Faces of Japan [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Murray Sayle Many a first-time visitor, scanning the desolate Industrial wilderness around the head ot Tokyo Bay through the tinted windows ot his airport bus, has experienced a memorable shock of disbelief. Can this really be Japan? Not that your worldly-wise traveler really expects the road to be Fringed with cherry blossoms or crowded with rickshaws. Everywhere else, traditional beauty has paid the bill for industrial progress, and why should japan be any ditterent? Logic suggests that all those motorbikes and TV sets have to be put together somewhere, so signs ot industrial activity are, shall we say, only to be expected. What really disorients the visitor is his inability to connect anything he sees with what he already knows, or surmises about Japan. Why do the world's tidiest people accumulate so much neatly stacked garbage? How does a masterful, efHcicnt industry operate from a jumble of sad shacks and sheds slouching around the outskirts ot Tokyo, where even the newer concrete factories, already grimy, are often shamed l^y a rusty pile of junk next door? How can fiercely patriotic citizens, who hoist the I^ising Sun flag everywhere, let their cities choke for lack ot a green space? Why does ancient, indestructible Japan look so temporary, so thrown-together-yesterday, so much in need of its hrst coat ot paint? And, while we are juggling with mysteries, why does a nation of fabled honesty need so many policemen, in so many tiny, down-at-heels police stations? Airports (especially Japanese airports) are, ot course, special places, and perhaps we ask too much to expect the real Japan to be laid out tor inspection on the road into town. To begin with, the whole area around Tokyo was leveled during the war—"fried" the Japanese say, grimly—and hastily rebuilt so that a htmgry and humbled people would have somewhere to sleep, and something to export to buy their food. Aesthetics had, naturally, a low priority.