Boiled Rice Nationalism, by Yukio Mishima
"What if we now completely stopped making a mirror of the West? This is my nationalism."
Boiled Rice Nationalism
Yukio Mishima
Three Types of New Returnee
When I consider whether a Meiji-style word like “new returnee” would no longer have currency in a world where full jets arrive in and depart from Haneda around the clock, it does not seem so.
There are fairly many people whose character changes completely after only having gone abroad for several months. This is natural, and even with scenes that one is accustomed to seeing in movies and on television, the shock of actually having seen it is great. When I first went to New York and saw groups of skyscrapers, I was at first struck with admiration for how prewar soldiers courageously started a war with such a country, and I doubted whether they would have felt like starting the war if all of them had seen New York.
Even among men who have gone for a year to a country like Italy, which is not particularly rich, there are those who subsequently become prisoners to the fixed idea that “Japan is poor,” and, no matter how many numbers you give to assert the poverty and social backwardness of southern Italy, will refuse to listen and continue saying “Japan is poorer.”
But since the economic boom of a few years ago, the “Japan Is Poor Faction” has gradually come to be overwhelmed by the “Japan Is Great Faction.” When the mood of new returnees changes so, it has a tendency to influence the entirety of public opinion.
On the whole, the comparison of things is carried out from where there is a greater or lesser possibility of competition, and even when people who live in an apartment with two rooms in addition to a dining room and a kitchen visit an ultra-modern large residence with an area of 660 square meters, the same as if they had gone to a department store or hotel, it is natural that it be big, and not only do they not even feel like comparing it to their home, they only think that their home, where everything is within arm’s reach, is in all things more comfortable.
The new returnees of the Meiji era were probably of that attitude, and their pride was placed totally in non-material things, in the spiritual values of the Japanese and Japanese culture. However, because what is invisible is not readily understood, the parts that are visible dressed themselves in civilization and enlightenment and faithfully copied the West. Thus have we passed through three or four generations since we began to wear Western clothes.
In that time, civilization and enlightenment has permeated our minds, even the spiritual values of Japanese culture have been lost sight of, and the burial gang that seeks to make the Western spirit our spirit has occupied the majority of intellectual new returnees. Language study has also developed, and facilities for studying Western culture in Japan have grown greatly, and as a result, great intellectuals who have not read the Japanese classics properly have become Japan’s opinion leaders.
When the war ended, Japan recovered economically, and truly for the first time since Meiji an economic system was established that permitted copious domestic consumption of domestic products, fortunately, because this coincided with the era of the Americanization of Europe and its loss of economic hegemony, Japanese who go to the West gradually ceased to feel a fearful economic gap between it and their own lifestyles.
First, there is no comparison between outhouses and flush toilets, but when in urban areas homes with flush toilets cease to be uncommon, in even bathrooms a standard of comparison follows.
Next, with the modernization of the kitchen, the kitchen is also added to this standard of comparison. We cannot at all match the cultural relics of Europe, but they were built by their wealthy ancestors and will just remain forever because they are made of stone, we come to feel that now, at present, the abilities and economic power of Europeans aren’t that different from ours.
This is the basis of the idea of the first innocent “Japan is Great Faction.” And this is a totally unthinkable idea to Meijiite new returnees, and in the minds of those of this faction, nothing is included of the spiritual values of the Japanese except the spirit of thrift that has been kept until now.
In contrast, the new returnees of the “Japan Is Still Poor Faction” point out the poverty of Japan by inferring from the social security and individual accumulation of Europe and America, explain the characteristics of Japanese culture also from this poverty, and, in conclusion, point out that if she does not start a typical Afro-Asian socialist revolution, Japan will never be able to become truly wealthy.
And what these two factions have in common is what I call “boiled rice nationalism.”
The Aftereffects of Civilization and Enlightenment
What I often receive when I go abroad are invitations from resident Japanese to eat boiled rice, seaweed, and pickled turnip in their homes.
Even looking at how full of confidence the inviter’s way of speaking is, I can almost see how many travelers, with this one word, have purred like a cat that has smelled catnip. Even among gentlemen who are fashionable from head to toe there are a number whose nerves go strange if they don’t eat boiled rice for a week, and it seems that only boiled rice does not give consideration to thought, as, once they have stepped one foot abroad, progressive literati and reactionary politicians both happily become the prisoners of boiled rice nostalgia.
And, while smacking their lips and gulping down boiled rice, earnest debate rages over Japan, with one saying “Japan is poor,” the other, “No, Japan is great,” the one “Japan is still a backward country,” and the other “No, Japan is now not the Far East but the Far West.”
In general, there is nothing so difficult to reform as culinary life, and no matter how much Japan industrializes after this, it will be difficult for her to cut ties with rice meals.
Even if you say that they eat rice meals in Italy and Spain, one can say that there is no people other than the Japanese that cooks this kind of rice in this way and eats it in such large amounts. The rice that is preferred in Southeast Asia is that long, thin, and dry foreign rice. The stickiness and unique shine of, and the attachment to meals of Japanese rice are something completely unique to Japan.
— Now, when such Japanese return to Japan, they relax into the honest feeling that Japan is nice because the food is delicious, but this is an exceedingly subjective feeling and a sensibility that is absolutely incomprehensible to Westerners.
The arising of nationalist ideas through the mixture of such sensibilities and thoughts is boiled rice nationalism. This is not limited to rice meals. Discovering that the French cuisine of Japan is the most delicious (!) thanks to having traveled around the world is a variation of boiled rice nationalism, and rediscovering that the women of Japan are the most attractive in the world and also how wonderful it is to lie down on a new tatami in just underwear are the same.
Are Japan, the Japanese, and Japanese culture so difficult to understand? Are they so difficult to appreciate within Japan? Can one not grasp this by any means without having stepped outside the country? Or have the Japanese become so extravagant that they have ceased to notice the value of what they have except from afar?
It seems that this is probably, rather than a condition of civilization and enlightenment, something like an aftereffect of the civilization and enlightenment of Meiji.
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