Japan Wonders 1

Seven Wonders of Japan

By William Wetherall

A version of this article appeared in
Mainichi Daily News, 20 January 1990, page 9

See also
Japan Wonders 2
Minority Wonders
Suicide Wonders

Contents

1. Emperor Jokes
2. Nature Lovers
3. Cultural Misunderstandings
4. The Japanese Brain
5. Bashing Phobia
6. The Myth of Homogeneity
7. Sexual Censorship

1. Emperor Jokes

Japan is awash with jokes delightful and tasteless about the imperial family. I have heard them told in barbershops and at Ministry of Education seminars, and have seen them repeated in popular magazines. There are books devoted to graphic spoofs of the imperial family, so why not a collection of jokes? Two of my contributions would be:

2. Mature Lovers

My neighbor belongs to a bank, a set of unscratched golf clubs, and a perfectly duff-free garden. His one passion in life, when not trying to find a missing yen or polishing his platinum-plated putter, is taming nature. He exhausts his own longevity by denying the leaves in his manicured garden a decent decay. He dreams of protecting nature from itself while watching it from behind the glass door of his air-conditioned living room. When he spots a falling leaf, he dashes out and snatches it before it can reach the ground and disturb his order. No room in his Jomonist heart for nature, wild in couth and awe.

3. Cultural Misunderstandings

My neighbor's wife belongs to the dog she walks with spade and bag in hand and a grim smile for me when I catch her watching the dog do it. One morning she saw me slap my buttock as I went out the door. By noon everyone in the block had me down as a self-flagellator. I explained that foreigners slap their buttocks to test reality and prevent crime. They want to make sure that their asses are still there, and check that they've got their wallets before they take their chances with the local police-box gaijin gazer who gets a sudden urge to inspect their papers, I plan to tell the officer who asks me what happened to my fingerprint that he can't see it because it was made with invisible ink.

4. The Japanese Brain

Rumor has it that native speakers of Japanese can be taught to imagine that nature is speaking to them. The Japanese cerebrum quickly tires when taxed with real English, but it thrives on English noise of its own making. Its gray matter flips in its gimbals when overdosed with smoke, speed, sex, moonlight, or earth's magnetism. And it gets high on the murmur of a brook, the rasp-of a cricket, and the crunch of a cockroach. No wonder Japanese politicians can't hear the voices of the people.

5. Bashing Phobia

Paranoia is endemic among Japanese who equate outside criticism of "our country" with unfriendliness, and who feel that they are victims of American and other "western" cultural absolutism and even imperialism. The most vulnerable are intellectuals who believe that "the Japanese" possess a unique "ethnic culture" the "values" of which are not to be judged by outsiders. The fashionability of racial culturalism has given outsiders the choice of accepting Japan's politically managed self-image or inviting charges of "cultural misunderstanding" or "Japan bashing." Relativists refuse to believe that some of Japan's best friends are the humanist critics who reject the nativist proposition that a society is best understood in its own terms by the people who control these terms.

6. The Myth of Homogeneity

Japanese public figures like former prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, lower house representative Ishihara Shintaro, and even Sony's Morita Akio (notwithstanding his denials to the contrary), have done more than anyone else to encourage the global failure to regard Japan as a raceless, multiethnic state whose citizens and non-citizen residents come in all colors and kinds. The myth that Japan is a "monoethnic state" would be dead by the end of the century if journalists and scholars, who should know better, stopped repeating the he that Japan is a homogeneous country with one culture, one race, one language, and one historical experience. As a noun, the word "Japanese" is truthfully used only to designate human beings who, regardless of their race or ethnicity, happen to be citizens of Japan. Phrasing like "Ainu and Japanese" denationalizes Japanese of Ainu ancestry. "Japanese and blacks" similarly deprives black Japanese of their citizenship.

7. Sexual Censorship

Nothing betrays Japan's collective denial of nature and diversity more than the hiding of sexual organs and even pubic hair in theater and gallery art, while rush-hour porn is allowed to invite public attention with impunity. Censors who tamper with films like "Camille Claudel" ought to be hung by their hangables. Why hide those vignettes, however voyeuristic or speculative, of Rodin's carnal inspirations? No wonder Japan excels in passionless pulp. If Big Brother must cut something, why not the ubiquitous urinal scenes in TV dramas? As an inveterate daisy waterer who got potty trained in the woods, I'd just as soon that such scenes stay. But given their subliminal power to suggest a toilet break when the ads come on, you'd think the sponsors would complain.