JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 5 из 270«A man seeing an X-ray photograph of his own skeleton,» wrote Marcel Proust, «would have the same suspicion of error at the sight of this rosary of bones labeled as being a picture of himself as the visitor to an art gallery who, on coming to the portrait of a girl, reads in his catalogue: 'Dromedary resting.' » The Japan that I have described in this book will be equally unfamiliar to many readers. The «land of high technology,» lacking the know-how to test for or clean up toxic wastes. The society that «loves nature» concreting over its rivers and seashores to feed a voracious construction industry. An «elite bureaucracy» that has so mismanaged the public wealth that the health system and pension funds are failing, while the national debt has soared to become the highest in the world.
It is an incongruous picture, shockingly alien if one is familiar only with the seductive outer skin of Japan's manufacturing success. How could the winsome Portrait of a Girl, presented to the world for forty years by Japan experts, have turned out to be Dromedary Resting – ravaged mountains and rivers, endemic pollution, tenement cities, and skyrocketing debt? Why have writers and academics never told us about this?
Since the 1950s, Western observers have come to Japan as worshippers to a shrine. When I majored in Japanese Studies in college in the 1960s and early 1970s, I learned, as did most of my colleagues, that it was our mission to explain Japan to an uncomprehending and unsympathetic world. Japan did everything differently from the West, and this was terribly exciting – for many Japanologists, it seemed to be an ideal society, a Utopia. Even the revisionist writers of the 1980s, who warned of a Japanese economic juggernaut, spoke largely in terms of awe.
Many of my colleagues remain convinced that their job is to present Japan attractively to others, and a high proportion of them depend, in one way or another, on Japan for their livelihood. Let the Japanophile say the wrong thing, however, and he may not be invited back to address a prestigious council; his friends in industry or government back in Tokyo will cease to funnel information to him. So self-censorship rules.
Even stronger than censorship is the power of nostalgia. Japan experts long for the beautiful, artistic, efficient Japan that they continue to believe in, and the unhappy reality makes them cling even more to a vision of Utopia. Incurable nostalgia rules this field, and this is why Zen and tea ceremony experts recite to us many an exquisite haiku demonstrating Japan's love of nature but do not speak of the concreting of rivers and seashore.
It is an incongruous picture, shockingly alien if one is familiar only with the seductive outer skin of Japan's manufacturing success. How could the winsome Portrait of a Girl, presented to the world for forty years by Japan experts, have turned out to be Dromedary Resting – ravaged mountains and rivers, endemic pollution, tenement cities, and skyrocketing debt? Why have writers and academics never told us about this?
Since the 1950s, Western observers have come to Japan as worshippers to a shrine. When I majored in Japanese Studies in college in the 1960s and early 1970s, I learned, as did most of my colleagues, that it was our mission to explain Japan to an uncomprehending and unsympathetic world. Japan did everything differently from the West, and this was terribly exciting – for many Japanologists, it seemed to be an ideal society, a Utopia. Even the revisionist writers of the 1980s, who warned of a Japanese economic juggernaut, spoke largely in terms of awe.
Many of my colleagues remain convinced that their job is to present Japan attractively to others, and a high proportion of them depend, in one way or another, on Japan for their livelihood. Let the Japanophile say the wrong thing, however, and he may not be invited back to address a prestigious council; his friends in industry or government back in Tokyo will cease to funnel information to him. So self-censorship rules.
Even stronger than censorship is the power of nostalgia. Japan experts long for the beautiful, artistic, efficient Japan that they continue to believe in, and the unhappy reality makes them cling even more to a vision of Utopia. Incurable nostalgia rules this field, and this is why Zen and tea ceremony experts recite to us many an exquisite haiku demonstrating Japan's love of nature but do not speak of the concreting of rivers and seashore.