I never thought that I would be spending Passover in Japan. The idea was always, “Next year in Jerusalem” not Tokyo, but here I am. Several currents conspired to bring me here with a few other members of my family. First of all, my older son fell in love with a marvellous Japanese girl while she was an exchange student in Toronto. After she returned to Japan to finish her degree, he began visiting her there and that promoted Japan to the top of my family’s bucket list. Then, Japan recently had a major earthquake and Air Canada announced a seat sale as a goodwill gesture. Not able to resist a bargain a few of us booked a two-week vacation in the Land of the Rising Sun. Oh, did I mention that my son and his girlfriend are planning on getting engaged while we are here?!
[T]he Japanese think of Hiroshima as their Holocaust…. It is their “Never again” moment.
I packed the minimal fixings for a Seder in my carry-on, a handful of Haggadahs and the ceremonial items for the Seder plate. I usually grill a chicken neck instead of the shank bone but I was told that you can’t import meat so I substituted a beet, the vegetarian alternative instead. My roasted egg got crushed and the parsley wrapped in cling wrap was confiscated at customs so they had to be replaced at the convenience store near our hotel. It was a very simple Seder, just the highlights to introduce the future member of our family to one of our most important customs. She is keenly interested and has even started to study Hebrew. In turn my son has been learning Japanese as is his wont but it appeared at the Seder table that it has been displacing his Hebrew. Oh, well. He loves learning languages but I guess that there is only so much room in the noggin.
I have loved and admired Japanese culture for most of my life. In high school I used to read Japanese poetry in translation and even composed some haiku in English, though I have always been aware that its not the same thing. In any case it was a pleasant break from composing English sonnets and sestinas. In university I came to admire Japanese architecture and of course film. (READ MORE from Max Dublin: A Very Unhappy Anniversary)
Because I enjoy working with wood a friend once gave me a few classic Japanese woodworking tools, a block plane, a marking gauge, a hand saw, and a hammer. I still use the hammer, saw, and marking gauge from time to time but the plane is beyond me. Keeping the blade honed and properly set in the wooden frame is an art and I have never been able to find the time to master it. The action of the plane and saw are all about pushing rather than pulling, quite the opposite of what we do in the West.
Tokyo is marvelous, full of the energy of one of the great cities of the world and very special in its own way, especially given the times that we live in. There are no homeless in the streets, no public trash bins but also almost no litter — you carry it home and dispose of it there. It is also a very safe city which is rather welcome. People in the street do not try to make eye contact as they do in the West, but nor do they necessarily avoid it, they are simply reserved. All of this reminds me of what Toronto used to be like when I was growing up there. Flashy electrified signs are everywhere beckoning for your attention. It’s like a low-key version of the original movie version of Bladerunner but without the menace.
Japanese society is rather conservative. The people are hard-working and value tradition but, in many ways, especially in their casual dress, also rather au courant. My son tells me that the Japanese are not very interested in politics, which suggests to me that they are well governed. Things get done quickly and efficiently. There are no pro-Hamas protests, which is a relief for me at this particular moment. The only protest that I came across downtown was a rather feeble one protesting the continued presence of the American military base on Japanese soil. After all these years the Japanese have had enough of the American post-WWII occupation. Japan happens also to be a good friend of Israel but because this country does not like to grandstand on the world stage the friendship is low key.
It turns out that many Japanese feel a certain affinity with the Jewish people. When I asked my future daughter-in-law what is her favorite Japanese movie it turned out to be the anime film, In This Corner of the World. It is about the experiences of a Japanese family surviving World War II culminating, of course, in the bombing of Hiroshima. I cannot recommend this film too highly. It is entirely lacking in rage and self-pity but is mainly embed with a quiet stoicism, with love, perseverance, and acceptance of a tragic and dreadful fate. I have been told that the Japanese think of Hiroshima as their Holocaust, not in the sense that the experience is the same but as a watershed moment engraved in a people’s collective memory. It is their “Never again” moment but playing out, as it were, on the other side of the net.
Germany has its own version of this but it has played out very differently. This appeared in stark contrast when Angela Merkel decided to let in a million Moslem refugees early in the ongoing Syrian civil war. This decision was ostensibly based on a blind post-World War II guilt. However, at the time that Merkel made this decision the late famous fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld observed with high irony something to the effect of, “You feel guilty about murdering millions of Jews in the Holocaust so you invite a million Jew-haters into your country?”
Japan has some great advantages over Germany in the fact that the former is an island nation. Like Britain, that other famous island nation, Japan is not contiguous with other rival nations. When the European Common Market (ECM) was formed after World War II, it was basically an economic entity. The idea was that free trade among its member nations would prevent them warring with one another. (READ MORE: Biden Pulls a Bait and Switch on Israel)
However, when the ECM morphed into what is the European Union (EU), a huge conglomeration of nations ruled by unelected bureaucrats, it was not surprising that Germany, with the largest economy, wanted to be the boss. After transforming from basically conservative after the War to left-wing, Germany adopted self-destructive policies around open-borders and climate change and now those chickens are coming home to roost.
To their credit the Japanese have embarked on a much more sensible trajectory of very limited and controlled immigration along with sensible environmental policies. It is not as if Japan is a perfect country — no nation is. It has its own problems, including a slightly faltering economy and the occasional political scandal, but it seems to be able to deal with them sensibly. On a personal note, given that Japan is basically a mono-cultural country, as a Jew I feel safe and secure here.
