1. THE JAPANESE SOUL – AND OTHER IMPONDERABLES

I landed in Japan for the first time in the early spring of 1972, just as the cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom along the Fukuoka canals. Fukuoka (of all places) became my initial experience of a Japanese city, simply because of the exigencies of air travel half a century ago. There were few nonstop long-distance flights anywhere – one had to leapfrog from one city to another, often spending a night or two at hotels along the way. Between Sydney, Australia, my starting point, and Hiroshima, my ultimate destination (where I’d been hired to teach English), I had to make four ‘fuelling stops’: at Darwin, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Fukuoka. Fukuoka then was not the hyper-active industrial port it is nowadays. It resembled more a quiet backwater with a relaxed small-town atmosphere, and its canals gave it extra charm. So, after settling in at my hotel, I enjoyed an evening stroll along a nearby canal under freshly budding blossoms that shone faintly pink in the moonlight. I began to feel I had already entered the enchanted realm of haiku poetry.

Before long, however, my aesthetic reverie was interrupted when I was approached by a Japanese man a few years older than me (I was then a tender twenty-six) who stood directly in my path with the obvious intention of engaging me in unwanted conversation. Since I already had plenty of experience being approached this way in places like Tijuana, Kowloon, or the seedier areas of many North American cities, I immediately put my defences up, suspecting that he wanted to sell me something illegal, con me in some way, or perhaps get up to something even more nefarious. But, much to my relief, it turned out that all he wanted was to ask a question. And such an unexpected, innocent question it was that half a century later I still remember it clearly. In painfully well-articulated English, he asked: ‘What do you think of the Japanese soul?’

My answer was obviously not so memorable, because I no longer remember it, but I imagine I excused myself by saying that I had only just arrived in Japan, so it was a little early for me to make any pronouncements on a matter so profound. Whatever my answer, it was certainly not intended to poke fun at his question.