Sunday, June 26, 2005

Hungover Ho


The great skies of Tokushima

Dear dog, what a rough morning.

I just woke up to the humdrum of a collosal headache, surpassed only by my friend's hungover proselytising about the dangers of
nomihoudais (all-you-can-drink parties) and the loss of self control, much like the lyrics to that old Laura Brannigan song that I can't seem to stop humming now. I still remember it from the time I was a young sprog, tortured by it through the speakers on the backseat of the car as my mom picked me up from school. If only she had known that her poor taste in music would, years later, kick back with sadistic gusto. Or maybe she did. Mom never agreed to me drinking too much.

I drink fairly often (probably less than someone my age should), but not frequently to the point of last night's debauchery. "What does he know, he who only knows sobriety?" I suppose he knows a lot, starting with the fact that that drunks are annoying. And if he is a well educated fellow, he could also know a lot about epistemological theory. But I digress. Last night taught me that 3 minute drills with cheap stolen wine after going to a couple of bars is not a good idea. I also learnt a random fact about tourniquets, but that's beyond the point.

Despite my youthful looks, I'm old enough to know better. Besides, I'm a shit drinker. Perhaps not the worse one this side of Nanjing (for a national sport, drinking does take its sorry toll on many red-faced Japanese, some of them bushwhacked after only a few beers), but due to lack of practice I'm not one to "chug" things, let alone ascertain my masculinity -undoubtedly tattered in front of numerous pub clienteles by now- through nonsensical feats involving Satan's urine. Call me a cold rationalist, but judging the size of other men's bollocks by seeing how much liquid they can shove down their gullets is a particularly bizarre leap of logic. And why would you want to think of another man's bollocks anyway? Isn't
that kind of gay to start with?

Still, I had fun. Sure, I might feel like arse and the denture in my wallet hurts like lemon juice on a mouth ulcer, but like a wise proverb of my people says: "lo comido y lo bailado no me lo quita nadie." Which roughly translates as something like "no one can take away what I ate and danced." What excellent Catholic values!

I need to lie down.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Sandcastles



At the moment the tide recedes, these giants of crushed shells and unmade stone plead to emerge from the bubbles that the seafoam left behind. Slowly, rising from the trench that will soon become a moat, the towers form, defiant of the empty flatness in this water-ridden desert.

In handfuls they pile up, a frenzy of protuberance fulfilling the dream of a million specks clamouring to rise from their tabular state, to look down and kiss the breeze that gently pounds on their pretentions. Playfully, she whispers "You do not belong here," and convinces a few with her sirenlike voice to trickle down in sucidal lust.

The towers grow bigger now as they begin to take shape. A door, a window, a courtyard and marble steps. From sand into cement, the walls harden like callous hands; but not to stiffness, for the structure is malleable - not a collosus like the rocks of previous lives, but a payment of the karma begotten by their past unwillingness to budge.

Monuments brought down by hordes of liquid discontent, they rest swayed by the same water that once tore them apart, torn again in the humid embrace of salty oppression, ever coarser, ever finer, ever flatter in defeat.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Japan IO

Quaint quarries on the way to Tensui

The cliché goes that Japan is a country of contradictions, a melting pot of East and West where traditions collide in Zenlike harmony. Native and foreign elements are perceived as complementary, and adjectives for the resulting combination may hover around anything from fascinating to anachronistic. Many will be ready to point out the dissonance of old and new, the cunning alloy of Western wit and Eastern wile. Japan, they say, still retains its Asian soul amidst cold industrial technology. Yet, despite its cultural schizophrenia—or perhaps because of it—Japan is not so much an incongruous country as it is a place ruled by binary opposition.

Japan does retain many traditions and faux pieces of culture, if not for the sake of authenticity, at least to cling to a romantic image of a "pure" Japan that never was. Many famous Japanese cultural symbols are political creations of the late Edo (Tokugawa) and early Meiji periods, roughly between 1850-1900 and analogous to the height of Western imperialism. They are based less on real tradition than a bid to establish a national identity to secure national unity.

It was during this period that Kabuki theatre, once a persecuted and vulgar form of art, was raised to highbrow status as delineative of the ‘Japanese spirit’ - this despite the rebelliousness and social critique underlying many Kabuki themes. The newly acquired state religion, State Shinto, managed to take local animistic rites and put them in a national scope, all the while creating new rituals to exacerbate the myth of Japan as a monolithic entity. Ancient books, such as the Kojiki (a collection of mythology from circa 1200 AD and roughly a Japanese equivalent to Homer’s Illyad), were used as a base for the newfangled national faith. Even though the country as a unified whole is a relatively recent idea, the Meiji oligarchs endeavoured to give Japan millenary legitimacy through a mishmash of cultural and religious forms, and they exist until these days as national symbols.

The above is not always easy to reconcile with the modern highways, mobile phones and capitalist consumerism that describe Japan in the present. In turn, nationalist sentiments and institutionalised xenophobia have further helped to forge a widespread concept of cultural absolutes, where things are either Japanese or foreign in nature.

Nativism is not a new phenomenon in Japan, and its society reveals a deep nationwide concern with cultural purity. It comes as no surprise that one of the most favoured adjectives by many Japanese–especially those who speak English—is “Japanese,” as though the word itself carried a significant descriptive weight. It can be seen, read and heard everywhere, from tourist pamphlets evoking that elusive ‘spirit of Japaneseness’, Yamato damashii, to pop music lyrics (such as a recent hit titled “Japanese girl”) or endless conversations about ‘Japanese’ tea and ‘Japanese’ cherry blossoms.

Since trying to define what exactly constitutes being Japanese is tricky, it is easier to establish what is not Japanese instead. Thus cherry blossoms and green tea belong to Japan, because highways, mobile phones and capitalism do not. If the latter are of higher quality than in the West, it is only because they are imbued with abstractions, such as the Yamato damashii.

Yet all these arguments start sounding dubious if we consider that most cultural legacies are almost never engendered through singularities, but a buildup of numerous traditions, generally from different places. They borrow from one another, in turn giving form to separate expressions of folklore. Just as Zen Buddhism –a defining theme in many traditional Japanese art forms- is founded in traditions from China and India, modern-day Japanese capitalism borrows heavily from North American and European models. Even cherry blossoms are native to several countries. The concept of cultural absolutes, then, vanishes in between the grayscale shades of critical debate.

Due to reasons both historical as they are political, however, and an educational system lacking in discussion, focused instead on correct/incorrect answers, a large number of Japanese end up perceiving their country not as a mere state-governed physical location, but rather a state of mind. Japan is as much a name as it is a feeling, pride conjoined with deep nostalgia for the old furusato (village), that mythical commonplace of virginal kimono clad maidens performing tea ceremonies for stern samurais. Binary logic has, in short, made Japan a stereotype of itself. And while the preservation of cultural legacy is a legitimate endeavour, history has shown how dangerous equating concepts of nation, race and culture can be.

Japan is indeed a melting pot of contradictions, but only because of the antipodean struggle to separate the native from the foreign, even when these boundaries are oftentimes imaginary. It might not provide seamless harmony, but certainly paves the way for more similar clichés.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The Silence Breaks

Blogging Again - and this time it's personal.

One of the best cliches in writing must be starting one's piece stating the present time. "It's 12am now...", and off we go with the day's rant. I don't know why, but it happens, especially in emails. It's the written equivalent of talking about the weather - politely informative, yet not necessarily conducive to anything worthwhile. And just like weather talk can fill in awkward gaps in conversation, stating the time provides a good resort for the uninspired author. "It's 3:30pm and I'm washing the dog"; "1:43am. I am tired." Genius.

Truth is, I was having a bit of trouble trying to come up with something to update the site - especially after over half a year of glacial electronic silence. And good starting lines are scarce these days. So, at the risk of sounding trite, I was about to pull a timey myself for this article. But then I realised that the old timelog gambit would only make for a sublimely dull piece. Overall, it would've looked something like this:

1:21am - I am writing an update for my weblog.
1:23am - Still writing.
1:26am - Still writing.
1:35am - Scrounging for ideas, but still writing.
1:41am - Hey, a cockroach.
1:42am - Still writing.
1:50am - Yup. Still here.

Luckily it didn't!