A Japanese Mirror

by Ian Buruma

  This image of fate, its unpredictability and evanescence, is an important part of travelling and also, of course, of Buddhist thought. The pathos of things, mono no aware, the most important characteristic of Japanese aesthetics, is an essential condition of the drifter’s life. It inspired the poems of the Manyoshu, written at the time when Buddhism became the official creed. It also helps to explain Tora-san’s popularity.

  For he is funny, clumsy, sentimental and lazy, but above all he is lonely. All his jokes have a melancholy edge, like Chaplin’s, as if he is laughing through his tears, which is exactly what the producers want the audience to do. But rather than describe his pathos, here is an example, including the stage directions. It is a scene from ‘Torajiro’s First Love,’ made in 1971. Tora-san meets a young girl called Kimiko:

  Tora-san: ‘Ah, a lovely full moon tonight … ’

  Kimiko: ‘I bet you think of home when you see a full moon on your travels.’

  T.: ‘Yes, I do.’

  K.: ‘It must be great, the traveller’s life … ’

  T.: ‘I can’t complain, but it’s not as easy as it may seem to you.’

  K: ‘Oh, why’s that?’

  T.: ‘Well, let me give you an example: I’m wandering all alone on a country road at night. Then suddenly I come across a farm-house with a lovely garden. I peer through the hedge and see a family having dinner in a cosy room. Then I think to myself, that’s the way to live.’

  K.: ‘Yes, I understand. You must feel very lonely … ’

  T.: ‘Yes, well, so then I go on and have a drink at some local bar before turning in on one of those wafer-thin mattresses in a cheap inn across from the station. But I can’t sleep at first, listening to the whistles of late-night trains going by. In the morning I’m woken up by the clatter of wooden sandals. I forget where I am. Then I realize and think of home at Futamata, where Sakura must be just starting to prepare the soup for breakfast.’

  K.: ‘Oh, how wonderful … I feel so envious. I’d love to travel like that.’

  T.: ‘You would?’

  K.: ‘Oh yes, ever since I was a student, I’ve longed for that life … to be with someone I really love, a travelling actor maybe, and to live on the road … ’

  T.: ‘Really.’

  K.: ‘Yes, wandering together, broke, on an empty stomach, in the rain. I wouldn’t mind a bit, for we’d have so much fun … Ah, I’d like to go right now, leaving everything behind. What about you?’

  T.: ‘Mm, yes … ’ (his voice has a note of sad resignation).

  K.: ‘Are you leaving again soon, Tora-san?’

  T.: (looking bothered) ‘Mm, … yes, yes … ’

  K.: ‘Really? When?’

  T.: ‘When? … Well, let’s say when the wind beckons me. One day I’ll just be gone.’

  K.: ‘Oh, I feel so envious. I wish I could come with you.’

  Needless to say, she does not really wish anything of the kind. Like the audience she just dreams about it. We are the insiders, he is the outsider, condemned, like the Flying Dutchman, to drift forever. He is free, yes, but for a price most of us could not possibly pay. The pathos of the situation is heightened by the fact that the girl has no idea how he really feels, while we, the audience, do.

  Being a drifter, a romantic and the hero of a respectable family film series, Tora-san’s love life is an unmitigated disaster. It is part of the Tora-san tradition that he falls for the guest star in every film. The pattern is always the same. ‘Torajiro – The Paper Balloon’ (1982), is a good example. First we see Tora-san coming home to attend a class reunion at his old school. This turns out to be rather sad, because Tora-san, the tramp in his loud suit, cracking his coarse jokes, is openly despised by his former classmates who are all respectable citizens now. Tora-san is so hurt that he gets blind drunk, giving us the first hint of what an outcast this favourite son of Nippon really is.

  He then sets off to visit a friend who is terminally ill. This friend, a failed yakuza like our tramp, begs Tora-san to marry his young wife after he dies. Tora-san, being a good sort, promises. After the friend does indeed die, Tora-san is the first to offer the widow his help. ‘You’re the only one who cares for me,’ she sniffs and in a scene with more sobbing than talk, it is clear that Tora has fallen in love again.

  Determined to keep his promise now, he rushes back home and starts behaving in a very odd way. Daydreaming about his prospective life of marital bliss, he draws up plans to rebuild the family home. For the first time in his life he buys a shirt and tie. He has a serious conversation with the priest at the temple. He even puts in an application for a job. Nothing is stated in so many words, however, and people have to guess at the reasons for all this. Only Sakura, her sensitive antennae quivering, instinctively realizes what is going on.

  Finally the great day arrives: the widow is coming! Tora-san, nervously pacing the room, prepares to pop the question. She is warmly welcomed by the family, but Tora-san can only stammer some niceties like a petrified schoolboy at his first dance. The audience is delighted by this demonstration of social embarrassment. It is considered to be good manners to show oneself to be slightly ill at ease in awkward social situations. To be too forthright and too obviously at ease is known as choshi ga ii, literally ‘to have a smooth manner’. What is really meant is that one lacks sensitivity.

  Tora-san is anything but choshi ga ii here. In fact he does not speak a word. This too is a sign of delicacy. Deep feelings, especially love, must remain unspoken. Coming right out and saying, ‘I love you, will you marry me?’ is all right for foreigners, perhaps, but not for Tora-san. While he sits there fidgeting, the widow tells the story of her life. How she used to be rather wild and how she wanted to marry so that she could settle down and have a baby. But unfortunately her husband was a yakuza, always on the move. At this point Sakura looks at the woman and then at Tora-san and she senses the coming disaster, as do most people in the audience who have been here before and so start grabbing their first handkerchiefs.

  When it is time to go home, Sakura prods Tora-san, who is in a state of catetonia by now, to take the widow to the station. As they go along, she quite calmly and he in a terrible state, the film comes to its emotional climax, the ritual moment when, if it were a Kabuki play, people would have shouted ‘We waited for this!’6 To give you the full flavour of the situation, here is the ensuing dialogue:

  The widow: ‘Did my husband ask you anything?’

  Tora-san: (trying to look non-committal) ‘Huh … oh, no … not really.’

  W.: ‘He told me you had promised to marry me. You didn’t really mean that did you?’

  T.: ‘Huh, oh, that … no, of course not. I was just trying to humour a sick man.’

  W.: ‘Oh, thank goodness for that. For a minute I thought you really meant it.’

  T.: (Deeply distressed) ‘No, of course not.’

  W.: ‘Well then … ’

  T.: ‘Well, take good care of yourself … ’

  W.: ‘Yes … and you too.’

  Tora-san is shattered. It is of course what is left unspoken that makes the scene so tragic. It is the kind of understated melodrama, if one can imagine such a thing, in which the Japanese excel. The widow realizes she cannot marry another drifter and so does Tora-san. For him to declare his love would put her in a spot, causing them both to lose face, especially as she, despite her Japanese antennae, has no idea of the depth of his feelings. So he remains silent, crying inside, as they say. Love is still the forbidden fruit for the wandering hero.

  He goes back home and finds the reply to his job application. Of course it has been turned down. He laughs a bitter laugh and says: ‘Well, it looks as if it’s time for another trip!’ The whole family is sobbing now, the violins in the soundtrack are going full blast, and the people in the audience reach for their third handkerchief. Tora-san is on his way again, on to the next place.

  The film ends with a shot of the family, minus Tora-san, sitting round the table, celebrating New Y
ear, the Japanese equivalent of Christmas; the kind of tribal feast that makes people feel happy to have been born Japanese. All is warm, wet and kindly.

  And Tora-san? He is off selling trinkets somewhere, cracking jokes on the roadside. He has served his purpose for yet another film. People feel better now. Poor Tora-san, the lazy, unmarried failure: he is everything the average Japanese citizen is not. But he will always be loved for the same reason Edo townsmen loved prostitutes and actors and modern cinema audiences admire gangsters, ronin and nihirisutos: the tragic fate of the outsider confirms how lucky we all are to lead such restricted, respectable and in most cases, perfectly harmless lives.

  13

  Conclusion: A Gentle People

  The Japanese, perhaps as a way of coping with the cultural rapids of modernization, have become obsessive about defining themselves: Who are We? What are We? Why are We so different from everybody else? (That they are is taken for granted by every Japanese, and most foreigners too.) Out of this national navel-staring has grown a multitude of books, films, magazines and television programmes, all dedicated to the Nihonjinron, literally the Theory of the Japanese. Insular though the Japanese are, foreigners are actively encouraged to take part in playing this game.

  There is a certain consensus about the Japanese stereotype. As taxi-drivers, students or ‘salarymen’ will gladly point out to any foreigner within earshot, the Japanese are ‘wet’ and yasashii. They stick together in mutual dependency like ‘wet’, glutinous rice, so dear to the Japanese palate. And they are ‘soft, meek, gentle and tender’. They express themselves by ‘warm, human emotions’, instead of ‘dry, hard, rational thought’. Finally, they are also closely in tune with nature, in harmony with it, and not in opposition.

  The question is how does this soft, meek stereotype (like most stereotypes it has some truth in it) tally with the extreme violence that is such a predominant feature of popular culture? To be sure, not every Japanese is obsessed with bondage fantasies, and the acceptance of sex and violence is not universal. Indeed, there are pressure groups, such as the powerful Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), who set themselves up as moral vigilantes. Nevertheless, many examples in this book, which may seem exceptionally bizarre to the Western reader, are normal features of everyday life in Japan.

  Photographs of nude women trussed up in ropes appear regularly in mass circulation newspapers; torture scenes are common on television, even in children’s programmes; glossy, poster-sized pictures of naked pre-pubescent girls are on display in the main shopping-streets; sado-masochistic pornography is perused quite openly by a large number of men on their way to work on the subway.

  This is not to say that what is to be seen on the streets of Tokyo is any more outré than available merchandise in Times Square or Amsterdam; in fact it is less so, but what there is, is more openly accepted, more a part of the main-stream of life. There is no furtive huddling in dank little shops with darkened windows. People feel no need to pretend that sex and violence cater only to a sinful minority, because these fantasies are neither thought to be sinful, nor, quite evidently, are they confined to a minority. Otherwise, what would they be doing on national television and in weekly magazines?

  If the Japanese are indeed a gentle, tender, soft and meek people with hardcore fantasies of death and bondage, few of these dreams appear to spill over into real life. The atmosphere in the streets with the disciplined crowds, the piped music, the plastic flowers, the tinkling bells, the pretty colours, is mawkish rather than menacing.

  Does this mean, then, that vicarious cruelty does not lead to actual violence; indeed, that by providing an outlet it makes society safer, as those who are opposed to censorship in the West are wont to argue? Perhaps. But what works in Japan would not necessarily be effective elsewhere, in different circumstances. (Even if Western factory workers could be induced to sing company songs every morning, Japanese style, this would not necessarily herald an Economic Miracle.)

  Modern Japan, as anyone who has ever watched a Japanese tourist group can tell, is still a group-orientated society. The desires of the individual are subordinated to the demands of his or her group. The concept of individual rights is not readily understood in Japan. Wa (harmony), as a recent prime minister liked to point out, is the key to the Japanese Way.

  A strict sense of hierarchy effectively prevents individuals from asserting themselves and thereby unbalancing the harmony of the group. Violent confrontation between individuals is not restrained so much by a universal sense of morality (what the British like to call decency), as by a system of etiquette more rigid than anything seen in the contemporary Western world. But this system is based almost entirely on known human relationships; without a group to relate it to, it tends to break down rather quickly.

  Outward harmony is preserved in many different ways. While in the West a person is supposed to have opinions, which he or she voices in public, in Japan, opinions, if held at all, are kept to oneself or carefully blended with those held by others. Political discussions are generally avoided altogether. The Japanese language is structured in such a way that it sounds as if one is constantly seeking agreement. Even a contradiction will start off with a phrase like: ‘You’re absolutely right, of course, but … ’ This makes life very difficult for professional critics, and indeed they tend to write everything but criticism. If one really dislikes somebody’s work, one usually refrains from writing about it at all.

  So, although the Japanese can privately disagree, conflict is hidden behind a bland veil of politeness. When serious differences do come to the fore, they often lead to emotional crises ending in a complete rupture with the group. Harmony can at times be violently disturbed by bitterness and fisticuffs after simply bypassing the intermediate stage of rational debate. In short, consensus may often be a public façade, but then façade counts for a great deal in Japanese life.

  Few Japanese confuse this public play-acting with reality, but everyone is agreed about its importance. ‘Being True to Yourself’ or ‘Sticking Up for What You Stand For’ are not Japanese virtues. One must play the public game, or be excluded from it, which, to most Japanese would mean living death. Pretence, in other words, is an essential condition of life. There is an expression for this in the Japanese language: tatemae, the façade, the public posture, the way things ought to be. Consensus is often a matter of tatemae. The opposite to tatemae is honne, the private feeling or opinion, which, in normal circumstances, remains hidden or suppressed. When Japanese talk about being able to communicate without using words, they really mean that they can read each other’s honne, while keeping to the tatemae.

  Conforming to set patterns, blending with the group, never sticking one’s neck out, always wearing the company badge can be very reassuring and many, not only in Japan, seek this security. Perhaps this is more important than individual initiative or romantic love or personal originality. At least one knows the limitations of one’s existence, like living in a soft-padded cell. But what does one do with those warm, human feelings the Japanese always insist they are so inordinately blessed with? What are the emotional outlets? For women, it must be admitted, there seem to be few. Romance, despite what the women’s magazines promise, is not traditionally part of a Japanese marriage. It still is not of most modern marriages either. Even the most loving husband is not much good if he has to spend most of his life with his company colleagues, returning home late at night, exhausted and sometimes drunk. Women are thus left only with their children, whom they are understandably reluctant to let go.

  For men there is play, which is another way of replacing reality by a fanciful façade: the artificial love of a prostitute instead of a relationship at home; revelling in blood and gore on the stage or screen rather than asserting oneself at the office. Play often functions as a ritualized breaking of taboos, which are sacrosanct in daily life. (Violence, especially any form of bloodshed, is a strong taboo in Shinto, hence, quite possibly, the incessant flow of blood in popular Japanese en
tertainment.)

  Play is the spectacle, the carnival, the masquerade: to break away from their suffocating identities, if only for a few hours, people don masks, dress up as the opposite sex, commit acts of violence, indulge in orgies. This outlet, in some ritualized form or another, exists in every culture. Spanish bullfights, so shocking to many northern Europeans, are a good example: the taboo of death is defied by the ritual killing of the bull. Sexual taboos are broken in most religions too, usually by some form of crossdressing.

  Much of this, in northern Europe, especially since Reason dawned upon it, has lost its ritual significance. Cross-dressing, for example, is now considered to be an aberration; the festival fool now lies on the psychiatrist’s couch. But in Japan, one often feels, play has not yet lost its ritual meaning.

  This is not to say that Japanese rulers and their officialdom have not tried to clamp down on, or at least limit too much play. But unlike governments in the Christian West, they never had an overriding religious system to use as a proper clamp. Japanese rulers did not even have the Mandate of Heaven, which Chinese emperors needed to justify their rule. Instead they had force and a set of self-serving rules, mostly based on Confucianism, which they imposed on the populace through sumptuary laws and other, only partly successful measures.

  Respect for human life, dignity, the female body and all those other matters we are taught to take so seriously in the West, are taken seriously in Japan too, but not on the level of play. For, once again, it is not the overriding principle people adhere to, but the proper rules of conduct governing human relations. One has no relationship with an actress playing a part, or a character in a comic-book, so why ever should one feel any compassion for them?