The Inland Sea
I had read Donald Richie's The Inland Sea before, and I had not liked it. That was years, maybe a decade ago. With my interest in Japan renewed, I thought I should give it a second shot. I started doing this the other day, having finished Sven Regener's Herr Lehmann (a good read for in between, when you're not expecting much and are happy with getting exactly that while being entertained).
By the time he wrote the book, Richie had lived in Japan long enough to be familiar with it. He spoke Japanese fluently, even though apparently he never made much of an effort to learn how to read or write it. He admits as much in the book. I'm thinking he must have at least been able to read the basics -- I couldn't imagine living in a place and being essentially blind to its signals.
Richie begins his book with his misgivings about the country, which he takes as the motivation to explore the inland sea. Strictly speaking, there's nothing inland about it: Japan is an island country surrounded by water. The inland sea is a stretch of ocean around which three of the main islands (Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū) congregate so much that it's only accessible through a number of very narrow straits. There also is a smaller island that seals off a larger gap between Honshū and Shikoku.
But Richie doesn't travel there to inspect the area's geographical accuracy. Instead, he is looking for all that he deems quintessentially Japanese, all of which that is disappearing in the dreadful city of Tōkyō (his home). He doesn't call Tōkyō dreadful. There are many other words to that effect. The city's only bonus appears to be that it's less terrible than American cities (which, if you think about it, might not be the best approach to a problem).
I appreciate the openness of the endeavour. As a reader, you begin your own journey by knowing what your guide is up to: the old, more basic, more traditional Japan is good, so let's look at it. I suspect that Richie's idea is widely shared in the West. I have read more than one book by a Westerner about Japan that bemoans the country losing everything that made it such a special country because of an embrace of Western influences.
If you think about that for a second, if you read this written down by a Japanese author, you might deem the sentiment either deeply reactionary (if it's a bad writer) or at least a little bit droll (if it's a good writer). After all, you cannot seriously expect that your or any other country will not embrace a changing time.
What is more, Japan did shut itself off from outside influences for a long time: from 1603 until 1867 (during its Edo or Tokugawa period), Japan was a closed country, essentially a medieval country attempting to exist in an increasingly and decidedly non-medieval world. While this resulted in such things as the tea ceremony or flower arranging, it actually did very little for most of the people living there.
Anyway, in search of the old ways, Richie makes his way across the inland sea, visiting a number of its many small islands, and describing what he encounters. But somehow, he can't make up his mind about exactly that: it turns out that the unchanging, more modest Japan -- the non-Tōkyō one -- comes with a lot of features that he doesn't like.
For example, on some small island, he encounters a number of teenage girls who hang out on the beach with their bicycles and school uniforms. School has not yet started. Because the uniforms had been stashed away with mothballs, that smell needs to come out of them before school starts again, which is why they are being worn. It is an unusual way of airing out clothes, but why not.
Richie finds it easy to converse with the teenagers, something he enjoys. Teenagers and young women in Tōkyō, he does not fail to mention too many times, cannot be spoken with, given the way they act: they giggle, evade answers, etc. (How or why a man in his mid forties needs to apparently constantly talk to young women is not explained). These teenagers, however, do speak with him once they establish that this foreigner is indeed able to speak (Tōkyō) Japanese (Richie admits that he cannot understand the island dialect).
He asks the prettiest one (his description, not mine) what she is going to do with her life. She is 15, she tells him, and she say that she will marry a young man that Richie saw at the harbour. This, she says, has been arranged by their fathers. Richie is aghast at a 15 year old young woman describing her future this way. What life would she have? What life could she have, if it were not for this arrangement?
Whatever you want to make of this -- I'm somewhat certain most Western readers would side with Richie, you cannot decide to look into the old, traditional Japan because you dislike the new one so much, and then judge it by the very standards that you openly declared you dislike so much, can you?
Another example: on one of the ferries, the ship passes a vulcanic island whose shape resembles that of Mount Fuji. Richie explains how Japanese people do not like symmetry. But he still cannot understand how or why all the people he speaks to on the ship just cannot admire what he, a Westerner, sees as beautiful. And then, of the horror!, they discover another island, one with scenic rocks and trees, and enjoy that!
Throughout the book, Richie encounters Japanese people who somehow look more unrefined and coarse than the Tōkyō types -- which is what he was looking for: they're more real, only to find that they also are more unrefined and coarse.
Going through the book, time and again I'm struck by Richie doing exactly this: looking for the "real" Japan and then judging it harshly when it doesn't conform to his own ideas. It's not that I think you have to simply accept what you find. But at the very least, you might as well interrogate where your reaction is coming from. In particular, you might as well question the very premise of your journey: maybe the problem is not Japan and how it manifests itself, maybe it's you?
I can't help but think that Richie's quest was not for the real, traditional Japan. Instead, it was for his idea of what that real, traditional Japan might look like.
As someone who has been living in another country for two decades now I recognize some of Richie's reactions from my own life. As much as you can try, you're never going to be a part of that new country. Japan obviously is different than the US, and the cultural differences between Germany and the US are a lot less pronounced than the ones between Japan and the US.
Still, as a stranger you arrive in some place that deeply appeals to you, to start your journey to fit in and embrace the parts that appeal to you, you realize that this cannot be had because of the many little obstacles, you maybe start to look for the "real" in the country that you live in, thinking that your problems arise from you facing something new, and then this doesn't work out, either: you will perennially be a stranger.
The "real" stuff that you're looking for is in you.
I don't know if that's so bad (even as this means that instead of my own Inland Sea book you merely receive this email).
Thank you for reading!
-- Jörg