Two days ago, I arrived in Japan. It has been a strange experience. The first night was perhaps the strangest. Riding on the opposite side of the road in an angular, oppositely-constructed van along highways barely wide enough to fit one car, high swamp grass creeping over the shoulder—uninhibited as a result of nonexistent guard rails—I felt I had been transported into the past. The feeling extended through the evening, as my fellow teachers and I ate various chicken skewers in a rather old, hut-looking restaurant.
The second day, I realized that Japan was not just like visiting the past, but visiting the future as well. This is the obvious thing most people think of back in the States; it is striking how far from reality, however, the conception is. Downtown Ogaki, with its small, winding rivers and picturesque plant life sandwiched between ancient buildings with their very Asian-style roofs, it seems mostly very untouched by American “modernization.” But obviously it has been transformed as such, and it is striking how incongruent and transparent the changes are.
Loc City, for instance, is a giant shopping complex a few short blocks from my apartment. It houses the 24-hour MaxValu Supermarket, a number of clothing stores (most of which are similar to their American counterparts, aside from the one that only sells kimonos), a book store, a coffee shop, a food court, a Sports Authority, Eiden—the Japanese equivalent of Best Buy, a bedding/home goods store, Daiso—the awesomely superior Japanese version of the Dollar Store, and an internet café/arcade/pachinko parlor known as Korona World.
In case you didn’t realize it, there are a lot of English words thrown in there. And that is similar to everything, everywhere I’ve seen thus far. Katakana—Japanese characters used to spell “loan words” taken from English, such as “su pa ma ke to” (supermarket), etc—are everywhere, even though most of the time the English words they’re translating are incomprehensible. Still, it’s a stunning reminder that a lot of the stores here, a lot of the restaurants and signs and what not, have either taken their names from English, or incorporate English right into their names, despite what little sense it makes.
And it rarely does. Take, for instance, the description from a “Dessert Spoon” that was provided for me here at the apartment: Desiring a flower blooming in the kitchen the nature gives you relaxation and composure. Stay in the wine. Or the nonsensical description emblazoned upon my Bow-wow brand folder: I like a walk. Therefore, it is lonely for a rainy day not to go outside. If it goes to a park, there are many friends. Playing with a ball with everybody is pleasant. Everyone—literally people of all ages—wears T-shirts with completely random English words and phrases on them. The other teachers seem to find it amusing. I find it disturbing.
English—in any sort of real, comprehensible sense as a language—is decidedly not widespread in Japan, though all students are required to take English classes from fifth grade on, and many take classes at private schools (such as the one I’m working at, Shimon) as early as three years old. Still, trying to set up my internet café membership with the teenage employee took twenty minutes, and it simply required seeing my passport and informing me it cost 100 yen.
As such, I’ve spent the last day or so in a state of unease at the prevalence of English words throughout Japanese society. And then it hit me: Japan is, essentially, like an idealized American colony. It has accepted, almost unquestioningly, the American way of life. English words, no matter what they say, are cool. We may have put a lot of them there following World War II, but Japan’s fascination with the West stems back decades earlier in the 20th century, to the ‘20s and before. The katakana “loan words” were probably adopted wholesale in emulation, while much of the actual English may have resulted from postwar occupation and cultural influence/dictation.
Thus, there is a very superficial quality to Japan’s “modern-ness,” even when it exceeds its American counterparts. Electronic speed limit signs and other technological novelties just seem like symptoms of Japan’s American-ness. It is the ultimate consumer culture, and outpaces even America in its desire for nice clothes and weird gadgets. There is a vacancy behind this attitude, however, that seems to indicate the most profound sense of future shock. Older Japanese in their dilapidated buildings, much older than anything Americans in similar cities would be living in, seem oblivious to their country’s changes. Younger Japanese don’t question the unnerving capitalism-run-amok that has made their country what it is. Even as outsiders view Japan as a land of the future, living in Japan, one never gets the feeling that other countries would ever want to emulate this one. It is simultaneously ahead of America, yet perennially playing catch-up.
So you have Japanese riding their “mamachitas,” cheap silver Schwinn-like bicycles with baskets, wearing their stylish clothes and watching their American-imported movies, all trying uniformly to be like the ever-awe-inspiring Americans, yet living in a land where such an achievement could never be possible. Japan is too gorgeous, too squashed together, too ancient and simply too different to ever resemble America, but it has been so crippled and emaciated that it does not realize how it beats America out in so many different ways. Instead, there are only two modes of thought: the self-consciously “Japanese” style, evidenced in anime, still-popular samurai TV shows and other stereotypical “Japanese” cultural forms, and the empty capitalism of Japanese artists like Pizzicato Five and Takashi Murakami, who operate as much as brands as they do artists, an inevitable consequence of having no other culture than wholesale appropriation and American-influenced capitalist globalism to draw from.
(Of course, many Japanese artists have found vitality outside of this model, but it is amazing how rare such free-thinking seems to be on the whole. In America, there are a million different niches for people of different lifestyles and artistic preferences and musical tastes and what not. In Japan, however, it seems there is but J-Pop and direct American emulation, such as the “Rock n Roll” band my fellow teacher plays bass in. The only exceptions to this that I can think of offhand are the vibrant Japanese noise and psych scenes. Why American acts can be direct revivals and seem original, or at least consciously contemporaneous, as opposed to their Japanese counterparts, is something I cannot satisfactorily explain at the moment, however.)
Perhaps all this is simply a warped perspective provided by someone who can barely understand any of the culture that is around him; disconnected from the news, television shows, and simple conversation with the vast majority of people here, I have the distinct impression of living atemporally, in a world that is so far detached from life as I knew it that it seems like living in a human ant farm. Someone has popped all these English signs and music and movies in, and nobody knows what they mean, but they sure seem cool. Meanwhile, every other facet of life exists completely detached from the world outside the glass. It’s neat, but risks being intellectually stifling, a feeling only compounded by the extreme politeness that prevents the Japanese, even those with strong commands of English, from speaking directly to Americans (or, it seem, much at all). I’m sure I could live here easily enough, but as someone who used to follow politics religiously and spend most of his time trying to conceive of utopian societies, it’s weird to live in what seems like a world of total inconsequence. It’s strange; very, very strange.
Oh, and the mosquitoes are terrible.
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