JAPONISME: Some thoughts about culture and identity

Chariya:   Each different culture seems to have a different ideas about what the Japanese are.

Daiki:    (chuckling) Most Japanese themselves do not know what they are.

Bhäraté:   The whole attempt to define "self" in terms of any static artifice is bound to fail. . .

An-Yi:     Of course! That doesn't stop people gazing into the mirror, and imagining 
           so-called "national characteristics".

Bhäraté:   Perhaps our whole grammar of identity is wrong. Isn't the "self" is actually 
           a verb, not a noun? There is no "self", only reiterative "self-ing".

An-Yi:     . . . wasn't that what Robert Pirsig was trying to say?

Chariya:   Pirsig?

An-Yi:     You know, that "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" guy.

Daiki:     But I do not have a motorcycle . . .

Bhäraté:   And I do not have zen . . .

An-Yi:     Anyway, everything worth saying has already been said.

Chariya:   Oh.


=====================================================================================
from _Pan-Asian Pulses: Poetry, Art, and Dialogs about Asia_ by T Newfields
SUMMARY:  A conversation about identity, nationality, and stereotypes.
KEYWORDS: Nihonjinron, Japaneseness, national characteristics, Robert Pirsig

Author: T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955)
Begun: 2000 in Nagoya, Japan ≜ Finished: 2019 in Yokohama, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} Granted

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TRANSLATIONS 

ESPAÑOL:  https://www.tnewfields.info/es/japonismo.htm
NIHONGO:  https://www.tnewfields.info/jp/japonisumu.htm
ZHŌNGWÉN: https://www.tnewfields.info/riben.htm