A Gaijin's Guide to Japan: An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture
An alternative look at Japanese life, history and cultureYour Rough Guide or Lonely Planet book can tell who where to stay or what to see, but how do you really get under the skin of Japan? In this book Ben Stevens explores the serious and the frivolous, the history and the obsessions of a fascinating nation.Taking an A-Z walk through Japanese culture, A Gaijin's Guide To Japan looks at everything from akachochin bars to chikan (the weird blokes who touch you up on trains), geisha, inari shrines, karaoke, omikuji (sacred lottery) and ending up at zen. With a fair sprinkling of celebrity mentions - from David Beckham to soap opera star Yong-sama - and handy guides to kanji and sushi this is the perfect book for the Japanophile in all of us.Ideal for readers planning a visit to Japan but also to armchair fans of Japanese culture.
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A GAIJIN’S GUIDE TO JAPAN
An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture
Ben Stevens
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by The Friday Project in 2009
Ben Stevens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constrains in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781906321215
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007347421
Version: 2016-09-22
for Kazuyo
Table of Contents
In 1853, a Reverend Samuel Wells Williams—in Japan to act as translator to Commodore Matthew Perry (SeeBlack Ships, The)—declared the Land of the Rising Sun to be ‘…the most lewd of all the heathen nations I have seen’.
As it transpired, however, the good Reverend was a bit of a dork who couldn’t even speak Japanese all that well, so we shouldn’t take his opinion too seriously. He was merely distressed that women laboured bare-breasted in the paddy fields—a fact which, if he’d lightened up a little, may well have actually put a smile on the miserable old coot’s face.
Since then, a host of academics and other experts on Japanese history, language, culture and customs have pondered such important questions as: Why did nearly every Japanese woman under the age of thirty go nuts over David Beckham during and after the 2002 World Cup? Why will saying ‘Chin-chin!’ at a Japanese drinking party result only in stony stares and an awkward silence? And is it really true that many samurai warriors liked—in their spare time—to get ‘down and dirty’ with one another?
Here, finally, are explanations concerning these and many other weighty matters. (Around 200 of them, in fact.) I have compiled this book while residing in Japan, teaching English for a living (surprise, surprise), immersing myself in judo and karate training (the origami course was full) and occasionally indulging in the mystical, ancient art of karaoke.
In A Gaijin’s Guide…, I set out to record everything that struck me as being relevant to this fascinating country. You hold the end result in your hands. Hopefully it will entertain, enlighten and otherwise delight you. Now, hajimashou—let’s begin…
ABE, SADA
I can pretty much guarantee that any male reading this is shortly going to be crossing his legs and wincing…You ready? Okay—born in 1905 to a respectable family of tatami makers, Sada Abe became a rebellious teenager whom her parents, in despair, sold to a geisha house. Unwilling to undertake the years of rigorous training necessary to become a geisha, however, Abe became a prostitute instead.
She seems to have had an insatiable appetite for sex, indulging in a string of lovers, as well as paying customers. However her physical desire came at a cost: on several occasions throughout her life, she would require treatment for syphilis.
It was when Abe quit prostitution to become a waitress that she met the man whom she thought would become the love of her life. Kichizo Ishida was the (married) owner of the Yoshidaya restaurant in Tokyo where Abe worked, and the pair were soon embroiled in an affair. His sexual stamina left even Abe reeling; on occasion the pair remained in bed for anything up to four days, with Ishida sometimes demanding that a shamisen player perform for them as they made love.
When Ishida rejected her for a time and returned to his wife, Abe was devastated. They briefly resumed their affair—this time experimenting with ‘erotic’ asphyxiation (they tightened an obi or ‘belt’ around each other’s neck at the moment of climax)—but Abe was paranoid that Ishida would leave her again.
Early on the morning of May 18, 1936, Abe strangled Ishida to death (using their treasured obi) as he slept. Then, using a knife, she hacked off his penis and testicles before depositing them—wrapped in newspaper—in her handbag. (Kind of makes the old bunny-boiling routine all seem a bit tame, really.) Using the blood to write ‘Sada and Kitchi together’ on the bedsheets, Abe then went on the run, managing to evade the police for three days before being captured (by which time the ‘Abe Sada Incident’ had successfully scandalized the whole of Japan). She told the police: ‘…I knew if I killed him, no woman would ever touch him again.’
At the resulting trial—and contrary to her own wishes, as well as those of the prosecution—Abe was not given the death penalty. She instead received a mere six years for the murder of her lover and the subsequent mutilation of his corpse. (The luckless Ishida’s genitalia, meanwhile, were put on public display for a time at Tokyo University’s Medical School. Nothing like letting the poor sod rest in peace, was there’)
