There's a good article about opinions by
Charlie Brooker in the Guardian; 'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's opinions' is how it begins,and that's
pretty much how I feel most of the time these days, and I don't think it's any coincidence that I live in Japan. A hell of a lot of westerners that arrive in
Japan will arrive here 'knowing' what Japan and Japanese people are like. Either that or they have come to 'discover' Japan and the Japanese, but they
already know. They may have only just got here last week, but they know and anything they experience will serve simply to confirm what they already knew
about 'the Japanese' and what 'they' are like. Seek and ye shall find. Especially up your own backside, and in your search your bound to be helped out by
people who are like you but from the other side of the fence and are keen to keep alive a sense of 'we Japanese'. As I said, if you go looking for it you're
going to find it and if you're interested in Geisha and the 'Japanese mind set' there are always going to be people to around to answer your questions, spout
off, have your cameras/microphones pointed at and let you stroke your chin infront of them. I mean Geishas? I'd love to see some travel books on Britain and
the bear skin guard communities of London. About as relevant. So whilst visitors/foreign residents, whatever, accuse people in Japan, with some
justification, of being overly concerned with Japanese-ness, the rest of the world is just as obsessed with pigeon holing this country. It's a vicious
circle, but great for publishers.
I'm no great traveller. I've lived in the UK, Japan and Spain without doing anything too exciting other than live in the 3 places. Comparing living in Japan
and Spain has always been interesting for me though, especially in how other non-Spanish/Japanese react to the two places, and so we get back to opinions.
The difference in the 'amount' of opinion in the 2 countries is massive. Your average foreign resident in Spain will have thoughts on this and that about
Spanish culture and life for sure, but here? Jesus. Have you ever seen
Spirited Away? When Chihiro feeds the massive, bloated Kao Nashi (pictured above) the thing the
river god gave her, he starts to projectile vomit up everything he had gorged himself on over the previous few hours. That's more or less what it's like
listening to a lot of people give their thoughts on Japan. Except it's worse. I was always surprised at how what is surely the same thing, could be viewed so
differently in different countries. There are sex shops all over Madrid and hardcore porn is easily buyable (and in public view) at street Kiosks
(apparently, hoho). Sex and porn is highly visible here too. Noone talks about it in Spain. the Spanish male isn't inherently perverted and yet here...? I
once read that in America, in LA alone I think, 10,000 porn movies a year are made. that's around 27 a day? A mind boggling (amongst other things) figure.
Are white Americans seen as perverts? Never heard that opinion put forward before myself.
People seem very keen not to have their stereotypes challenged, after all that would have meant they were wrong and us westerners don't like being
interrupted in full glorious flow. I met a guy who'd been to Madrid a while back. He started talking about the easy going-ness, relaxed lifestyle *insert
general Spanish happy clappy stereotype that us anglos love* of the city. I had to say that my experience wasn't anywhere near as positive mainly due to the
racism my Japanese wife experienced on an almost daily basis.....slight pause, 'Yeah so like I say,, anything seems to go in Madrid...people are so relaxed'.
Erm, yeah, did you hear what I said? I'm sure his experience was very positive, as many people's are (I'm not trying to diss Madrid nor say the Spanish are
more racist than anyone else, that argument's for idiots, go, it's lovely in Spring) but my little tale didn't sit comfortably with the whole cuddly Latin
image.
The writer
Alex Kerr pointed out (somewhere) the huge amount of right wing nationalist literature in Japan about Japaneseness. I would love for someone to
tell me about the flipside of the coin.....the book on Japan by the outsider. I have no factual evidence whatsoever, just a hunch that there's more of it
than say books about the French written by intrepid travel writers. Alex Kerr is a great example. A historian and environmentalist who writes very
interestingly on both subjects but just can't help himself and has to resort to 6th form American pop psychology and write about everybloodything else. I
read a laughable bit in his
'Dogs and Demons' book on animation where he makes some cack handed point about Pixar showing, I dunno, that Japanese animators
are stuck in the past, in that they were embracing computer techonology whilst
Studio Ghibli were still doing things by hand. Whilst grudgingly admitting
that
Miyazaki Hayao wasn't that bad, the point was there - CONSERVATIVE. Hey, Pixar make great films but I'm not going to be watching Toy Story anywhere near
as many times as I have already seen the aforementioned Spirited Away. And what a load of shite anyway. What lazy tabloid journalism. Is any animation head
going to go, 'Yeah the animation scene in Japan is just sooooo dull, stick on Nemo again'. There's another terrible section on Japanese mums. I like Japanese
mums, hmmm perhaps I should rephrase. I spend a lot of time with Japanese mums....doh! Well, I do. It's part of my job. One of the nicest things about that
is seeing the way they interact with their kids and other people's kids. The love, patience and plain fun of it all. To read Kerr on Mums you would come away
thinking they are all utterly shallow, obsessed with clothes and hairdos and only making friends with people who look just like them. Again, shoddy, shock
tabloid journalism. If you want to go to America and interview gun toting red neck neo nazis, you can, make a programme about it, and then an awful lot of
people are going to accept that as the way things are in the US. I've seen my fair share of 'documentaries' like that.
Japanese women though are amongst the first in the firing line. From Japanese men, foreign men and foreign women. The amount of shit that gets said about
women here as if that's the way 'they' are is shocking. And their 'sisters' from the west are amongst the worst offenders. There's no feminism in Japan I've
heard. Well, er, maybe there isn't the feminism you know, from a western perspective, in English, cos, come on, that's what you mean, I never say to women
who have said that to me. You're married to a Japanese women? -pause with surprised look- 'Are Japanese women who travel abroad different to Japanese women
here?'. Oh fuck off you patronising fucking hippy, I, again, didn't say. In my experience Japanese women are always ready to do things and carry them through
and are less about, yep! opinions. But again that's bull shit generalisation. At least I'm being positive though. I'm interested in music obviously.
Hiroshima is full of talented female DJs, artists, musicians and singers. I struggle to remember anywhere near quite so many active women in areas that men
usually dominate.
Here's a really shit blog -
Gaijin Smash - The idea behind Gaijin 'Smash' is that.....oh I can't be arsed to type that wank out.
Go here to find out the full
horror of immaturity. It serves me well in my rant against knowing fuck all but claiming to know everything with a lovely tale of suppositories.
Read it herebut in brief. Twat goes to doctor, gets medicine that goes up bum, has never heard of it before - THEREFORE everyone and everything else is STUPID and this bizarre medicine was invented by insane Japanese chemists. And going
back to women again, apparently the only women worth knowing are 'Americanised' women.... The kind of opinions expressed there are not in the minority. I had
to stop reading Japan Today because of the forums which ranged from mildy annoying to downright racist. In fact it's this kind of bollocks that finally
provoked me to get it off my chest in my own hypocritical opinionated rant.
I read this quote on
this blog the other day -
If you want to live in Japan for a long time, then you must be reborn. You must forget everything you know and everything you believe in, and start over. You
must value age and experience over book learning. You must do as you're told and blank your mind to any other thoughts. You cannot feel resentment against
the system, not even for a single moment. You cannot demand fairness or equality, or even hope for it. You must learn to believe in a society that is based
on hierarchy. It is a completely different way of thinking, of living, of being. If you do not accept it utterly, into your soul, then you will not survive.
Its from a book called
'In search of Wa' by Karin Muller, and my god, doesn't it sound hideous. I'm going to have to hope it was correctly quoted and I have
no idea of the context. A quick visit to Amazon and, oh yes! It's got a geisha on the front. Here's what Publisher's Weekly says about it -
Having previously traversed the Ho Chi Minh trail and the Inca path, Muller retains an engaging freshness as she goes about "prying open the doors to
traditional Japan." She observes some well-known traditional communities (geishas, samurai), some less familiar (taiko drummers, pachinko parlors) and some
more recent (the criminal yakuza, the gay community). A keen listener, Muller lets an ensemble of voices speak, among them a swordmaker and a crab fisherman.
She's also a participatory learner, taking on tasks like harvesting rice. The diverse activities and excursions to far-flung places make this a fine travel
memoir, but it's the backbone of Muller's voyage that gives her book resonance and richness. The deterioration of her relationship with her host family is a
looming presence; even as it collapses, Muller acquires an intimate sense of customary values from the urbane Genji Tanaka and his conservative wife, Yukiko.
Muller's search for the traditional, culminating in her participation in a 900-mile trek to 88 sacred Buddhist temples, also shapes the narrative. Muller
went to Japan to find wa: a quality of dedication, inner strength and spiritual peace. Her memoir isn't an account of achieving those goals, but it is an
engrossing, rewarding record of her travel toward them.
Geisha, Samurai, taiko, swordmakers, rice harvesting, traditonal, sacred temples, conservative wife, inner strength and spiritual peace. FFS. Forgive me if I
won't be reading this one. Maybe it's excellent, I don't know, but from what I have seen of it I don't think I want to risk wasting the time to find out.
Personally I find that original quote from the book disturbing, and in many ways, racist. If I think of my family, friends, colleagues, guys I play football
with, people who sell me onigiri, and then read that quote, where does it tally up? Where do these mindless robots of which she is speaking exist and am I
destined to become one of them? Where's the salsa dancing Ojisan who gave me a massage last week? As Charlie Brooker said -
'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's opinions'
Next week, Windcheater racially profiles the Dutch. Part 37 in a 92 episode series.
Must go and make some music now...
I did get to go via Bangkok this year though which was a lot of fun. Very hot, very crowded, lovely food, and all sorts of stuff to look at and be entertained by. 5 days seemed too short in the end and I soon forgot any plans to go on a trip somewhere although it now would be nice to see a calmer side of Thailand.
And I traveled north, to see chums in Newcastle. That was nice as we toured Britains majestic countryside in a VW Polo. I'm not even being that sarcastic. The countryside is amazing. We went to the Lakes, Hadrian's Wall, Scotland, Holy Island and er, Bigg Market.
