Not one but three cruel ironies are being played out in Japan as the
country tries to comprehend the apocalypse
of the past 10 days.
The Japanese prize nature, beauty and order, yet the tsunami has mocked
all three.
It has been distressing to see a people whose culture values
cleanliness, refinement, delicacy and graciousness, wandering around in
the clothes they fled in and sitting on the street near giant saucepans
waiting to be served from soup kitchens.
The love of nature is the very basis of Japanese aesthetics.
They show their joy at the arrival of 'sakura' or cherry blossoms with
picnics, tea ceremonies, musical concerts and special meals.
The Japanese cherry tree is not cultivated for its fruit --- it is not
fruit-bearing --- but purely for the ephemeral beauty of its blossom.
In Japanese homes, the sliding partitions are invariably painted with
scenes from nature.
Traditional wooden homes, often flimsy-looking, are not built as
fortresses against the elements but rather intended to blend in with the
surroundings because the Japanese approach to nature is different from
the western desire to subjugate
it to man's will.
They are taught that there is no dichotomy between man and nature and
this temperament finds expression in
traditional scrolls or ink drawings where nature dominates.
The artist, instead of treating the natural scenery merely as a backdrop
for depicting people, lets nature take
pride of place while relegating humans to marginal figures. (Although
the ultra-controlled Japanese garden
with its clipped and pruned trees and raked stones is the opposite ---
an attempt to bring some order into
nature's occasional unruliness).
The passion for beauty and exquisite refinement immediately strikes any
new visitor to Japan.
You enter another universe in which the most subtle aesthetic
sensibility is woven into the fabric of daily life.
Everywhere you look, you see delicate mannerisms: the ticket inspector
on a train who turns to the seated
passengers and bows before leaving the compartment; the supermarket
sushi parcels covered in persimmon
leaves; shop assistants wrapping mundane purchases in beautiful paper
with as much care as they would a
sacred offering for a temple.
Anything that offends their aesthetic sensibility is shunned.
Worshippers' shoes outside Hindu temples may be strewn higgledy piggledy
but outside Buddhist and Shinto shrines in Japan, the slippers that you
put on before entering are tucked into each other and arrayed neatly in
a line on the steps.
If a monk at the shrine chances upon a pair that is even slightly
askew,he will instantly bend down and straighten it.
Visitors have been known to observe this elegance --- particularly among
Japanese women whose elegance is simply extraordinary --- and go home in
a spasm of selfhatred, feeling gauche and graceless.
The television pictures of devastated towns and mile upon mile of debris
would be agonizing for any nation but
it has to be excruciatingly painful for a nation that has turned love of
beauty into something that is as unconscious and reflexive as blinking.
Japanese conduct in public is a perfect manifestation of how this
pursuit of refinement, transported into the
external domain, creates harmony and order. Very rarely do you hear
anyone speaking loudly.
There is no aggression; their manner is gentle.
There is no coarseness; no scratching, yawning or stretching. And they
most certainly never push, elbow or
jostle. Even now, surrounded as they are by horror and calamity, they
are unlikely to abandon their
customary decorum.
It is this consideration and respect for others that allows almost 130
million people to live together peacefully,
despite one of the highest population densities in the world, and boast
of a crime rate that is one of the lowest in
the industrialized world.
These qualities of politeness, honesty and gentleness will enable the
Japanese to come through this catastrophe
with their dignity intact.
They are already on display: no one is looting (unlike New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina or during the
Gujarat massacre) or panicking and people are queuing up for water and
food.
In the midst of flattened towns and muddy fields where their homes once
stood and without water and electricity, people are shown on television
channels still bowing and speaking to one another with formal courtesy.
Even in normal times, vending machines stand undamaged by vandals.
Pedestrians bend down to remove a tiny scrap of paper from an immaculate
pavement.
Taxi drivers in black suits look at you if you mistakenly hand over far
too much money and hand the extra back.
A Tokyo resident who was in a restaurant when the earthquake struck on
Friday reported that everyone ran out onto the street. But when the
tremors subsided, they walked back in and formed an orderly queue to pay
their bills.
An awareness of the transience of things and a melancholy wistfulness at
their passing has always been central
to Japanese cultural tradition.
The tsunami has sadly bequeathed them with abundant experiences
reflecting the truth of this axiom.
It has also brutally demonstrated the truth of another Japanese
principle, the aesthetic principle
of 'wabi sabi' which postulates the beauty of things as "imperfect,
impermanent, and incomplete".
An apt description of modern civilization, with all its sophisticated
gadgets, when faced with
nature's fury?
