Flying
over the Bo Hai Sea to the Sea of Japan.
I haven’t done so in nearly nine months. Prior to that I was back and forth between Beijing and Tokyo
every other month for most of the decade.
My Suica card needs charging.
It is a breathtaking juxtaposition. Tokyo’s glistening efficiencies,
disarming decency, palpable refinement.
And dull resolve for reluctant decline. Beijing’s tarnished, wounded, resurgent inevitable preeminence. Rough as all industrializations
and transcendently optimistic, fluid, blessed with unfathomable potential. Arrived. Arriving. Lost
patrol, tryst with destiny, refined, brash, intransient, intransient, proud,
proud, unforgiving, unforgiving, obfuscatalogical, obfuscatalogical. Doomed, Doomed. Anointed, Anointed.
I need to recharge my sense of Japanese perspective. It has been too long. I am basing my assumptions on
yesterday’s perspectives. Things
move fast. It is a glutton or a
gypsy’s refinement, enjoying immediacy in more than one city
simultaneously. Tokyo,
effortlessly one of the world’s greatest urban experiences. The nation, glistening with enviable distinction
and refinement. And, throughout an
alien stoicism that pushes away rather than allowing otherness to ever graph
on. Brine, defined.
Japan in opposition to China’s resurgence is the pivotal
schism of East Asia. This is Asia
and hence the world’s most pivotal roadblock. Were China and Japan to resolve their differences in some
mutually affirming manner that did not involve defeat, humanity would have a
new axis of global power projection.
Civilizational refinement would properly and undeniably assume a new
anchor for humanity.
Can we arrive at this in a manner that speaks to Japanese
dignity and Chinese dignity? The smart money, alas, is on this exchange
descending into round two, of total war. I for one reject this defeatist shuck, as weak and ignorant
and worth fighting against. Japan,
may be coming up on a bitter but inevitable turning point. Can it be a commercial
archipelago and not trade with China?
For a few more years. For a
few more decades?
Eventually, a decision will be forced upon them and the United States
and after a hiccup or two, proximity will begin to reassert itself.
Japan lost bitterly.
They cast their lot with the global hegemon, as did many other
countries. But this is a temporal
contingency. The U.S. would
invariably power share their
future, to protect their homeland, before they would consider defeat or
annihilation, for the sake of any far flung land. Let alone one that didn’t vote. Japan will ultimately have to reckon with China. If it does so now, it can consider
things from a a position of comparative strength that it currently occupies as
a waning center of power. Or
should they do so later? Twenty years
hence China might falter. But if
it doesn’t’, or if it quickly recovers, China will almost certainly be more
preeminent and Japan commensurately diminished. The longer Japan waits, the more supplicant their hand seems
to become. What a breathtakingly
different world it would be if Japan and China were to suddenly cooperate? This would signify a distinct
civilizational pivot.
This region understands center and periphery. Been that way for a few
millennium. Acknowledge who is on
top and who is subordinate at and everything is as it should be. Will Japan ever take its peace in a dignified way within
Chinese Confucian predominance? Can
China or either Korea ever forgive?
It may be this or war. Japan
would never cede such a thing, without a pungent, unfortunate and thoroughly
bald-faced estrangement with the U.S. wherein the U.S. racial pre sets
reasserted themselves and in a time of unendurable tension and calamity, the
U.S. suggested a tilt to Western Europe or simple pragmatism, to the detriment
of East Asia. If Japan experienced
a rude, bald-faced civilizational snub, it might prove the final straw, to
unleash a practical realignment of affinity, to the immediate west. A Confucian Co-prosperity Sphere with
China properly at the center. A
tsunami will seem utterly manageable in comparison. This will change Japan and China.
The metaphor de jour?
Loneliness. I am lonely on
ANA flight 1256. This is the
flight between Beijing and Haneda.
The service . . . impeccable.
People are egregiously deferential and I am showered with a surfeit of
everything. The flight is only 1/3
filled. If you travel on planes a
lot and you predict properly, this is like being able to reliably secure a
business class ticket for the cost of a bargain fare. There is no one next to me on either
side for entire damn row. Normally
if the seat next to you is free it’s a boon. But I’m talking the entirety of row 26. Nada.
That’s unnatural. People go on about China’s state owned enterprises mixing
national agendas and private company concerns in ways that disrupt the market. Well, I gottta tell you if this were
not a matter of national pride the ANA to Tokyo flight would have been
identified as a money looser a long time ago and folded. This flight is always
empty. Chinese people don’t choose
it. It is predominantly Japanese
and the numbers are no where near enough to fill it. Clearly though, we are
talking about national pride and the show must go on.
Fly on then, out of obligation. It is most certainly a matter of preserving something
face-like. China at the end of the
day does not need any lessons on how to deal with another Confucian, erstwhile tributary,
nation. It will voraciously
proceed on instinct. Move
back.
Loneliness can only mean the blues. Now we were talking about Johnny Guitar Watson the other
day, playing with his bare fingers.
And there ain’t but no one who can make you feel more sorry for a set of
six strings than the Texas bluesman who also plucked with his mighty bare
eggplant like fingers, the one and only Albert King. Not sure how he wound up on my bop mix. But it is mighty welcome. I got to see him a few times in the
80s. Mighty, mighty man. And we’d always ask for “I’ll be
Dogone” cause the live version on the 1972 release “I’ll Play the Blues for
You” is about as good as a loud, live guitar jam gets, short of you know who. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'll_Play_the_Blues_for_You
I don’t know of anyone who gets more out of just three
notes. Even Jimi. Simple. Clear.
Unmistakable. Six foot six,
and the guitar looks like a toy in his hands. And when it’s time to make the
point, well you know he’s going to 一针见血[1]
Glad to have the big man from Texas lay everything out so
accessibly as I span now, once again, these two commanding alternatives to
Mediterranean civilization.
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