Japan!!

[dedalus]

Japan ...
is a neon tangle
of buildings and streets
and black-haired people
scuttling among
indecipherable signs
flashing ... flashing,
with vending machines
on every city block
dispensing
condoms, coca-cola,
coffee, beer, cigarettes,
whatever you want
but don't really need
in never-ending
hedonistic amoral
cornocupia.

Japan ...
when you step off the plane
for the first time
overwhelms your senses
and makes you
think seriously
you are on another planet;
nobody understands a word
you say, but when you
leave the "gaijin" cocoon
tentatively, slowly,
so hesitantly,
as when you first
do something unusual,
you can't help smiling.

Japan ...
sucks you in,
provokes and entrances
your roving imagination;
even frightful Tokyo,
a frenetic urban nightmare
with a whiff of drains,
evokes and enhances
your sliding divorce
from familiarity:
this country
this whole damn archipelago
hits you on the head
like Disneyland on wheels,
and when, finally,
you get food and drink
and shelter (a job),
you start to think
hoo boy!

Japan ...
revolves around you
spinning, spinning
a bit too quickly:
you can't understand,
you can't speak,
you can't read,
and you sure as hell can't write;
you just wander about,
an amiable impressionable
idiot; this is when
the first decision
comes, you either
seek out other exiles
to complain, to commiserate,
to criticize, or else,
quite simply, jump
into the strangeness.

Japan ...
is sensibly
indifferent to loud
opinionated people
from overseas;
yet when you crawl out
from under that shell
you start to discover
a very different country,
one in which delicacy
of feeling, sensitivity,
and a strong reverence
for ancient traditions
continues to exist
in quiet restrained
and understated ways,
as if people
were shy to share
subtle convictions
with yawping barbarians.

Japan ...
is umbillically attuned
to each passing season:
festivals and family gatherings
are faithfully observed
from generation to generation,
but done so casually,
so confidently,
you can't help but sense
that you are walking
in the presence of the past,
and that long-dead generations
look down benignly
and with fond affection
on the children of the present;
you can feel that,
and before long
want to be part of it.

Japan ...
is almost wilfully
misunderstood;
we think of them
as worker robots
in a way that assuages
our pride and appeases the pain
of Pearl Harbour, Bataan,
the Bangkok Railway;
we make racialist jokes,
belittle them as buck-toothed dwarves,
these formidable people
who scared the living bejesus
out of our grandfathers;
but you wouldn't know it
now, with everything
so clean, so polite,
so effortlessly efficient:
leave your wallet at the bus-stop,
it will still be there tomorrow.

Japan ...
begins to open
its inner doors
when you start to crack
the hard nutty core
of its enclosed, nuanced,
layered language:
after the first three years,
sweating blood,
you think you are doing well;
after the next three years,
you slowly come to realize
you are an 'advanced beginner';
so when I saw
that fashionable movie
"Lost in Translation"
I thought: these people
are simply wallowing
in dull incomprehension,
embracing their alienation,
in the parochial hope
of getting back
to the "Real World" soon.

Japan
is
equally real.

[twoleftfeet]

Ded,

Fascinating stuff, shedding light on a world that has been largely self-contained and impenetrable until modern times.

I especially like the expressions "neon tangle","gaijin cocoon" and
"sliding divorce from familiarity".

It seems to me that you have an almost limitless source of material here,
so I look forward to some more.

Nice one
Geoff

[pseud]

I wonder if this info might be better in prosey-journal format than poem format? There are some good expressions, but overall I think the experience might be better served with a few anecdotes.

That, or condense and work on the sounds of the words so that you may be able to do something with Japan (or just one city in Japan) similar to what Sandburg did to Chicago.

It's just hard to write a poem to an entire country, I think!

- Caleb

[juliadebeauvoir]

I enjoyed the pictures with the poem--just watched "Memoirs of a Geisha" so I was in a receptive mood! I have always wanted to visit Japan--love the art, the history. I like how east meets west:

flashing,
with vending machines
on every city block
dispensing
condoms, coca-cola,
coffee, beer, cigarettes,
whatever you want
but don't really need
in never-ending
hedonistic amoral
cornocupia.

Not sure you need "Japan" as a heading on each stanza. I think it stands on its own. I also agree that it is a bit prosy--but I have been critiqued for doing the same. Maybe condense a bit?
Sorry, I am at a loss as to what a Wog is...
Cheers,
Kimberly

[David]

I think this is great. Honestly. I think it's a generous, tumultuous, baffled, delighted response to living in Japan. I love it.

Kim, regrettably, wog is (I've always understood) an acronym for "wily oriental gentleman" - a legacy from our rich heritage of snooty racism, I'm afraid.

Cheers

David

[twoleftfeet]

Nay,
wog is an abbreviation of golliwog, methinks.

Geoff

[Minstrel]

Not really my cup of tea this Bren but I could be reading it wrong. The structure/ rhyme scheme encouraged me to read it fast, almost in rap form. Which it probably shouldn't, and I am influenced. Perhaps by the picture. That being your cause, its not fast enough.

Without beating about the bush, with the wrong end of the stick, should it need the pictures? should it not stand alone? Pictures are great but lazy.

Great use of language though and thoroughly enjoyable to read.

Minst.

[dedalus]

Many thanks for the comments and the variety of thoughtful opinions they contain!!! It's hard to know what to do with this poem. It's more an audio than a visual event and it works like a charm with the expats in Japan if you read it out at a good clip and leave them to catch up on the references and fill in the gaps. The best ever reception of this poem (an earlier version) was accompanied by ad-hoc backing from a fusion band with sax, drums and riffs on electric guitar. Who says poetry can't be fun?

[emuse]

I love poems of place and visuals too! The pics might not get into an editor's magazine but they are very welcome here. I would suggest ending it on the penultimate stanza. I think the last one wonders off too far from the poetic note you strike in the beginning and doesn't have as much heart as the rest. Love the divorce line and the way the narrator reveals his willingness to experience and perceive the cultural explosion around him. Much to like.

e

[dedalus]

The photos were more or less chosen for a jolt -- although the one in the centre is like a walking hyphen. This poem will never be finished. I appreciate your comments but this one just gets stuck in a drawer and then after three months I come back and have another look-see. Japan doesnt change all that much -- I do.