From: miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: Opinions on the book, "The Hollow Doll"
Organization: Teknekron Communications Inc.
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 05:22:56 GMT

In article <1ibvdpINN591@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> johan@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Johan van Zanten) writes:
>In article <1993Jan5.023054.11119@tcsi.com> miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.) writes:
>>
>>Well, maybe you *wouldn't* be interested in my opinion.  I thought it
>>was hilarious.  My friends and I were saying "You c'n jes call me 'God
>>Jesus'" and breaking into hysterical laughter for weeks afterward.
>>(Yes, you HAVE to read the book to get that one.)
>
> No, i'm interested in just about everyone's opinion.  Actually, that
>was right where i put the book down.  I read the description of the
>God-Jesus doll, and then very clearly saw what he was doing.  You see, i
>am not Christian, and didn't really get was was so "gauche" about the
>Japanese having a God-Jesus divination doll.  I also can't find a
>non-racist way of intrepreting this sentence from that section:
>
>"He [ the God-Jesus robot] does have white skin -- preternaturally white
>-- and blue trim, if that's any consolation."

OK, just a reality check: of those of you who haven't yet read the book,
how many are laughing already?

>  I am assuming here that the consolation to the gentle [Christian]
>reader here is that at *least* God-Jesus is white, i mean (God) forbid
>that the Christian God (and Jesus) would be of um, well *you* know, a
>different race.  That would be, well, just wrong.  What Bohnaker is
>really relying on here is a rather retarded and self-centered (as
>self-centered as he accusses the Japanese of being) perspective in the
>reader.  In effect, he's saying, "Can you *believe* these Japanese
>people?  Are they crazy or what?  A "God-Jesus" doll?  Isn't that
>strange? Aren't THEY strange?" 

But it *is* strange, to a culture in which one (or only a few) standard
images of Jesus Christ are prevalent.  I.e., to Westerners.  There's
just no logic (to us) to calling a robot doll God Jesus, and nothing out
of the ordinary to them.  We're talking about a nation that's about 2%
Christian -- about as alien from our so-called Christendom as any
industrialized nation can get.

>  For some reason, Christians don't seem to think there is anything
>inequitable with dismissing or even insulting other people's religious
>and metaphysical beliefs as silly or misguided while theirs' are beyond 
>question or even analysis.  To me, this is what is at the heart of the
>"God-Jesus" piece.  Bohnaker is encouraging the reader to think of the
>Japanese as weirdos who just don't get the Christian "thing", and
>expects the reader to believe that Christianity is the one "true"
>religion.

No, he's encouraging us to look at a culture in which Christianity is
so alien that such a doll could even exist.  Personally, I found it an
enlightening example -- not to mention screamingly funny.

I rather doubt that Bohnaker is himself a Christian, by the way.  Where
did you get that impression?

>>So what if he wrote about everything that drove him crazy about Japan?
>>Lots of things drive lots of gaijin crazy in Japan -- Bohnaker just
>>managed to record a significant mass of them....
>
>This may be true, but what about the thousands of people who will read
>his book and base their opinion of the Japanese people on it?

I have read maybe dozens of books about Japan, and intend to read more.
I have been there, and intend to go back.  Yes, here and there, you
might find some people who's ONLY basis for an opinion about the place
is Bohnaker's book.  And if they are as self-importantly serious as
you are, unable to see it for what it is, they'll have a distorted view
of the country.

Just like the much greater number of people who have NEVER read much
of anything about Japan.

>			....  I think after reading this book, most
>people without an unusually strong interest in Nihon would be inclined
>to unfairly write the Japanese off as a pack of weirdos.

I think that you have to have an unusually strong interest in Japan
in the first place to even want to read the book.

 						   Bohnaker's book
>is the equivalent of a Japanese author finding all the bizarre news
>stories in the U.S. that he can (and there are many) and writing a book
>based on these stories and what they imply about American society. 

I'd love to read any such book.

> There's nothing wrong with him writing about what drove him crazy in
>Japan; what bothers me is that he acts as if he was the only sane person
>in the country.

Hey -- living in a strange place is a very isolating experience.
If you don't know the language, customs, culture, laws, conventions,
manners, diet, you-name-it, you can start to think that everything
is a little crazy.  This is called Culture Shock, it is well-documented,
it is occasionally a serious syndrome, and sometimes has a wonderful
cure: the ability to laugh about it all later.

> 	          But to be perfectly honest, our two cultures have not
>made enough progress along the lines of understanding and mutual respect
>to begin the rather blunt and dehumanizing joke phase.  I don't think
>that we have that kind of lee-way.

Good.  OK.  Henceforth, the book is banned.  Uh, just *which* inter-
national cultural enforcement agency did you say you were with?

I found nothing de-humanizing in his jokes.  People are ridiculous
everywhere.  The Japanese have their own way of going about it.
Americans have theirs.

>>Flip to the last few pages if you think that Bohnaker left Japan in
>>some kind of paranoid huff.  Any interpretation of this book as being
>>essentially mean-spirited is left to the hopelessly humor-impaired.
>>The rest of us (gaijin, anyway) are still laughing too hard.
>
> I understand what you are trying to say here but as someone who has
>devoted a substantially amount of my life to writing, i think writers
>have a responsibility for the ideas and thoughts they encourage.  I
>don't think that everyone (especially people who are largely unfamiliar
>with Japanese society and culture) will take this book as a 
>don't-take-this-too-seriously joke, and i don't think that Bohnaker wants us
>to take it as a joke, either.

You are seriously clueless.  A section heading "Is There No Mercy?",
over a section describing the Japanese character dictionary schemes,
and the proliferation of kanji?  YOU DON'T THINK HE'S JOKING?

Bohnaker has some good ideas, I think.  The characterization of Japan
as a more of "surface tension" society than a principle-guided society
is not exactly original, but his school-boy-horde-hawking-lugeys-at-
the-train episode certainly lent some support to the hypothesis.

What if a Japanese sociologist were to chime in right now, and agree
that Bohnaker had put his finger on a very interesting and serious
point about Japanese society?

(Now excuse me while I go quote-digging in Japanese sociology.)

>					 It's definitely suppose to be
>entertaining but he has some very serious conclusions about Japanese
>society.  Namely, regardless of the number of ways as he tries to pad this,
>he really seems to think that there is no morality in Japanese society,
>just correctness.  I don't think this is true.  I also think that the
>book is very dehumanizing, which does not do anything good for
>cultural relations between Americans and Japanese.

On that point, you may be right.  I prefer, however, to think that
he was describing a difference in degree, rather than an absolute,
when he ascribed much of Japanese behavior to formula-over-principle.
And I think it's a difference in degree that might really be there.
When I complete my own explorations of Japanese culture, I'll have my
own opinion.  Until then, I take Bohnaker's voice as one of many, and
still hear a surprising degree of harmony among them.
---
Michael Turner
miket@tcs.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan