Japan — A Love Affair
by Elise Krentzel
The moment I stepped onto the tarmac at Narita Airport in1977, I knew Japan was my “home.” It was love at first sight, even though my first glimpse of the country was of 10,000 screaming female Kiss fans wearing KISS make-up screaming like it was the Beatles all over.
They dressed like miniature Kiss dolls. Outside the airport were garish billboards advertising electronics that hadn’t been invented in the States, grey concrete slapdash buildings, and a ring road that winds its way around the gigantic megalopolis.
The cadence of the language heard first on a built-in loudspeaker in the pint-sized limo sounded like a ribbon of poetry. Words ending in vowels, questions rising to a formal occasion, I swayed and sashayed to the a, e, I, o, u’s. The Japanese had an exquisite sense of esthetics perfected over millennia. Once we exited the ring road, I was visually assaulted with such beauty as to be incomprehensible. The country was a visual orgasm on a scale that I could not fathom.
How had I been able to exist in America at all? It seemed ludicrous to compare Japan’s tapestry of visual beauty: in architecture, landscapes, packaging, graphic design, painting, interior décor, fashion to anything I had seen in other countries. In Japan, I felt the essence of my artists’ soul was set free in this land. I thought I could just be me, something I had rarely experienced growing up and then only a few short months during the European trip I took in 1973. I didn’t have to do anything. I just was!
If Japan could be a sun sign, it would’ve been Virgo. Every aspect of social behavior to the representation of such in nature, food, and art was perfected. From the geometrically shaped pebbles aligned correctly on the streets to the Emperor’s Palace in Tokyo and the many temples of Kyoto. Everything was somehow discreet and modest in its grandiosity.
Consumer goods — anything from a box of tissues to a porcelain vase — were mindfully wrapped in thin rice paper, dyed to a pale hue, then finished with origami shaped ribbons of gold, red and white. How the parcel was delicately handed over to the customer as if it were a precious treasure found at the bottom of the sea. The American phrase ‘the customer is king’ was rendered hollow. The level of detail
paid to the temporal aspects of everyday life lifted my spirits. Routine was hailed as high art.
I had never thought of the banal that way and experienced a profound awakening; extraordinary beauty could be produced from anything. Looking at life through a microscope, one unearthed the complex riches of the small. What the Japanese pulled off brilliantly was bonsai. They bonsaied everything from computer games to chopstick holders. This fascinated me. Before entering a restaurant, plastic mini reproductions of dishes served inside were displayed in a vitrine. Every last ingredient was included. I was delighted by the ritualized politeness imparted by the “elevator girls.” An absurd job if ever there was one — young women whose sole purpose was to lift their white-gloved hands in sync with their high pitched sexy whispers announcing the floors on an elevator ride. “You’ve arrived on Level One, please enjoy your shopping,” “You’ve arrived on Level Two, please enjoy your shopping”…
Looking at schoolchildren dressed in navy blue school uniforms with starched white shirts and beanie caps carrying yellow flags tickled me. A taxis’ back seats had spotless doilies by the headrests as if nary a customer had ever ridden inside. Cleanliness extended to people as well. The Japanese had been taking baths 500 years before the Europeans ever discovered water.
I adored the perfectionist’s sense of personal hygiene. Kimono clad waitresses bowed deeply, to thank you for your patronage. It was the most civilized place I had ever been to. America was the dark ages, and Europe was just crusty and snobbish. What was there not to adore for an aesthete like me? Walking the main thoroughfares and backstreets of Tokyo was like experiencing origami on Ecstacy 24/7.
As foreign and utterly unappealing as Baroque music was to me, the strange minor squealing sounds of ancient Japanese Koh-Uta music sent shivers up my arms. Inexplicable as that was, other oddities (for “gaijin” — foreigners) felt “normal” to me. I ate natto! Fermented soybeans that smelled like rotting mold had a texture I craved; gooeyness when mashed in a mortar and crunchy all at once. Mixed with scallions, mustard, and soy sauce on top of rice, it was a culinary tour de force.
I was an adventurous eater and tried everything, no matter how weird. The main point was that I never had to eat the same thing twice. A full month could go by, and there would be indigenous cooking methods and ingredients to satisfy a get-bored natural raven like me. Fast food didn’t exist, and that was a cause for exultation.
Sybaritic pleasures were never too far away. The lavish sushi dinners prepared freshly in front of my eyes by a master chef left me quivering. The wild colored costumes and fanciful moaning of Kabuki theater actors left me speechless. The nights spent drinking whiskey in Ginza’s infamous watering holes with my surrogate mother, Mrs. Watanabe, manager of Kabuki’s leading actor Tomasaburo Bando, were bonding us in ways I had never felt with my own mother.
Every day of my life, for six years, from 1977–1984 was a journey to my home within a home. I had never before felt as if I belonged anywhere as I did in Japan.
