JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 250 из 270«There arepeople right now living pleasant lives in lands across the sea... A place where just taking a walk in the morning makes your heart beat faster with excitement. Where the bustle of activity in town is not tiring but energizing-surely cities like this exist somewhere in this wide world.» There follow photos and rankings of Edinburgh, Santa Fe, Bologna, Penang, Auckland, and so on, as places for the Japanese to move and start a new life, concentrating on an unspoiled natural environment, large comfortable houses, and a vibrant traditional culture. Sato Sachiko, the wife of a Japanese businessman living in Strasbourg, says, «When I think of returning to Japan, I get depressed.»
Why should she get depressed? The word semai gives us a strong hint, and Nomo's use of the word enjoy instead of endure brings us close to the answer. The school system, the bureaucracy, and the oppressive rules and hierarchies to which they give rise are dampening the Japanese people's spirit. In short, Japan is becoming no fun. Sasaki Ryu, a fifteen-year-old student who was interviewed in Asiaweek in May 1999, sums up the mood in Japan today:
I dream of going to a college in the U.S. School is so boring here. All the kids in my class think alike and everybody wants to be in a group. I'm quite sick of it. I like baseball, and when I see how some Japanese baseball players have made it in the States, I really admire them. Japanese players are good too but somehow the individuality of the American players draws me. I know it will be tough, but I'm ready to try. Young Japanese people have no dreams. I don't want to be like that.
This brings us full circle – from the Japanese people's relationship with the outside world to their feelings about their own country. Stalled «internationalization» has very little to do with anything international; rather, the problems spring from troubles within. As Ian Buruma comments, «The main victims of the bigoted, exclusive, rigid, rascist, authoritarian ways of Japanese officialdom are not the foreigners, even though they are at times its most convenient targets, but the rank and file of the Japanese themselves.»
When «young people have no dreams,» when a great inventor gets «no position, no bonus,» when school, work, and sports are a matter of «endure» rather than «enjoy,» when cities and countryside are losing their beauty and romance – that's a case of becoming no fun.
Why should she get depressed? The word semai gives us a strong hint, and Nomo's use of the word enjoy instead of endure brings us close to the answer. The school system, the bureaucracy, and the oppressive rules and hierarchies to which they give rise are dampening the Japanese people's spirit. In short, Japan is becoming no fun. Sasaki Ryu, a fifteen-year-old student who was interviewed in Asiaweek in May 1999, sums up the mood in Japan today:
I dream of going to a college in the U.S. School is so boring here. All the kids in my class think alike and everybody wants to be in a group. I'm quite sick of it. I like baseball, and when I see how some Japanese baseball players have made it in the States, I really admire them. Japanese players are good too but somehow the individuality of the American players draws me. I know it will be tough, but I'm ready to try. Young Japanese people have no dreams. I don't want to be like that.
This brings us full circle – from the Japanese people's relationship with the outside world to their feelings about their own country. Stalled «internationalization» has very little to do with anything international; rather, the problems spring from troubles within. As Ian Buruma comments, «The main victims of the bigoted, exclusive, rigid, rascist, authoritarian ways of Japanese officialdom are not the foreigners, even though they are at times its most convenient targets, but the rank and file of the Japanese themselves.»
When «young people have no dreams,» when a great inventor gets «no position, no bonus,» when school, work, and sports are a matter of «endure» rather than «enjoy,» when cities and countryside are losing their beauty and romance – that's a case of becoming no fun.