(no subject)

[esmenet]

You know, I really wasn't sure what to make of David Pollack's Reading Against Culture: Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel until I got to page thirteen, whereupon there lies a great indication of AWESOME:


Kipling admires everything about Japan's idyllic and imaginary past. But the modern Japanese character he does not like at all, and it occurs to him that what he does not like about it is precisely the way the Japanese have somehow managed to turn the tables on the sahib:

Chance had brought me opposite the office of a newspaper, and I ran in demanding an editor. He came -- the editor of the Tokyo Public Opinion, a young man in a black frock-coat. There are not many editors in other parts of the world who would offer you tea and a cigarette ere beginning a conversation. My friend had but little English. His paper, though the name was printed in English, was Japanese. But he knew his business. Almost before I had explained my errand, which was the pursuit of miscellaneous information, he began: "You are English? How you think now the American Revision Treaty?" Out came a note-book and I sweated cold. It was not in the bargain that he should interview me.[P. 170]

This brief encounter, rife with contradiction, unfolds like the account of a one-sided judo match. The Englishman superciliously runs in "demanding" an editor, only to be confronted by someone whose Western dress does not seem to admit of demands. Caught off balance, Kipling is then disarmed by unexpected (for which we should no doubt read "devious Oriental") courtesies; noblesse oblige is, after all, supposed to be the role of the superior! Despite a weak thrust of scorn at his interlocutor's "little English" (there is nothing that so undermines a sense of superiority as having to converse with the inferior foreigner in one's own language), Kipling finds himself pinned by an unexpectedly direct assault upon the most politically sensitive issue of the day: the long-proposed revision, led by the United States, of the infamous Unequal Treaties giving foreigners extraterritorial rights in Japan. Floored now, all he can do is squirm, temporizing with the only weapon left to him, his native ability to equivocate in his own language: "I Gladstoned about the matter with the longest words I could," he ends, more than a little pathetically.

This is neither the first nor the last time that something in Japan has gone awry -- has, as Kipling phrases it, "taken a distinctly Oriental turn" (p. 213). Even as he sneers at some amateurishly unimposing army maneuvers, he admits presciently that with a little training these people "ought to be first-class enemies" (p. 166). His gallant attempts at scorn and ridicule finally ring hollow: "Good gracious!" he exclaims. "Here is Japan going to run its own civilization without learning a language in which you can say Damn satisfactorily. I must inquire into this" (p. 169). With a bit more perseverance he might even discover that the Japanese language has managed to compensate nicely for its deficiency in English expletives.


I don't have a terribly strong feeling about this book yet, but I'm beginning to think it's going to be very enjoyable.

Comments

[quadruplify.livejournal.com]

Haha, oh man, this is nothing short of amazing, and a perfect summation of why I will never touch anything by Kipling.

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

Apparently he's not as bad as Barthes, though -- it seems he tried to come across as never having heard anything about Japan in his life before he went there, whereas Kipling at least admitted that he was super super biased.