Japan

Another influence in life that NJ Kpopper is now beginning to understand better is the role of Japanese culture.  It is not something that I will ever fully experience or fully inhabit.  I will never learn the language and have a long term relationship with it like I have with Russian or French.  It is not even going to be one of those ever-present elements like Korean or Turkish.

Instead, there are very specific elements that fascinate me [including green tea].  Visually, I like whimsical Bento Boxes 

I like all of the variety and customizable of Japanese pens, pencils, and other writing gadgets - anything orange is especially good.

I like Japanese interior decorating style - clean and uncluttered.  I would like to have a Tatami room in the not too distant future.

But even with all of that, I am not a Japanophile.  I am indifferent to Japanese architecture, manga, or any of the other manifold expressions of culture in a general sense.  I don't feel that I want to move towards Japan in the same way that I would about Russia or Korea.  Maybe that is because of the famous Japanese xenophobia?  That I know I could never be accepted there, and therefore don't even consider the possibility?  Perhaps.

But...

Now we are getting to the point.  

But...

There are a few things about Japan that are turning out to be VERY important to me.

There are a couple of giants of Japanese literature: Mishima and Kawabata.  Mishima I have been reading and rereading for a long time.  Kawabata I only recently discovered.  They are quite different from each other in many ways, but the underlying fatalistic doomed ideals of perfection that seem to me to be at the center of their work is maybe the closest thing to my own artistic ideals.  And so I am clinging tightly to those particular works, such as Snow Country.  I have looked at a few other Japanese authors, and I really don't care for them much, so once again this is not a general thing.

Then there is Japanese film.  While contempary Japanese culture seems to be a few gems hidden in an ocean of weirdness [sometimes the gems are weird], there is a lot of good stuff if you look back to the past.  For the last year or so I have been on an intensive study of the classics of Japanese cinema, at least as collected by the Criterion collection.   

Since this is just a blog post, I would sum it up like this.  The collaboration of Naruse and Takamine represents the best of what film has to offer.  Naruse as a director mostly creates very close studies of the emotional world of women with an ultimately pessimistic worldview.  His visual language is extremely precise, but extremely subtle, and always serves the story.  Takamine is just gorgeous in an Elizabeth Taylor idol-like way, but with fantastic emotional depth.  Her acting prowess is not displayed in any one show-stopping scene, but builds power from small details that change from scene to scene as the movie progresses.  For example, Yearning. These movies are so good I can even get my family to sit still for them.

Also, I lost all respect for Akira Kurosawa after learning about how, later in life, he dissed Mifune, who was really the soul that animated Kurosawa's intellectual constructions.  

Who knows if I will ever go to Japan, but Mishima, Kawabata, Naruse, Takamine is enough for me!