February 2001

Two points on the map, and all the spaces in between. Paint a picture in words of all the places I've never been.

It's inevitable that the search for Japan should lead me to literature. After all, it's happened before. One fall day in Prague comes to mind, when the sun on the cobblestones reflected up to the balcony where Kafka used to write, and I pulled out a copy of his "The Trial" to read. It made the experience somehow more authentic, as if being there wasn't enough. As if the book was somehow more real than the real thing. It was. When night fell and the gas lamps were lit, I looked over my shoulder, expecting to meet Joseph K's sad fate myself. Restless paranoia. Such was the power of the words on the page.

The words on the page. Filling in a map of the world, piece by piece. And when the time comes to travel, I can say I've already been there in my mind. Not so with Japan. I hadn't even touched "Shogun" when the time came to fly here. Just a mouldy old paperback history of Japan bought for $2.99. History is a far different thing from literature: only the facts; an objective account; dates and names. Hardly alive, hardly living, but useful nonetheless.
In the search for all that is Japan, 2001 is a more auspicious year than 1868. Not as important to history, probably, but more important because we are living in it. This is Japan. For a while at least, this is my Japan.

Many days it seems just like a huge mystery, and like an impenetrable dream. History is ever present in daily life, in shrines, festivals, and clothing. And yet always so far away from the realities of pachinko, cellular telephones, and daytime T.V. Murakami Haruki's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" mirrored for me these feelings I have about Japan. History is an important discourse in the novel, telling in part the story of the Japanese campaign through Mongolia and into Russia in 1939. The novel lists official book sources for the history. Yet history is merely tangential to the plot: a fantastical mind-bending quest for an elusive woman who disappears; a missing cat; a strange little girl. The novel is a metaphysical mystery, perhaps along the lines of Poe or Borges. But very Japanese. And for a long time last summer it had me wrapped up in the mystery even as the sun shone down outside.

The other novel, which I am just now reading, is Mishima Yukio's "The Sound of Waves". It is set on the Ise Peninsula and is about the growing love between a fisherman and a wealthy man's daughter. The prose is spare and elegant, ridiculously beautiful, and somehow tinged with sadness, inevitable tragedy. Looking at the English translation, one can easily imagine the original kanji flowing out Mishima's pen. Kanji too are beautiful, and much more expressive of concepts than the equivalent English words. A few words are condensed into one kanji: black and white, love and hate, all separated into their own separate symbols.

The lovers meet, a world passes in a glance. "Your shadow's giving you away," the boy says, as the girl hides behind the hull of a fishing boat. Literature is only a shadow of this world, but is in some ways more real. It's another kind of map, and a secret history; it tells the truth, unlike T.V. It's a picture of Japan in words, in my own head, but not for all to see.

Matthew Oldridge

Posted on February 2001 in the following categories: Opinions, Stories and Information | TrackBack(586)