Out of Their Right Minds

In a concerted effort to prove that the revisionist/fantabulist movement is, while far from dormant, far from the actual levers of power (and reduced to exhibitionist feats of fury) LDP exile and serial plotter Hiranuma Takeo cajoled 64 members of the Diet to join him in forming yet another study group—this one intent on reintroducing the pre-1945...

wait for it...

wait for it...

orthography system.

Because when compiling the list of the causes of Japan's modern ills, a reasonable method of writing Japanese words as they are pronounced must not be allowed to escape opprobrium and condemnation.

Seriously.

For reasons clear only to the members of this group, which met for the first time on Wednesday (because, being Diet members, they had nothing else to do, the Diet being in session and all) reading and writing using four different symbol systems (kanji, hiragana, katakana and romaji) two of which are borrowed from languages that have no morphological similarities with Japanese--is simply too easy.

What is needed to revitalize Japan is the reversal of the orthography reforms carried out under the Occupation, the ones that eliminated the superfluous "wi" and "we" kana and most of the archaic kanazukai reflecting ancient pronunciations or differentiations of homophones. The most notable escapees from reform are the uses of the "ha" and "he" kana for the particles pronounced "wa" and "e" in modern Japanese.


The goal of the Occupation-era simplification was to make reading and writing less onerous, opening the door of literacy wide for all the newly enfranchised citizens. The PRC government had similar "democratization of society through democratization of literacy" goals in carrying out its own massive simplification of Chinese characters...with the democratization bit seeming to have been not quite so successful in the Chinese case.

(Hmmm...the anti-PRC angle...)

At the May 28 inaugural meeting, Hiranuma explained the study group's raison d'être thusly:

"We say that words have the spirit of words (kotodama) in them...and in generation after generation, our ancestors took care of them. But then there were the policies of occupation and now the national language is greatly disturbed. I want to establish a movement to bring back a steadfast (shikkari to shita) national language."

It is all there: the reification of prewar society; the blame for a purported current, debased state of the national language upon the democratizing reforms of outsiders (Americans, yes you damnable, occupying, gelding Americans, I am talking about you!); the betrayal of the ancestors and antiquity; the presence of kami everywhere, even in the very words we speak...the whole, esoteric mystery-spinning, xenophobic, nostalgic, nobility, blood-and-semen worshipping authoritarianism just beneath the skin of every self-professed "conservative"...

Oh Amaterasu, can we be not spared hearing any more from these ugly minds?

Luckily, or perhaps because Amaterasu has already heard our prayers, Hiranuma managed to summon to his shindig a motley crew of the truly unusual suspects. Former Prime Minister Mori ("Japan is a land of kami with the emperor as the centerpiece") Yoshirō is the chief advisor to group. Clearly demonstrating the moral perfection of achievable through archaic orthography was the presence of the LDP's Funada "the Very Sorry Adulterer" Hajime. Watanuki Tamisuke, leader of the Japan People's Party and the leather-skinned co-owner (with Kamei Shizuka) of the Ugliest Man in the Diet Award put in appearance, together with the bat-eared Nishioka Takeo, the Democratic Party of Japan leader in the House of Councillors.

Of the above, Watanuki is to be forgiven for wishing a return of the old ways. He is a calligrapher of extraordinary talent. T'is indeed a pity that he chose politics as a profession rather than art. That he would want to restore archaic, complex written forms is understandable.

As with any Diet study group, especially one where Hiranuma plays a leading role, the press speculates as to whether or not the orthography movement is a screen for meetings leading to the formation of a hardline conservative party. Hiranuma is the chief advisor to Nakagawa Shōichi's "True (space) Conservative Policy Study Group" [Honest to Amaterasu, I am not making this up: the actual name is the "True (space) Conservative Policy Study Group"]—which clearly styles itself the kernel of a future hardline party. Hiranuma has also been claiming he can lure enough former postal rebels who lost their seats following Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro's purge of the LDP in 2005, local LDP politicians, disgruntled current LDP and DPJ Diet members on his own to field 30-strong contingent of district seat candidates in the next House of Representatives election.

It is unlikely that this orthography counterreformatory group is the core or even the shadow of a Hiranuma-led new party. Former Prime Minister Mori's presence indicates that the movement likely does not seek to break down the major divisions of the existing political order.

The sheer cussed antiquarian pointlessness of organizing a Diet study group on reestablishing the complex, anachronistic pre-Occupation written forms of words does, however, cast an interesting light on the dormant constitutional reform movement. As former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō repeated ad nauseum, Japan (and by "Japan" he meant himself and his revisionist/fantabulist allies) needs (and by "needs" he meant "is going to get") a Constitution "written by our own hands" – meaning, of course, not dictated to the surviving members of Japan's elite by outsiders (Americans, yes you damnable, occupying, gelding Americans, I am talking about you!)

Because pater and patria should not be sundered.

The formation of this new group shows that no postwar reform is spared the gelded rage of today's "true conservatives" –- no matter how useful or beneficial something may be, if the Meiji State did not have it, then out it must go. In the conservative mind, it is not just the anti-military strictures of Article 9 or the emperor's renunciation of divine and sovereign status that have impermissibly hollowed out Japan's moral center, leaving it at the mercy of the rapacious Chinese and North Koreans. The humiliating, democratizing rationalization of "spelling" by the Occupation, is destroying Japan.

No humiliation too small, no reform too rational that it will not attract the vorpal blade of the "true (space) conservative" right...

Die Götterdämmerung

Tomiyama has two peaks.

On the west peak is a viewing platform built for a visit by Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princesss Masako, back in the days when they used to ostentatiously climb mountains surrounded by phalanxes of bodyguards, local officials and members of the press.


Beside the viewing platform is a stone monument commemorating the Crown Prince and Princess' visit. Beside the monument is a metal sign repeating the inscription carved into stone and--honest to Amaterasu--a map showing where one can find the monument.


Atop the east peak, the scene is a bit different.

A pitted and tilting sandstone staircase (not paying enough attention, I fell on the way back down) leads to a gateway...where no gate stands. Plinth stones give testimony to the temple entrance that had once stood there.


Entering the overgrown courtyard, inhabited only by giant dancing flitting black swallowtail butterflies, one's progress impeded by waist-high undergrowth.

One reaches the decrepit remains of the main hall. Through the open and decaying doors, one sees an empty altar. On the floor are a black and white line drawing of Kannon (Avalokiteshvara), leaves and blown-in dirt.



Nothing stirs.

The deities are gone.

* * *

You cannot miss them.

Once you leave the core urban areas you find them.

Terraced paddy fields choked with weeds;

crumpling houses;

trucks left in place so long their tires have dissolved;

restaurants that never open;

padlocked storefronts with kicked-in shutters, their interiors awash with seas of bottles and cans.

Not the mark of poverty is this. It is the mark of death.

Great areas of the land are dying, emptying out, rotting out like uncared for teeth, even in the prosperous Kantō plain.

And beyond the confines of the Kantō, the Nagoya Plain, and the Kansai corridor and the Fukuoka-Kokura industrial zone—Amaterasu help us.

* * *

I will have to dig around for the quote--but a few years ago a politician said something on the order of:

“It's so sad. Out in the countryside with the shuttered commercials districts (shattā gai)...and when it's festival time, there is nobody around, there is no festival spirit. It just gives of a feeling of lonesomeness.”

Yes, that is it. With the collapse of the business districts and the departure of the people come the end of the mandates and rituals of the kami. The twilight of the gods.

* * *

Long, long ago, the responsibility to protect every single square centimeter of Japan was parceled out to three classes of protectors. Two corporeal; one spiritual.

Over the long years these beings have jealous guarded the frontiers of their territories --while in benevolence laboring to bring prosperity to the residents within.

The names of these guardians?

Seijika, kōmuin, kami/hotokesama.

The Politicians, the Civil Servants and the Spirits.

Exalted they were. Respected. Spoken to in reverential, formal language.

The Politicians and the Civil Servants brought the roads and tunnels and bridges and tetrapods. They brought the subsidies and the regulatory mazes. The Greenpia and the third sector projects.

All to protect the residents and their livelihoods from change. To keep the world at bay. To protect their sacred precincts and prerogatives.

But change happened anyway.

The roads and bridges and tunnels made it easier for residents to drive to the formerly distant hypermarkets. No more was it necessary to patronize the little shops along the road leading out of the train stations.

By their budget allocations and zaitō investments, the myriad contracts to grateful construction firms, the Politicians made the countryside ugly. By their rules, requirements and regulations, the Civil Servants made it uniformly ugly.

With their subsidies and fiscal follies, they created a class of clients, persons incapable of creating value, engaging in activities that had no meaning.

They kept people living where people should not be...and wounded the land in the process.

So great was the damage done that at long last all that remained were the clients, the cavernous and empty great projects and the constipated fields, plantations and harbors. Most of the living had moved to the cities, leaving behind rituals and gestures, the pantomime of politics and bureaucratic budget slicing competitions.

* * *

I would love to hear the complaints of the kami, to hear them whine about decline in donations at festival time, the shorter and shorter lists of names hammered onto the signboard, the declining number of visitors throughout the year, the increasing age of the parishioners...

I wonder if the kami would at last declaim to me:

"It's because of the Western ways...the blasphemous worship of the deities from across the sea...the ancient harmony is ruined."

The kami have an excuse: they cannot move. They are bound to protect the same piece of land--their sacred territory with its invisible boundaries--even as the generations go by. Even as their shrines fall into ruin and the shoulders carrying the mikoshi grow fewer and more stooped.

Protectors of arbitrary and artificial divisions...to the end.

Redistricting...such a small thing to get wrong.

Photos of Tomiyama taken on July 15, 2006. All photos by MTC.