One of the initial sources of information I use to reestablish contact with Japan after an absence of any significant length consists of on-the-scene newspaper and periodical articles in English published more for foreign residents and visitors than for "outside consumption".

One such feature encountered on the flight to Japan this trip aboard Japan Airlines I found in the October 1999 issue of the JAL in-flight magazine WINGS,  It concerned an expansion of the definition of "Narita Divorce" (a young bride returns from her foreign honeymoon and immediately upon landing at Narita airport files for divorce). 

In the not-too-distant past, this term was applied to a situation in which the young woman found in the course of the honeymoon that her husband was too demanding -- "wash my socks", "bring me my newspaper", "scratch my back right there".

Now the concept has come to focus on the perception that the new husband (in charge of planning for and directing the honeymoon trip as is "the man's" prerogative) does such a poor job and commits so many embarrassing gaffes that his bride can't imagine spending her life dependent on such a boorish oaf.  Some services have even sprung up to train the bridegroom -- at a week-long seminar sold as part of the honeymoon package -- to avoid the problems involved!

The second article I found in the Wednesday, October 27, 1999 issue of the INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE.  Some 1.7 million copies of a book entitled KATTE WA IKENAI ("DON'T BUY THIS") have been sold in Japan since this past June.  The book aggressively and assertively names names and describes 89 leading consumer products sold in Japan that, in the eyes of the authors and scientific findings, pollute the environment or harm living things during the manufacturing process.  Five products named in the book have already been taken off the market "for further testing".

Controversy surrounds the book.  It besmirches "the reputations of the nation's leading companies", say critics, based on faulty or misleading use of false evidence tied to out-of-date scientific studies.  No matter, counter defenders, the cause is a just one.

Whatever the eventual outcome, the book has substantially enhanced the fortunes of Japan's last important Leftist periodical: the circulation of SHUKAN KINYOBI (which published the original series) has shot up by 10,000 subscriptions since the book appeared.

These kinds of articles help begin the process of reacquainting me with Japan.  But there are dangers here as well.  The "Japan" depicted in both these stories, however fascinating and entertaining, remains something of an exotic "Other".  I still need to move towards seeing Japan at the end of the 'nineties more as a "normal" variation on the current state of human affairs, not as the strange and somehow abnormal cultural subset sometimes it is made out to be.

OCTOBER 28, 1999