There are 604 800 seconds in a week, and this particular one is designated the most important one in Miki’s week. The reason is that although Miki belongs to that 20% of the Japanese population with pro-Korean feelings, it is this precise moment, approximately 160 minutes after she landed at Kimpo, that Miku first feels an anti-Korean sentiment. The precise emotion is not antipathy, nor it is contempt, or even a feeling of “inappropriateness.” The only possible English word that describes Miki’s feeling is that of “disqualification.” Miki feels that the street vendor/food vendors in the subway station should be “disqualified” from selling their wares. Association with the philosophical term "qualia" in unintentional. What is trying to be communicated is a certain delicateness of emotion: that the feeling does not rise to the level of dictation or certainly not action, but a vague sense of uneasiness, that a boundary has been inappropriate crossed.
If there were infinite space and reader interest, a novel could be written about the quasi-religious nature of the Japanese rail system; that inductees work sixteen hour days and live in company dormitories at the end of branch lines; that a discrepancy of a mere five or six minutes can throw chaos into the entire Tokyo train system. But of course such would be a digression resulting only in chaos. To understand that, read that; to become more involved, contemplate the arcing perfection of three hundred fifty mile trains running across an entire country without a history of a single fatality. Like the power system, 99.98% uptime since 1951, the trains in Japan are governmental and perfect. Food does not belong in a train station; that is the opinion of a culture and a nation, and this moment, this one second of more than half a million, reveals that frisson of cultural difference. It will be repeated, actually more strongly so, later that week, and that might be moment number two or four or five, the five most important seconds in a sea of onrushing time.
On Thursday, having gone out for lunch with a couple of the program attendees, Miki decided to walk around Seoul for a bit alone. A wrong turn sent her away from the main tourist areas around Seoul station, and ascending a hill, she found herself in a working class district up a steep hill and sufficiently shady for her to start thinking about finding a way back. Yet once more that same emotion of "disqualification" arose. Cabbage leaves; kimchee smells; such would inherently spill out across a city which both were part of the national cuisine. But to find a working quarter where the garbage was strewn out across a street: once again, there was the sense that in Japan , no matter how poor, the streets themselves were never full of food garbage. They may be rich; they may be getting richer; but something yet has not been reached in terms of cultural development.
This is not an elaboration on the inferiority of Korean culture. The precise point is that Miki is abnormally pro-Korean; most Japanese would have twenty or thirty anti-Korean moments in a week spent anywhere on the peninsula. Yet these were the moments of strongest emotion save one: something happened on Thursday that turned everything around. A gasp is elicited out of Miki--one extremely similar to the collective gasp exhaled by the three hundred Japanese girls during the campus tour when they are told a surprising fact at the orientation auditorium. (300 Japanese girls: ehhh!). Shared by all but one of the Japanese girls in the 2/1 class, this moment was one of the most special seconds of all, taking into consideration not personal perspective but social situation. It will be discussed shortly; it is offered here merely against counterbalance against perhaps moments 4 and 5, private phone conversations with her family back home that force certain resolutions or reveal certain states about her friendship circle at Chuo. But we have met Miki now, and we can slowly ease off; the set-piece is concluded.
We have accomplished a number of things. We have seen the two critical encounters between the foreign boys and between the Germans; we have learned the Japanese are a little more laidback, given that they are negotiating merely their own culture and withholding action in favor of first establishing basic politeness. Two Americans meeting: off like firecrackers, explaining their best qualities. Two Japanese: waiting in reserve, establishing initial codes. But time now to seize the bull by the horns and sketch out all principals, personalities that define and determine events; that guide the progress of things for three short weeks, constrained by location, time, effect. There were 300 Japanese girls present; there are a dozen foreigners, by chance mostly male. The age distribution of the girls is roughly 90% university students or a few years out plus a 10% of older women in semi-retirement or otherwise freely using time. The boys were all basically in their twenties, except there is one older American male, an English teacher (designation: HATTRICK). With fees being what they are, the total budget of the program was approximately a quarter million US dollars, roughly 40% of which will be profit. With twenty-five total staff members employed, (the precise number is hard to elicit; the security personnel at Keiwha and cleaners surely count something for the budget, but they are employed regardless of whether the program runs or not) Keihwa paid out something on the range of $70,000 in salaries and benefits for the month and that is the biggest expense per se, but there was a certain intangible cost in less than stellar-academic Japanese bouncing around the Keiwha name once they return home. Snobbery existed between the teaching staff (all Keiwha graduates, all roughly 30) and the students, but feelings sometimes ran both ways. The Americans tended to rate their teachers A or B, while Germans and Japanese gave more cynical reviews. All of these broad trends should be noted, as well as the new student centre carved into the Keiwha campus like a giant vulva, but Freud, Marx, Levi Strauss, whoever are not quite so important as the broad geographical, economic, linguistic concerns.
ᴥ
The principals of this story are TUSK, JOHANN, AKEMI, KANYE, ERI and SHINO, roughly in that order, after which there is a major drop-off in influence over collective events, although at certain points we will see the influence of QUARTERBACK, MIKI, HATTRICK, CAROLINE, LINGLING, NORWAY, MEDIA-CHAN, FARMBOY, TABUN, DEADBOLT and ROLLER. We have given a quick glance at the critical first meeting of foreign boys; we have seen the Germans meet which is more of a style introduction, more of a deliberate attempt to indicate the overall tone of Japanese communication style rather than a critical introduction. MIKI's first week illustrates certain overarching cultural values and a good "baseline" to the collective first week, but it is appropriate and simple now to note the overarching plot development. TUSK and JOHANN became friends; how they did so, in relation to the love-situations involving AKEMI, KANYE, and ERI; how QUARTERBACK, NORWAY, ROLLER did what they did defined that central 2/1 class. Facing each other, they began to shape the fabric of the programme itself and others stood up on tippie-toe to look in. By the end, all were getting drawn into the orbit and it is believed that eventually more and more domination would have occured, all though of course people would have acted different under different baseline circumstances. But we get ahead of ourselves here; we return to that topic of week one, which made everything happened, that forced all else to fall in its wake.
Quick a review. TUSK was a cynic, an American Yale graduate desperately searching for a Japanese girlfriend and using prodigious mental abilities to inflict chaos and unnecessary anxiety on the world. His psychological process might be basically summarized as: paranoia others are plotting against him, and then aggressive action to correct that mis-read situation, resulting in development of the social scene, never as intended. JOHANN was the orphaned German, the unreformed Third Reichest who produces classical music on the side. Trained as an economist, his psychological process was one of deviant manipulation and playing off of others against each other, fundamentally the attitude of a defeated power now destroying others all in the name of survival. AKEMI, upon reflection, was the girl of Firsts and Lasts. In the end, actually she was somehow involved with every single male in some capacity. What a slut! ROLLER had her down right. KANYE, Black American, provided entertainment value for how viciously he was treated by every other individual at the school. Fortunately
, he was monotonal and had much to learn in his relative youth; we won't feel too sorry for him. ERI, employee of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, was perhaps the oddest principal, bringing as she does that third governmental contact. If TUSK is U.S. government/quasi-military and the Fulbrighters with their evil social dominance represented civilian cash, ERI was a true political nightmare, a Zainichi no less as her grandparents had immigrated to Japan from North Korea. God! This document is weirder and weirder by the second. Finally SHINO, that Fukuoka girl of all Fukuoka girls, maybe was top-dog by the end, although it's questionable whether we call her a principal. JOHANN never liked her; she was in fact not all that bright. But anyway she was there, as were the rest of that madcap group. We take note of the abnormal presence of governmental associates; we take better note that at least three of the people were abnormally sadistic. With bright young fresh and innocent faces, it was amazing the pain was that was dished out; the cynical, manipulative evil types surely did
The Flowers of Keiwha Page 3
