Bashō Passed Through Fukushima Once

In 1689 Matuso Bashō went on a long walk, starting in Edo (present day Tokyo) and ending 2400 kilometers later in Ōgaki, Gifu Prefecture sometime in 1691.

On his way he passed through Fukushima. After bumbling around in the mountains looking fruitlessly for a purple, floppy-eared iris named katsumi — calling out "katsumi, katsumi" as he went along — Bashō poked about Kurozuka no Iwaya (the cave-house of Kurozuka, home to a she-devil) before searching for lodging in Fukushima.

Passing strange then. Passing strange now.

Finding The Enormous Turnip, The Difficult Avocado

One of the pleasures of living in Japan is that I'm able to get the latest Murakami well before it ever makes it to the states. His newest collection of essays, a self described "comeback after a ten year absence" (as an essayist) is titled The Enormous Turnip, The Difficult Avocado. 

Like salivating over "Japan's most delicious oolong tea (© Murakami)" I was drawn to the cover before I even saw that it was a Murakami by — what else — the big, fat turnip with its conga line of characters dangling from it, the lot of them just having pulled it from the earth.

The cover illustration reminded me of a post I did back in March about a magazine I had found which exalted the turnip by dedicating its entire 96 pages to that venerable vegetable.

And inside that magazine, on page 64, was a spread on the well-known Russian children's book by Alexei Tolstoy from which Murakami got half his title. In the story, an old man grows a giant turnip, asking his wife to help him pull it out after he is unable to do it alone. When even the two of them can't manage it, they recruit, one by one, a child, a dog, a cat, and on down the line to a mouse, until the thing at last pulls free.

The Enormous Turnip's enduring popularity as a children's book does say something interesting about the desire for a kind of collectivism in Japan (I'm assuming that parents pick out most of what children read at this age); or, if not collectivism per se, at least an emphasis on the importance of working together to achieve a common aim. Certainly we're not talking about the fostering of a kind of Russian brand of early Bolshevism; more to the point, I think, is the continued honeycombing of the collective brain-hive, a snug, neatly built structure protected by virtue of being surrounded by ocean; by virtue of employing a single language; by adherence to the notion that the harmony of the group matters.

While The Enormous Turnip may be an apt metaphor for the all-for-one mentality that will be needed to cope with the ongoing problems associated with the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl (you can read about some of the latest issues here, here, and here) it may be a tad simplistic to think that there's going to be some sort of early 1960's-like inspired flowering of national will to achieve those ends. Given the technical difficulties of handling the clean-up of radioactive elements; and normal people's normal aversion to getting anywhere near anything called "radioactive," there's just as likely to be a national burying of heads in sand, a national distancing, as time piles on top of itself, and forests grow, and power plants resume humming, and people forget.

But since I don't think Murakami's essay has so much to do with some of these specific larger issues, and since this post was supposed to be about serendipity, and influences, and what is "in the air" at any one moment, I'll end this admittedly ragged post with one of the book's illustrations, by Ayuru Ōhashi (大橋歩)：

They're thinking, I'm thinking, aren't we all thinking: "Holy shit, what if Big Brother lets go?"

Punishment in Droneland

The news yesterday that Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry minister Banri Kaieda had threatened to punish Tokyo firefighters if they failed to comply with orders to carry out a spraying operation at the Number 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daichi plant was hardly surprising. Nor was the subsequent apology which was nothing more than a hollow face-saving measure. Behind the scenes, I'm sure, "punishment" will go on. When you sign up to be a drone, you don't dress in the Queen's clothes; a drone never even thinks to say "No, I'm not going to do that." A drone has only one purpose: to work for the good of the hive.

But what the punishment means within droneland is anybody's guess. All military-like organizations have their means: ostracism, bullying, assigning the punished the nastiest work; never again promoting them — the form of punishment is really only limited by the sadist's imagination.

I like what the late Richard Feynman had to say about disrespect for authority. He started with the simple observation that we're all human beings — every one of us has to get up in the morning, eat, shit, walk on two legs, cry wolf, etc. Just because someone's wearing a uniform or a funny hat doesn't make them inherently more magical or powerful.  There's no reason to bow to someone —whether it's the pope or five-star general — just because they're wearing a pope cone or five-star general thingies on their shoulder.

Now, I don't want to disparage the bravery and self-sacrifice and loyalty to the colony that so many workers in and around Fukushima have exhibited. But I do think it should be within anyone's free will to refuse to carry out insane commands. I'm not going to Afghanistan to kill people, so don't ask me. I'm not hosing down that reactor either no matter how many days off or how many yen you're willing to dangle in front of my nose.

Last night, at a local shipbuilding company, I was in the middle of a conversation with a student about just this topic when another student, whom I rarely see, trudged into the classroom. His face was a whitish-purple behind his white allergy mask; his hair disheveled and greasy; his uniform dirty; his hands a pink color from what looked to be a rash.

We both looked at the newcomer with a mixture of fascination and horror, asking almost simultaneously what had happened to him. Just work, he said. He had spent the afternoon inspecting paint jobs in various dark and cramped nooks of the bulkheads of a carrier. He had the blinking, dazed look of a man just released from a prison hold.

I'm sure that that man would go anywhere and do anything on that ship that his superiors ordered him. I don't doubt his loyalty or bravery or heart. But I do think he should watch the Feynman video. We need fewer foot soldiers and drones in this world, not more.