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On this page:- botchi loudspeakers in Japan 2002 December 19: Is the latest Tolkien movie war propaganda? Ethics of Nuclear War in Iraq religion in Japan ... or we could call this Christmas Day and New Year in Japan Christian terrorism Hugh cleans his room kerosene shortage?!? The Diary of a Nobody
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Section 7 Entry 0001. Date: 2002 December 18 Wednesday.
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Teaching English has really sharpened up my navigation skills, but tonight's taxi journey, ten minutes from the factory to the railway station, is really difficult to map out in my mind. This year I've made the return trip four times, but I've only untangled about eighty per cent of the route, and I want to know the rest just in case ... just in case a huge earthquake rips the world in half or something like that.
So I'm in the back of this taxi, trying to keep track of the twists and turns of this journey by night through the backblocks of nowhere, and suddenly, as we take a corner, the headlights illuminate columns of angular stone, an organized geometrical jumble, and the word for this leaps into my mind, and the word is botchi.
The English word comes trailing along a couple of heartbeats later: the corner is landmarked by a "graveyard". However, I haven't had occasion to use the word "graveyard" in years, whereas botchi got a really good workout during the months spent house hunting - it's surprising just how many places turn out to be built right next door to a graveyard (or downwind from a large-scale urban garbage incinerator, or right on top of an underground shinkansen line which makes the whole place shake every time a train goes through.)
And now it's 2100 and I'm on an actual shinkansen, the MAX "Toki" 338 to Tokyo ... one of these really smooth double-decker trains, one of the supreme achievements of Twentieth Century engineering ... and shinkansen is definitely the automatic word for this machine. The English "bullet train" never enters my mind from one week to the next.
The shinkansen ... liquid light sliding ... flowers of neon in the night ... I will remember this when I am old, or in the years after our brief civilization has fumbled its way into self-dissolution ... this life where moving so fast seems as natural as standing still ....
The whole experience is made all the more memorable, and I mean really memorable, by the coffee, which has been sitting in my heavy duty stainless steel vacuum flask since it was made yesterday evening, and is still triumphantly lukewarm ... you force yourself to drink a cup of that stuff, and you don't forget about it in a hurry.
"MAX" = "Multi Amenity Express". (Just in case you were wondering.)
Section 7 Entry 0002. Date: 2002 December 19 Thursday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)
This morning, I'm lying in the bath at 0725 when this sound truck comes along the road with loudspeakers blaring. I don't know what it's about. My Japanese is still fairly weak, and usually I need to know the context before I can understand anything.
(The easiest stuff to understand is a long TV documentary focused on one single subject, or a TV news program on a recurrent problem like North Korea. But even knowing the context is no guarantee of comprehension. The other day, at the Noritake showrooms, I asked a salesman a question about porcelain, a decidedly unfamiliar topic, and got a detailed reply of which I didn't really understand a word.)
Noritake: a Japanese company which makes china and porcelain. NOT cheap.
Anyway, lying in the bath, I hear, very clearly, "mina-sama," which translates as "very honorable everyone". I also hear (or imagine I hear) "kodomo-kai," or "child meeting," in which case the offender is (possibly) the elementary school in the neighborhood.
What's going through my head at this moment is a very British expression. "The nerve! The bloody nerve of these people!"
One thing the average Westerner never adapts to in Japan is the loudspeaker problem, the people who invade your home with amplified sound, quite possibly on a Saturday or a Sunday, sometimes before eight in the morning and, on rare occasion, after ten at night.
Yesterday was an early-start day, out of the house by 0615 and not back until 2300, but today my first assignment starts after lunch, meaning I have time to do the laundry, iron some shirts, and think some more about an article in yesterday's International Herald Tribune.
The question is this: is the latest Tolkien movie war propaganda?
The article is datelined New York, and it's by Karen Durbin of The New York Times. The (English language) Japanese edition of the International Herald Tribune gives the article the headline "An eerie double edge to 'The Two Towers'".
The article is about whether the movie of Tolkien's book The Two Towers (the second part of The Lord of the Rings) is or is not war propaganda. According to Durbin, "in the current climate it's impossible not to experience" this movie "as war propaganda of unnerving power."
Durbin goes on to talk about how the movie dehumanizes the enemy, and writes that "Dehumanizing the other guy is the first step in training soldiers and fighting wars. The danger is that this is what makes not just warfare palatable but extermination itself."
I haven't seen the movie, but I've read the book (three times) and my own opinion is that Tolkien's The Lord of the Ring can most definitely be considered as a recipe for genocide.
I won't enlarge on this, for two reasons. The first is that the washing machine is demanding my attention. The second is that I've already discussed this question elsewhere in some detail.
Section 7 Entry 0003. Date: 2002 December 20 Friday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)
Nuclear war in Iraq: Hugh's thoughts on the ethics. | links: war, nuclear war, Iraq |
The news continues to be of the looming war in Iraq, and today's newspaper suggests that war in Iraq would be possible "by late January". That's something like thirty or forty days away.
To my mind, the big question is this:-
Will the coming war in Iraq be a nuclear war?
This seems an infinitely depressing and unappetizing question, but it seems irresponsible to ignore it. ("What did you do in the forty days before the nuclear war?" "Oh, I ate icecream and unwrapped my Christmas presents.")
An article in yesterday's International Herald Tribune says that a recent survey found that "6 in 10 Americans favored a nuclear response if Saddam ordered the use of chemical or biological weapons on U.S. troops."
This is one of the most depressing things I've read all year, particularly since there seems to be a possibility that exactly that might happen - that the use of chemical or biological weapons by Iraqi forces might prompt the use of nuclear weapons by American forces.
To my way of thinking any American use of nuclear weapons would be a serious error for five reasons:-
(i) It would probably be difficult to know (or to prove) who authorized the use of chemical or biological weapons.
(ii) Nuclear weapons can be relied upon to generate collateral casualties.
(iii) The use of nuclear weapons would not be good for America's image in the world.
(iv) The use of nuclear weapons by American forces would set a very poor example to other countries, most notably India and Pakistan.
(v) The outcome of the war is unclear - the end cannot be said to justify the means when nobody really knows what the result of the war is going to be.
The elements of each argument are as follows:-
(i) Suppose that biological or chemical weapons get used on American troops. How is the question of proof and responsibility ever going to be settled? Was this Saddam Hussein's decision, a rogue commander's decision, an accident or a smart move by Osama bin Laden? Given that some people still have their doubts about who shot JFK (and why) it seems that gift-wrapping this present for the consumption of future generations is going to be difficult, to put it mildly.
(ii) The use of nuclear weapons would necessarily be a war crime. Using them without murdering people would be impossible. Saddam Hussein is not going to be stupid enough to be caught standing in the middle of the empty desert with nothing but sand for a hundred miles in every direction.
Deliberate acts of mass murder are war crimes.
There is no doubt that civilized Western powers such as the United Kingdom and the United States are capable of deliberate acts of mass murder. During the closing stages of the Second World War, tens of thousands of German civilians were murdered in cities such as Dresden by firestorms engineered by the wholesale use of incendiary bombs.
However, the mere fact that there are precedents for this kind of thing does not in itself seem like a good reason for going and doing the same kind of thing again.
(The American writer Kurt Vonnegut touches on the subject of the firebombing of Dresden in his science fiction novel Slaughterhouse Five, parts of which are based on personal experience. Vonnegut was an American soldier in World War Two and was taken prisoner by the Germans. He was actually in Dresden when it was firebombed.)
(iii) "The use of nuclear weapons would not be good for America's image in the world." Put it another way: if American companies end up pumping oil in a radioactive Iraq, this is going to be the best recruiting tool Osama bin Laden could ever hope for. People with radiation sickness have a habit of dying slowly from diseases such as leukemia.
If nuclear weapons get used in Iraq then the survivors from the fringes are going to be a political embarrassment for the next ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years. Trust me on this. I have been to the atomic bomb museums in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I have seen evidence of things I will not forget. Ever.
(iv) The use of nuclear weapons by American forces would set a very poor example to other countries, most notably India and Pakistan. This is a key point.
India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers and there is a very active possibility of a nuclear war between these two nations. If America were to lead the way, in effect saying that "nuclear war is doable, justifiable and survivable," then this amplifies the possibility of nuclear war elsewhere.
(v) Since the ends of the coming war are unclear, it is important to be careful of the means.
Or, to put it another way: it's hard to find a way to justify the use of nuclear weapons when there's no clear justification even for the thousands of dead bodies that a conventional war will generate.
The question has still not really been answered:-
Why is it necessary to have a war in Iraq at all?
Here in Japan, I'm living just across the sea from the evil dictator Kim Jong Il, the mini-Stalin who rules North Korea, a 1984-type Big Brother complete with secret police, death camps, a nuclear weapons program and (quite possibly) actual nuclear weapons.
And yet, nobody is talking about having a war with Kim Jong Il, and I have every confidence that in the fullness of time he will die, that an evolutionary regime change will take place in North Korea, and that eventually North Korea and South Korea will be reunified, just as East Germany and West Germany were reunified.
(It is helpful to remember that at one time the Soviet Union was ruled by the monster Stalin, but that in time Stalin died, an evolutionary regime change took place, and eventually someone conceded that "mistakes have been made" ... evolution has so far taken us as far as Putin ....)
later commentary on North Korea
It seems that George Bush has ruled out a war with North Korea simply because it is impractical. An early casualty of any such war would in all likelihood be Seoul, the capital of South Korea, which is very close to the border with North Korea.
The difference between Iraq and North Korea seems to be simply that a war with Iraq is more doable in the sense that the thousands of civilian casualties will be Iraqis rather than friendly allies. However, going to war on the basis of doability rather than necessity does not seem very sensible.
Given that there is no necessity for having a war in Iraq, what greater good is supposed to justify all the killing and destruction?
What are American troops supposed to be achieving in Iraq in the first place? Is the idea to replace the dictator Saddam with an icecream-eating democracy? If so, what's the plan for providing security for the Kurds? And what's the plan for managing the tensions between the Sunni and Shia factions within Iraq? And who gets the oil?
George Bush's rhetorical stance is that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction pose a threat to the security of the United States. But Saddam Hussein seems to be as stable as Stalin: a risk-analyzing individual who has been deterred for some years now and who therefore could reasonably be deterred into the forseeable future.
Additionally, it has to be remembered that the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed not by nuclear weapons but, rather, by box cutters.
Assuming that there is a war with Iraq, Iraq will lose, and then someone will get the oil. It seems to have been agreed that the Russians will get some of it, but then who gets the rest?
One way to think about terrorism is to consider it as a public relations problem. And it's important to realize that, in creating this kind of problem, actions speak louder than words.
It's all too easy to imagine this scenario: a couple of years after the war, Osama bin Laden gets gunned down during a raid on his mountain hideout in Paraguay. Then some young rhetoritician in some country says this:-
"America invaded Iraq, and American companies are now profiting from pumping the oil. Meantime, the average Iraqi lives a life of poverty and misery. And here, by the way, is my recipe for Chemical X."
(In which country? Take your pick. Maybe France or Canada or Yemen or England.)
Apparently a standard American take on the events of 9/11 is that the terrorist attacks were a result of jealousy or baseless fanaticism.
One thing that sticks in my mind is an agonized column written by the American humorist Dave Barry in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It was a very serious column without the slightest hint of a joke anywhere on the horizon, and the seemingly unanswerable question it asked was "Why are Americans hated?"
For Osama bin Laden's successors, the coming attack on Iraq will form the basis for one set of possible answers. This even if the war remains strictly conventional. If it goes nuclear, then the chances are that the consequences are going to be remembered until America has been forgotten.
Section 7 Entry 0004. Date: 2002 December 21 Saturday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)
Saturday, and the start of a three-day weekend here in Japan. Monday 23 is officially the Emperor's Birthday. After that comes Christmas - Christmas Day is not a national holiday in Japan, but I will not be working on that day.
Since Japan is a predominantly Buddhist country, the religious side of Christmas is not important here, but the pagan elements of this festival have a universal appeal, and so Japan enjoys (if that is the word for it, and I sometimes have my doubts) piped Christmas music in the stores, Christmas trees, Christmas cards and Santa Claus.
[entry dated 2002 December 21 Saturday]
However, although a pagan Christmas is celebrated in Japan, the big festival here is New Year. From Saturday December 28 through to Monday January 6, Japan will be more or less closed for business.
The most important day is New Year's Day itself. On this day, everyone goes to the local Shinto shrine, where the activities are likely to include ritually drinking drink a small saucer of sake, receiving fortune-telling predictions for the new year and, of course, praying. The Buddhist temples also attract crowds of visitors, and this is the time of year at which the huge bronze bells which are a feature of the average Buddhist temple come in for a heavy workout.
Note that the same people who go to the Shinto shrines are also likely to go to the Buddhist temples, even though Shinto and Buddhism are, technically, entirely separate religions.
2002 December 21 Saturday continued ....
Christian Terrorism
contents
One of the strangest things about Japan, from a Western point of view, is the fuzzy coexistence of competing belief systems. The same individual can go to both a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple on one and the same day without, apparently, having to internally resolve the following question:-
"Am I a Buddhist or do I adhere to the Shinto faith?"
This fuzzy coexistence of competing belief systems is completely alien from a Western point of view since the Western intellectual tradition is one of absolutism. This absolutism, coupled with thoroughgoing intolerance, has been a recipe for religious warfare, which historically has usually presented us with the unedifying spectacle of one Christian killing another over some point of doctrinal difference.
I was reminded of this today when I began reading the diary of Samuel Pepys (pronounced "Peeps"), an English diarist who was alive at the time of the Fire of London (1666). Pepys (1633-1703) did not have his own website, but he has still managed to become a presence on today's Internet.
I've long been aware of Pepys, but I've never actually gotten around to reading anything by him. Today, however, I finally started reading his diary, meaning to take my mind off the troubles of the modern age.
It didn't work. I was still plowing my way through the prefatory material in the 1893 edition by Henry B. Wheatley when I came upon a passage in which Pepys is accused of being a Catholic (or, in the language of the day, a "papist". Parliament got involved and Pepys "was charged with having a crucifix in his house".
Back in those days, England was a Christian nation and so was Spain. However, the Christians in Spain were Catholics and the Christians in England were Protestants. Back in 1588, a little before Pepys's time, Christian Spain tried to invade Christian England.
And, on 5 November 1605, a Catholic terrorist by the name of Guy Fawkes was arrested in the basement of the Houses of Parliament. He was planning to blow the place up using gunpowder.
Note to anyone who thinks that terrorism can be contained through the global suppression of scientific and technological advancement: the low-tech recipes of 1605 packed enough of a punch to blow up entire buildings if intelligently applied.
Guy Fawkes was a member of a Catholic terrorist group led by a man by the name of Robert Catesby who was killed while resisting arrest.
Back in those days, then, the terrorist threat was real. Catholics were treated very much as second class citizens, and suffered from various legal disabilities through until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829.
Catholic terrorism has continued to be a problem for England right through into my own lifetime. In fact, Catholic terrorists came up with another plan for blowing up the English Parliament (or part of it) as recently as 1996.
The plan was to bring a barge laden with two tons of explosives down the Thames River and use this to blow up the Palace of Westminster, the edifice in which the House of Commons is to be found.
This plan was the work of the IRA, an organization whose members were Catholics.
However, I've personally never had any problem making the distinction between "a person who happens to be Catholic" on the one hand and, on the other, "a terrorist".
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was a Catholic. Even so, when I think "JFK" I don't think "terrorist".
And, furthermore, although I've been aware of the activities of the IRA for most of my life, I've never been even remotely tempted to think of the Catholic religion as a recipe for terrorism.
Yes, I know, it's not appropriate to categorize the activities of the IRA as being "Christian". That's exactly the point.
The root causes of IRA terrorism are obviously historical, the primal root cause being the English conquest and colonization of Ireland, and it is plainly more sensible to think of the IRA as a nationalist organization rather than a religiously-inspired organization.
I think that to think intelligently about the current terrorist threat from Osama bin Laden and company it's necessary to focus more on history than on religion. (And by "history" I mean land, oil, power and the colonial enterprise.)
Sidebar, by way of a pop quiz: for many years, IRA terrorism in England was generously funded by the benevolently citizens of which oil-loving nation?
IRA = Irish Republican Army. Nationalist organization dedicated to the unification of Ireland
Section 7 Entry 0005. Date: 2002 December 22 Sunday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)
Finally settled down to the job of cleaning up my room, something which has not really been done for the better part of six months, and I discovered a missing mechanical pencil, a sock, some cellotape, some neckties, some belts, five kilos of household dust, a dead dog and the lost city of Atlantis ... I don't like tidying up, but the inefficiencies of living in chaos eventually build up to the point where there's no real option.
Other news? The digital camera finally arrived last night (it had been on order for some time) and today the Noritake china arrived (the Essex Court line, eight plates, eight soup bowls and eight cake plates ... my theory is that if you buy way more china than you actually need then you're safeguarded against a soap-slippery catastrophe.)
Occasionally, over the last couple of days, I've felt a sense of incongruity ... this completely normative domestic life being lived in a quiet part of a peaceful, organized city ... and, elsewhere on the same planet, the machineries of war gearing up ....
I've remembered, a couple of times, a dream I had at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the war in which Saddam Hussein's forces were driven from Iraq ....
The details of the dream were confused when I woke up, let alone now, years later. What was it about? Huge echoing sounds, a battlefield in waiting, a ship on a darkened sea ... but the thing about the dream which really made an impression on me was the overwhelming sense that "this is real" ....
Real iron, real sand, real blood, real metal ....
Section 7 Entry 0006. Date: 2002 December 23 Monday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)
Suddenly, without warning, Japan has been hit by a problem out of nowhere which may well mean that we are going to be in for a very unpleasant winter.
This morning I waited for the kerosene delivery truck, which came round on schedule despite the fact that it's a public holiday, the Emperor's Birthday. I had two 18-liter containers filled with kerosene for a cost of 1,700 yen.
up
As mentioned elsewhere in the diary, this house in Yokohama has no central heating, and is heated instead by kerosene heaters, a standard arrangement in Japan.
"Next week will be the last time for next year," said the young man who drives the kerosene truck, a very cheerful and friendly guy.
That didn't make sense because winter has only just started, and after five years in Japan I know full well that kerosene deliveries continue until pretty much the start of spring.
I used my basic "let's check my comprehension" technique. If I'm not sure what someone's just said to me in Japanese, I rephrase the statement in my own simple Japanese and ask if I have it correctly.
"You mean," I said, "next week's delivery will be the last one for this winter?"
"That's right," said the delivery man.
Then he went on his smiling way, leaving me still a little confused over whether I had heard correctly.
This evening's TV news cleared up the confusion, maybe. (Actually, I'm still confused). The winter has been unusually cold - in fact, a few days ago it snowed - and this has meant a run on kerosene stocks. So I gather that stocks are running low, which may account for the local kerosene delivery outfit curtailing service unexpectly early in the season.
Let's see if I can find anything on the Internet about this ... after hunting around I've found some stuff by doing an advanced search using Google ... news dated 2002 October 30 makes the following points:-
(1) At that point, kerosene stocks were at record lows;
(2) Japanese oil companies have been keeping inventory low to cut costs;
(3) Back in October, at least one of the oil companies was afraid it might get burnt financially if it went and built up fuel stocks and the winter proved mild.
.... well, at this stage count me confused. After poking around on the Internet, I haven't been able to find any up-to-the-moment news. Furthermore, I didn't really understand the Japanese-language reporting that I saw on TV this evening. I'll have to take a good look at the newspaper tomorrow and see if I can find out what's actually going on.
However, obviously, if there is a problem, my initial description of it as "a problem out of nowhere" is completely wrong.
Section 7 Entry 0007. Date: 2002 December 24 Tuesday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents)
Christmas Eve, though I must say that it doesn't feel like Christmas Eve. I have begun to pick my way through the diary of Samuel Pepys ... the notes to the 1893 edition talk about Pepys's problems with kidney stones and say "At the post-mortem examination a nest of seven stones, weighing four and a half ounces, was found in the left kidney, which was entirely ulcerated."
Really, considering what people had to put up with in previous ages, it's a privilege to be born and raised in the modern age, at least if you have the good fortune to be a resident of one of the world's more prosperous countries.
This point came home to me very clearly on my last visit to London, in the British Museum's galleries on ancient Egypt. Apparently back in the days of the pyramid builders everyone in Egypt had bad teeth, even royalty.
Last night I downloaded a copy of The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. This is a novel in the form of a diary kept by one Mr Pooter, who is resident at The Laurels, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway.
I first heard of this book a great many years ago but have never been able to lay my hands on a copy until now. I'm not sure of the publication history of this (the copy I downloaded does not contain the original publication date) but I think this book first appeared either late in the 1800s or early in the 1900s.
Mr Pooter begins by saying:-Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a 'Somebody' - why my diary should not be interesting. My only regret is that I did not commence it when I was a youth.At the time, George and Weedon Grossmith were writing with a sense of satirical fun. In terms of the culture of the day, it was considered amusing to imagine that anyone would even dream of publishing anything as lame as Mr Pooter's account of his early adventure in his new house, material like the following:-April 3. - Tradesmen called for custom, and I promised Farmerson, the ironmonger, to give him a turn if I wanted any nails or tools. By-the-by, that reminds me there is no key to our bedroom door, and the bells must be seen to. The parlour bell is broken, and the front door rings up in the servant's bedroom, which is ridiculous. Dear friend Gowing dropped in, but wouldn't stay, saying there was an infernal smell of paint.Nowadays, of course, anyone and everyone can and does publish exactly that kind of thing, thanks to the magic of the Internet. My own news for the day is that I have so far been unable to resolve the question of whether kerosene will or will not be readily available for the rest of the winter. I think that this is a question of the utmost importance, and in saying this I have every confidence that Mr Pooter would agree with me.
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