Revolution

Lunch: Teachers' Room. One of my favorite Japanese teachers sat at the desk to my left and dumped a condiment over her rice. She noticed me observing her, leaned over to me, and whispered in my ear, "I'm Japanese". I looked back at her in abject confusion; the most apparent thing in the whole world had been spoken aloud and told to me as if it were some kind of secret. "I'm Japanese," she continued, "but I don't like rice." Befuddlement changed abruptly to shock.

How could this be? Wasn't one of the requirements to be a Japanese person was that you had to like rice? Isn't it engrained into the psyche? A gene shared by all Asians? I mean, they eat rice at every meal. To be born Japanese and not like rice seems to me to be some kind of cruel joke of the Fates. I wonder if there are others out there?

Shift gears now, two weeks later. I'm in a car with a fellow teacher who drives me to our school every day because the school (being on top of a mountain) is rather inconvenient to ride my bike to. I'm running late and, hence, we'll miss the morning meeting held every morning in the teachers' room. The Japanese are sticklers for ceremony and ritual and I express my apologies at his missing the meeting. "It's ok," he replies. "I don't like the morning meetings." What's this? A Japanese person expressing an opinion contrary to the mainstream? "They're boring and useless. Everything important the principal could say is written on the board anyway." Of course, I know he'd never say anything like this to the other teachers, the principal, or even another Japanese person for that matter.

Shift gears again. This time, one month later in the compact automobile of a Japanese friend. We are stopped at an intersection next to a van which is broadcasting entreating requests to vote for a certain political candidate running for mayor or city council. Now let me tell you about these trucks and vans. They're all mounted with loudspeakers, blaring pointless propaganda at all hours of the day and have no less than three jacketed women inside wearing white gloves waving to anyone they spot on the streets. And sometimes a man hangs out the window and shouts the message himself, for he needs no megaphone.

Needless to say, they are annoying as hell.

One person in a van happens to glance at my friend from across the way, she smiles (with way too many teeth showing), and gives a slow, flowing wave of her hand. My friend returns the smile, turns back toward the wheel, and makes the closest expression I've ever seen a Japanese person make to rolling their eyes.

Sarcastically I say, "Don't you like them?"

She turns to me and says, "I dislike them very much." Yet just a moment before she had smiled and nodded at the woman.

"Does anyone like them?" I ask.

"I don't think so, we try to ignore them."

"Don't people complain?"

"No."

Hmmmm.

Now let me tell you about a fantasy of mine. It involves a van and an egg. One quite average day, a week before election weekend, a van is blaring its political non-message to the countless members of an innocent community. There are a group of young kids, perhaps students of mine, hanging out outside a nearby convenience store. A van is heard from down the street, the women inside waving toward the nearby shops. A teenager looks up from his manga (Japanese comic book) and sees the van, he glares. He then enters the convenience store and purchases.. a small package of eggs. His friends watch him curiously as he removes a single egg. The van approaches and much to the shock of his colleagues, he throws the egg. The egg rolls through the air, a stunning ballet of physics as time itself slows. Bit by bit the egg approaches the van until it splatters.. on the nearby asphalt (c'mon, who ever hit their target on the first egg throw?) He removes a second egg, regauges the distance and the egg flies from his hands and shatters upon the windshield of the unsuspecting automobile!

The occupants are shocked and completely disoriented by the unprecedented projectile and the van swerves into a light pole. No one is hurt (seriously) and the people shout at the youths who have already abandoned their post and made a beeline down a narrow side street.

Of course, the event is all over the news, on TV that night and the newspapers the next day. That particular candidate decides not to send out his vans for another day, hoping things will get back to normal by then. But other youngsters have since realized the power of the egg and the consequences it produced.

And perhaps next year there will be no loud obnoxious trucks. Perhaps there are only posters on walls or a person quietly passing out fliers on a street corner. Peace, if not order, has been restored.

Admittedly this is a very American thing, the egg-throwing, but the idea, the spirit is still there, always floating within the reach of all humans.

The Japanese are a very group-oriented, ritualistic, anti-confrontational people. It is part of what they have come to define themselves to be as a nation. What must it take to change something in such a society? One person refusing to change shoes when they enter a building or restroom? A proud, public declaration of the preference of bread over rice? One egg? And what would happen if such a thing were to happen? Would it be socially acceptable to wear your shoes in the house or to be able to take a sandwich lunch to work instead of sushi rolls without being teased by your co-workers? What would follow from that single action, what would come of it? Nothing perhaps. Disorder, chaos, anarchy, revolution?

No one has thrown the egg yet so I don't know. Maybe I'll chuck it myself just to get the ball rolling.

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