Japan

A break from running chat. I failed to get myself to the Lochaber start line. Various issues got in the way not least of which was being away in Japan. Running goals are being reassessed but in the meantime, an intermission...

 It has been a while now since we got back from Japan and to be honest even after a number of days i don't entirely feel like i have properly processed the trip. It is of course naive to think that 10 days is enough to grasp a culture as complex and different as Japan's. I am still left wondering, "what was all that about??".

There are lots of trite things you can say about Japan though. It would be easy to glibly summarise it as a 'nation of contrasts'. It is of course a place with deep traditions that run alongside a mania for progress. This often results in some clanging juxtapositions that really jar our western sense of heritage and history.

Historic sites abound in the main cities. You are never far from a pretty Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple but these sit cheek by jowl with the seemingly out of control modern urban environment. Where we would impose a po-faced heritage exclusion zone around our major religious sites, with key views ruthlessly protected and good manners imposed, Japan takes a more matter of fact approach. The past, the present and future all seem to be treated as much the same thing. This is where i think the assumption that this is an enigmatic nation of contrasts is wrong. The ancient temples and the modern office buildings are all part of the same continuum. Every point in time is treated equally. At the same time, change is not just embraced, it is absolutely fundamental to the culture and the environment.

In many ways Japan is a difficult place for man to have settled. The forces of nature are felt very profoundly here with very real threats from earthquake and tsunami. There seems to be an acceptance that nothing is permanent. Everything can very quickly be swept away and renewal is in a sense more important than preservation. Unlike our culture of heavy masonry buildings that stand for hundreds or indeed thousands of years, Japan has a tradition of building in timber. This is much less permanent but that is not an issue. You will find that most temples or shrines have been rebuilt at some point due to fire, flood or earthquake. The beams and posts may be physically different but the connection to the past remains. Renewal and rebirth.

But this is of course fundamental to the mindset in may other ways. The religions of the area value a connection to nature and  while this may seem curious when in so many urban centres you feel like nature couldn't be further away, it retains an obvious presence in daily life. This is evident not least in the universal delight that the cherry blossom season seems to bring.

There is no doubt that cherry blossom is A BIG THING in Japan. Round the main sites it is hard to move for Japanese tourists taking pictures of it or standing in front of it getting their pictures taken. To my mind, its nice but the extent to which it is an event there seems out of proportion but it is really about the coming of spring. Our seasons tend to all meld into one so we don't really celebrate their changing much. All lot of those sort of festivities are also tied up with religion in the west as well. Shinto is very much focused on the nature so the coming of spring looms large in the Japanese psyche.

The cities though seem terribly disconnected from nature. Private suburban houses don't seem to have much in the way of gardens. The city centres are largely bereft of parks. What parks there are are imperial or former imperial sites. It seems like contact with nature is something only for the very privileged. The parks are largely amazing though. While we would balk at having to pay admission it seems to allow a high level of maintenance. Of course everything is also beautifully laid out in that typically Japanese manner which seems to us terribly picturesque but which clearly leaves very little to chance.

Unlike our parks too there is no sign of litter despite there being almost no bins available. The respect that is ingrained in Japanese culture extends to the immediate environment. Leaving rubbish or mess seems unthinkable. I don't know whether this cultural attitude came first or later but it seems to me that it is absolutely key to understanding how Japanese cities work and how they have developed. Without this inbuilt respect for others and your surroundings somewhere like Tokyo just couldn't work. So dense, so sprawling and so confined is the city that with an "I'm alright Jack" attitude of the sort you find in London the place would be a powder keg. Because everyone respects each other the infrastructural failings of the city are somehow mitigated. Busy subways work because people queue at carriage entrances. Massive intersections like Shibuya Crossing don't descend into chaos because people wait patiently to cross and then proceed at a leisurely pace when permitted to do so.

But it does seem to me like the cities lack a true civic heart and that has to have an impact on society. Tokyo though seems have developed numerous sub-communities. Being so big and dispersed has tended to make different functions or businesses converge together for convenience. Thus there is a sporting goods quarter, a kitchenware area and also Akihabara, Electric Town. Formerly the place to go for cheap electronics this place is now the seedy underbelly of the Japanese pop-culture that we are more and more familiar with in the west. Essentially a mono-culture of manga, anime, maid cafes and the preferences of the sort of chap who refuses to grow up, Aki is an example of what happens when a culture becomes insular and self-sustaining. It happens all the time on the internet where negative behaviours become reinforced till they are the norm because there are no dissenting voices to challenge them. In Aki Japan's issues with sexual politics become obvious and clear. The crossover between sexualised images and very young characters or pop idols is queasy to our western eyes. Alongside this is a particularly joyless trade in vintage toys. The whole thing seems like a very distorted version of childhood.

So at the end of the day, do i like Japan? That is a trickier question to answer than i anticipated before i went out. I cant claim to have felt comfortable like i do every time i visit Italy or to have fallen for Tokyo so profoundly as i did for New York. I am more than glad to have gone. It was fascinating and fun but there is so much about the place and the way of life that i just don't connect with. Aspects of the culture, food, craftsmanship and architecture were massively engaging but ultimately i think it is probably too different and too challenging for me to really connect with it.