I read an interesting column by Roger Cohen the other day in the IHT that had me grinning with understanding approval. Though I didn’t entirely follow the story’s arc, I thought Cohen made some great points while attempting a brief interpretation of Japan. The piece starts off with a nod to Japan’s quirkiness and penchant for technology that comes in the form of a trip to the gym, where Cohen finds his exercise machine displaying images of calorie-laden guilty pleasures like beer, ice cream and cheesecake. I personally found that a fairly strange source of motivation, but I’m often serenaded by songs like “Never Gonna Give You Up” and “On The Wings Of Love” when at my own gym (not kidding), so perhaps we should just add this to the ever-expanding list of Japanese peculiarities.
The piece had other interesting observations that are worth pondering, many of which I’ve blogged about in the past. There’s always a special joy one takes from journalistic reinforcement!
On Japan’s hobby obsession:
Indeed, there’s a Japanese word, otaku, denoting a whole universe of monomaniacal geek-like obsession, whether with an electronic game, some odd hobby, or the cartoonlike “manga” comic books devoted to everything from kamikazes to kinky sex….Japan is rich enough, bored enough with national ambition, strait-jacketed enough and gloomy enough to find immense attraction in playful escapism and quirky obsession.
On Japanese deference and conformity:
Events have imbued the Japanese corporate warrior with a new insouciance. It coexists with a tremendous conformity. On Sundays, when traffic is closed around the imperial palace, I saw lines of people waiting for pedestrian lights to change even though there were no cars. Smiling deference can seem so uniform as to constitute a gleaming wall. I can see how the urge to escape from this homogeneity could be strong.
