We, the non-Japanese, the gaijin, the hypnotised and the cauterised, the Japan-crazy and the Japan-sick, flock to a fictitious land.
No view of life can encompass itself. That way lies the inconsistency of infinite regression: VL > VL. We’ll never know our own lives, but perhaps we can believe what we think of them. And if we never really see ourselves in the picture, at least we can look at the rest of it.
If I were to now confess that I have just, let’s say, been woken by my daughters on a cold morning in suburban Montreal, that I have never been to Japan, that there has been no seeking, no journey, no discovery, that everything so far reported was part of some long-running and lucid dream, redolent of a soap-opera that had written itself into a dead-end, that nothing I refer to means anything – then what of it? Or instead of a dream, what if all these words were nothing more than fatally flawed memories, unintended inaccuracies, or even lies? Would this mean disappointment for the reader, to discover that one has been reading barely credible fiction and not the truth? Or that artifice made obvious is somehow fake? Does it make any difference now, as you read this?
And finally, the thought to start with:
There is Japan and then there is Japan…
