GEORGE OHSAWA: A HOPELESS IDEALIST

Nihonjinron theories of Japanese uniqueness found expression in a favourite book of mine Jack and Mitie in the West by George Ohsawa. First published in French in 1956 by the Ohsawa Foundation in Paris it was published in English by the George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation in California in 1981. This book looks at the disease of the West and offers solutions that are to be found in the Orient. In this book Ohsawa casts two primitives, Jack and Mitie, whom find themselves in the jungle of civilisation. Here Jack ponders the civilised mentality and its inability to conceive of the infinite whilst Mitie is shocked by the naked cadaver on the cross that is worshiped in the Christian churches. Having taken it upon himself to enlighten the West, Jack is of the view that theory without practice is useless and practice without theory is dangerous. Throughout the book Oriental wisdom is privileged at the expense of Western science. The grandeur of the infinite and eternal universe in the East is compared to the world of the West which is enclosed by walls of lead called time and space. What is hard to believe is Ohsawa's persistence in characterising the Japanese tradition as being one that is peaceful and at harmony with the world. The battle of Sekigahara alone is testimony to the bloodletting nature of Japanese history. In more recent times there are, of course, the war crimes committed by the Japanese during World War two. Murakami Haruki has written powerfully about this in The Windup Bird Chronicle. And, presently, there is the push by the Abe government to change the constitution to rearm Japan whilst allowing the American military to override the wishes of local residents to relocate the Futenma air base in Okinawa. George Ohsawa was an eccentric with interesting views about macrobiotics but a hopeless idealist when it came to writing about the history and culture of Japan.