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The first class is scheduled in a windowless meeting room on the 25th floor of a Shinjuku skyscraper. When I arrive each of the fifteen students (employees of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government) introduce themselves in formal, crippled English and then I am expected to conduct the class. A textbook is handed to me and I read aloud an utterly banal and contrived conversational passage (a speech!).
Friends: In 1963 when President John F. Kennedy announced the signing of the first nuclear test ban treaty he said, “Yesterday, a shaft of light cut into the darkness.” In the same way through our discussions this past weekend we can also say, “A shaft of light cut into the darkness.” Our shaft of light is friendship that penetrates the darkness of international misunderstanding. Thank you for coming to Japan. Thank you for becoming friends. May the light of our new friendship shine throughout the rest of our lives.
It is as if the mind has started to reel and panics, wildly attempting to find a familiar foothold anywhere in the situation. Staring around the table at the bland polite attentive faces and feeling overcome with terror, I fan myself and sip water. (I am feeling aghast). If I haven’t experienced it before, it must be Xenophobia, acute and inopportune. Afterwards the class takes me to lunch at the Metropolitan Government cafeteria. I am still only barely able to tolerate the circumstances and try to explain that I am claustrophobic. All those seated at the table immediately pull dictionaries out of their coat pockets and there is a general murmur and conference. Afterwards I go straight back to the Australia Council studio and lie in bed for the remainder of the day.
I am attracted to examples of ”Japlish” not because they are simply comical corruptions of good english but often because they emphasise, in an uncanny way the absurdity and the conceit lurking in our own, native utterances. In this way - as so often in Japan - the familiar is estranged and revealed.
Another Gaijin enters the train carriage.
I am instantly drawn to look in their direction but at the same moment I feel self conscious and and if our eyes happen to meet I turn away and ignore the person.
Why is this?
A Canadian woman explained the estrangement between foreigners as having something to do with the special status that is accorded the English teacher. She described watching a foreigner walking down the street surrounded by an entourage of respectful students and being reminded of the story of the emperor's new clothes. It is possible that the English teacher also thinks of this and in moments when not completely absorbed in their role, suspect that whatever qualification they hold is not entirely deserved. They fear being un-masked by a jealous compatriot.
The first sensation upon catching sight of the other foreigner is a feeling that one’s own singularity is slightly diminished. It is preferable to be completely alone than to be one of a foreign minority. The grandeur of foreigness comes at the expense of the company of ones fellow country-men.
I feel an impulse to speak to the other foreigner but it is checked by the realisation that they may very well speak no English. Worse still, they might reasonably see foreign-ness (which is to say; a shared exclusion) as being a pathetic pretext for conversation and this, a sign of helplessness.
Looking at the foreigners face, one sees just what it is about it that amuses the Japanese child. The bridge of the nose juts out from between the eyebrows. The eyes bulge and wander without restraint or modesty. Hair grows everywhere on the body. The face writhes, like a basket of snakes, with the compulsion to express and betray emotion.
I realise, at the instant our eyes meet, that all my musings must probably occur to the foreigner when they look at me. This thought is unbearable and my gaze is immediately deflected by this thought.
Transform your “Inner Scream” suppressed
consciously or unconsciously into a work of art and get it published.
Express yourself. A comleted work make not only inspire you to
go on to greater things but you may also find your hidden identity
through your creativity.
Creation gives you the effetcts like facing a strenger in you,
reaching the deep resources your soul. So, express yourself for
all you are worth.
I found myself trying to describe the significance of the
last line of an Australian poem that goes: ‘Fuck the fucking fucker ‘cause the fucking fucker’s fucked’. It was explained to me that an expletive with a sexual or genital connotation is rarely used and its dramatic effect not easily comprehended in Japan. The closest I could get to the word ‘mother-fucker’ was a phrase that literally translates as “he whose umbilical cord has yet to be cut”.
Art & Artist are going hand in
hand. Conception and Love are the fundamental elements of artistic
activities. Because they are seeking after the need to materialize
the unpresented things by all possible means and after creation
on the condition that there are the shortcomings in the horizon
of presence from unpresence is possible only when there is a
love for existance free from the presented works and utillites
and also a conception of an ideal which yields in a form equivalent
to hand of an artist.
English and the command of its colloquialisms is sometimes the only thing of value one feels one possesses in Japan. Surrounded by wealth and infallible manners it is a small consolation to think that one possesses this thing innately and in this respect one’s qualification will always be higher than that of a native-born Japanese. It was disconcerting to discover that many of the young people were simply not impressed by any of this. It was, in their milieu, considered far more fashionable to be able to speak French.
• A schoolgirl shopping with her mother in Tokyu Hands department store. The girl’s T-Shirt reads “too drunk to fuck”
Transcriptions from some other T-shirts:
“We are in a time of momentous
change. New concept are born and from them new words are created
and the beauty of new feelings arises. The creative impulse is
born of the impressions we get from a several thousand years
which feels so close as to be only recent. A lesson for the heart,
these impressions are trapped within the struggle between boby
and spirit. It is here that my creativity lies.”
I wonder if I am getting any better at understanding and following narratives on television and in comics even though I still can’t speak a word of Japanese? I fancy that not knowing the language might encourage one to pay more attention to other clues and signs that would usually lie by the wayside of literal comprehension. I thought I might be getting stronger in the same way that blindness could strengthen and concentrate a person’s hearing. I enjoyed and understood the kung-fu movie on TV last night but in retrospect, this probably doesn’t prove anything much.
This picture appeared in the newspaper just before I left for Japan. It is a photograph taken by a man named Shigeno Takasu from inside the aircraft in which he was travelling hours before it crashed at Nagoya airport, killing everyone aboard. The caption to the photograph was a little strange; it said that the photo showed passengers ‘relaxing only hours before their death’ as if they had been waiting for the crash that was scheduled to take their lives.
• From my seat in the aeroplane I was facing at least five colour video screens of varying shapes and sizes. As we took off I was surprised to see that they were monitoring the view taken from a camera mounted in the nose of the plane. It was quite a thrill to watch the tarmac rushing forward on television at the same time as feeling the gut wrenching velocity of take-off. An interesting analogy to virtual reality. Found myself thinking of that photograph (a relic) that was recovered from the wreckage of the aeroplane that crashed at Nagoya recently. What a fantastic and banal image. As if it had achieved significance by a sleight of hand. Wondered if what I was watching on the monitor was being recorded at that moment by the aircrafts black box. Imagined that I was already analysing an incident that had yet to occur. Being incinerated in the catastrophe and simultaneously witnessing its replay on the evening news.
Reminds me of a device developed by the french army that consisted of a camera mounted on the barrel of a rifle. The camera carries an enhanced image in whichever direction the gun is pointed, to a pair of VR goggles worn by the soldier. As well as enabling him to fight by starlight, it obviates the need to take aim as anything that he ‘looks’ at is already in his gun-sights.
• Kids stumbling around in the padded harness of the VR game. How amusing it is to watch someone’s virtual blindness.
• “Interactive Media” in many instances promising everything but delivering nothing more profound than the possibility of having a direct neural connection to the channel selector of a television set.
It isn't easy to describe this but at first one crushes them unthinkingly with a cold eye and for reasons that seem practical. Then in the course of co-habitation, one may become aware of their human-like behaviour.
Cockroaches are generally timid, preferring the dark in which they move quietly about, looking for food. Turning on a ceiling light will scare a cockroach away but the beam of a single torch may inspire in it curiosity and a compulsion to creep forward. With antennae waving gracefully before it, a cockroach will advance slightly and then hesitate as if to consider the next move. Perhaps we can say it is thinking. Unlike other insects that trundle dumbly forward like trolleys or street-cars, the cockroach will watch for fast moves and appear to deliberate even when the coast seems clear.
How it panics when uncovered or caught in the open! It will run frantically this way and that, as if it feels the exact weight of ones gaze but, being low and flat, is unable to locate it. The thrill and obsession with hunting these repulsive vegetarians must owe much to the challenge of their speed and intelligence. Add to this the precision needed to to make a conclusive strike with a shoe or newspaper and the force required so as to kill without making a mess of the Tatami matting. The Mess! The sight of the pulp exuded by the crushed body makes ones skin crawl and after a month of obsessively hunting these quick intelligent creatures, the skin crawls merely in anticipation of this sight. Why did Kafka choose this creature as the subject of his story of metamorphosis? Already present in the cockroach are the qualities we admire, of unassuming, hardworking and misunderstood devotion.We could imagine that the (unwritten) first part of the story introduced a cockroach named Gregor who had awoke one morning to find he was human.
The mystery of lanterns. They mediate the source of light. They will always make us think of standing outside a lighted dwelling at night. At the same time as illuminating things around, they draw attention to themselves. So unlike a beam of light directed out that locates points within a dynamic geometry where centres are shifting and only temporarily important. The lantern says that there is a discreet life here. The shadow of a body against the drawn blind of a boudoir window. One feels lighter for the lanterns gravitational pull. Its generousity assures discretion.
Symbolizing the Three F philosophy
in which we aim at discovering every need in daily life and
an emitting base of creation and suggestions of new life, this
mark consists of three forms with free strokes. The round shape
of “Circle Green” which gives a feeling of warmth represents the earth fostering us and a solidarity ring combining the new life style of people who are increasingly becoming sensible with local communities to support the people’s happy and healthy lives. The bright heart of “Heart Red” represents information-emitting energy, indispensable for today’s convenience stores and the “service mind for rich lives.” The bright star of “Star Blue” represents
Three F attitude of trying to materialize a peaceful and affluent
future. When todays life style exists free from uniformal patterns,
our store itself is a message for the people of a new kind.
Thus, as the core of the message, this mark symbolizes the
spirit of Three F rendering thoughtful services.
WE ARE ECOLOGY-MINDED.
THIS SHOPPING BAG WILL SELF-DESTRUCT IN MOTHER EARTH. |
