Rising Son

Konnichiwa, I am Japan.

Relatively recently in my history, in the midst of my transformation from a post-war pariah to a burgeoning economic empire, a child was born across the world. Despite my small stature, my shadow loomed large over this soon-to-be young man from a very young age; from books and movies and the study of martial arts, this youth was swiftly swept away by my legend, even as I left that legend further and further behind.

To this boy, the tales of Japan, told second and third-hand in manga, anime, and movies, were no more legends than were the daily news reports. They held the reality of story, which preys on youth, and they formed in his mind an idea of honor and a vision of strength that captivated and enraptured him. Their ideals became more real than reality, their stories became doctrine. These are tales I know well; the sound of their tread is as a heartbeat to me, as they have walked my shores for centuries in one form or another.

More important, by far, was beauty. To the child across the sea there was no greater beauty than the combination of form and function, the beauty of the dance of the fighting arts, and the spirit of harmony promoted by them. This ideal of harmony was absent from his life, and perhaps absent from the world, save for in his myths of me.

He longed to be that peaceful warrior, for whom fighting had become superfluous, a futile exercise, for when one harms others he also harms himself. Or the boy simply claimed to want this for himself, yet his fantasies, often played out behind glazed eyes in forgotten classrooms, were full of acts of savage violence, beautifully executed. In that way, I suppose, that spirit of harmony was absent from him, too. Is peace, then, a thing within the power of man to achieve, or is it simply a legend of a place that has never existed?

To this boy, Japan was the peace of the world.

Childhood ends. The boy is still there, but he is buried beneath layers of learning; the dust of his travels. His view of me, too, is filtered now through that silt, and I have become as grey as the rest of the world. My shores, which held such fascination for the child, seem just like any other now: full of people full of turmoil, restless in their hearts and foolish. His world had become a reflection of himself. The images reaching those child’s eyes were filtered through murky self doubt, and the Japan of his youth was lost. It was lost to me too as the world closed in. I can’t remember if it ever was.

Our stories intertwined for a time in the young man’s 26th year when he traveled, finally, to my shores, furiously lacking expectation but truthfully wracked by fear of disappointment. This is an old story for me. Foreigners approach on tender feet, cautiously feeling my edges, afraid and expectant. They who have made me in their minds are now afraid to meet me. I am the celebrity of the earth; the master author who, with a handshake and a greeting, may immortalize my works or tarnish them forever.

Our meeting lasted a month.

From Tokyo to Fuji to Kyoto to Okinawa he wandered, searching for an unknown thing as so many have done before and will, undoubtedly, continue to do in the future. At times he thinks he has found it. In a traditional Japanese home, in an old woman’s smile and slowly spoken question, in a rain dotted pool on temple grounds, in a child’s open stare.

But mostly he finds, as he expected to, that I am just a place like any other. People are simply people, the world over, surviving in the only ways they know how. The only place my legend exists is in the children of my heart. I am the ancestor of the storyteller, and the mist tumbling down from the mountains ensures that there will always be gods. And the kiai of a child ensures that there will always be bushido. There are no samurai anymore, no ninja, no bushi, no hitokiri. But my people are Japanese. And they are all of those things in their hearts.

If not them, then who?




Oh, I forgot. There was a moment when, in a Tokyo museum, the boy who was now a young man happened upon a spear blade crafted in the 16th century. I remember this blade well; It was mined from my heart, after all. As he stared at this blade, this perfect untouched needle of light, for a moment the murkiness of the interceding years cleared away, and I briefly met that child across the sea for the first time.