Having been to Japan twice before, I must confess I’m somewhat surprised by all this. Things must be getting really out of hand, because in my experience there is no nation in the world more adept at subtly training foreigners.
It starts as soon as you arrive. Think that other immigration queue looks much shorter and you could just slide over to it when no one is looking? Don’t even think about it. You’ve been told to join the queue you’re in and there you will remain, even if the tail end languishes in another time zone. Think your (really very modest) rucksack could just nestle on your lap on the shuttle bus to the hotel? Sorry! Into the hold it must go, along with items of luggage capacious enough to accommodate a small family.
Before this all threatens to devolve into a rant, I should say at this point that I have huge respect for the Japanese. Daily life, even at its most mundane level, features a wealth of artistic touches that not only beautify the environment but connect the nation’s present to its far past like an uncountable number of silk threads. And the people really are as kind and courteous as advertised. It’s just that these qualities exist in abundance only up to the point when a rule lurches into view.
So… at hotels, sun loungers vacated for just ten seconds after being dragged into the shade by guests who do not wish to burst into actual flames while reading are returned by staff to the full glare of the meridian because that’s where they’re supposed to go.
Likewise, your assurance, upon entering the onsen, that you have indeed had a preparatory shower in your room only five minutes before will be met with polite (of course) insistence that you have another one. It’s not that they don’t believe you, you understand. It’s just that they want to be ‘sure’. So you sit there, crouched on a child-sized stool, and scrub at your torso (the only hirsute one in the place) as if trying to rid yourself of the last, faint vestiges of independent thought and spirit.
On it goes. At the mighty Tōdai-ji temple in Nara, guards order you not to sit on any of the benches that fringe the central space around the Buddha, no matter how sore your feet might be; at the Kyoto Imperial Palace, staff inform you that you’re welcome to enjoy the sublime architecture however you wish – as long as it’s anti-clockwise.
To be fair, the Japanese themselves don’t seem especially happy about all this. They squirm with embarrassment about it quite frequently. Baristas, for instance, verge on the distraught when imparting to you the bad news that the takeaway green tea you just purchased cannot, in actuality, be taken away, but must be consumed within a designated distance (about one metre) from the café, because walking while drinking is not allowed.
Their mournful expressions seem to say, “I know it seems crazy. But remember, you’re only here for a fortnight. We have to live like this.” And indeed, they do. It’s hard not to gain the impression once you’ve been in Japan for a while that the entire nation, however stratified its society, is in the grip of helpless, terminal OCD.
What’s more, although the verbal rules are accompanied by fulsome apologies and precisely angled bows, the plentiful signage shows no such restraint. Once you’ve started noticing it, you can’t stop. Injunctions containing the words ‘no’ and ‘don’t’ are everywhere and seem to be most numerous in places that are nominally devoted to carefree enjoyment.
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Dotonburi in Osaka is a prime example. It’s really just an industrial canal but it has been made genuinely magical at night by acres of stylish LED and cute 3D representations of the hapless sea dwellers (squid, octopus, cuttle fish) that its restaurants are famous for serving. But every three paces, there are warnings: “don’t obstruct the bridges or walkways by stopping to take photos” (nice try but have you ever heard of Instagram?), “don’t drop litter in the water” (fair enough), “don’t jump in the water” (I wasn’t planning to, but what if I have to retrieve litter I accidentally dropped in?). There may as well be just one very large sign at the entrance to the district: “Welcome to our famous fun area. Don’t have too much fun.”
It’s not that any individual rule or instruction is essentially unreasonable. But, there are so many of them! And no matter how much you strive to be obedient, they start to exert a strange influence on the Occidental mind – or this Occidental mind at any rate. I would not, by any stretch of the imagination, regard myself as a rebel. Most people who’ve known me in my life have, at one point or another, teased me for being ‘placid’. But after my first week in Japan, I began to sense a change in myself.
It started modestly enough in the hotel, where I arrived three minutes late for my designated breakfast slot. Then it progressed into the outside world where I increasingly ignored ‘no sitting’ signs, stepped over low barriers to sniff interesting looking blossoms, talked slightly louder than my normal volume on the Shinkansen (bullet train) and, most daringly of all, consumed a beverage at least ten metres from where I purchased it.
It was all infantile, but the accompanying sense of rebellion grew more and more dizzying. Towards the end, I felt as if I were undergoing an actual physical transformation into an engorged Hulk of truculent disobedience: straining at the seams of my clothes as I threatened at any moment to explode into full anti-social rebellion.
I didn’t, of course. I grumbled a lot but continued to follow all the main rules. Because (and I hate to admit this) the positive results were all too detectable. Put it this way… if I lived in a country where the areas immediately outside train stations were spotlessly clean, I’d do anything to protect the fact – up to and including placing snipers with tranquiliser darts on the roofs of the surrounding buildings.
So good luck Japan. Keep up the attempt to corral, funnel and declaw all those rambunctious Westerners. But keep an eye on the Yen too. If it falls any further there will be a fresh onslaught of even more ungovernable visitors and you may have to break out the cattle prods.