A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture by Ian Buruma
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Overview: The received myth is that the Japanese are a race so different from the rest of us that no outsider can understand them. Ian Buruma explodes that view with a studied analysis of the way the Japanese perceive and portray themselves in popular culture.
The fantasies and stories he analyses revolve around sex (prostitution, pornography and the pure ideal) , relationships between men and women, loyalty (amongst men and from women for men – it doesn’t work the other way), Yakuza tough guys, violence and cruelty. Film, theatre, comics, poetry and literary works are the media through which the examines these themes.
~His principal conclusions are that the extraordinary restraints that operate at all levels of Japanese social life force people to be polite and gentle. There are rules for play as well as work and social interactions. which lead to outbursts of extreme behaviour that follow acceptable formulae – such as the games shows on TV, presented to English audiences by Clive James some years ago when young Japanese men submitted themselves to all manner of ghastly torments to win a prize for endurance. These dated from years after Buruma’s book, but fit perfectly with his thesis.
The last sentences of the book sum up: ‘The morbid and sometimes grotesque taste that runs through Japanese culture – and has done for centuries – is a direct result of being made to conform to such a strict and limiting code of normality. The theatrical imagination, the world of the bizarre is a parallel, or rather the flip-side of reality, as fleeting and intangible as a reflection in the mirror’ (p 225).
This has been a fascinating book to read, always lively, sometimes dealing with subject matter I found so horrifying I had to go and read something else before coming back. It has left me determined to read more Buruma and more about contemporary Japan with its passions for both continuity and innovation..
Genre: Non-fiction | History | Japan
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