Japan beyond the cliches

Pallavi Aiyar offers a thoughtful and entertaining portrait of the country

If you are curious about Japan but are unlikely to go there anytime soon because of the pandemic, the costs of travel or the fear of unfamiliarity, pick up Pallavi Aiyar’s book Orienting: An Indian in Japan. It gave me a chance to learn about the country in an intimate, thoughtful and entertaining manner. And now I am excited to know more about the people and the culture. It might have the same effect on you, or maybe not.

This book combines memoir, reportage and travelogue with cultural analysis and political commentary. Aiyar, a globe-trotting journalist, establishes early on her own positionality, for it determines what she sees in Japan and how she makes meaning of it. Her Spanish husband, Julio Arias, is a diplomat. “Since meeting Julio in 2000, I’d lived with him in the UK, China, Belgium and Indonesia,” she writes.

The book will make you chortle with laughter if you appreciate a sense of humour that delights in literary allusions. Take this description of Japan, for instance. “The country came across like an upper-class spinster from a historical novel with impeccable manners who spent her days dabbing the edges of her mouth with a linen napkin while internally tutting at the uncouth dining etiquette of today’s upstarts, id est: the Chinese.”

Aiyar read a lot before she moved to Japan, and while she was there — writers like Yukio Mishima, Matsuo Basho, Yoshida Kenko, Kobayashi Issa, Junichiro Tanizaki, Haruki Murakami and Fukuda Chiyo-ni. Reading helped her settle in her new surroundings.

Orienting: An Indian in Japan | Author: Pallavi Aiyar | Publisher: HarperCollins India | Price: Rs 499 | Pages: 304

She had some harrowing experiences while trying to open a bank account, using ride-sharing apps to hail a cab, and using credit cards to pay for meals at restaurants. However, these challenges did not make her bitter. Japan grew on her, and she was able to find joy and sustenance, even hope, in things that caught her entirely by surprise.

“Over the years, my husband left his iPhone in a taxi in Kyoto; my brother forgot his passport in a hotel lobby in Hokkaido; I left my unbacked-up laptop on the monorail to Haneda airport. Between all of us we regularly ‘lost’ umbrellas, jackets and hats.” Each of these lost items — including lunchboxes left by her children on public buses — was found.

Sensing that there was more to the story than good fortune, or the fact that she had privileges that many foreigners in Japan do not have, she dug deeper. In the process, she stumbled upon an odd piece of information that made her warm up to her new home.

She writes, “According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s ‘Acceptance Status of Notification of Found Items and Notification of Lost Items’, conscientious finders handed over more than 4.1 million lost items to the city police in 2018.” Living in India, this might come as a shock. Even more stunning is the fact that “the number of found items handed in was four times the number of missing item complaints filed”.

The book is filled with sensory details and introspective moments. Aiyar will make you imagine what it feels like to behold the sight of cherry blossoms, soak yourself in hot water springs, relish chestnut ice cream, go to zazen meditation sessions, learn how to use Japanese toilets, and come to terms with “the ‘peculiar’ Japanese ease with silence”.

You will also meet people who made an impression on the author during her four years in Japan. One of them is Michiko-san, the Japanese teacher who addressed Aiyar’s cat as Tofu-chan, which was “the equivalent of her saying ‘Tofu ji’ or ‘Miss Tofu’”. Another one is Shoukei Matsumoto, a monk at the Komyo-ji temple who did his MBA at Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business and began to conduct temple-management seminars in Japan.

The case-study method that he was taught at business school came in handy when he began to teach. She writes, “The monks who joined him studied various temples as cases and went on to design renewal plans for them. The ideas generated included ways to raise revenue and relevance by instituting meditation courses, temple stays, the supporting of volunteer activities and the hosting of music and theatre productions.”

If your idea of Japan has been shaped by koans and haikus, and an interest in geishas, wabi-sabi, kintsugi, sake and tea ceremonies, you will find them in Aiyar’s book. However, the real gift lies in the balance she maintains between awe and critique. She does not shy away from talking about the suppression of individuality in Japanese society, mental health crises, gender-based discrimination, and racism towards immigrants.

“Japan was both deeply Zen and deeply troubled. Only naïve observers felt discomfort with contradiction. I had long come to the conclusion that the truth was rarely singular and always messy,” she writes. She seems to have made peace.