I Am a Japanese Writer

AMERICANIZE/JAPANIZE

THEIR WARRIORS WORE colorful costumes and applied violent makeup. After the Americans defeated them, they became Americans. One way of absorbing those damned Yankees. A double culture: their own and that of the conqueror. Which explains the monstrous success of the double hamburger. The Japanese produce the best one-hundred-andten-pound Elvis doubles. In certain small villages, you can meet highly educated jazz fans. Or John Lee Hooker without the wounds of racism. Bob Dylan without the silliness of the 1960s. Marilyn Monroe without the antidepressants. They do for stars what Las Vegas does for the world’s monuments. Copies made while you wait. The young Japanese girl’s insatiable appetite for American gadgets. She talks fast, breaks off words so quickly she cuts them in half. Since time refuses to lengthen, she shatters language into an incomprehensible mishmash. She devours the world, speaks it, breaks it, transforms it, hoping to turn the defeat into victory. She wants to secretly penetrate the heart of American desire to change it into desire for Japan. Americans will never become Americans again because they don’t realize they’re already Japanese. And here I dreamed of becoming a Japanese writer — I wonder what’s hiding behind that label. And most of all, where such an obsession could have come from.