo (archery); and finally the art of courtly love and seduction, eloquently described in the world's first true novel, Genji Monogatari (the tale of Genji, written by Murasaki-shikibu, a woman), and made accessible to the elite by the ladies of Gion--the Geisha (literally "art person").
We have been delighted with this Japanese aesthetic since at least the mid-19th century, when the American Commodore Perry sailed his black ships to the shores of Uraga and forcefully opened up Japan to trade after a 300 year self-imposed isolation. We do know, however, that Portuguese and Dutch traders kept up their trading during this hiatus, but were limited to the small island called Deshima just off the coast from Nagasaki. In short, there was much to be learned by both sides.
The infatuation with things Japanese permeated Western consciousness in an assortment of fine art and designs made by Western artists in the late 19th century. It even had a name, Japonaiserie. The flurry of interest about this slumbering island nation, having been so rudely awakened from its hibernation and forced into world, is the start of its decline and loss of soul as I witness and write about it today.
Such a Pity.
It's hard to begin to express the sorrow I feel looking at all these wonderful, gorgeous, beautiful, precious gifts the Japanese have bestowed upon our consciousness, reduced to mere shadows--just the very soft flicker of the original fire left.
I took the afternoon yesterday to look around town on my bike. The Nagoya landscape has been described before and more eloquently by others, so I won't go into much of it here; however, it is clear to me, at least here in Nagoya, people have lost all sense of values about who they are and where they are going. As I cycled around Nagoya Castle, the original built in 1610 (destroyed by fire 1660, rebuilt, then destroyed by bombs in World War II, and rebuilt again in the 1950s) by the great Shogun himself Tokugawa Ieyasu who's lineage held sway over Japan for 265 years (1603-1868), I found myself in one of those precious moments !!Ping!! when you recognize you really are in Japan.
As I communed with the carp and ducks living in the moat surrounding the castle, and admired the latticed stonework patterns in the vast, high-walled gates, the intricate yet simple design of the castle structure as it sat resplendent on the highest point in town... I was forced to succumb to the here and now--sounds of highway traffic, screaming sirens, honking horns, and the ubiquitous squeaks, chirps, pongs, barks, whiffles, hacks, and high-pitched robotic voices of women through electronic loudspeakers telling me to look left, to look right, not to cross the street, to cross the street, be careful of cars, take my children by the hand, and the thousand and one other things I really don't need to reminded to do on a pleasant, sunny, solitary Saturday morning out for a carefree bike ride.
Those that live or lived in Japan know what I am talking about. You can't go anywhere without a loudspeaker telling you what to do. It's like the entire nation is potty-trained or beat into obedience with these constant messages yelling out at you--I wouldn't be surprised if there is a warning in the toilets telling you not only to flush afterwards, but to check to see that you wiped. But of course there are! They have paperless toilets (well, not so popular since the bubble burst ten years ago) where at a push of a button, a joystick-controlled nozzle streams warmish water at your privates with some voice saying what it's doing ("your buttcheese is being smeared off now") then a blast of hot air dries "it" off ("your butt is being dried now"). I mean, sheesh.
To add insult to this aural assault, now they have these mini video cameras that look like a wire and can be concealed almost anywhere, anytime. The fallout from this sort of thing has been a wave of pornographic movies and images available on the World Wide Web showing people sucking, peeing, pooing, and screwing... and whatever else they do in a public spaces. Personal space, in other words, is almost non-exsistent.
In my own wee room, for example, the quality of my life is made worse by the thunderous bass of the yahoo-down-the-hall's boom box, the guy beside me who watches TV constantly (all night long, don't you know) and the strange sounds emanating above me from the guy or gal who "paces" up and down (the room is about 10 feet square) and seems to roll ball bearings across the floor at the oddest times to inflict a form of torture.
Of course I forgot about the aural and visual horror of the construction of yet another faceless, ugly ferro-concrete piece of shit building being built kitty corner from me some yakuza/pachinko owner/government official's putting up on some money laundering scam. Here the work crew arrive dutifully and ready to go, all done Ultraman fashion and Jika-tabi footwear, promptly at 6:30 am--Sunday morning. The rest of the week they roll in around 10 am. *sigh*
Recall I once lamented how the thing about Japan is that it is ALMOST comfortable. Almost--but there is always a jab in your ribs to let you know that you can't be too comfortable. But enough about me. I want to address the rest of this about 1) the people here, and 2) the lowdown on the work front.
I remarked to a friend last week, and it was the first time I have ever said this, and it sort of was a shock to me as much as it was an epiphany, but this is what I said: "the Japanese are Ugly. U-G-L-Y."
Yes, succumbing to Yellow Fever (those guys that have lived here know this form of yellow fever, and it ain't from a mosquito) was a useful (and fun!) phase, but it has run its course and the prognosis is this: the ugliness has nothing to do with physical appearance (although Nagoya is not the home of the most attractive Japanese people-- something about the short, chubby and stubby legs, the pigeon-toed shuffle, too many teeth that shoot out at all angles when they smile, and a propensity for the people here to have roundish, chubby faces, and mouths and lips that are too big and pouty, but in a very unnattrative way--think of the Alfred Hitchcock, not Marlene Dietrich-- pout--and that is the Nagoya pout).
No, the ugliness comes from within. The ugliness is, in these parts, is that the people have no class. I don't mean to say I look down my nose at these folks because, after all, I am a negro-- it's more observational than a judgment.
Tokyo folks are sophisticated. I will give my Japanese sculptor friend full points for that observation. But Nagoya?
1
On my first day back to school, and the first thing this rather ugly Nagoya troll doll (remember those things?) of a boy comes up to me and describes, in some detail, that he has the shits, and the shit is sort of runny with blood in it. He then smiles and goes and sits down. He did not even bother to say "Hello, Happy New Year" or perhaps just "Hello"--he launched into this description.
Admittedly, it is well known that fecal references in greetings is common in most cultures of the world. We know for fact the French "Comment allez vous", which literally means "How are you going" is an everyday common greeting having its origins in speculating on one's bowel movements. You see, if one was ill with plague, the feces would be runny and off-color as well of a particular sweet and sour aroma (for which the French would describe the scent as a mal au coeur--sickness of the heart. How that figures in bowel movements is... well... they are French...).
The Germans have "Wie Gehts", and English speakers say "How's it goin", which etymologically is associated with bowel movement. So, it is not that my virgin ears were hurt by this boy's greeting, it's just that I was not at all ready to hear about this troll's shit in lieu of the usual greeting on the first day back from break. Well, no matter. He'll get his come-uppance... because I have to fail him.
Note I didn't say I want to fail him, or that he failed, or anything to suggest there is a causal relation between whatever he did in class and the grades he earned and all that. No. The dictate from above is that 30 percent of my class gets the chop, regardless of their performance in class, on tests, exams, or other forms of assessment. This has been the bugaboo that has haunted my consciousness ever since I signed up for this gig in the bottom-feeder, low life university between Kinki and the Kanto plain. But I'll pick up on this part later.
2
People honk, hack, hork, chortle, sniffle, wheeze, katchoo, suck their teeth, roll their eyes, tongues, mouths, and burp-- then breathe the morning's tobacco, fish and congealed oleo-ketased protein breath in your face, pick their bums/twats/dicks, pick their nose and/or scalp and/or zits, look at it, and if is too small wipe it on the seat, and if too big eat it-- in very tightly cramped public places, especially in rush hour, jam-packed commuter trains.
3
When walking, they zig-zag along the street like some Limey high on cheap sherry, except they are perfectly sober. Hmm... might have something to do with the pigeon-toedness that prevents them from being able to walk in a straight line. And as they walk, they swing their arms pell mell, so guys, watch your nads when that sassy foxette ahead of you decides to stop suddenly, not before laying on a solid low blow even Mike Tyson would be proud of.
Ok. I went into physical description when I really wanted to talk about what is ugly on the inside.
What is ugly is their vapidness. What once was the noble Zen No mind has lost all the significance and meaningfulness of its original intent, and now no mind really means "a mind filled with such garbage they don't know what to think about anything". Being bombarded from all sides (even at buttcrack level!) with nonsense, how can one expect these very real and noble humans to carry on in the sublime cultural heritage which is their birthright?
Well, the Japanese are not the only victims. They are but one race who have sucked up the the poison seeping out of that bastion of freedom America (believe it--or else!), which seems to see the world population as a homogeneous mass of Madison Avenue slogan believing, jelly-spined... consumers.
If you've got the "Holiday Gift Giving Season" (formerly called Christmas) Santa Claus ornaments, the Elvis bust, the black velvet pastel of a clown (crying), the wee statue of the cute little boy trying to take a crap on the toilet (from the Franklin Mint!) at Walmart's, then swing over and load up on bulk bags of sour cream 'n' onion Lay's at Cogeco, have a nosh at McDonald's/Carl Jr.s/Burger King/Pizza Hut/Mister Donut/KFC... swing buy the pharmacy to buy your Ibuprophen/Allatin/Valium/Visine/Viagra/Xanax and your carton of Marlboro lights before speeding off to that important "business meeting" at Starbuck's in your SUV-- the SUV being all decked out with a rack of high intensity Bosch magnesium spotlights mounted on the front (...and back!...just in case some asshole gets a little too close), the geo-satellite locating device for those dangerous off-road back country treks you'll never in a lifetime ever do...only to find your SUV's digital fuel gauge display is flashing red and beeping annoyingly to let you know you are running low on the high-octane, super duper premo, Iraqi-grade oil byproduct and need to retank the mother because it gets 6 miles highway/3 miles city per gallon at the nearest Exxon/Shell/Mobil gas station...and while you're there, you might as well pick up the windshield ice scraper and a few licorice ropes...what the hell, a few Snickers bars for the kids...pay the $80 in gas and chug your SUV along the well appointed boulevard past strip malls that the Flintstones predicted every city would look like in the future in a subliminal way (you know...if you watch the Flintstones, the artists got a bit lazy and just looped the sequence of Barney and Fred driving/running home in their car past the same shop/drug/barbershop...which, if you really look carefully, is what every city looks like these days...check it out) and onto your "business meeting", which, well, is not really a business meeting, but a secret lunch with the silicone-tittied and botoxed-faced thirty-something you met at the Louis Vuitton shop while you were there to pick up a little something for the missus (separated, but "trying to work things out"), after she just finished her aerobics class at Bally's, and you don't want to be late because she has to run off in half an hour to the Bikram yoga class, followed immediately after with her Tibetan meditation class, (where she and other bored ladies of the "empty-nest"/"he left me for a younger slut"/"I finally kicked him out, that slob!" syndrome listen to tapes of some fey Rinpoche). You meet her and her pungent Calvin Klein smelly hair tonic only to arrange yet another "meeting" sometime later at the franchised Wolfgang Puck eatery to munch squid-ink pizza and wash it down with a Zima or a Tecate...and then after you've made that date, you head back home, the four-story Victorian townhouse (a fixer-upper ...but with all the potential in the world), which is what you spend the rest of your earnings on based on the sagesse advice of your investment broker/banker/laywer/fiduciary/and golf pro. You greet the kids who are watching Pokemon on TV and playing Pokemon Playstation at the same time) and spend a little quality time (which is to take off the Rockport shoes and Ermenegildo Zegna suit and lie back like a sack of beans on the punched-leather couch and vege out...only to really pass out and the missus has already put the kids to bed (her eyes rolling scornfully and whispering "you selfish prick" under her breath...almost all the time...), and since things between you two aren't really working out (hence the "business meetings" with Ms. Silicone Botox) you take the Burberry blanket and matching pillow and head on up to the guestroom and crash out for the rest of your six hours of sleep before you wind it all up and do it all over again.
I could be talking about almost anywhere, couldn't I?
Well, this is Japan, and although there are all the trappings as I outlined above here, in the words of that cooking guru Everil, they take this label displaying inanity and "turn it up a notch"... they don't really understand what it is they are buying, or why they need it, but if it's expensive, it must be something to have...especially if it is foreign.
4
Richard Feynman, the nuclear physicist and wisecracking, no-nonsense wise guy, delivered a speech to the 1974 graduating class at Caltech entitled Cargo Cult Science, in which he denigrated the problem of unconsciousness and the lack of inquiry into how things really are:
In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head as headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.
It would be difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples.
5
Apparently, in this day and age, most people, but especially the Japanese because they are at the leading edge of this problem--they really don't get it--they are not getting to the root by looking at the examples at all. They don't get the joke. They don't know they've sold out their birthright and replaced it with straw men, straw planes, straw bags (which cost a fortune!)...and they really do hope that these external signs are meaningful and important, simply because they've looked around and been told that they are.
It is not working because there is nothing on the inside to tell them why these external forms are of value. They have no grounding, no culture to deal with all these external things. They've traded their culture in for a culture whose heritage and development they cannot even fathom.
This is what I mean by vapid. It is not their fault, other than they have been led by whatever forces to slowly erode their own understanding of themselves to adopt--a Louis Vuitton bag and Burberry scarf-- as culturally important artifacts.
6
One of the most foreboding images of this trade-in was a photograph of Japan's Emperor Hirohito at Disneyland in Anaheim, California in the 60s. In this photograph, we see Walt Disney and the Emperor on some ride, and both are smiling, but there is something rather impish about the smile on the Emperor's face. He's grinning ear to ear, in full mirth.
Here he is, the descendant of God (GOD!), the man who was as cursed as Hitler during World War II by the allied forces, and the man who had to admit, as part of the unconditional surrender to MacArthur, that he was not really a God at all. What a turbulent reign indeed. And yet, here he was a happy as could be...and do you know why?
He was wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.
That just about sums up the problems that are besetting the Japanese culture today. They've turned in their culture for a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.
Gaga | 9:00 AM
| comments
...............
...............
Comments:
Post a Comment