[...] What I liked [in Japan], in restaurants and subway stations, is the absence of English. You don't have this self-humiliating, disgusting, pleasing attitude. It's up to the foreigners to find their way out. I liked tremendously those automatic vending machines. Did you see The Shining, based on Stephen King's novel? This is America at its worst. Three people, a family, in a big hotel and still the space is too small for them and they start killing each other. In Japan, even when it is very crowded, you don't feel the pressure, even if you are physically close. The art of ignoring. In the New York subway, even when it's half full, you would have this horrifying experience of the absolute proximity of the Other. What I liked about the Foucault conference in Tokyo I attended was that one would expect the Japanese to apply Foucault to their own notions. But all the Japanese interventions were about Flaubert. They didn't accept this anthropological game of playing idiots for you. No, they tried to beat us at our own game. We know Flaubert better than you. Every nation in Europe has this fanaticism, conceiving itself as the true, primordial nation. The Serbian myth, for example, is that they are the first nation of the world. The Croatians consider themselves as primordial Aryans. The Slovenians are not really Slavs, but pretend to be of Etrurian origin. It would be nice to find a nation that accepts the fact of being the second and not the first. This might be a part of the Japanese identity, if you look at the way they borrow languages. I recently read a book on Kurosawa. It is said that Rashomon was seen in the early fifties as the big discovery of the Eastern spirit. But in Japan it was perceived as way too Western. My favorite Japanese film is Sansho by Michoguchi because it offers itself for a nice, Lacanian reading, the problem of the lost mother, the mother's voice reaching the son, etc. This is the Japanese advantage over America when the mother's voice tries to reach the son. In America one would get madness, like Hitchcock's Psycho, but in Japan you get a normal family. The Balkans is now a region where the West is projecting its own phantasies, like Japan. And again, this can be very contradictory. The film Rising Suns ambiguously suggests that there is a Japanese plot to take over and buy Hollywood. The idea is that they do not just want our factories, our land, they even want our dreams. Behind this there's the notion of thought control. It's the old Marxist notion of buying the whole chain, from the hardware until the movie theatres. What interests me in Japan is that it is a good argument against the vulgar, pseudo-Marxist evolutionary notion that you have to go through certain evolutionary stages. Japan proves that you can make a direct short circuit. You retain certain elements of the old hierarchical superstructure and combine it very nicely with the most effective version of capitalism it pretends to be. It's a good experience in non-anthropocentrism. It's a mystery for Western sociologists who say that you need Protestant ethics for good capitalism. What I see in Japan, and maybe this is my own myth, is that behind all these notions of politeness, snobbism etc. the Japanese are well aware that something which may appear superficial and unnecessary has a much deeper structural function. A Western approach would be: who needs this? But a totally ridiculous thing at a deeper level might play a stabilizing function we are not aware of. Everybody laughs at the English monarchy, but you'll never know. There is another notion that is popular now amongst American sociologists, the civilizations of guilt versus civilizations of shame. The Jews and their inner guilt and the Greeks with their culture of shame. The usual cliche now is that Japan is the ultimate civilization of shame. What I despise in America is the studio actors' logic, as if there is something good in self-expression: do not be oppressed, open yourself, even if you shout and kick the others, everything in order to express and liberate yourself. This is a stupid idea, that behind the mask there is some truth. In Japan, and I hope that this is not only a myth, even if something is merely an appearance, politeness is not simply insincere. There is a difference between saying "Hello, how are you?" and the New York taxi drivers who swear at you. Surfaces do matter. If you disturb the surfaces you may lose a lot more than you think. You shouldn't play with rituals. Masks are never simply mere masks. Perhaps that's why Brecht became close to Japan. He also liked this notion that there is nothing really liberating in this typical Western gesture of stealing the masks and showing the true face. What you discover is something absolutely disgusting. Let's maintain the appearances, that's my own phantasy of Japan.
Wotjek wrote: Take for example interaction with other people in public places. When you go to places like Nairobi or Istanbul you cannot complain about the lack of interaction, which is an euphemism for a barrage of attention directed at you from vendors of various stripes. On when you go to Cape Town or Jo'burg it is not uncommon to be lectured by a taxi driver about the vices of apartheid and basic suckiness of "the North."
I do not particularly enjoy attempts to separate me from my money or being lectured about things of which I have no control - yet these encounters do not annoy me as much as most attention grabbing efforts I run into the US. What makes the difference is that the Turkish or Kenyan vendor or South African cab driver may want something from me, but they interact with me like with another human being. By contrast, most US-ers do not even seem to be entertaining the basic humanity of others around them. They either enjoy themselves, as you correctly pointed out, completely oblivious to the effects their enjoyment has on others, or they treat others as mere instruments in their mission, whatever that mission might be. They do not talk, they broadcast. Most of the times I have an encounter with a stranger in a public place in the US I feel being treated like an object - either ignored altogether or being treated as a mere means to one's end, used and discarded.
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