Typed by Makoto Nakamura (Matsumoto Academia)

April 16, 2006 (Monday)
Second Thoughts About Logic.
Third Thought: Go Middle.
いったいロジックとは何だろう。
やっぱり中道だ。

Woke up, hearing a preacher blaring out of the idiot box, “God bless America orcurse America!” NY Post’s exclusive: $1B 9/11 War, Ailing workers: Give us ourshare. “7,000 Ground Zero workers are suing the city. The city fights back.
Where’s justice? Ugly. My room cleaner Nicole (Rumanian, working at this hotel
13 years) “The city doesn’t care a bit. We gotta be on our own. Luckily, this hotel
is a hospital for me and for customers.” “Got a mosquito bite last night.” “Did you
open the window?” This was just a small Easter talk.
Two Marys. First, good Mary. Mother of Jesus. Virgin Mother. Icon of blue.
Clean woman. Second, bad Mary. Seductive prostitute. Dirty Mary Magdalene.
Bad chemistry between Mary and Peter. Jealously. This is real as it gets. Had
Mary been the first Pope, Catholicism and Protestantism might’ve been entirelydifferent. This is a debatable issue involving two “blues”: sacred or sexy. Orperhaps both, in the eyes of Hindu-shinto spiritualism: the middle of the road.
Tomomi (my Muse in NY) and I went to Metropolitan Museum of Art, now
exhibiting Hatschepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. She was the history’s first female
head of state who ruled Egypt for two decades (1479-1458 B.C.), more than 1,400
years earlier than Cleopatra. Observing those antiquities on audio cassette, I felt
like a Jewish slave, way down at the bottom of society. Resentment. “Gotta getout of here. God, give us exodus. Wait, we’ve got no God. God is a monopoly ofpharaohs. We need something or ‘somebody out there’ indefinable, invisible –Yahweh.
This nameless God’s first mission was to give Jews exodus, freedom, redemption:
break with their tradition of pharaohs, guardians of gods, ultimate preservers of Maat,justice or truth, an abstract concept of representing the ideal state of universe andeveryone in it. It’s somewhat similar to 八紘一宇 or 国体 in our cultural ethos.
Hatschepsut, the first queen, let the world know that Maat was firmly establishedthroughout Egypt. Gone was the glory of ancient Egypt.
Look at New York now. It’s ruled by the former slaves of Egypt. Egyptians are24

Typed by Makoto Nakamura (Matsumoto Academia)

cab drivers and Muslims targeted by NYPD as possible suspects of terrorism. AnEgyptian cab driver, I met, misses his country and hate America for injustice andsuspicious eyes. A Chinese taxi driver (Buddhist) in London said, “How can Muslims
get away with terrorism? They’re always complaining, when they are patronized byQueens? How can they judge? Neither can this Chinese.
History bears out there’s always a conflict between rulers and the ruled.
Pharaohs, Monarchs, Kings or Queens, dictators as oppressors and the oppressed.
Masters and slaves. Capitalists and wage-earners. History also proves that theJews have always had the short end of the stick – “chosen to suffer.” Jews, by andlarge, resent monarchy, and love democracy. Huey P. Long, a Louisiana governor,
calling himself kingfish left this famous line:
A perfect democracy can come close to looking like a dictatorship.
Amen. A democracy in which the people are so satisfied that they have nocomplaint he explains. And I added; the media begin to control the mind of thesheeple given to group-thinking. Adolf Hitler, Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan.
He’s George Bush’s poodle on a leash. Worse than a distributor, for Bush’s
pyramid scheme. Where’s justice? Winners. If losers get justice by revolution,losers get justice as winners. International tribunal’s winner’s justice. Japan lostthe last war and surrendered because Americans dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima andNagasaki. Iran is said to have suicide squads lined up to strike U.S., if the west kills
their nuclear program. Everyone in America calls Iranians terrorists. I say, “Look,who’s talking.” Where is justice?
Why does that matter? Because justice is getting blurred. Japan, once
considered a “100 million, all-middle class society,” is rapidly transforming itself intoa winner-take-all society. Says who? Says today’s NYT’s front page REVIVAL
IN JAPAN BRINGS WIDENING OF ECONOMIC GAP, arguing to the effect thategalitarianism is at stake as rich-poor division threatens mobility. Japan IS inidentity crisis and in chaos. That’s bad news. But the good news. It takes a
tough guy like me to thrive “on” crisis, not “in.” When the going get tough, thetough get going. The risk-takers savor risk taking, and accept failures with grace.
Having lost an interview job with Delight N.Y. doesn’t thwart my attempt to comeback again on top in Japan as a visible samurai (principled) interviewer in English.
Logic and common sense tell me one can’t hope to come back at 66, givensagging morale. But Musashi must soldier on, unafraid. Samurai logic defies logic –the logic for the living. The way of samurai is found in death (Hagakure). I prefer‘dead alive’ to ‘living dead’ shamelessly. This isn’t illogic; it’s PRE-LOGIC. The
intrinsic spiritual value in such wind-water logic supports Hindu’s circular logic,
Buddhism’s ‘middle way’ – and “situational ethics.” Mixed with a female group?
Why not?
25