A Freudian Deconstruction of the Jap Social Psyche:
Most people are familiar with the typical Japanese garden setting -- immaculately pruned trees, a small arching bridge, still calm waters....all one can hear is the sound of water trickling, or perhaps the occasional rustling of leaves as a breeze courses through.....but otherwise, there is a very zen feeling about the whole place. Nature and religion/spirituality fuse as one in this little space, emanating a sense of unruffled calm and harmony.....
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| a zen garden in Kamakura |
Now do you not find this to be emblematic of the unfailing politeness and graciousness of the Japs? The constant bowing, the repeated ad naseum 'arigato gozaimasu' and 'irrashaimasse', the ever smiling faces that greeted u at the shops.....one kid, upon alighting from the bus, even yelled out loudly 'arigato gozaimashita' to the bus driver! And did I mention that when I asked for direction at a bus stop after getting lost in Kyoto, the woman listened intently despite not knowing English very well, trying to make sense of my smattering of English and broken Japanese. Before I knew it, a crowd had gathered at the bus stop, and the woman appealed to them for help. The group of them then studied the bus schedules meticulously in between rapid bursts of Japanese too fast for me to catch. One of them even stopped a young Jap couple strolling past to get them to explain to me in English! In the end, the young couple escorted me all the way to the train station a 10-min walk away! I walked away from the whole episode feeling like I've just mobilised the help of an entire village!
A similar situation occurred when I was trying to locate the hostel in Osaka. After asking an obasan, she beckoned me to follow her and went to ask a fishmonger where the place is. Then the fishmonger and she walked with me till I reached the hostel gate! These are the random acts of kindness I encountered during this trip that left a good impression about Japan. And we're talking about a city here, where people are supposed to be stressed and bo-chap!
But at the same time, this politeness can be seen in a different light....when a vast majority of a people are this polite, u can't help but feel that this is too good to be true, that there is something amiss here. I got the answer when I looked at the zen gardens and the lush autumn foliage.
Zen gardens can be seen as an artificial re-creation of a natural setting, the way our Gardens by the Bay is. But they are not exactly a faithful replica of nature, because the plants within are pruned to near-faultless perfection, faultless to a fault -- like the pruning of a bonsai! Just take a look at the pics below. Some of them are so well-manicured that there is this unnatural tidiness about them, a sense of imperfect perfection! There seems to be some nebulous force at work that is repressing their original tendencies. The result of this inhibitive and repressive force is a surreal calm that nonetheless emit an undercurrent vibe of disquiet if you stand there long enough.
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| see how the trees and hedges in the garden are unnaturally shaped compared to their natural counterparts in the distant background. There is even a wall that seems to be containing its natural tendencies... |
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| How is this for a well-manicured and crafted tree? Resembles mushrooms or those delicious-looking Japanese buns! It's located just outside the Guesthouse Tamura where I stayed while in Nara. Notice once again that this tree is grown within the confined walls of a garden. |
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| can u feel the latent energies within trying to break free? |
Could we not draw a link between this zen garden phenomenon and the social etiquette of the Japanese that is characterised by excessive politeness? That unfailing politeness and constant bowing are akin to the pruned shrubs u see in a zen garden -- perfect to a fault, yet disturbingly unreal, even unnatural. It is as if their natural tendencies have been forcibly reined in by cultural dictates. Picture a cultural corset being forcible donned on, with the strings behind pulled tight and tied into several knots, a la what happened to Kate Winslet in a scene from "Titanic". In literary terms, this is tantamount to the reining in of the Dionysiac to impose some Apollonian order. The numerous rules and meticulous steps associated with their tea-brewing ceremony also point to this.
And if this theory is true, then the Jap society is a repressed (sexually?) lot. Freud would have a field day analysing this phenomenon! The way I look at it, Mother Nature registers her protest at this unnatural reining in our natural tendencies by exploding into the fiery bursts of colours that we had witnessed in the autumn foliage pics in an earlier posting. As if forced into celibacy (a metaphor for the strict rigid social protocols imposed by society) for the whole year, and knowing that the dead of winter is beckoning, she decides to give it her all and break free of the 'chains' that shackle her. This manifests itself in the orgy of colours that splashes across the landscape, a defiant gesture against the repressive forces that seek to contain her.
In the Jap society, this translates into the underbelly of Jap's less flattering subcultures, e.g. the gothic fashion in Harajuku, the Cosplay wannabes, the infamous AV porn industry, fetish with girls in sch uniforms (think sailor moon), and of course the manga/anime culture. These function as a cathartic outlet for escape from the restrictive social codes that can be stultifying to one's creative tendencies. So, in contrast to a geisha dressed immaculately in a kimono sashaying down the streets of Gion, you'll see a 30-year-old woman incongruously dressed in a sailor moon outfit meant for someone more than ten years her junior, whisking about in Harajuku -- surely a symptom of social dysfunction in the working.....
Another intriguing thought struck me regarding autumn. What if Nature is not a she but he? A sexually-repressed Father Nature ejaculating in splashes of colours, much like the paint oozing out from a painter's coloured ink tubes.... a biological process transmuted into a work of art.....
