Photoepic, Failed Modern State

I will remember fondly Vicky Gerardi, my year 10 and 11 (VCE 3/4) Art teacher for many and varied a reason. Her influence was large upon my life.
But two conversations come to mind here, now in my present occupation of walking the world.
The first was when I last returned from Japan, I took photo's largely on a disposable camera and they were pretty shabby, compared to the photo's Vicky took of her trip to India which she took with her family at the same time.
She paid bottom dollar for beautiful prints with white borders in India. Her subject matter all selected carefully, I couldn't help but notice how much easier she structured her narrative of her trip than I did mine from my haphazardly taken photos mostly of people I knew or met.
But the thing I remember her talking about was how hard it was to strike the balance that does a foreign country (which really can be expanded to any experience) justice.
I think specifically she said "How do you tell people in the same sentance about this beautiful ancient palace, cleverly designed and maintained that backs onto an unofficial garbage dump." or something to that effect.
This in many cases is my dilemma. Infact most of the time, most people tend to opt for the positive side of the balance. That is to put on the rose coloured glasses and focus on the merits, neglecting to talk about those garbage dumps, the racism etc. Others go to the negative end of the scale. I tend to be one of said others, for most experiences I had. Things I thoroughly love and enjoy, I will often talk about in mostly a critical form, what can be improved, what could be done better.
Other, others who focus on the negative are the kind of people that find anything hotter than pepper spicy, anything that's not white bread, dirty, and anything that is remotely feminine or even colourful, gay. Whilst they should be applauded for at least trying to have an exotic experience, they really should for everone's benifit stay at home and watch Kath & Kim DVDs.
So it is that the first of Vicky's insights (chronologically second) caught me out though, I found myself when posting facebook photo's qualifying photo's I'd taken that I had inadvertantly self censured. That is, much like a brochure of Japan, (albeit without having an airbrush at my disposal) I found myself taking photos going to great lengths to get the camera to find a view that was still meaningful whilst cutting out the littany of billboards, powerlines, garbage, concrete, construction barriers, dead trees etc. I found myself in short looking at Japan only through rose coloured glasses, then upon witnessing my own selection, backpeddling to write snide little remarks next to my photos.
So I resolved to dedicate an album, to the ugly side of Japan. Similar to Australia, national symbols aren't in reality on every street corner. You find Eucalyptus trees in parks, Kangaroos in the outermost suburbs sometimes if lucky (or as roadkill as was the case with my one campbellfield kangaroo encounter), you do see other things though like you can definetily see the trams on many a melbourne fridge magnet. Cockatoos do fly through the sky, though not as often as bats.
But Japan is a different kettle of fish, while Australia's domestic tourism has been on the rise, Japan's has been in virtual freefall, the reason being that Japan is largely laking in tourist attractions, and Japan is arguably more xenophobic than isolated Australia. Japan also doesn't have that many foreign tourists.
When I read this it came to me as a shock, I had kind of thought Japan to be sort of a Milan type fashion capital, where rich hollywood stars came to revel in hero worship and experience the Japanese wackiness.
When I thought about it though, I realised that whilst I would struggle to count the number of my friends that have been to Thailand, (I find it easier to count the number of my friends who haven't been to thailand, except its harder to remember who those friends even are) when I think of my friends who have been to Japan the task isn't daunting at all.
And what of it, Japan is expensive, Thailand is cheap. I do think of Thailand as touristy though, and what exactly does that mean to me? It means this, in Japan there is a rich cultural history, there are temples Castles and Palaces and Gardens to observe. But these are wrapped in endless streets of the same old shit. Go to Hot Potatoes in Sydney Road brunswick and look at the store front. Then turn around 180 degrees and look at the housing complex. Now imagine that with a web of wires hanging in the air that isn't even used to service a tramline. There you have most of Japan.
And that's precisely what touristy isn't, in thailand you go see whatever it is you wanted to see, then you go to a river market, wander the streets, ride a took took, get a suit tailored, lie on the beach or drink in a club.
In Japan, you stay in a hotel room light by fluorescent lights, watch the same 6 celebreties on show after show, and pay $40 a glass for whiskey. If you do go to the beach you will see a big concrete wall, with same iron staples as a servacible ladder to get down to the sand below where garbage is heaped up, you will be assailed by a stench, and you will not see a banana lounge or Sarong in sight.
Young people in Japan go abroad as well.
In Alex Kerr's book 'Dog's and Demons' he points out that a visitor to Kyoto, goes and sees the obligatory temples, Kyomizutera, Kinkakuji the Golden Pavillion, Sanjusan-gendo the hall of the 1000 buddha's (all of which I have seen and are spectacular) but then you leave. Kyoto is not a city you relax in and live in. This is despite a cultural heritage of Ryokans which are traditional Japanese hotels, and Kyoto being the capital of cultural refinement, the setting of 'Memoirs of a Geisha' the Geisha Houses do exist, but for $10,000 to hear songs I lack the refinement to understand, play drinking games when I don't like drinking when it's free and kneel on tatami matts all night is out of most people's realm. Adding to that that Geisha are rarer than hens teeth anyway.
The reason for this largely is that Kyoto apart from a ring of heritage temples on its outskirt, and bike riding zen monks, is home to a red and white tower that looks worse than the canberra Telstra Tower, and a huge grey Brick that is Kyoto central station, and apart from that row after row of drab 80's housing, apartment blocks and telephone wires. And that is what you see Japan over. It looks much of a muchness as the rest of Japan. The sole exception being city centers, but these generally aren't much better, or different than Melbourne's city center, the shops are certainly less diverse, although the cuisine is a world worth exploring all on its own.
But I digress, the point is, that I have three kinds of days here.
1. Talking days, these are where I catch up with people I know, and I talk in Japanese all day, they are fun, I generally get paid for all the way so they are free and I polish up my Japanese whilst getting complemented alot.
2. Walking days, these are days where I 'live' in Japan, as I would in Melbourne, this I enjoy the most as an act of independance, however to overcome the constant assailment of noise polution in Japan. The public announcements that stop just short of 'breath in, breath out' I plug into my ipod, and go digging for hidden musical treasure. I also check out girls on the train, this is fun but leads nowhere.
3. Tourist days, these are the days where I fill up my camera card at some attraction, of which there are plenty, these are where I carefully frame my shot to capture the castle, the garden, the moat, the beauty and ignore the construction barrier with the cartoon man painted on it. This is something I'd never do in Melbourne, nor would I take photo's of Melbourne, so used to living in that city as it were.
And as such I realised, I took very few photo's on walking days, and talking days I tend to forget my camera all together.
And here is the second thing that inspired me to construct my photo epic. The first day I ever met Vicky, ever, as my art teacher was when I walked into art class to find all our work taken off the wall. Vicky had stuck up posters by Dali and Magrette, by Van Gogh and Rembrandt and the usuals.
I was taken aback (a few weeks later she would team up with the other art teacher and paint over our classes mural with flat blue) but the explanation given was upfront.
'I took down the art because it was below standard, art should only be displayed if it is of a quality to inspire you' and she was right, our environment shapes our thoughts and feelings. According again to Alex Kerr, Japan has the same population density to habitable land ratio as Belgium, a country rarely regarded as cramped. However the Japanese (as if you know it as I do is almost a collective entity like a hive mind) will often refer to their country as semai which means 'narrow' Alex Kerr states that 'semai' is in the mind, the reality of the country is that people could live much more spaciously and comfortably if they could only adopt the perspective.
And this largely coincides with my experience. Scratch the surface of Japan and torrents of blood come gushing out, limbs fall off. The pretense is not deep but it is powerful. Terry Pratchett's book 'Interesting Times' a parody of both feudal Japan and pre-revolution China set in the sci-fi world of discworld refers to 'things worse than whips' and in Japan, this is everywhere, it is a mindset.
I came here wanting to meditate, a place where Zen was such an integral part of the national identity. Zen is the art of seeing, without the mind getting between you and reality, yet Japan is so out of touch with reality it is hard to believe.
A simple exercise when beginning meditation is to still the mind, calm it relax, 'thought through no thought' I have done it in Australia where you get your mind to focus on finding sounds.
In the middle of the park in my current town, my mind jumps like a flying fish from left right, up down to the sound of hammering, jackhammers, plows tearing up roads, or freight trucks screaming down hill, songs blaring from political lobby trucks that blare right wing propoganda all morning. All this sound of activity, of construction from a country that has had either 0, or negative economic growth for the past 12 years.
Let me put that further in perspective and draw again on the research of Alex Kerr, "In 1994 concrete production in Japan equalled 91.6 million tonnes, compared with 77.9 million tons in the United States. This means that Japan produces almost
thirty times as much concrete per square foot as the United States" and to Paraphrase "In 1998, spending on public works came to $136 billion the kind of money that dwarfs building the Panama Canal and far surpasses the budget of the US space program...all this in a 'poor' year when Japan was clearly in recession." research I would never bother to do. But albeit was helpful, in shattering my impression that all the concrete was necessary to prevent disastrous fallout from earthquakes.
It is infact to prevent government officials from being jobless when they retire as they retire into management positions of the companies that recieve the lucrative construction contracts for unnecessary projects after no real bidding for the tender. I guess in that is some reassurance that not all the money spent on concrete is spent on concrete but instead is lost to anti-competitive contracts.
This is news to me but seems well known to the Japanese people.
Suppose you do buy into it all being about earthquake prevention though, whilst it seems my amatuer attempts at Zazen will not be interrupted by the need to pave every single canal and then some, too create footpaths that lead nowhere and plant railing in incase you are blown by a taifun 10 meters into the nearest threatening traffic.
What of the power lines, why are they above ground, live wires being knocked loose in an earthquake can only aid the setting fire of the densely packed 'semai' housing and according again to Alex Kerr's research prevented emergency services from accessing areas in the last major Kobe earthquake.
This doesn't suggest that burying the poles is just a smart thing to do, but it should also be a priority.
But it isn't, I think that was the biggest dissapointment for me when I returned here. When I first came they had recently begun burying the powerlines at the central Nagoya station, and I had assumed that logically this would spread as Japan modernized. When a kid is lacking inspiration he can always look up at the scoud and make shapes of the clouds he/she sees.
But instead this is still happening through a tangled web of powerlines. It is not too hard to find a patch of sky to stand under where 6 or more overlap.
Vicky's standard comes ringing to my ears at this time where I again am faced with the importance of removing this visual polution, kids who grow up with their vision filled with ugly powerpoles are going to be very short sighted indeed.
Misaki actually articulated the 'high tech country' pride in the power poles that I intuitively shot back 'high tech countries bury their powerlines' this has become an unfortunate habit of mine, maintaining the discipline of calling things 'Ugly' or literally 'hard to look at' when ever I'm taken to a choice viewing spot here. I make sure to point out the beautiful forestry or the superb ancient architecture, I thank them for taking me, I am a gracious guest.
But as a guest I also feel obliged to provide the crucial feedback that I don't find the visual polution acceptable.
And that's the real clincher, I came here wanting relief from Australia, I almost wanted to talk with the intelligent people here from an Important and advanced nation about Australia's cowardly slow response to the environmental crises, its poor management practices in the private sector, its many subsidised industries, its job buying hidden welfare system.
Only to find what 0 growth really means, Japan is still the same country it was when I first saw it 7 years ago. I literally cannot have a conversation here without coming back to the economic mismanagement, the stupidity and craziness of it all.
Infact today I was sick of talking about Japan's problems, so longing (and I am sincere, I swoon, I pine for it) to be in love with Japan again, to rediscover and rekindle all the potential I saw, that I resolved to ask my host father at breakfast and anyone hereafter what their favorite thing in Japan was, the one thing that they couldn't bare to see dissappear.
The dad thought for a moment, then replied, 'I like hobbies. I like watching movies, I really love movies. [I asked him if he meant Japanese movies or American ones] I used to like Japanese movies and now I still see a few, but I really prefer American ones. I also when I was your age, loved travel, then though you didn't go to other countries, I travelled all around Japan, I love the historical things. I also love music, when I was your age, I listened to the beatles and the rolling stones and Led Zeppelin, I really loved them.'
That is close actually to a word for word translation, with most of the humming and haiing removed. Look at the response though, the music is the easiest to cut because they aren't Japanese at all, a phenomena of significance for Japan all right but not, of Japan. Likewise the movies, his love of poorly dubbed films originally filmed in English is of no help to me discovering something new to love in Japan either, these (and they recieve mostly blockbusters not independant films) are the ones he'd recommend over Japanese films. The historical things are what I love about Japan, I still love about Japan but there is a new Japan built on top of it that doesn't have much to do with the Japan that was (apart from obediance).
Lastly the domestic travel issue. This I could possibly salvage if I didn't know better. That Japan has been paving shit at thirty times the rate America has, the Japan of pops' travelling days is gone, he couldn't even recommend me a place to go. I know the big ones, and they are impressive, but they are not the wandering Samurai lifestyle journeys, nor the mystic modernization that the dad had experienced travelling around on the new trains to rural festivals.
They are now filled with multipurpose homes, kitch themeparks dedicated to obscure cultures, galleries with no artwork in them or hydro electric dams.
So you can see my dillemma when even the locals recommend a Japan that is long gone, my question wasn't really 'what could you not stand to lose?' but 'what do you miss the most out of all the things you've already lost?' and that get's me nowhere.
So you see, all this time, I may have seemed quite negative about Japan, and yet I am framing shots, and trying in earnest to find out from the locals what the good oil is with my ear pressed firmly to the ground.
But again, as a foreigner in Japan I am permitted to equally important rights: The right to say whatever the fuck I want. My Japanese hosts just take it, and to their equal credit and discredit for not acting, many agree with what I say. (I most often hear that I 'yoku shiteru' or 'know Japan' as probably my most regular compliment recieved here)
and the second right I am permitted is for my words to have absolutely no consequence whatsoever.
There is no evidence I can find of progressive thinking in the general public of Japan, when girls are here to become good little wives, men to become slavish company employees, and the elderly to retire quietly and argue against the prohibition against whaling as if it is an issue anywhere on Japans radar of important things that need to be addressed.
And that I guess is it, what it is all about, whilst I know my Japanese culture possibly above and beyond anyone I know bar my old teacher Terry, when I think of Japan as being defined by it's Musashi Miyamoto's, Ieyasu Tokugawas, Akira Kurosawas, Soichiro Hondas etc I'm thinking wrong.
To focus particularly on the warrior class times, the leaders were exceptional, a society will always be defined by the mediocrity, in Australia this can be a very active exercise in the form of tall poppy syndrome.
Japan isn't a nation of warrior tradition, the warrior's were the elite class that Commodore Perry removed (after they had ruined themselves financially though) Japan is a nation of miserable bowing peasents, used to tiptoeing around the shadows of the powerful and sacrificing the sweat of their brow to the ruling power.
The Japanese spirit for the most part is farmers and forresters, a small people, not the elite swordsman who lived by the confucian ideal of scholarly virtue.
The Edo period allowed Japan to forget the rest of the world and focus on making itself a culturally rich country, a better country.
Japan today cannot not forget the rest of the world, never again after Perry and his gunboat diplomacy, but they also cannot embrace it. The learning is all one way, where as before Japan had been the whole world, and yet its warring states found away to work together and prosper, (even as its government declined the merchants did rise) yet could not see the bigger picture and take this leadership to the world.
Australia, oh Australia, there are so many lessons in Japan for you Australian's.
I promise I will do Australia justice, but the book to read is Clive Hamilton's 'Affluenza' to better recognize the inadequacy of Australian popular culture. At the moment I'm thinking England is the country to bet on, America under Obama might find the vision it needs to progress again in another 8 years, but consider that England seems to be the quickest learning nation, I should extend that to the whole EU. That whilst Carbon Trading seems to have failed, the EU is going back to the drawing board where Australia hasn't even made its first attempt yet.
And Japan? Climate change 'whats that'
Japan has a more pressing issue, and that is to modernize, Japan is to me, the 80's developments that compromise goldcoast hotels and motels, modern then, not so now.
My photo epic was a simple exercise, I am not a photographer nor have figured out all the settings on my camera.
This is what I did:

I told my hosts I was going for a walk.
I took my camera.
I walked about 15 meters then stopped and took a photo of the most interesting thing I could see from that point.
Repeated ad nauseum.

You would have to take my word for it, but I didn't pick an area that is the Japanese equivalent of Broadmeadows, Clayton or Campbellfield, I picked a major street (a tree lined boulavard no less) and walked towards Toyota city a major residential and commercial area. Think Geelong or something. So this was no backwater, nor was it a city center either (although they are no Venice Canal works either).
Possibly the best comment I have heard describing Japan's plight that sums up the balance is this anecdote, a businessman upon arriving in Osaka is sitting with his host (another foreigner) on the train from the airport, he looks out and sees a suburb dotted with commission housing like apartments rising into the sky in ugly beige, gray and brown colours, the verandas are lined with laundry and old airconditioning units hang from the ceiling and walls. The businessman remarks 'Oh so this is where the poor people live?' and his host replies 'no this is where everyone lives'

To conclude this monologue, this explanation of my first protest of one, as a tourist to Japan's treatment of itself, I would like to make clear that I haven't given up on Japan. I love Japan. I replied to my hosts answer of the favorite thing about Japan, what he couldn't bare to lose, was that my favorite was the food, and then the historical places. This of course is incorrect, the one thing I couldn't bare to loose, and the source of my optimism at the opportunities Japan still presents are the Japanese people themselves.

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