june 30th, 2019

by Kitty Truong

location: NYC's room

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What has not been touched remains a fabric of fictional construction, penetrated by pigmented truths that weaved together with aspirations, impressions, and tastes. When I had not cared about Japan, I thought of her as a techie paradise with mild antisocial syndrome, immune to sketchy politics and ambivalent choices. She was healthy and indifferent to social drama because she is too obstinate on following orders and rules. The aftermath of knowing Japan more is to constantly readjust these impressions and rediscover that like all humans and things, the more you explore a country, the more you’re attacked by confusions because a human can’t grasp all nuances of a place. This makes me reflect on my affair with Japan and how these streets and houses are too irrelevant to my own life if I remained a tourist. Being a tourist is like an unmarried, no strings attached couple, once I left the country, I’m not so sure what parts of me remain with it.

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That’s why I’m greeted with happiness that I’m learning deeply while simultaneously experiencing Japan first-hand. We are now on the honeymoon phase where I met with happiness every day. As the city’s map and subway system became more of a memory exercise than a navigation exercise, at last I feel a little bit assimilated and becoming. I recall the kind and nervous Vegan chef in the corner of a secluded alley or the random strangers who helped me under the pouring rain for half an hour, my chest grew bubbly with appreciations and I love how every turn is still an undiscovered horizon. I love the jammed streets that juxtapose minimalist houses in between chaotic colorful signs, then traditional buildings pop in and temples and shrines appear out of the sudden in a modern neighborhood. Somehow this sentiment makes me miss home. Vietnam, she is indefinitely beautiful and I mistreated her by being apathetic. We all seek for novelty, yet after the honeymoon, it is the mundane, day-to-day happenstance and the relationships we have made that truly stay. If I looked at Japan through this eye, I hope to remember her, not through the excitement that drives my idealization of her, but more as what she is. And this very genuineness and understanding of place are what would stay safely in my heart space.

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The reason that I don’t idealize Japan, academically speaking, is because like all other places, culture is built by happenstances and motives of the powerful. In Professor Watt’s lecture, Japan adopted Buddhism in the 6th century and generalized all spiritual practice under the umbrella term, Shinto. The faith in animism isn’t unique to Japan, but why it is specifically reserved here? I suspect a big reason was due to the linguistic signage this “religion” was given during this period to distinguish itself. Fast forward to the modern world, Shinto then was revived by a wave of nationalistic fever during the Meiji Restoration, it was promoted to the new position called ‘national religion’. If an outsider only knows that Shinto is a prominent practice in Japan, the person might infer that this religion reflects the country’s values so deeply that it is faithfully preserved over centuries, while not seeing the political and practical reasons behind it. In other words, fundamental attribution error, thus by collecting information from lectures, observations, and readings, I could gracefully avoid these misunderstandings and truly understand the country as it is without added fictional fabrication. My fantasies of Japan are broken down piece by piece, in the mapping assignment, I wrote, “My mind got knocked back-and-forth between reality and the advertised world.” It would be a whirlwind and confusing journey to demystify Japan into a coherent story, an impossible task so to speak. As Benedict Anderson affirmed, nation states are but an incoherent shuffle of events being given a meaningful, coherent narrative to settle human’s anxiety.

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However, I am intrigued by some so-to-speak coherent patterns that emerged in the modern days. In past exercises, I had talked a great length on Japan’s sentiment for philosophical values, visible in my research on washoku and discussion on Professor Leheny’s lecture. On washoku, I mentioned how the government frantically wanted to enlist eating traditions onto UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list showed its deep sentiment for a lost glory. The latter was proven by Prof. Leheny by his quoting of various Japanese political statements that specifically used emotional and philosophical values to dictate policies and responses. These two instances show that Japan’s leaders are especially philosophical rather than practical. This reminds me of philosopher Lin Yutang’s book, The Art of Living, where he commented that throughout China’s history, its politics is rather romantic than of a practical one. I wonder if being a Sinocized country influenced these two countries to share this habit. But I would argue that why being philosophical is less than being rational. Through my personal research on cuisine and my experience in Japan, it is the ungraspable that touch. And being a human having humanly experiences, what's more beautiful than being touched by beauties even though you can't contain it?

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One more pattern of Japan is its affinity for raw materials. It is apparent in my research on cuisine, where seasonal and natural ingredients are national pride and aspiration, to the architecture of Shinto shrines in Prof. Watt’s lecture, where no color is added on wood to preserve the natural beauties of the construction materials, and during my trip to the National Arts Center Tokyo, lots of ceramics works are left in its raw, unrefined state, with bumps and flaws from non-mechanical creation. The fond for nature is also apparent everywhere, from the panels of the four seasons in the National Diet Building (and the Japanese are especially proud of having 4 seasons) to the ink works in National Arts Center Tokyo, where natural landscapes and phenomenon are treated as the ultimate muse.

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Finally, being an attentive person to aesthetic choices and especially to color combination, I found Japan's choices of colors interesting. It is emphasized in kaiseki, washoku and shojin ryori to embellish the five colors of the five natural elements (red - fire, wood - green, earth - yellow, metal - white, water - black). In the National Diet Building, the framed windows in the red carpeted hallway are dark emerald (although it might be easily mistaken for black), and even though the big hall was decorated in European inspired style, it still chose the color combination of emerald and red. Since this combination is very symbolistic of Japanese Buddhist temples (prominently found in all of the temples, from the one I visited in Ueno, to Kawagoe, to Waseda, and Senso-ji), I wonder if there's a connection between the two.