It starts with being surrounded by the Japanese themselves. Oh of course one notices the new trends and idiocies- tanned blond Japanese girls staggering about in five inch platform heels and so on. But this time it was the guys who hit me between the eyes. They wear their hair medium length shaggy, and after two years of close-cropped westerners it was like finding myself back in my youth, or at least in a shoujo manga. And they all seem to speak in the soft tones and round phrases that the early British groups of the 60's used as well. There's a softness to middleclass Japanese and Brits totally absent from their American counterparts. I was forcibly reminded that all the western- looking guys in Japanese manga are actually Japanese and carry this inherent sensuousness with them. That's why yaoi guys can do the things they do and not be ridiculous, a fact I occasionally lose sight of over here.
I could never imagine (and wouldn't want to imagine) any western guy in a yaoi scenario. Too much testosterone, too much hair, too much egoism, too much attitude. Loud raucous voice, pink patchy skin, and a perpetual insistence that you Look At Me!! It's the chronic problem with western gay films as well. These guys aren't beautiful either physically or emotionally. But any young Japanese I saw on the train would fit seamlessly into the genre. The smooth skin, the silken abundant hair, the liquid eyes, the carved mouths, the low voice, the restraint, the decorum-- oh my yes. I spent the spare moments of the Japanese Ability exam concocting scenarios between the two junior proctors, one highcheeked and handsome with necklength hair, wearing a tight buttoned-up Harlockish overcoat throughout the exam (I was in shirtsleeves, to the consternation of the Gabonese student beside me, because the room was Japanese-overheated), and the other an obvious uke, short, with curly hair and a roundish pouty face. Well, it passed the time.
This sensuousness isn't confined to the men. Women of a certain class and age do it too. The Japanese female voice can be lulling as a cup of hot cocoa. (Exclude the extreme ends of the age spectrum: schoolgirls and grandmothers are just loud.) Mothers talking to their children, all soft-voiced friendliness; smiling salesgirls wherever you go speaking the soothing phrases of keigo; especially the stewardesses on the JAL plane going over, looking after two families with small children like loving aunts. With the stewardesses and salesgirls this obliging charm is simply a professional persona. It's not personal at all, but the very lack of personal input is a relief. If a westerner puts herself out to be nice to you, you have to acknowledge the extra effort she puts in to it. The JAL stewardesses are just doing their jobs. They require nothing from you but a similar courtesy back- and not even that if you feel like being churlish. But who would, when you have someone so obviously intent on making you feel good?
The only westerners I've met who do something of the same sort are gay waiters. It's perfectly clear that the charming and obliging guy who half-flirts with me and attends to my order as if it was a matter of extremest importance isn't the guy himself. It's his waiter persona, and one responds with one's customer persona, and you both enjoy the pleasant minuet of mutual social interaction. Again, this is something the Brits do better than us. Maybe it has to do with living in a small country where extensive ego is going to get in someone else's way pretty fast. Whatever, it makes a nice change from having to worry whether the salesclerk, repairman, postal clerk or government employee is having a bad day and how that's going to affect your ability to buy new shoes, get your washer working, send that parcel and obtain a new passport.
It rained one day in Tokyo. Tokyo is not a good rainy weather city, which is a pity because it rains a lot there. While the winter sunlight can make the landscape glow beautifully, even the concrete, a low grey sky shows that the place is even uglier than you thought it was. And there's nowhere to go to get out of the rain where you can both sit down and be free of cigarette smoke. (Well, there's Macdonald's, but who wants to live at Macdonald's?) So I went to the Museum of Western Art in Ueno to catch the show from the Musee d'Orsee in Paris: and walked directly into an exhibit there had been a ninety minute line-up for the previous Sunday. One advantage to bad weather, certainly. The Musee d'Orsee specializes in late 19th century painting, which is well enough. There were enough famous Matisses and Rousseaus to make me happy- and to seriously piss off anyone who'd gone to Paris to see these masterpieces, only to discover that they were over in Japan. And there was one section of nudes, all together so you could learn something about nudes, presumably. (Japanese exhibits are highly didactic.) Now, we all know that western nudes tend to be female. Try to get a male nude study anywhere, statues aside. But two out of the six canvasses here were of men. And the first you come upon is a Renoir painting of- no other word for it- a bishounen with a cat, white bum turned towards the viewer and dark eyes half-looking over his shoulder. No-one I've shown this one to has believed it was a Renoir. We all know that Renoir drew women and little girls. And one very sexy bishounen boy, and you can bet the Japanese made a beeline for that picture when they were compiling their wish list from the Orsee. 'Mattaku (woodencha no-wit)' I thought, strolling into the next gallery which had examples of early photography. Some portraits, some nudes, some landscape: a dozen or so in all. And two photographs labelled respectively 'Bound model suspended in the air' and 'Model wrapped in a sheet, bound and gagged.' Mattaku in spades. Now I know a little about French kinks. Bondage is not a common French kink. It's not. It's a Japanese kink, big time, and it would take a Japanese to find what I'm willing to bet money are the only two b&d photographs in the whole of the Orsee collection. They didn't want to see women in stockings or women in corsets or any of the staples of French erotica. They wanted to see someone tied up like a rump roast, and they did.