I Am a Japanese Writer

THE COLDEST EYE

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT the camera has had the greatest success among the Japanese. I’ve long suspected them of not putting film in their cameras. Or, at least, of not looking at the photos once they return home from their trip. How can they tell the difference between the pictures they took and the ones their friends took, since they all take the same photo in front of the Eiffel Tower from the same angle with the same smile and even the same suit? In the photos, they all wear their cameras slung over their shoulders. A nation of smiling photographers. That kind of behavior must be hiding something. Maybe they’re stockpiling photos so that later they can get an idea of how we lived at the beginning of the twentyfirst century. The information would not be very diversified: billions of Japanese photos showing nothing but smiling Japanese. If one day we stumble upon these mountains of photos, we might well conclude that the earth was inhabited at the time solely by Japanese. There was not a single monument worth mentioning on this planet that they did not colonize. The conquest was worldwide. A universal point of view. If I want to become a Japanese writer, I had better rush out and buy a camera. But I think I’ll stick to my typewriter. At heart, though, it’s the same thing. You describe everything you see. I would like to be, not a photographer, but a cold, objective camera lens. To simply look at the person in front of me. Is that even possible?