~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


SHALL WE EAT?

Chewing on my brown rice the thought occurs to me, gestalting the distinctly American and Japanese portions of my psyche, that despite the vaunted tradition of individual liberty in America, (as though government were the source of liberty) and of individual restriction in Japan, the fact is that things are just the opposite: the individual in Japan is more free in the ways in which freedom really counts, i. e., in the spirit, whereas the American is perhaps more free in a societal sense, but is more restricted in the spirit. And that if you have a free spirit, there is little need for external liberty on a grand scale; whereas if you have only external liberty (the generosity thereof delimited by implicit violence, street crime etc.), you are constantly starved for a greater freedom, and are ever seeking new excitement in narrower and narrower ways. One is thus much freer (which is not to say totally free) within the restrictions of Japanese life: free of religious prejudice, free of the psychological and social restrictions of both implicit and explicit violence; free of fears of all kinds. Including fear of government. Americans fear their government (think IRA, CIA etc.) much more than do the Japanese. And as for social rules, one can, after all, break the 'rules' now and then in Japan, and merely get begrudging tolerance of what is obviously a necessary and presumably temporary whim; whereas if you step over the equivalent bounds in the US (I particularly remember the hassles with long hair, earrings on men; right now, if you're Arabic or French...), it can have severe consequences indeed. America is very vindictive in its liberty [update: here's a perfect example, link thanks to Ron Andrews], even unto the levels of government. Of course I am speaking in a general way, and somewhat from the elevated status given foreigners here (no such status is given foreigners in the US, where foreignness is rather a negative thing to be overcome); but even allowing for this, one enjoys a peace of mind here that is utterly unknown, even incomprehensible, in the US; one does not fear. What is the price of such freedom? In the US, there is a sense of dog-eat-dog; in Japan, it's more like: Shall we eat?