Retaining Warmth
Today there was a special lecture on my campus about Murakami Haruki. The lecturer, a former employee of my university and current employee at Kisei University, began by talking about the March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor crisis, talking about how the people of those areas had to adapt to a way of life they had grown unused to. The irony in this is that it’s a way of life they lived for hundreds, thousands of years before. A lifestyle without air conditioning even in the mid-summer heat of Tokyo, where they had to use うちわ and spray the ground with water to lower the air temperature a few degrees. People had to step, if only a little bit, away from the Internet Age.
A speech given by Murakami in Spain (if I remember correctly) after the earthquake of course turned back to the events. It’s not something we as world citizens can’t ignore, and certainly not something a Japanese citizen can ignore. That event was a world changing one, he said, but it cannot be a decisive moment. Change is a constant in this world.
Yet at the same time, we’ve walked into a territory in which our attention spans are short. Though Murakami’s 1Q84 was originally released before the March disaster, the lecturer drew a connection between some of the things Murakami wrote and the things he said in that speech. Aomame and Tengo were able to retain the warmth of a single moment from twenty years before, a feat that we seem incapable of today. We’re waiting on the edge of our seats for the power to come back on so that we can forget about change.
When I first ventured into the world of 1Q84 I found the story surrounding Aomame and Tengo to be entirely too idealistic. Perhaps it’s because I’m not quite done with the book (roughly 600 pages in), I don’t know. I thought it was like a bad cliche involving love conquering all and whatnot. But when that particular angle was put on the story I thought maybe I could look at it with a more open mind. Aomame and Tengo are not a simple love story. They are a hyperbolic device to show this lack of warmth society has taken on, and I don’t think this is a theme exclusive to 1Q84. Such themes can be found across almost all of his work.
This idea of retaining such a warmth after so many years is something I began to ponder as I made my way home after the lecture. Since coming back to the States, to some degree I’ve felt my hometown is a few degrees colder than I remember it. I’m not talking about the weather, though that certainly applies as well. What I refer to is the way people are so caught up in everything that they don’t slow down, they don’t hold onto the positive things.
I’ve had a certain amount of difficulty in readjusting to the life I’ve come back to. Reverse Culture Shock is a very real thing, as strange as it might seem. Though by now I’m used to rude service, a lack of okonomiyaki shops, and seeing Katy Perry rather than Arashi, other things remain. A year creates gaps in friendships that are not easily identifiable.
It was today that I came to realize what that specific gap was. Somehow in the absence the dynamic has shifted. Everyone is on the move constantly. Even if we go out for fun, we’re doing a specific activity. We’re at the movies where we can’t talk, we’re pouring our attention into video games, we’re at a club dancing to music too loud to talk over. My friends who often sat and chatted on MSN for god knows how long every night have even gone off to do their separate things. I realized this when I thought of the izakaya we went to last Friday. My Japanese class just sat down with some drinks and got to know one another. I’d wondered why I felt so happy when I woke up the next morning. Now I know: it’s so rare that there’s time to sit there and just talk.
That was the thing about Hiroshima. We were a small group of kids in a small town. In some ways we were forced to sit down and talk. We had to get to know each other and to make our own community. For activities we didn’t have cheap movies, our beloved gaming systems or clubs. We could go on hikes, sit in the library, eat at a restaurant, go shopping, cook or watch movies in our dorms, or sit at a bar. Aside from karaoke, these were mainly the ways we spent our days. These are all activities that force one to add conversation to the activity. Even though we might have had nothing in common, even though we were people who might never have had a vague interest in each other back in our respective countries, we had to get past these differences. We were forced to become the kind of community that has disappeared in recent years. The concept of “neighborhood” is very different from what it once was. It’s so easy to hole yourself up and create barbed wire fences around yourself in the modern age.
Even beyond this, we were all thrown into a foreign country and curious. We wanted to know about each other’s lives. “I used to always do ______ with my friends,” was an interesting enough topic. The things people take for granted were suddenly interesting. Coming back, however, people don’t want to know more than, “How was it?” Maybe they’ll have a specific question, but they don’t want more than that. Your random tidbits get to be annoying, and after you get this reaction enough you’ll feel annoying.
It feels cold when people don’t want to share things. It’s cold when people don’t want to sit down and talk. All it seems like we want to do is talk at each other. It’s this world we live in – it’s rare for such communities to exist. The internet is perfect for talking at people. It’s the lifestyle we’re coming to know.
This isn’t to say that I want to do away with the internet. I’d cry as much as most of you would. It’s just to say that knowing that sense of community, it’s hard for me to return to a world where we have the luxury of hand-picking our social circles. There’s something amazing about that moment when someone you don’t expect to confides in you. There’s a thrill in being thrust into a group where you might hate some of the people you must see on a daily basis. If nothing else, it gives you all a mutual topic: “God, did you hear about ______’s latest shenanigan?”
Yeah, you HUSAs know exactly whose name goes in that blank.
I guess I’m saying that Murakami and that lecturer are both right. We’re moving too quickly, but we’re doing so to shy away from perpetual change. It’s a contradiction. We’re forgetting the feeling of holding someone’s hand too quickly. I think I want to slow down a bit. We used to go for midnight walks along the Mississippi River. We used to sit in the parked car talking about nothing. We used to walk around the neighborhood to nowhere in particular laughing at a plethora of old jokes. We used to slow down and talk. What happened to those moments I miss the most?
