The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

by Donald Richie

  20 september 1996. The level of public manners continues to fall in this once most polite of all lands. For example, the portable phone. People walking, driving, standing on corners, laughing, grimacing, shouting into their fists. “Just go away!” someone behind me shouts. “Get out! Never want to see you again!” Startled, I turn, but he is merely using the telephone.

  Voices are now much louder and eating in public is epidemic. Not just the young, but also everyone now trails crumbs and mustard drippings from whatever fast food they are consuming.

  Coming from where I do, I cannot criticize this, so I merely notice the difference. It is large. Still, public politeness was often based on fear of what others would think. It was, by definition, craven. So, mustard droppings and all, I am glad to see more personality. Except that now it is all the same personality—loud, brazen, and banal. There is nothing personal in the new persona. Before everyone was polite in the same way, now they are all impolite in the same way.

  25 september 1996. Paul [McCarthy], Gwen, and I go and see Ed—now much better, clots dissolved, and waiting in his new green pajamas for the rehabilitation man. Ed is anxious to get back to Hawaii. “I should not say this,” and he makes a shocked face and puts two fingers to his lips, “but I trust American doctors so much more.” I say that I would more trust a Japanese surgeon, but that I would more trust an American diagnostician. “Exactly,” says Ed, as though I had agreed with him.

  In the evening I walk around and inspect the damage done by furious Violet—that was the now-vanished typhoon’s name. Now that the Americans have become convinced that fearful catastrophes are not invariably female, the next one will perhaps be named Vulcan.

  A number of willow trees have had large parts torn off. Willow must be a soft wood. The cherries have fared better and the maples came out of it best of all. No one has come to clean up the damage, however. The dead willow clumps are like so many enormous heads of wilted cabbage. Probably there is a day for damage repair and they are waiting for the event.

  Amid all this appropriately flailing willow, a madwoman. Barefooted, she stands in red slacks and a long green kimono-like coat, as she curses, apparently, the elements. When anyone gets close to her she begins to shriek in such a manner that very few come near. I too observe her from a distance. She is obviously homeless—dirty, no shoes, but did the madness unhouse her or was she rendered mad by loss of dwelling?

  I hear the voice of sentimental posterity—why didn’t you do anything? Well, what should I have done? Gotten shrieked at? I have given hamburgers and rice balls to lots of the homeless and have talked with many and sent several off to the employment agency and given money to others. But this woman both moved and frightened me. I did not go near her.

  10 october 1996. A holiday, one of the prewar imperial ones now turned democratic. My cold is bad and I spend Green and Healthy Day in bed reading the manuscript of Karel’s new book on what is wrong with Japan. What is wrong is that the citizens are still—post-Tokugawa though they be—too cowed to do much, even vote. His description is lucid and logical and, since it is intended for translation for a Japanese audience, will—I hope—make its mark.

  11 october 1996. A party for Ed’s release—held in a drinking establishment near Karel’s place in Mukojima. Here he comes, triumphant on his cane, leaning on the arm of Maki, Herb Passin’s long-time girlfriend. Once sat down, he pulls up his trouser to show us his elegant service-weight stocking and the neat blue cast. We are all anxious to see what he orders after the long drought, and are all relieved that it is beer and beer alone.

  Lots to eat, however—eggplant in miso and chicken wings and pork and vegetables—and the talk is about Japan, of course, but Ed utters nary a word on this subject except to agree with everyone. I do not know how it ends, however, after the beer has taken its toll. I am feeling lousy with my cold and leave early.

  14 october 1996. I look about me—in the park for example. Now that it is colder many poor homeless women have emerged. They sit all day by the pond and talk, keeping each other company, but they are homeless, and their shoes have holes. Also, in this cold, begging. A woman kneeling outside the Ueno Hirokoji subway stop with an empty soft drink can, its top open for coins in front of her. A man lying on his back suddenly raises one hand, makes the sign for money—thumb and forefinger forming a hole—then raises the other in Buddhist benediction.

  And by Ueno station, something somehow tragic. A very old woman in rags kneeling, leaning forward. She is so bare that her dugs hang in the winter air. And I thought of her young, when this would have been immodest, and she would have blushed and hid. Now it is not immodest, it is monstrous. Equally monstrous, no one does anything to help her. Just as monstrous, neither do I.

  23 october 1996. The election is over and once again the Japanese people have chosen. Preferring stability to reform and predictability to improvement, they have agreed once more to let back in the Liberal Democratic Party, which is nothing like either of its adjectives suggests. Having escaped it two years ago, they welcome it back, forgetting all the scandals, all the graft, and all the incompetence.

  It returned for two reasons. One is a new electoral formula that favors the reelection of incumbents. Two (says Tada Minoru, commentator) is that voters were influenced by public opinion polls that indicated that the LDP was likely to win. As for big winner, Hashimoto Ryutaro, Prime Minister, he said, “The reform proposals are too radical to be taken seriously.”

  There may be a third reason as well. Few voted. Thinking people, a minority here as elsewhere, feel that the bureaucratic machine is in charge anyway whoever wins, and it will see that nothing changes. Non-thinking people, in their frivolous, selfish, eijanaika mood, are not interested. They are too taken up with playing with their Nintendo machines, with karaoke, with their manga, and their Walkmen. These creations of the Education Ministry are the ideal citizens for a governing bureaucracy.

  22 november 1996. Journal much neglected, Bali looming—soon Dae-Yung and I will be there. Travel, the continual sighting of the new—it has many advantages. Among them is that it saves self from self. I am not myself when I am somewhere else. I do not have to feel my familiar inner geography when I have the lay of the world to gaze upon. I remember Carlos Freer telling me that Madame Yourcenar, after Jerry’s death, was frantic to travel. She kept suggesting places but she was over eighty and could not travel alone, though she did not want to be any longer with herself.

  10 december 1996. Lunch with Gwen at the Press Club where we were later joined by Karel [van Wolferen] who was on his way to see [ex–Prime Minister] Nakasone. He was going to ask him what he thinks of the recent breaking of the taboo about criticizing the Constitution. I told him how Eisenhower asked about this American-inspired document back in the 1950s: “What, you still got that worthless piece of paper around?” Karel pointed out of the window at the palace lying below us. “So long as we have him we are going to have taboos. They’re a pain in the neck. They get in the way.” I tell him that royalty cannot exist without taboos. “Just what I mean,” he said.

  Gwen brought up the subject of fetishism, not in regards to the royals but because we had been having a discussion about it. I said loose talk about politics was all right, but if we were to discuss something as important as fetishism we would have to define our terms. I then defined them: Fetishism is what erotically occurs when the part is taken for the whole. Karel’s, says Gwen, is that pleasant little line just under the buttock where it smilingly joins the thigh. Her own was “bottoms, men’s bottoms.” Then they asked mine and I had to say: “Everything.” But this they would not accept. “If you fetishize everything you do not distinguish the part from the whole and we cannot accept this. It is a tautology.”

  11 december 1996. Fumio came over to read me the translation of my Honorable Visitors, since I cannot read it myself. Over the years he has come to know the precise level of my Japanese. He knows what I am apt not to understand, reads a difficult passage a
nd at once puts it into simpler language. I ask him if a portion includes the fact that it is ironic. No, he does not think so. This I will talk to the translator about. Not all languages are capable of the same things. This translation does not (cannot) render the nuances of my account of Jean Cocteau and Marcel Khill in Japan. All my meaning is between the lines. In the same fashion, Japanese poetry is too filled with connotations and meanings unwritten to be successfully translated.

  15 december 1996. I wander around and look at the girls in their Frankenstein boots and their elephant socks, and the boys under their variously colored thatch—blue is popular right now. I also listen to people talking on their cellular phones.

  These focus all attention in the ears rather than, as is customary on the street, in the eyes. The users do not realize that they are spilling their lives into the ears of the passersby, and if they did they would not care.

  I loiter near to hear what they are saying. They pay no attention. Besides, if they do notice, they see merely a foreigner, and foreigners are famous for not knowing the language. So I feel like Siegfried in the forest—understanding the language of the birds.

  But this promiscuous telephoning can be dangerous. Last night’s news told of a man using his phone on the platform as the express rushed by. He was so intent on what he was saying that he walked too close to the hurtling train, was drawn into it and sucked onto the tracks, where he made his final connection.

  16 december 1996. I go shopping at Ameyokocho, only a block from where I live, stretching for a long distance on either side of the tracks south of Ueno. It is indeed like a bazaar. I can see why all the Middle Easterners prefer it: right on the street, no doors or windows to bother with. Little caves, hundreds of them, filled with bargains, shopkeepers hovering. Wandering to the other side, I find a whole district I knew nothing about. It is given over to jewels—diamonds set in gold, silver, and—so it said—platinum.

  I also find another store. This one is selling army surplus—from the East German Army. The prices are very low—a thick, woolen East German soldier’s overcoat for the equivalent of five dollars. Nonetheless, few people were buying. The East German Army would look odd on the streets of Tokyo. There is one man, however, who has bought himself a whole outfit. He stands in front of a mirror—uniform, hat, coat, and boots. He looks the picture of an East German soldier, except that he still also looks like one of Tokyo’s homeless—now a warm homeless though he is. I toy with a fur hat, but the East Germany Army insignia will not pull off and so I do not buy it.

  18 december 1996. I walk the windy streets of Shibuya, a territory completely given over to the young. Here they come in their hordes, driven by fashion. Let me describe them lest this motley show be lost forever.

  Younger high school girls wear their plaid skirts and sweaters and their elephant socks, loose, baggy, white, which they say make their legs look thinner and often have to be held up with a kind of glue that is especially made and sold over the counter. They still sometimes wear old-fashioned braids, but their manners have been attuned to the times. Among themselves they use male language, mistaking this for a kind of emancipation.

  Older girls often wear very short skirts coupled with built-up boots, which reach the knee and thus offer an expanse of thigh. With this, a long overcoat unbuttoned so that the thighs may flash. Long hair dyed (chestnut, maple, mahogany) or streaked with peroxide or henna, and brown pancake make-up with silvered lipstick complete the ensemble.

  It has a name. It is called kogaru—derived apparently from kokosei garu (high school girl), though the layered cut, the trimmed eyebrows, and the lipstick emulate the image of the older popular singer, Amuro Namie. Some of the girls show their navels in the summer, and often sport a ring in it.

  Piercing is seen mainly in the boys. Those in high school wear eyebrow studs or lip studs as well as earrings. This with jeans (now firmly at the waist, since the groin-look is out of fashion), boots with thick soles, and lots of rings. Boys in Shibuya are more decorated than the girls are.

  Along with this a new vocabulary. Saiko and saitei for best and worst are out. In is choberiba for very bad and choberigu for very good. I do not know the derivation of these. Another new word is makudurama, which can mean anything from a big sports event to a big rock concert to a big TV spectacular. Continuing into the new year is a teenage passion for purikura, photo stickers made in three minutes, showing you and your friend wearing funny hats, grinning, and making the V-sign, with which you can decorate your school locker or your letters, if you send any.

  Back in Ueno, only twenty minutes on the subway, is another world. Here the young are more scarce and are not overly given to body piercing or wearing work clothes as a fashion indicator. Here such clothing is seen on the working young, but mainly on people older and poorer. Much less shopping going on. In the station, lines of old men—indigent, homeless, sitting on the pavement. I pass two in noisy conversation. One drunkenly tells the other, “I don’t have a penny (Issen mo nai no yo),” yet he must have had at least several to get this drunk.

  During the fiftieth year of writing his journals, Richie, now seventy-three, is occasionally distracted by medical problems, but the clinical details of his illness are also there for their own sake; he chronicles old age much as others keep track of adolescence or the middle years. With two of the books on which he worked longest (Kuma­gai and A Divided View) still unpublished, Richie spent his time writing essays and taking notes for a book on Tokyo, and for this journal.

  6 january 1997. Everyone’s first day back at work after the usual orgy of holidays—or at least the first day of attendance to indicate that work has begun. No one actually does any work. Everyone is going from office to office to give greetings and to mention work to come and their desire to be remembered in further enterprises.

  Lots of bowing—people in the street, bending over for each other. I am bowed at, too, and bow back. This occurs at the International House, where I go to check the Bulletin before publication. The office staff bows. I stand up and bow. We tell each other that the New Year has begun (Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu) and that this year too we wish to be kindly remembered (Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai itashimasu).

  Such occurs wherever one is known, however slightly. In the evening I drop into the porn theater (where they have a new policy—reduced priced tickets for the aged), and am so greeted by the women who work there taking tickets. Underpaid, worn down, having to spend their holiday in this dank place, they observe the custom and asked to be kindly remembered because the law of ritual is stronger than they are.

  Once inside the darkened theater I see it is more full than usual and that the patrons are bunched at the back. Then I see why. Two long-haired young girls, maybe seventeen, all dressed up in long coats, are standing there surrounded by men in raincoats. Everyone is looking at the screen and paying careful attention to no one else.

  They could stand thus all night, no one making a move, each so afraid of rebuff. I, for whom the rebuff holds no terrors, go and talk to the girls. They giggle and eventually inform me that they are from Saitama (very rural), in town for a day, and thought they ought to see the sights. I asked what they think of the local offering. “Very educational,” says one as the woman on the screen writhes, orifices full.

  The other men, emboldened, move closer, and so we three step into the lobby where the girls smoke and ask where I am from and giggle and I, having already seen this particular picture, tell them that an educational bit was coming up. The lady got to screw the gentleman. How, they want to know. “With a dildo,” I tell them. “Oh,” they say, then, “Where?” “In the ass,” I say. “Oh,” they say.

  Two of the men join us and we have a conversation until the ticket-taking women herd us back in. There we stand in a silent puddle, me firmly beside the prettiest one, the men stationed around us. But nothing happens. Nothing ever does. We could have stood all night and nothing would have happened. Eventually the girls tire of the spectacle, and
with many an attractive smile and waggish wave they leave—back to Saitama, wiser.

  One of the hovering men smiles and shakes his head. I say I thought at first they were enjo kosei—high school girls out for money. Oh, no, he knew from the first. Just a couple of kids having a good time in the big city. Then, in that spirit of disinterested learning one so often finds here, he enlightens me as to the literal meaning of the term. Enjo kosei translates as “assistance-oriented relationship.”

  12 january 1997. I read that an authority on psychology, one Tomita Takashi, has ascertained that the “territory area” of the Japanese is just forty-five centimeters, rather small compared to other nationalities. But so crowded are we in the cities that we have to make do. Thus, says Sensei, people send out signals that they are no threat, that they are behaving themselves. I wonder if I do that. Probably. I know I always dive for the neutral corner seat, if one is available, or at least the end of a row.

  Another authority, this one named Saito Isamu, tells me that everyone does. We can, he says, let down our guard in this position, or at least only have to defend half of what we would were we in the middle. Dr. Saito goes on to tell me that men peeing always finish faster if the urinals on either side are taken. If there are no people, they dawdle. The most popular urinal is the one on the end. But do people idly dawdle? I have seen only dawdling with intent.

  16 january 1997. Out with two women, both Americans, one blonde, one brunette, and after dinner we were wondering where to have coffee and I suggested the Shiro. But the fact that we were three might be a problem.

  I asked one of the elderly and dignified transvestites who wait in the street and let themselves out to gentlemen who wish to go down those dank stairs but cannot without an at least nominal female.

  “Oh, no,” he said, “you can’t get in with two women. Only allowed one. You ought to send them in as a pair and then take me along with you as another one.”