Post XX
You`d be forgiven for thinking that I had given up on this blog alltogether, but actually I have been writing the entire time, just not publishing anything that I write. Perhaps some would argue that that constitutes giving up on the blog, but hey ho. To me it highlights that writing for `the blog` has more of a therapeutic character to it, regardless of if I publish it or not.
Anyway, here is a post I wrote in the wake of my Winter Holiday. Reading it back, I don`t like it very much, but when do we ever like what we have written when we reflect on it with a sober eye?
So the New Year is in full swing, and I am
yet again being terrible at updating my blog. Still no internet at home, and I
spent the vast majority of my winter break traveling around Japan. I finally
feel like I have done some of the more touristy places in Japan, so can now
just kick back and do some exploring at my own pace.
But, having said that, it will be some time
before my next holiday, and it`s taking a few days to get back in to the swing
of school life (especially school lunch). My new year’s resolution happens to
be school related too. I am going to make sure I attend club activities once a
week from now on, regardless of how tired I am. Last term I really did savor my
Wednesday afternoons, when I could go home at a reasonable time, but I decided
that playing sports with the kids is a much better use of my time even if I get
a bit (more) tired.
Speaking of being tired, I had some pretty
sleepless nights whilst on holiday. In Osaka, for example, we stayed in a dark
and dingy `capsule hotel`. It was cheap as chips, but not THAT much cheaper
than some of the really nice `guest houses｀ (hostels) we`d been staying in. The accommodation was actually ok,
but it was the atmosphere that made it a very uncomfortable stay. The place
reeked of despair, radiating from middle aged Japanese salary men who were
crying in to a vending machine cup noodle with a fag hanging out of their
mouth. It was the kind of atmosphere where even a silent smile was met with a
glare, as it threatened to shatter the overbearing misery. The hotel itself,
like its clientele, had seen better days. It was old, and the toilets were of
the Japanese squatter style, for which I have no time whatsoever. What was
booked on a half whim half joke, had backfired on us quite radically. I would have
been able to laugh at it if we were only staying one night, but we were staying
two, so the joke was on us really.
In some ways, it was a blessing and a curse
though. Because the hotel was so dire, we didn’t want to spend any time there
at all. So, despite getting home late and drunk, we were still out before 8am
the next day. In Kyoto, on the other hand, we wallowed in our hangover till
around 10am, which meant we didn`t see everything we wanted to! But, it`s an
excuse to go back even if it may be really busy and touristy.
Perhaps the highlight of my holiday, though
I use the word `highlight` being fully aware that it may be a distasteful word
choice, but for want of a better word it will have to do, was Hiroshima. Hiroshima
was possible one of the most distressing places I have ever been in my life. On
a par with Auschwitz in terms of soliciting a feeling of boundless despair within
myself at my fellow man. An entire city, reduced in an instant to ash and
rubble, at the hands of the USA. I won`t go in to all the details, but rather I
will mention a few things that I found particularly hallowing. One thing in
particular that stuck out is that alongside the plane that dropped the bomb,
there were others dropping scientific equipment, and one to film the blast,
which highlighted the American`s complete detachment with the human effects of
dropping the bomb. It was as if it was any other normal test of the atom bomb,
only this time the Japanese were the subjects. What`s more is that, at the
time, most of Hiroshima prefecture`s Junior High School students had been mobilised
in a demolition effort in Hiroshima city. Meaning, that an entire generation of
children where right in the epicenter of the blast. Many of whom, not dying in
the initial inferno, suffered skin-melting burns, and were miraculously able to
struggle home before succumbing to their injuries the next day, or day after. There
is a catalogue of victims, with stories far more hallowing than I can do
justice to, alongside school uniforms so burnt one cannot distinguish the
melted skin from the fibers of the cloth.
I think that Hiroshima is something that
all civilized people should visit. What`s more I think that Americans have an
obligation to visit. Because in the wake of one of the single most inhumane
things committed by man, America and Japan have taken radically different
policies. Japan, the victim, has pursued a policy of non-violent national
security, and is now (though, of course, it was not always) a nation committed
to peace. America, on the other hand, have continued to have a foreign policy
centered around aggressively securing resources from other countries by means
of force – with large levels of popular support no less. I think it is all too
easy for people to get tied up in to the “us” vs “enemy” dichotomy that is
constantly presented and supported by governments and media associations alike.
It makes it all too easy for us to distance ourselves from the terrible human
consequences of war. Take the “War on Terror” as a modern example. This is a
war so vaguely defined that there are no achievable goals that could bring it
to an end. It is also so vaguely defined that almost any group that one chooses
will serve well as an enemy. This is a remarkably unstable situation for
everyone, and could encourage popular support for future genocides by the
Allies against, most likely, the Middle East or perhaps China. If governments
have already gained support for the “War on Terror”, then all that’s left to do
is to convince the public that any given group are “Terrorists”, and people
will support killing them.
Of course I am not a proponent of
terrorism, and any reader who takes me to be has not picked up on the message beneath
my words. Of course, terrorism is a problem, and perhaps on its own a “threat”
to the world. But, nonetheless, propagating war, propagating the dichotomy,
will only serve to allow for more atrocities in the future. And that, above
anything else, is what must be avoided, if we are to take anything from the
aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
