Lost Japan (12 page)

Although Chinese Studies at Oxford concentrated overwhelmingly on the classics, the course did not wholly ignore modern China, and we also read passages from Mao Zedong and studied the contemporary Chinese political scene. I noticed then that writings on China contrasted with writings on Japan in that the emphasis, far from being on social theories, was on politics: which faction was in, which faction was out, and so forth. This is not just a modern phenomenon – because of its sheer size, China has been plagued throughout its history by political turmoil. In order to govern such an enormous country, drastic measures are called for; as a result, politics attracts a great deal of discussion and debate, and the country has always been riven by political issues.

For example, during the Sung dynasty, a group of ministers conceived an ideal system which they called the well-field system. It was based on the character for ‘well', which is written with two vertical and two horizontal lines, like a tic-tac-toe game. This character represented a plot of land divided into nine portions: the outlying eight fields were for peasants to cultivate by themselves; the innermost field was to be cultivated communally, and the proceeds given as tax to the government. In order to institute the well-field system, millions of peasants were displaced, wreaking havoc with agriculture. There was loud opposition, and soon the anti-well-field faction came into power. They banished the pro-well-field ministers and, at tremendous human cost, dismantled the whole system. Some time later, the
pro-well-field group came back into power, and the sequence of events was repeated. This went on for a century, and can be credited with weakening the Song dynasty and leading to its final collapse.

An overconcern with politics likewise afflicts Chinese poetry. A large number of ancient poems are protests over some injustice or government policy, and as a result, many of them remain mired in the circumstances of their time and fail to interest us today. Wherever you turn, politics is everything: during the Oing dynasty, debate raged over whether to allow Western civilization into China; then, with the twentieth century, came the warlords, the Japanese and, finally, the Communists, who proceeded to practically destroy the country in the name of their own modern version of the well-field system.

When I was at Oxford, the effects of the Cultural Revolution were still strong, and the Beijing-published Chinese language textbooks we used in class were almost comically politicized. Lesson One taught the numbers from one to ten; Lesson Two taught ‘thank you', ‘you're welcome', etc.; and then in Lesson Three, the vocabulary list introduced ‘dissident elements' and ‘Japanese devils'. In 1977, the year I graduated from Oxford, all this abruptly changed. The leaders of the Maoist era were reviled as the Gang of Four, and ‘Japanese devils' became ‘Japanese friends'. In contemporary Chinese art, the same forces can be seen at work: while modern art in Japan is almost totally devoid of political intent, Chinese contemporary art is inseparable from the history of dissident movements.

The Chinese have published very few books endorsing the Chinese equivalent of ‘theories of Japaneseness', and so I found the atmosphere of Chinese Studies relatively free and relaxed. I came across no attempts to impose theories about the wonderfulness of China upon the people of other countries. However, as is evident from China's very name – Chung Kuo (the Middle Kingdom) – the Chinese are firmly convinced that their country
lies at the center of the earth. Until very recently, China bestowed its culture on neighbors such as Vietnam, Korea and Japan, but received relatively little in return; practically the only thing which ever went from Japan to China was the folding fan. Consequently, the Chinese take their superiority for granted. It is the air they breathe, so there is no need to prove it to themselves or others.

Japan, in contrast, was always on the receiving end of cultural imports from other countries, and deep in their hearts, the Japanese are haunted by a sense of insecurity about their cultural identity. What can you call truly ‘Japanese', when almost everything worthwhile, from Zen to the writing system, came from China or Korea? People are constantly made aware of the relations of superiority and inferiority; for example, through the honorifics which Mrs Chaplin thought it so important for me to learn. This thought pattern has become a reflex, and the Japanese cannot be at peace without setting up hierarchical ranks for countries as well. Naturally, Japan must stand at the top of the pyramid, and this is what has given birth to the aggressive ‘theories of Japaneseness'.

I will surely be criticized for making broad generalizations about the nature of Japanologists and Sinologists – but I can't resist. Lovers of China are thinkers; lovers of Japan, sensuous. People drawn to China are restless, adventurous types, with critical minds. They have to be, because Chinese society is capricious, changing from one instant to the next, and Chinese conversation is fast moving and pointed. You can hardly relax for an instant: no matter how fascinating it is, China will never allow you to sit back and think, ‘All is perfect.' Japan, on the other hand, with its social patterns designed to cocoon everyone and everything from harsh reality, is a much more comfortable country to live in. Well-established rhythms and politenesses shield you from most unpleasantness. Japan can be a kind of ‘lotus land', where one floats blissfully away on the placid surface of things.

When I compare the paths taken by my friends in Japanese
Studies, Chinese Studies and Southeast Asian Studies, the differences are striking. For example, two of the most memorable people I met at Oxford were my Tibetan teacher, Michael Aris, and his wife, Aung San Suu Kyi. Michael, a modest, soft-spoken man, was a remarkable and dedicated scholar. I remember being impressed when, in the middle of one of our classes, the phone rang and Michael began speaking in rapid Tibetan – it was the Dalai Lama on the line. Suu Kyi is Burmese, the daughter of General Aung San who fought the British and established the modern state of Burma (now called Myanmar). In 1988 she returned to Burma to lead the democratic movement against the military dictatorship that had ruled Burma since the 1960s: it earned her six years of house arrest and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Another friend I met at Oxford was Nicholas Jose, a Rhodes Scholar from Australia. At the time, Nick was studying English literature, but he later took up Chinese and eventually became very fluent. After several years in China, he was posted to the Australian Embassy, where he served as cultural attaché. He became a central figure in the community of artists, poets and musicians in Beijing prior to the Tiananmen Square massacre, and personally rescued some of the dissidents from the police.

In contrast, when I ask my foreign friends in Japanese Studies to describe the most exciting moment of their lives, they respond along the lines of, ‘I was meditating in a Zen temple, and I heard the swish of the silk robes of the monks as they walked by.' Since World War II, Japan has had fifty years of uninterrupted peace, during which time the concrete of its social systems has set hard and fast. It has become the land of social stasis, and the foreigners drawn to Japan tend to be those who find comfort in this.

Japan's peaceful and secure society is one of its major achievements. Hygiene and literacy are higher than in many Western countries, and the benefits of its booming economy are distributed more equitably among the population than anywhere else in Asia. There is relatively little violent crime or drug abuse, and
life expectancy is high. At the same time, the serious social problems that do exist, such as discrimination against the
burakumin
(descendants of the old untouchable caste) and Koreans, are carefully hidden. Speaking out against the system is discouraged, with the result that advocacy groups for women, the ecology, legal issues or consumers are pitifully weak.

The curious sense of isolation from the rest of the world which you get when living in Japan has its roots in the harmonious social systems which make Japan seem even more peaceful than it really is. These systems reject sudden change and exclude foreign influence, with the result that global issues such as AIDS, ecology or human rights fail to penetrate into the national consciousness. From here, these things look like other people's problems, and foreigners living in this lotus land can easily get caught up in the minutiae of office life, or the aesthetics of tea ceremony, and forget that there are larger issues.

There is also the fact that more traditional culture survives in Japan in a form accessible to foreigners than is the case in most other Asian countries. Its elegant forms exert an almost irresistible sway over those who come into contact with them, and Japanologists tend to abandon their critical faculties and ‘convert' to Japan. This is partly because of the country's insecurity about itself, which results in everyone being seen as either a ‘Japan basher' or a ‘Japan lover'. People think they need to approach Japan with a worshipful attitude in order to gain access to its society and culture. The conversion mentality is something I often run across in Kyoto: foreigners studying the arts there tend to mouth tea-ceremony slogans such as ‘Harmony, Respect, Purity, Solitude' with the same zeal that born-again Christians talk about Faith. Sometimes I think ‘Japanese Studies' would be more accurately described as ‘Japan Worship'.

However, one must not overlook the positive side of this ‘Japan Worship'. Although concepts like ‘Harmony, Respect, Purity, Solitude' have been overused and debased, the aesthetic they
express still survives in Japan. Consequently, those who study traditional culture here do not merely bring the cold eye of scholarship to bear, but take their subjects to heart in a very personal way. The foreigners who have converted and become ‘followers' of tea ceremony or Noh drama in Kyoto exist as an extreme example of this, but they represent a side of Japanese Studies that we must be grateful for: it is through them that important aesthetic and philosophical insights, unknown in the West, will be passed on from Japan to the rest of the world.

China, on the other hand, is still suffering from the effects of forty years of cultural repression under the Communist government. The Cultural Revolution, in particular, had a devastating impact on traditional culture. One casualty was its Buddhist and Taoist temples: tens of thousands of temples were destroyed, and a Chinese art expert once described to me the sight of truckloads of ancient bronze Buddhist statues being carted away to the smelting furnaces. I have visited many of Beijing's famous temples, and only very rarely did I catch sight of an original Buddha figure. Most of them were confiscated or destroyed by the government, and all there is to see today are cheap copies.

Nor was it only the cultural products that were destroyed. Artists and artisans were sent to labor camps, theater groups were disbanded and the few who remained of the literati were mercilessly persecuted. Religion was almost eradicated, and even the daily routines of life changed down to their very roots. For example, according to the stories of those who lived in Beijing in the 1920s and 30s, the old city had developed a courtly code of manners derived from centuries of being the center of Imperial rule; even the exchange of daily greetings was something of an art form. But the old residents of the city were moved, and their houses and livelihoods wiped out; today, travelers often express surprise at the rudeness and surliness of Beijing's taxi drivers and hotel waiters.

The efforts to revive Chinese Opera, Buddhism, Taoism and
Confucianism in recent years are nothing less than heroic, providing some hope for a genuine revival as the Chinese rediscover pride in their heritage. But at present, China's traditional culture is still weak, just staggering to its feet after receiving a massive blow to the head. As a result, scholars from abroad tend to look on traditional Chinese culture not as a living force, but as a dead relic. I once had an argument with one of my tutors at Oxford over this point. I wrote an essay on the
I Ching
for a tutorial, and after covering the historical background and various philological issues, I ended by saying, ‘What needs to be studied in the future with regard to the
I Ching
is not its historical background. The
I Ching
is a book of divination, intended to advise people as to what the future will bring. The interesting thing about the
I Ching
is that it works.' At the end of term, the Master of Balliol read aloud to me from a letter he had received from my tutor: ‘Mister Kerr's way of thinking is typically American, soft and woolly-headed, full of spiritual truths, but with no regard for academic rigor.'

My tutor's attitude was not just symptomatic of Oxford. In general, Chinese Studies tends to be a little dry, keeping a discreet distance from the subject; Japanese Studies, in contrast, takes almost too reverent an attitude towards traditional culture. I cannot imagine any student in Japanese Studies being criticized by his teacher because he expressed an interest in Zen enlightenment.

In the summer of 1976, my last year at Oxford, a letter arrived from David Kidd containing a brochure about the Oomoto Foundation, a Shinto organization in the city of Kameoka near Kyoto. Oomoto was holding a seminar for foreigners in traditional Japanese arts, and David wanted me to attend as both student and interpreter. I sent off a reply: ‘I'm very sorry, but having lived in Japan since I was a little boy, I've already seen Noh, tea, and the rest. I'd rather spend my summer in the US with my family, so I won't be attending the traditional arts seminar.'

About a week later I was called to the porter's lodge to receive an international phone call. It was David. ‘I have bought you a round-trip ticket to Japan,' he said. ‘If you don't come to the seminar, never speak to me again!' And he hung up. I was mystified by this zeal on the part of David, who had always had a far greater interest in China than Japan. But it had been made clear that this was an offer I couldn't refuse, so I went to Japan and took lessons in tea ceremony, Noh dance, martial arts and calligraphy for one month at the Oomoto seminar.