The Claw Girl: photo by Beatka Provis

by Simon Sellars

‘Life’s Journey: In Search of the Real Japan’. Originally published in the Age newspaper’s Travel supplement, 15 May 2004.

Two years ago I visited Tokyo. I was in Japan to see my friend B—–, an English teacher in the northern port of Ishinomaki. We hadn’t seen each other for 8 months so we were starting all over again, with a lot of fear and trepidation tempering the anticipation. But Tokyo’s textures eventually injected a high-voltage dose of Japanese electricity into our veins. Not even the trials of love and commitment could dilute that brief, but ultra-energised, time we spent together.

We originally made guarded attempts to understand Japanese culture. But we soon realised there was little sense in trying to ‘feel’ a tradition we weren’t part of. By the end of our time together, we had started to accept Tokyo on its own terms, romping through the streets like giddy kids, intoxicated by the warp-speed collision of light, sound and fashion.

B—– collects Japanese comics and anime, and the plan was to make regular trips from Ishinomaki to specialist shops in Tokyo to fuel her mania. I’m interested in Japanese tradition and history. I grew up with the Samurai TV show, with its stylised depictions of ancient Japanese magic and ritual, and at university I studied Kurosawa’s intricate period films. But I, too, loved Japanese animation and electronic music, and I wanted a definitive answer to the question: “What is real Japanese culture – computers and video games, or samurai and geisha girls?”

Somehow, it’s become a bit clichéd to even posit such a dichotomy, and sure enough, Lost In Translation sparked off a touchy debate in the US for doing just that. Critics said it harboured a preponderance of Japanese stereotypes, positioning Japanese culture as either bound by tradition or over-the-top wackiness, with nothing in between. But Tokyo is a place of real extremes. Large-scale industrialism nestles against imperial relics. Gee-whiz technology thrusts against time-honoured ritual. It’s palpably confusing and contradictory to the outsider.

Actually, Tokyo can make you feel like you’ve landed on another planet. The Shinjuku district, an inspiration for the sci-fi film Blade Runner, is uncanny at night. That’s when most surface space on the densely packed buildings and department stores is lit with bright neon exhortations to buy, sell, consume, all couched in that unique Japanese mix of cute and cool. Shinjuku was a bit much for my first, thoroughly jetlagged, day in Tokyo. B—– had travelled from Ishinomaki to meet me straight off the plane, and I was glad when she took me to a ryokan (a Japanese-style hotel) in the Ikebukuro district, with its traditional trappings – tatami mats, green tea and thin walls. There was also a tiny bath, and I had to hug my knees to my chest to get a good soak.

A Japanese guest, noticing my reticence to get into the piping hot water, informed me that bathing in Japan is an ancient ritual based around meditation and purification. ‘It’s customary to wash and soap before entering the bath,’ he told me, which is poured as hot as is physically tolerable. ‘Once in, take your time, clear your thoughts – relax. Steam yourself of all impurities. Don’t empty the bath for those who follow’ – the water should be clean as no actual washing has taken place. I contorted myself and eventually relaxed. After bathing, we even spoke of visiting the Imperial Palace, in the heart of Tokyo near the Ginza district. I also wanted to visit the various museums brimming with historical paraphernalia and artefacts from Japan’s Edo period.

Score a point, then, for ‘samurais and geisha girls’ – tradition and ritual was nosing in front.

We hit the streets the next day with renewed vim, only for my interest in Old Japan to be suddenly, effortlessly crushed. I emerged from the Shibuya train station and caught a glimpse of the three super-noisy, giant video screens inset into the side of the department-store buildings overlooking Hachiko Square. The sides of the buildings seemed alive, crawling with animated animals and super-enhanced human characters. Hachiko Square was full of people working tiny, gleaming mobile phones beaming to the internet and to forests of satellites above the Earth (possibly to Mars for all I know); other unknown devices blinked with LCD displays and unfathomable electronic dreams.

The tables had turned: popular culture was bulldozing ahead.

Dazzled, I followed my nose for neon, scouring the rabbit warren of alleys, bars and worlds never thought possible. We stumbled into a shop that sold equestrian goods and racing memorabilia. Nothing too odd about that, except that the entire three storeys were kitted out like a racetrack. Customers sat on pavilion benches inset into fake turf, watching live horse meets on a massive TV screen. Ersatz bookies pretended to take bets. To make a purchase, presumably you had to visit the lady dressed as a Canadian Mountie. What was this place – a shop or a theme park? Was it a front for something altogether different? Or was it simply a manifestation of the Japanese obsession with exact detail? Naturally, to sell horse-riding gear, one must look like a jockey – perhaps that’s the logical extension of Japanese consumer culture, where the product is weaved seamlessly into reality. But this place represented a kind of virtual reality – illusion and artifice ruled supreme.

photo by Simon Sellars

Love hotels are another manifestation of this tendency. These odd little establishments have become another cliché of Japanese life, and we simply had to experience one (because, ostensibly, we were in love). Of course, love hotels don’t have to be used for nookie – many Japanese also hire them for intense karaoke sessions in a really weird environment. And that’s what B—– and I intended to do: get drunk on sake, sing a few songs, get lost in the strangeness of it all, and forget about the urgency of our situation.

There are around a hundred rooms in an average love hotel, and in the lobby you can peruse illuminated pictures of the rooms. We considered variants of Moorish temples, baroque palaces, sci-fi vistas – all designed with the equestrian shop’s unnerving attention to detail. Eventually, we chose a room bathed in UV light, with a black-light mural adorning the main wall – a smiling moon and stars atop a fairytale village scene. Fish, teddy bear and clown motifs decorated the other walls. There was a TV with naughty videos (the naughtiest bits blurred as per Japanese convention), a big bed and a huge mirror on the ceiling. There was also a karaoke machine and a sauna lit up from the bottom in rotating hues of red, purple, orange and green.

For a while, B—– and I just sat there. The combination of black light, fairy-tale imagery and soft-porn trappings felt like an acid trip – a demented inversion of childhood memories. I’m not sure if it was romantic, or even erotic. I really don’t know what was going on in the minds of the interior designers. But from there on in, each of my senses was finally alive and permanently hotwired to the intense, multifaceted layers of Japanese culture. And they needed to be, for Tokyo has a habit of mugging the unwary, assaulting the senses with the subliminal thrill of progress.

Tokyo was virtually levelled during World War II by aerial bombing from the Allies. It’s had a lot of catching up to do, and the Japanese obsession with bleeding-edge technology, so often associated with Tokyo, could be said to be a symbolic representation of this – the city seems to be on permanent fast forward. That’s also the case with fashion. In Tokyo, trends appear and disappear in months, weeks – perhaps days. Hybrids seem to be the key, but really I have no idea what makes Japanese fashion tick.

Strolling through the Harajuku district one day, B—– was gobsmacked by the sight of an apparition before her, dressed in black – like a cross between Brandon Lee, in the gothic fantasy The Crow, and Edward Scissorhands. As she drew near, Beatka saw that the creature was in fact a young lady sporting a claw and gas mask/headpiece accompaniment. B—– engaged her in conversation and discovered that she had constructed the outfit herself. The headpiece featured an imitation crow’s beak, inlaid with a circular array of spikes. She was wearing white contact lenses and there was some kind of frosting on her black one-piece latex outfit that made her look like she had been sleeping in a freezer. She cheerfully posed for a photo with her clawed hand hanging limply in front of her. Apparently, she was on her way to high school.

Later, as B—– excitedly showed me the photo, musing on the meaning of it all, a posse of teenagers pushed past us, matching the Claw Girl for sheer effort and attitude. They were like a clan of superheroes, each in a signature outfit: one looked like Sandy from the Monkey TV show; another looked like a female Ultraman (a popular Japanese superhero); the third appeared to have a medical fetish; and the fourth was Kabuki-inspired.

Tokyo Girls: photo by Beatka Provis

‘Wait!” we called after them. We had to know more. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To a pop concert.’

‘Is it normal to dress in such a fashion?’

‘We believe so.’

That really was it for me. After spending so much time in this mad place, I fancied myself thoroughly inured to Tokyo’s gadgetry, fashion and futurism. So lulled, I imagined that a cash advance on my Visa card at the bank would be a breeze considering the technology that must be at their disposal. But there was nary a computer in sight, and the few that were in use were as old as the hills. After considering my request, a process involving head scratching and embarrassed glances at co-workers, the bank clerk consulted a huge folder, following about 20 painfully slow steps to get my money. There was much writing down of figures and entries in ledgers, followed by a frenzied bout of rubber-stamping.

After an hour and a quarter, I got my cash. All the while the clerk kept apologising and smiling good-naturedly. He knew it was crazy. I smiled back at him, ruefully, for I understood that Tokyo was having the last laugh. I’d thought I had it pegged but I realised that it couldn’t possibly provide the answer to my naive question, “What is the real Japan?”, because Tokyo is beyond analysis. It is in fact a metacity, a living, breathing, untameable organism, forever scuttling expectations.

Soon after, I prepared to leave Japan to work in London. B—– informed me she wouldn’t be coming along, like we had tentatively planned – she was returning to Ishinomaki. It was an emotional moment and there were tears, because on one level our Tokyo romp had failed to have the desired effect – our relationship was clearly over. But we’d found our own personal playground there. Perhaps we’d never see each other again. Perhaps we’d move on to different partners. But we both knew that nothing could ever surpass that experience.

And nothing would ever be the same again.