Archive for June, 2011

What pretty Kate made me think

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

About three years ago there was a year or so when I was living with my boyfriend and his friends.

I told my parents back home “I am living with my boyfriend, and two of his friends Ed and Jon.” And my mother said “All boys….so it’s you who cooks everyday, yeah?”

In my home town, a small rural village in Japan, the word “woman” and “housewife” are so close to each other that there is hardly any gap between. By the way, “wife” and “maid” are close, too. I mean not literary, of course…

Living in London, I have a feeling that I am now experiencing a significant milestone of cultural anthropology – the over-empowering of women. One of the most significant revolutions in fashion history was women starting to wear trousers, and since then we came too far, I fear. What are we wearing now?

The over-empowering of women has lots to do with the sexualisation of children, I think – they were discussing this today on “The Wright Stuff”.

What we have now are women who are confused about their aspirations, a media frenzy with no moral backup, and a stark difference between each country’s attitude towards women.

“Kate’s family can be traced back to a mining family. A miner to Buckingham palace, what an achievement.” “Her father must be extremely proud.”"It’s a girl’s dream, being a princess!”. During the royal wedding furore, England temporarily became Japan. I doubted my ears. “Excuse me, if women’s ultimate happiness lies in marriage, what’s all the fuss you have been making for all these years?” In appearance, women here demand equality in careers, and abuse the word “sexist” as ammunition; actually they still long for being fed by rich men.

In appearance they follow this trend of independent women, but they haven’t changed at heart. They are confused. I sometimes feel sorry for men in London.

In Tokyo, it’s been about 10 years since several train companies introduced a carriage for their rush hour trains specially dedicated to female passengers, because of the unstoppable number of molesters. Women in Japan not only have to live without the concept of Ladies First, but also live in an environment that they can’t even dare glare at the molesters. They are not educated to fight against men, not even voice their opinions. Hence, it was only authority who can stop this, not women themselves. By the way, what an insult for Japanese men, I think. They are officially a bunch of oppressed animals, and a victory to my favourite English gentlemen. But how about English women? Are they ladies? No, they are spoiled and even arrogant. I can imagine, in London, the situation is opposite – young girls wearing slutty clothes and complaining about men just glancing at them – “sexual harassment”. For me it’s obviously reverse sexual harassment. From my point of view, women here should appreciate how polite men are. (Needless to say, this is the reason why there are so many “Japanese girl and English boy” couples all over the place, I speculate. This is the perfect engagement of mutual benefits)

I love head-strong London women who are singing the praises of freedom, though. When I discussed this royal wedding matter with my friend, she said “women can’t choose, women want everything; a dependable rich husband as well as an independent career.” I agree. Maybe I am becoming this monster-like woman myself, I pretty much fear. I am spoilt by my gentle English boyfriend, and am pursuing my freelance career at the same time. But I can also tell that recently I have been encountering more and more remarkable cases that show women with less of the elegance and modesty that the good old days valued so much.

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What happened to Japan

Saturday, June 4th, 2011

What happened to Japan three months ago seems to be almost forgotten by people in the UK. It’s news of the past.

I remember the first thought that came to my mind after the news breaking was “here it comes, ok, people in Sendai are having  their turn now”. It sounds nasty here, but that’s the reality. Everyone in Japan has a share of almost equal amount of earthquakes. The last big one was Kobe, so this time it was a different part of Japan, then next time would be somewhere else.

Okinawa hardly has earthquakes, but it’s a nest of typhoons. About 10 typhoons get born every year in the south of Okinawa, they always start off from Okinawa then choose where to go from there…”shall I go to Kansai, maybe then Kanto, or Hokkaido, or all of them?” They speculate on their future route while they hang around in Okinawa. Backpackers in Europe always use London as their “base”, the starting point, as it’s convenient, and during their stay in London they decide on whether to go to Paris next or Amsterdam next, east Europe or west Europe.

My background music for breakfast is always Japanese online radio news. I know that recently the first typhoon of the year hit Japan. Here comes the Typhoon season 2011. Just like Major League Baseball. It begins in summer and finishes in winter.

Japan is a bunch of islands mainly made from volcanos. They seem to erupt in a perfect shift system all year round so that there are constantly at least one or two volcanos in action to remind people they are there. This reminds me of Fukushima nuclear power reactors, but they were more like 7 new born babies crying out one after another for their mother in a perfect shift system.

That’s why, the word “evacuee” is very common in Japanese news. There are some towns evacuated somewhere in Japan all the time.

What a cursed island it is.

Anywhere you are, you are always under the threat of nature. This feeling is quite similar to the one I had after the London 7/7 bombing. Terrorism is maybe the only threat we have less of in Japan. When I was in Japan, I never thought that we were unlucky, it’s only after I got here I realised that some people on this globe live their life without any shake, any yearly earthquake drill at school, any evacuation pack beside beds, any scary earthquake alarm on telly, consequent phone calls to relatives in other regions informing each other with numbers “it was 4 here, how about you?”, any emergency order from father to family members to shut all the storm shutters of the house. In England, we have pretty fire places, but we don’t have windows each attached with screens for summer, and storm shutters for typhoons.

Having written all this, the feeling welling up inside me is homesickness. All of these desasters are completely part of our life. Also I guess people in Japan wouldn’t be thinking “Oh god, I wish I lived somewhere there are no natural disasters”. They don’t think there is such a place on the globe. At least that’s how I was.

Human’s life at the mercy of matchless nature. For us this is life itself. This absolute powerlessness and sense of fate play the biggest part to define what Japanese culture, art and personality is as opposed to other Asian countries. Also our technical advancement originates in the most reasonable reason behind, not money, not power, but to survive.

The scary thing is that because of our highly developed technology, we now know pretty much where the next major earthquake will be. Not precise enough to save people, but enough to make people get ready. The next turn for the major earthquake is at Tokai area within 40 years. Everyone in Japan knows this. What would you do if you lived in this area? It’s a sentence. Of course there is no news heard that people in Tokai started to move away, or the land price went down. You just have to live with it, even if you know within 4o years your life will be at risk.

 

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