Soy Sauce 13

The Japanese always have their act together, but it is an act. 
Expressionless eyes and unfailing correctness act to keep the world at a distance. The words for ‘thank you’ are loaded with self-deprecating equivocation- arigato, this difficult thing, katajikenai’, I am insulted, kino do’ku, this poisonous feeling, sumimasen, this never ends. The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness. If Freemasonry describes itself as ‘a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols,’ Japan is the largest lodge in the world. Like the face of a geisha or a gilt screen, the surface as exquisite as it is opaque. 
A corollary to their hatred of defilement, the Japanese are impatient with all limitation. They see no reason why everything cannot be made perfect, and possess the vision and the discipline to make it so. No daylight exists between the idea and the reality, and the construction and the creation- the gardener’s one flawless chrysanthemum a year, the calligrapher’s perfect stroke, the photographer’s reduction of three-dimensional reality to two-dimensional order. Everything, including the future and humanity, can be programmed and perfected. When IBM gave a Japanese manufacturing company a trial project, they set out a specification of three defective parts per ten thousand. The delivery came with an accompanying letter.

    ‘We, Japanese people, had a hard time understanding
     North American business practices. But the three
     defective parts per 10,000 have been separately
     manufactured and have been included in the
      consignment. Hope this pleases you.’

There is a common Western misperception that the Japanese are great at copying things, but not very inventive. The truth is that they are great at reinventing things, and possibly better at understanding the original invention. But they are also capable of taking inventiveness to bizarre places. Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem, but anyone actually attempting to use one finds that it causes so many new problems, or such social embarrassment, that it has no utility whatsoever. More interesting examples of chindōgu are the combined household duster and cocktail-shaker, the hay fever all-day toilet tissue roll dispenser hat, the all-over plastic aquaphobia bathing suit, the baby mop outfit floor cleaner and cat duster slippers, the noodle-eaters hair guard, the selfies extendable arm, the solar energy lighter, the butter grater, the square watermelon, and the flip hole masturbatory machine.
There is an imposition of cold horror here. The bonsai knows no capriciousness, no natural exuberance, no passion or fire. Ardor is replaced by order. Everything that is supposed to be changing and breathing and imperfect and alive is forced into perfection- emotions, relations, and the people themselves.
The word for ‘different’ in Japanese, is the same word for ‘wrong.’ Chigau. But, like no concept of evil, there is actually no word for wrong. The stake that sticks out gets hammered down. In a poll that asked what in their lives had given them the most happiness, more than half the Japanese questioned answered Disneyland. The army ants in jackets and ties and skirts and blouses coursing through the subways, and the lady-in-waiting white gloved taxi drivers, find their greatest pleasure in conformity, as comforting and cloying and antiseptic, as the muzak at Mickey’s House in Toontown.



                                     ‘O because
                                      We are not individuals
                                      We are the herd, the group 
                                      We are the group personified...’
                                               Tamura Ryuichi (1923- 1998),
                                                                         Three Voices