Egoism

I knew about the Japanese before I started to write about them that they are a highly egoistic culture. As I remember the religion is Shinto and I don’t know anything about it even though I pursued Asian studies for a year in High School. I got blown out of the water myself after that and forgot everything I learned. Hence, “saving face.” Avoiding embarrassment in defeat. This was not possible in the wake of World War II. But the spirit did not die. That was what I was forgetting. I cannot remember the image for Japanese pride, it has to do with the image of a red sun? They need help in a way that has to happen, at the same time they would rise again against their foes and that includes us, given the chance, which is something I was completely naively not seeing. I’ve heard it said that healing from a war lasts 400 years! Planet Earth is so torn by warfare, the hostility itself is some kind of evil factor, a toxin, not just socially but in the environment; I believe the food we eat is becoming impure, those poor sick cattle just like the poor little white feeding mice they give to pet snakes. (I am of the generation of the movie “Soylent Green.” I won’t try to explain, you have to see it.)

So, the Japanese today in America and elsewhere and in Japan have to be treated with kid gloves; for their pain, for their pride; the message of the pandemic is that we all need to be in this together, set aside the old racial barriers and work together on the problems we have been ignoring with the environment; the environment; the environement. Or we may lose our earthly home.