Land of the Rising Sun

A memorable sight repeated many times in the streets of Tokyo and in many parts of the world, is the Japanese businessman concluding a conversation on his cell phone, bowing politely to the person on the other end of the digital line. That is a deeply engrained behavioral pattern signifying a profound respect for tradition, and revealing a people who attach paramount virtue on good manners, or, at least, the ritualized appearance thereof.

Of the annual half a million Japanese visitors we host in Saipan, we see a lot of young Japanese westernized in clothing and appearance, with not a few male and female Clairol-ized blondes and brunettes, and/or gel-spiked shiny hairs to the Nth strength.

To be sure, we still see the older folks solemnly wandering about as they make their pilgrimage to the land that bore, bred, and took the lives of a beloved in the grueling days of the last World War. Some evenings in early January, you might even see kimono-clad geisha-like ladies wandering about the Paseo de Marianas, oblivious of being mistaken as part of the Karaoke Bar girls that litter the Garapan environs. But that is increasingly becoming rare. The squealing tots of modern Japanese families are just as rambunctious as their counterparts anywhere in the world, given the delights of the likes of a Pacific Islands Club waterpark, or a Nikko Hotel water slide, an ice cream cone or a Danish frozen ice bar

Our visitors generally come to soak up the sun and the sea into their psyche-stream before returning their bloodstream to curdle up to the freezing air-conditioned confines of their official and personal dwellings north and south of the Honshu geologic fault lines. I once overheard a Rotarian bemoaning the travails of doing business in the islands when a visiting Japanese colleague made an unequivocal declaration. “Look,” he said, “I anxiously labor 50 weeks during the year so that I can afford a relaxing two-week vacation that will allow me to lounge in the early morning sun, or drink my beverage under the shade of the coconut tree. You live here. I would trade places with you any day!” Of course, we all know that the significance of the annual two-week visit is enhanced by the contrast of what might be tedious 50-week monotony back at the office. No matter.

My generation was introduced to the country known as the Land of the Rising Sun shortly after the ‘60s when the words “Nihon” and “Nippon” once more got uttered with respect in boardrooms across the globe. I was in one of the last 20-day voyages of one of the former SS President Lines vessels plying the old Manila to San Francisco, coming into the continent appropriately welcomed by the strung cables of the famed Golden Gate Bridge. Stopovers included Hong Kong, Kobe, Yokohama, and Honolulu. That was when I first glimpsed the tranquil landscape of these earthquake and typhoon-challenged islands sitting on the volcanic ring of fire in the Western Pacific called Japan. Up to that point, like other people, I checked on the quality of commodities by insuring that it was not made in Japan. Japan made products were deemed cheap in price and quality.

It was a very memorable stopover, not the least of which was the experience of taking the modern train from Yokohama to Tokyo. I then squandered two-thirds of my savings that was to take me through a semester of college in the mid-West for an evening in Shinjuku, starting with dinner in the spectacularly afforded views of the first rotating restaurant in the world in Ginza. My fellow penny-pinching students threw caution to the wind and went on a shopping spree for the vaunted optic and electronic products. This was when one could still get 360 yen to a U.S. dollar! It was also my introduction to a people full of paradoxes and contradictions, of mystery, and intrigue.

Geographically, the Land of the Rising Sun is understood in a spatial sense relative to China. Korea calls itself the Land of the Morning Calm while the Philippines begins its national anthem as the Land of the Morning. Hangkok art favors the meditative mood of the misty month of May to depict that calmness; agrarian Philippines play up the pantomimes of planting paddy rice in its bright sunny mornings. Guam, and with the CNMI, collectively reclaiming the geographical name of the Marianas, now professes to be where America’s day begins. Thus, the islands along the Asian continental shelf and one of the archipelagoes, have appropriated the image of being the land of mornings for the Asian continent, and in the case of the Marianas, the U.S. American Empire.

Japan’s characterization of itself as the land of the rising sun, however, reflects a distinctly Japanese preoccupation with the paradox of being faithful to tradition at the same time, systemically structuring periods of renewal of those traditions. Consider the practice surrounding the Shinto Grand Shrine of Ise, home of the spirits of all past emperors. It is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years, using the same traditional design and materials, a practice began in AD 690. In this most venerated Shinto Shrine, purity of the tradition is maintained, yet, the tradition is renewed again and again. Grounded deeply in the wisdom of the past, borrowed as well as self-generated, the rising of the sun each morning brings newness and freshness of the new day. Japan’s technology mirrors this understanding. An invention from another clime finds its way into Japanese industry and a brand new replica in miniature emerges. In here is found for those who wish to look, an essential feature of the Nipponese soul.

This week, we will be getting re-acquainted with “Nihon” and “Nippon” as we welcome to a solemn pilgrimage in Saipan the imperial couple, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. With our guests’ avowed intent, it might be well for us to mind our manners. Irasshaimase.