I've decided to visit Japan this autumn, health and world situation permitting.
I’d thought about making this kind of trip for a long time, but recently I’ve revised down my best guesses at my lifespan, and within that my remaining time mobile enough to go travelling. With less time on the clock, I figured I’d better go soon.
Is this a wise use of funds, or a good reason to contribute to CO2 emissions? No. But, looking at the state of the world, it becomes hard to summon the will to do anything sensible.
I won’t be making an anime pilgrimage, exactly. I’m happy that a moving Gundam statue exists but I feel no burning desire to see it myself. I am glad that people draw genga; I don’t need to see the buildings where someone draws the Gantt charts. Like the centurion in Luke 7, I can muster faith without sight.
I’m more interested in shrines and temples, and also just in the stuff of everyday life. When I travel, it is a great pleasure to me to walk (hobble) around, or ride trains, and just see how people have put cities together elsewhere.
I’ll do my best to avoid adding to overtourism beyond the basic fact of my presence. And I’ve no illusory ideas about finding some kind of insight or authenticity. Barthes starts his book on visiting Japan by remarking that he can only report the imagined Japan he experienced, not the reality of the place as lived by those dwelling there. Probably that holds true for all of us. A tourist can only be a tourist.
Here, though, is a hypothesis before the experiment: I suspect that in some ways I will find Japan more normal than I expect.
For decades, Anglophone discussion of Japan has tended to stress differences and particularities. Those undoubtedly exist! But how different can an archipelagic constitutional monarchy on the Eurasian fringe really be? That’s the most normal kind of country there is.
We shall see—assuming I and/or geopolitics don’t endure yet more catastrophe—how right or wrong my hypothesis is.