古臭い！/Furukusai! [It stinks of age!]

“I hate Japanese films; They’re so depressing.” That was my brother-in-law S., who was born in 1945. The two Chinese characters used in his name mean “Off to war!” He was born in the dying (sic) days of the Pacific War, just after his father, who was a veteran of the war in China, had once more received his call-up papers. The father didn’t expect to return. After making his way from the road less mountain village of Ubuyama to the prefectural capital, Kumamoto, he was told he wasn’t needed after all, and lived to see his youngest son reach the age of fifty-five.

For the children of the post-guerre generation, there was a pall over so many aspects of traditional Japanese culture. Jazz, rock, Western classical music, “I love Lucy” and “mei-ken Lassie/ (“Beloved dog Lassie”) were the staple cultural nourishments of Y and her two brothers, once they had moved to the city and managed to get a television, around 1960.

And it wasn’t only the younger generation. Y’s mother loved the theatrical “professional wrestling” programmes just as much as her children. Fifteen years before, she had been drilling with other village women in the use of the nagenata, the traditional weapon which would protect them against the American invaders.

The rest of the world has a pervading image of Japan as a nation which values its ancient culture and meticulously maintains its shrines in their ancestral form, and its theatre in its fourteenth century idiom. I soon found the dialectical opposite of this stereotype. During my first week in Japan, the “master” of a coffee bar near Shizuoka Railway Station explained what a fantastic place Japan was: “It’s really up to date. We really like new things. As soon as anything gets a bit old, we chuck it away.” He made an eloquent gesture, as if throwing some of his expensive cups and saucers over his shoulder.

Months later his attitude was confirmed by a group of doctors who were among my first students of English. They had all been children when the war finished, and had known the hunger of those years when children were not ashamed to beg from occupation troops. One night, they asked me what I thought about Japan. At one point in my rambling reply, I said, “One thing that has surprised me is the extent to which Japan seems like new colonies, like the U.S. or New Zealand, rather than the more traditional European countries.” One of the doctors said, with obvious gratification, “Thank you very much.” That was even more of a surprise. I had felt I was honestly voicing something that they would not be happy to hear.

None of Y’s immediate family had even been to a Noh performance until she took me to see the Spring Noh soon after we arrived in Kumamoto.

One day after I had started to learn Noh, I told S about the next performance, and asked if he wanted to go. He laughed and said that it was the last thing he wanted to do. Noh, he said, was “furukusai” (stinking of age).

There are, many more S than people who like Noh enough to go to a performance. And yet, there are enough of the latter to maintain a living performance tradition, even in provincial cities like Kumamoto.

The traditions are not the exclusive preserve of the educated middle class. As I cycled around Kumamoto I saw that teachers of traditional calligraphy could also work as bicycle repairmen, and that working-class parents were just as keen to ensure their children went to university and learnt ikebana [flower arranging] as the local doctor.

Class divisions seem of less significance than in any of the European countries I have known. Whether one’s grandfather was a peasant or a samurai seems to count for little among the students of today. As in most countries, there has been a huge recruitment from the peasantry to the educated caste. Unlike European countries, Japan retains very little of its hereditary bourgeoisie.

The Americans carried out a huge redistribution of land in the late 1940s, and the generations that have followed show little no resentment. Nor has there been the kind of move to reverse the confiscations as in Eastern Europe.

Just as the hairdresser or the carpenter may be a teacher of ikebana, the doctor or the professor may be an aficionado of enka, the sentimental, popular song tradition. On New Year’s Eve, most families in Japan, regardless of wealth or standing, watch a four hour television extravaganza featuring a vast array of well-known performers, ranging from Western opera singers to enka idols, from teeny-bopper rock groups to Jazz veterans. I couldn’t imagine such catholicity of taste in any equivalent Western show.