Viewed Sideways. Donald Richie

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СКАЧАТЬ it would no longer be Japan at all. Perhaps in the future a perusal of these different models and paradigms will create emotions not only of indignation but also of nostalgia.

      —2001

      Crossing the Border: The Japanese Example

      Crossing the border: Japan may serve as example because it knows a lot about borders and because it has so many uses for them. And because, unlike those of many other countries, Japan’s borders are natural, not agreed-upon terrains but leagues of formerly uncharted sea. An archipelago, like the United Kingdom, it has long distanced itself from its neighbors, something its watery borders have encouraged.

      In consequence these borders have seldom been breached. Japan is among the very few Asian nations that did not suffer through the intrusions of Western imperialism—Europe and the United States crossing borders irrespectively.

      Japan’s borders were breached only twice. In the thirteenth century the Mongols set out to invade Japan but their fleet was stopped by a typhoon and an occupation was averted. This phenomenon was seen as evidence of divine favor and the typhoon was thereafter referred to as kamikaze, the “divine wind,” a term that was to prove useful on numerous occasions—most recently, describing the activities of suicide bombers during the latter days of World War II.

      It was during this war that Japan’s borders were again breached.

      The Allied Powers set out to invade Japan, devastated it, and an occupation resulted. This was the first and so far only time that Japan’s boundaries were ignored and its borders broken.

      The effect of such an invasion is often decisive. Not only are people killed and dwellings destroyed, but whole cities are ruined, communications systems are broken, and famine and pestilence stalk. The destruction of recognized borders in all fields leads to social and personal chaos. After all, the borders were there to preserve the very identity that is now threatened.

      For Japan, this was the first time it had been invaded. Though the country had had internal border problems, a massive breach of this nature had never before occurred. And in addition to the physical damage there was the mental harm that occurs when an idea of self predicated upon the notion of a state is destroyed. Borders are there not only to protect but also to define.

      Due both to these experiences and the fact that they have remained very much an island people, the Japanese have traditionally viewed border crossings as something of which to be wary. They have long regarded their own borders as boundaries—not merely lying adjacent but forming a limiting line.

      Indeed, during much of its history Japan remained nominally closed to outsiders. The government deemed leaving the country an unlawful act and returning after having somehow successfully left a criminal one—a national seclusion that is known as sakoku. Inside the country various borders were observed and travelers from one province to another had to pass through guarded barriers, forts that contained much the equivalent of immigration and customs services today.

      Borders were also put to work and afflicted not only on peasants and craftsmen. There was a boundary-based system known as sankin kotai where the daimyo, the lords of the capital, were forced to make expensive trips back to their own provinces. Since their processions were seen as ceremonial, they contained large numbers of people (though members of the immediate family were to be left behind as government hostages in all but name) and were very expensive. This had the double advantage of providing work, making money, filling state coffers, and curbing any thought of political uprising since such attempts are always expensive. The grand daimyo processions, spilling money, were stopped at each of the many district border forts. Borders were barriers.

      And indeed they still are. The 1945 Allied Occupation of Japan had substituted one military government for another and crossing borders, in and out of Japan, became again difficult for the Japanese. This is no longer true but it should be noted that even now the doors into Japan swing only one way. It is easy for the visitor to get out but not to get in. This is something that countries learn. This is why at most immigration barriers everywhere there are separate entry lines for the confident native and for the merely hopeful foreigner.

      This is also why there is also so much fuss made about nationality within the country. In Japan there remains a rigid definition. The Japanese are inside the boundary, everyone else is out. Though there are accommodations for Japanese citizenship, these are—like those of all other countries—rigid. There is no accommodation for those who would live and work there without undergoing proper procedures. Even third-generation people whose ancestors came from, say, Korea are routinely denied some of the advantages of citizenship—running for public office, for example.

      I myself have spent my entire adult life in Japan, living as a foreign body in the native mixture. Officially I enjoy eijuken, permanent residence, a fairly exotic and somewhat in-between category. Before I applied for this I was told that I ought to opt for citizenship because it was so much easier for the bureaucrats to arrange. I could be nominally Japanese in that fashion. With permanent residence I was neither one thing nor another—so I pay taxes but I cannot vote; my borders remain vague.

      It is not that Japan is with its history of closed borders more xenophobic than other nations, merely that it is more open about being xenophobic. There is little concern about being observed and found xenophobic—or indeed misogynist, or racist.

      Take, for example, the terminology used in referring to foreigners. The standard Japanese term gaijin translates, innocently enough, as “person from the outside.” Foreigners in Japan, to be sure, find the term loaded with prejudice, but that is their privilege. There are many worse that could be used yet rarely are—keto (“red-haired barbarian”) for example. And when it comes to bad-mouthing foreigners Americans have little ground to stand on. I remember from Occupation days Eighth Army notices forbidding “fraternization with the indigenous personnel,” and few languages can have had terms so unlovely as the standard G.I. for a Japanese person, gook, as in: “Hey, that’s a good-looking gook girl.”

      Still, tempered though it is in terminology, the truly politically correct, with all of its triumphs and terrors, has never knocked on Japanese doors. And for good reason. Japan is very suspicious of knocked-on doors. This tendency was much strengthened when, in the mid-nineteenth century, American warships appeared with what seemed to be a trade offer but was widely perceived as a bid for imperialistic takeover. With this threat, however, Japan did not, as given its history might have been expected, close its borders and retreat into an even more hermit-like seclusion.

      Rather, it compromised and opened its borders, but it did so ever so slightly for the would-be invaders from the West, just a port here or there. But it opened all the way for those Japanese who now needed to go out and learn all that they could about this country that was so politely menacing theirs.

      This ploy is a popular one, this one-direction border-crossing convenience. Many countries have found it of use, particularly in Asia—getting in and out of Burma, for example. It is cost effective and considerably slows down invasions, military or mercantile.

      It sometimes malfunctions, however. Several years ago Japan, still deep in what it termed “oil shock,” occasioned by just one more of Nixon’s perfidies, decided to shop elsewhere. Iran was to be the new oil supermarket, and to speed transactions the Japanese government initiated a visa treaty, a tit-for-tat arrangement where I freely enter your country and you freely enter mine. This would, it was thought, allow the Japanese oil people to get in and out of Iran with a minimum of fuss.

      Perhaps it did, but the fuss this occasioned in Japan was maximum. While Japan was sending a person or two a month to Tehran, Iran was allowing hundreds to travel weekly to Tokyo. Soon the city was awash with friendly, well-behaved young Iranians, СКАЧАТЬ