Let me start with some thoughts on Japan, and remember, there is no way for me as an American to politely discuss Japan, but I want to put some things down here. We'll start with a sort of simple story, after first discussing a term. The term is, gaijin, and the meaning is somewhere around, "dirty foreigner."
In Japan today, people do not want to be bigots - and that is average. For an average Japanese person to want to change anything about being Japanese is a massive deal. However, it is so ingrained in the Japanese character to hate anything that isn't Japanese - that it defies the mind. They have as many as a hundred or more polite euphemisms for gaijin, but they all essentially mean that you are a dirty foreigner. Further, as an American, you are the worst possible gaijin of gaijin, and we will go on to explain why through a story.
In the most traditional Shinto belief, the central and most sacred thing is the land of Japan. As harsh as the Japanese Isles are, they are the most sacred thing in traditional Japanese belief. In the most traditional Japanese belief, if you were Japanese and were not buried in Japanese soil - then you went to hell. There were no exceptions. This belief is not as widely held in Japan today, but it is the most traditional Japanese belief.
So - you are a tourist in Japan. You are the member of a nation who humiliated the Japanese in defeat, and dropped large weapons that decimated large numbers of Japanese people, and poisoned some of their sacred land. You are on their soil, and in the minds of almost every Japanese person, you deserve to die. They would slay you immediately without a mark on their conscience, except for one reason. It isn't good manners to slay you. It is improper form. It is disrespectful.
This is why you go to Japan as a tourist in a group, you stick with the group, and you mind your pint's and quart's when you are visiting there. You might disappear wandering around alone, and the American embassy would have trouble finding what is left of you if you were to disappear. The fact is that the average Japanese person doesn't think this is a good thing, but the fact is also that they would like you dead - particularly as an American - because you dare to step foot on Japanese soil after what has happened in history.
This is one reason our world is so fouled up today. No one can forgive or forget what has gone on in our history. This is not confined to the Japanese. None of us can forgive or forget, and so we're hacking at each other with our modern versions of machetes, though we all know that this is not the way the world should be.
The average Japanese person I have met on the Internet is far superior to the average American wandering our nation. This is because the average Japanese person has little luxury. Their lives are very hard. Further, in Japan, everyone lives at close-quarters, and has for many centuries, so manners are incredibly important. The intense concentration of the Japanese on manners makes their lives - livable.
I saw this when I visited England and Scotland as well. People live in close-quarters in England, so manners allow their lives to be livable, and so manners are an expectation in England, rather than icing on the cake. Familiarity does often breed contempt, and many in England see their country going to hell in a hand-basket, but what I experienced in England was a very orderly and mannerly world.
We do exactly the same in America. The gifts we do have we do not notice, and we see all of the American disorders taking us down into an abyss. There is truth to that, but that isn't everything - even about America.
Another story is one I tell very often. I had met a Japanese man on the 'Net, and we corresponded via email for a few months. One other very Japanese trait is to speak very indirectly. That is good manners in Japan. However, I understand indirection pretty well, and the message was, you are an American, and that makes you a take-caker among gaijin. However, we corresponded for some time, and in the end, the man told me that he counted me as a friend.
A thing about the Japanese is that no matter how indirect they are, they almost never lie. They say what they mean, even if they are being oblique in their manner of stating it. Further, if a statement is important, they are deadly serious about the statement. We might try being so sincere in America today.
So - imagine - I am a take-caker America among gaijin, from a nation that humiliated and defiled the Japanese people and their sacred land. I am friend to this man. These are amazing life-experiences that mean so much, even if I no longer correspond with the man anymore. I also recall that one time I deeply offended the man.
I still do not know what I had said to offend the man so badly. The man was ready to find a good japanese saber, fly to America, and hack me into small pieces. Not only was I unaware of what had offended him so badly, but this is a very average Japanese trait. This is true of both Japanese men and women. When a Japanese person goes on the offensive, you better beware. They are a fierce people. A wonderful people, but not to be toyed with.
I won't go into details, but stop at a local library and find a book of photography concerning the Pacific campaign in the second world war. It is a show-stopper. The Japanese fought like demons to defeat us as "dirty Americans," and we were forced to use our own demonic tactics to defeat them. No one can forget. We all want vengeance for what has happened. Our world is a big screw-up because of this desire for revenge.
Let me tell another story about the Buddha. In most ways, Buddhist religion views the first GuatmanBuddha in a way not dissimilar to the way Christians view Jesus. Buddha was also a martyr. However, the most traditional story about Buddha's martyrdom says something about the Asian mind that is not our Western ideal.
The story goes like this. Buddha preached a strict vegetarian diet. He is invited to a meal by a nobleman. Buddha decides that it will be good manners to attend the meal. He arrives at the meal, and the man is making a mockery of him. He has provided pork at the meal. Remember, pork was not very safe to eat in an older civilization.
Now - even though the man is making a mockery of him, if Buddha is to retain good form and have proper manners - he must eat the pork to respect the man's hospitality. So - Buddha eats the pork, gets food poisoning and dies. He was martyred over good manners. This is Asia!
Another wonderful example of the Asian ideal comes from the early Vedas. Across the large Asian geography, the Vedas are revered, although the interpretation of what this reverence means varies a great deal. This is one of the creation stories of the Vedas, and it is not the most important creation story, but it is a very early and sacred one.
So we have Brahma, the creator-god, an archetypal bearded old man wandering his pardisical garden. The irony seems to be that Brahma has gotten rather lazy, and he decides to lounge in a pool in this garden and falls asleep. He is asleep so long that a lotus-seed makes its way into his navel, and he is unaware that the seed has sprouted and bloomed.
In the bloom of this lotus flower that is in the navel of the creator-god is the middle-earth that we live in. The next irony is a later tale of apocalypse, where the creator-god wakes up from his lounging in the pool, plucks the lotus flower from his navel in irritation, and our entire world ends. This tale seems to the Western mind to simply be ironic, comical, and surrealistic. It is considered to be ironic, comical and surreal in Asia, but it is also a sacred story.
This is another one of our screw-ups in the post-modern world, because though we are still hacking at each other with our modern versions of machetes over our disagreements and for revenge - we are also attempting to dialogue about our differences. What makes this attempt at dialogue so difficult ought to be plain from these two stories. The great all-father of their creation myth will unintentionally grow our entire universe from his navel as a flower while he lounges, then bring on the apocalypse by irritably plucking this flower from his navel. The founder of a religious tradition is martyred over good mannners.
This is not the Western mind. So we dialogue with each other without much success so frequently because we simply can't understand each other - no matter what language we are speaking to each other in. To finish up this particular article, let me say something else. In general "post-modern," is a category used to critique our current state of affairs, which is not a pleasant state of affairs.
However, we have made perhaps one and only one improvement in our post-modern age. That is - that because there is so much diffusion of different ideals among ourselves, that we have begun to consider that our way of thinking is not the only way of thinking. At least we can consider that, no matter how badly we want our vengeance.
As far as we know, no culture in the world before us ever considered that other ways of doing things besides their own might have some value. So, while post-modernism is a critique of a sad state of affairs, we might want to have some pride as post-moderns that we can say to a very alien creation-myth, "That tale makes very little sense to me, but I can see that the tale has some value."
It could be a sign of good things to come, instead of a descent of our world into an abyss. No one can see into the future in that way - that was never the meaning of, "prophecy," in any Western tradition, but it could be a ray of hope. The next article is going to be fun, and it will be at this blog. You'll see.
