Over a lifetime the Australians Peter Carey and Clive James have made a name for themselves with their writing, one in London and the other in New York. Both, however, have had time along the way to contemplate Japan and the Japanese. Clive James made his television program Clive James in Japan in 1987 and in 1991 published his novel, Brmm Brmm. Peter Carey published a memoir about his trip to Japan with his son Charley in 2004, Wrong About Japan. Recently Peter Carey was in Australia to promote his new novel A Long Way from Home and I asked him if he was still wrong about Japan?
"Always" was his reply.
In Brmm Brmm Clive James refers to a "a facetious commentary by an Australian in lamentable physical condition." This not so thinly disguised self-portrait is a good description of the Clive James that appears in his TV special on Japan as he takes viewers into the world of the capsule hotel, sumo wrestling and the giesha. James struggles but perseveres with the language as he is lost in admiration on his way to an appearance on Beat Takeshi's game show, Takeshi's Castle. James is a good sport and does his amiable best despite being lost in a culture without a suitable guide book.
We see reverse culture shock in James' novel Brmm Brmm as a young Japanese man comes to terms with life in London. There is the tiresome humour of the British such as the endless jokes about his name, Suzuki, which lead to his nickname and the title of the novel. Elsewhere there are jokes about personal hygeine. He describes his trip to the English massage girls who "wore nothing under their nurses' uniforms." He observes that, "Their lack of cleanliness sometimes made him gag and even the pretty ones were no pleasure to the eye when one looked closely." He is then propositioned by a male journalist who he finds "physically repellent". He imagines his seducer in the tub and says, "The thought of a would-be seducer getting unwashed into the bath, and sitting there in his own scum, made Suzuki's face freeze." Clearly in James' mind cleanliness equals Japaneseness. And when you think about it. every great Japanese fim has a good cleaning scene with endlessly scrubbing. The best of these, perhaps, is the bath cleaning scene in the Miyazaki Hayao anime, Spirited Away.
Ultimately for James, there is a fiundamental disconnect between East and West. When Suzuki reflects on Jane, his English girlfriend and Japanese women, there are similarities but these are quickly destroyed. "He tried to imagine her in Japanese traditional dress, slowely and meticulously laying out the utensils for the tea ceremony. The thought was instantly dispelled when she tore a lettuce to pieces without looking at it. He could hear the lettuce scream for mercy." Not all is lost, however, as Jane's body passes inspection despite the disorderliness of her life. "Suzuki was pleasantly surprised to find that in resepct of her person she was, by Western standards, scrupulously clean." Phew, that was a close call!
No such qualms about cleanliness for Peter Carey. His view of Japan is framed by his son, Charley's love of anime and manga. And Charley's one stipulation when the decision is made to visit Japan, is that they not visit the 'Real Japan'. In other words. "No temples. No museums." Upon arrival there is the inevitable humour that comes with discovery and disappointment. The traditional toilets that Tanizaki lauded are nowhere to be seen. Instead there are contraptions, "designed for a science-fiction comedy." Think Woody Allen when it was okay to laugh at a Woody Allen movie. Visiting a traditional Japanese sword maker Carey senior is disappointed that they were not shown a sword. "We were gaijin, capable only of hurting the sword or ourselves." Finally, after being bored to death at the kabuki and learning all about the war, Charley gets to visit Kodansha, the holy shrine where the world of Gundam is created. Here, Yuka, a transexual otaku, explains manga and anime to Carey senior. He learns that manga is not a postwar phenomoenon. It is in fact based on traditions like the kamishibai (paper theatre). And the real purpose of Gundam, is to sell robots. Having worked all that out, there is the, after all, inevitable bath scene. Naturally, there is no way that Charley is going to get into the bath naked with Carey senior. Carey blames the puritan aesthetic of their New York lifetsyle for this. He himself doesn't get into the communal bath either due to all the Toblerones and cognacs he has consumed over the years since his previous visit. This leads to the suffereing of a "private guilt over my incomplete experience of the Real Japan." The climax of the trip, however, comes after a viewing of the anime classic Tottoro. Despite advice to the contrary, Carey senior and Charley do get to meet Miyazaki Hayo on a visit to the Ghibli museum. Here the great man did a show-and-tell for them... Carey senior writes that as Miyazaki showed Charley the notebooks in his drawers, "He was the kamishibai man dashing his wooden blocks together and working the magic of paper film." And so everything comes together in a sublime magical moment that is Japan.
