The Land od the Rising Yen

wear kimonos (unlike Italians who never do) and kimonos have outstanding advantages;
(a) they look distinguished and beautiful and (b) they cover up everything —
girth, legs, stomachs, behinds.
    So if you insist on long legs Mr
Kawasaki’s statements contain a grain of truth. But no more. The Japanese are
certainly not ugly. I admit that I spent only brief moments contemplating male
beauty in Japan. Male beauty leaves me cold whether I am in Sweden, in Japan or in the land of the hottentots. But I watched Japanese women almost incessantly
with what are — or at least used to be — expert eyes. I am now approaching the
age of consent, 10 but I was always aware that I
was in a land of very beautiful women, whether they wore their kimonos or not.
     
    In Japan you are surrounded by
beauty. The Japanese create beauty everywhere. (In Tokyo one occasionally has
the feeling that their talent for creating ugliness equals their talent for
creating beauty, but that is a local problem, of which more later.)
    First, it is their tidiness and
cleanliness you notice. These are virtues I do not respect, or if I may be a
shade more explicit, which as a rule I detest. They are the virtues of fat, dull,
bourgeois housewives, the virtues of door-polishers, the virtues which make
their possessors smug and vulgar. What’s more, and worse; tidiness and
cleanliness are not only habits, they are a philosophy, a desperate attempt to
put everything in its proper place, into a pigeonhole. Everything must belong somewhere. Excessive tidiness — tidiness as a religion, not just ordinary and, alas,
unavoidable tidiness — is an attempt to create a system where there is no
system. Tidiness is oversimplification. Tidiness is the desire to tame things — but things are wicked and unmanageable, with a will of their own, much more
untameable than meek lions who hop up on to high stools and leap through hoops.
Tidiness is tyranny. It is Goethe’s effort to fit everything into Gestalt (form)
or Gesetz (law). God, you will notice, is often far from tidy (but the Hausfrau and her philosopher counterpart, in their infinite goodness, are prepared to
forgive God).
    And as for cleanliness, it is
downright unhealthy and rather dangerous. It is unhygienic. Americans, who live
amidst too much hygiene, lose their resistance so that the tiniest amount of
dirt knocks them out and makes them sick. I am for untidiness; and for a
modicum of dirt.
    But Japan — one of the tidiest and
surely the cleanest country in the world — can plead extenuating
circumstances. Japan is an overcrowded island and the Japanese have no room for
untidiness. In a Japanese home every square inch is cleverly utilized and
everything must be put in its proper place because there is no other place for
it. When you get into a commuter’s train, you see the briefcases neatly stacked
on the rack, one briefcase closely pressed against the next, all standing with
their handles upwards, like books on a shelf, so as to occupy the absolute
minimum space although half of the rack may be empty.
    Tidiness in Japan can be forgiven, or at least understood. But I did find their cleanliness a bit
disconcerting. Everyone is always neatly dressed. The men’s white shirts are
invariably impeccable — they give you the impression that no shirt is worn
longer than an hour. Many people wear white gloves: taxi-drivers,
bus-conductors, even gardeners and dustmen. And when I say white I mean white.
How gardeners and dustmen can keep their white gloves spotless, is beyond me.
Cars — as I have mentioned — are always impeccable, their chromium gleaming.
You sit down in a café or a restaurant and the first thing you will
automatically be offered is a hot face towel: you wipe your face and hands and
feel refreshed. Everything is not only clean but also new in Japan — at least in the inner districts of the larger towns; tables, chairs, seat-covers,
vases, ashtrays, cushions. As soon as anything begins to fade or is slightly
damaged, it is thrown away. Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of
the United States.
    Homes, of course, are spotless too.
As people do not wear shoes inside their houses, it is easier to keep a house
clean in Japan than elsewhere where dust, snow and slush are carried inside.
    Hired Japanese cleaners are thorough
and conscientious: sweeping dirt under the carpet is not one of their national
traits. But here, as everywhere, there are limits. A European ambassador told
me