Nationalism, and drinking in the park

As I alluded to in my previous post, while in Tokyo we saw a strange mixture of the old, the new and the fractured aspects of Japanese society all parading past one another at the same time. In one small bridge we were able to see the inherent tolerance of Japanese society, its ancient ceremonial side, and its post-war fascist elements all on display at the same time.

The inherent tolerance of Japanese society was displayed in the way ordinary Japanese people wandered across the Harajuku bridge, paying no heed to the freaks by whom they were surrounded. Similarly, a march of some tens of thousands of drunken men wobbled its way by, and nary a conflict was to be seen. No-one yelled at the boys in skirts and make-up standing just metres away from the festival-goers; and none of the boys in skirts showed any desire to make themselves scarce. This could be because their make-up was perfect enough to fool an idle drunken reveller from more than a metre away; but I suspect it is more likely that the comfortable coexistence on display here is just a normal part of Japanese life, unremarkable at least to the locals. An alternative possibility is that cross-dressing is fine in this society, and the kind of cosplay which occurs on the bridge is treated as exactly what it is by everyone else - harmless fun - while perhaps those rebellions which I did not see are punished ferociously. I doubt this, however, and the locals' behaviour seems to me a classic hallmark of toleration after all the yelling and posturing one would see in the equivalent Australian scene.

But here we have the contradiction of liberal democracy, for parading behind the Harajuku kids we see the fascists, blaring their slogans from loudspeakers and freeloading an imprtant ceremony of national and religious unity (the shrine-carrying festivities passing by at the time) to preach the self-same message which almost destroyed Japan a mere 60 years ago. I say "self-same", but in truth I do not know the content of modern Japanese fascism, and for all I know it could be nothing more dangerous than a call to rearm the nation. Certainly the one slogan I could read ("the spirit of Japan is an important ideal", or some such) seemed innocuous enough; but what fascist movement did not start with these kinds of simpering vacuities, only to end up marching in lockstep down the road to ruin?

Alongside these strange contrasts marched the festival itself, which I should pass comment on. I have seen a smaller version of such a festival before in Tottori, and found it very amusing. A horde of men in traditional costume gathers under a huge palanquin of wood, on which sits a gold-embossed shrine. They haul the shrine along the road and into Yoyogi park, stopping periodically to rock the shrine up and down while chanting; and just like a huge rolling maul in rugby, men continually drop away from the shrine to grab booze, and are replaced by their slightly more drunken walking companions. Women also join this strange religious wagon train, and everyone - men and women, carriers and walkers, spectators and participants - is drunk on cheap chu-hi. In Tottori the chu-hi was dragged along behind some of the festival carts in huge wheeled eskies; but here it was hidden in boxes, I presume inside the shrines. At the front of each shrine a man walks backward with a megaphone, chanting marching chants; and at the rear a couple of men walk along behind ropes, pulling the palanquin back on track should it stray too far away from its line. I would say each shrine was carried by about 50 people, and there were at least 10 of these shrines in the march, probably more. From the accompanying photos it is clear that there is a huge gathering happening here, and as always at such a gathering, everyone was cheerful and there was no trouble of any kind. Even when drunk in big crowds, Japanese people are cooperative and polite. And many of the men at this particular festival were showing signs of dubious criminal background, namely huge tattoos sprawling over backs, necks, heads and legs. I was surprised that they weren't in the big black vans instead of under the shrines, but perhaps this is not unusual, given that Japan's most famous fascist, Mishima Yukio, was both gay and educated. Always Japan has to throw things in the opposite direction to the west!

In any case, the cross-dressers, the traditionalists, the fascists and the foreigners all got along famously, and at the end of the day I'm sure we all returned to our homes thinking, for very different reasons, that Japan really is quite a cool place.