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| The Cover of Speed Tribes |
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Buy this book at Amazon.com |
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| The Cover of Speed Tribes |
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Buy this book at Amazon.com |
Always on the lookout for books that describe and explore elements of life in Japan not usually reported on, this book fit the bill nicely. Greenfield has put together a very interesting collection of narratives, a choir of the castaways of Japan’s incorporated society, and given them space for us to hear their voices. This is a very interesting book, as it does what the best author’s of non-fiction do, and that is letting the subjects speak for themselves.
Come along with Karl Greenfield and get a sense of how the “other half” of Japan lives. These are the people who do not get on the trains during rush hour, packed in there together, wearing the same boring grey and blue suits with muted colored ties, pressed up against others who are equally bland and uninteresting, newspapers crushed in between, all carted away like lambs to the slaughterhouses of everyday spirit-crushing corporate existence.
These are the voices of the rejects and the losers, the wannabes and the would-be rebels. These are the forgotten, the modern day “eta” (untouchables), and they live the lives of people we do not usually meet. Sure, we see them on the street, in the cafes and bars, but we don’t really know them. We can’t say that we really “understand” them. Greenfield takes the time and efforts needed to get their stories straight, and to let them speak to us in the way they want to be heard.
These are the stories of the drug dealers and motorcycle punks, the porno actresses and hoodlums. These are not necessarily the folks you want over to your place for a BBQ, but they have a few things to teach us about Japan, and the reality of part of that world that does not get so much airplay to the West.
Our image of Japan is one that is usually sanitized and we are seduced by the “conflicting” pictures of kimono wearing women who still learn tea ceremony and calligraphy while their smartly dressed husbands engage in samurai-like battles on behalf of Toyota or Mitsubishi and their uniform clad children study so diligently in superior levels of math and science. We are wooed by the politeness of their culture, the sounds and smells of the shrines and temples, the textures and stark qualities of their art and traditions.
But in the room at the back of their homes is an angry neglected teenager. He’s playing edgy music in his room, sniffing glue, making trouble, and raging against his world. His world is a conflict of parental expectations, narcissism, self-hatred and loathing, lack of acceptance or identity, failed educational system, and plastic Hello Kittyesque nihilism.
If present day Japan were to be suddenly frozen in a freak Ice Age, archeologists a thousand years from now would be peering into this matrix of contradictions and wonder what the hell was going on.
Karl Taro Greenfield gives us a pretty good idea how to understand parts of it. Get his book. It’s a great read.
Mark Groenewold
Kanazawa, Japan
May, 2005
This page is copyright © 2005 Mark Groenewold