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Opinion

The performer and the audience

By Roger Pulvers


演者と観客

数年前オーストラリアで変わったパフォーマンスを見た。今思うと、それはアメリカとほかの国々の関係を象徴するパフォーマンスだったように思える。

A couple of years ago, I witnessed, by chance, an unusual performance on a Sydney beach. About a dozen young men and women were sitting cross-legged in a semi-circle with a handsome young man in the middle. They all had their togs on except the young man, who was stark naked.

After a while, the young man began to masturbate, his every move watched keenly by the others. Some moments later he reached a climax and, the performance over, the others gave him an enthusiastic round of applause.

It was certainly what one would call, in my profession, a well-made play, with a beginning, a middle and an end, though the middle part did not really last very long.

The thing that brought this event to mind was an article in The Asahi Shimbun (May 18 evening edition), written by Yamanaka Toshihiro in New York. He reports that only a very few Japanese people have had their obituaries written up, over the years, in the New York Times. The only ones who apparently made it to the front page were Mishima Yukio, Emperor Showa and Kurosawa Akira. Mr. Yamanaka seems to express a touch of disappointment in the fact that "Tezuka Osamu's (obituary) was nowhere to be found."

What should one expect, I wonder, from a country whose media is riding the fast carriage to a mission? More than ever, the American media — save for a few individuals who genuinely view the world with an objective, international eye — serves the national and commercial interests of the United States.

In fact, those two interests have virtually merged since the tragic events of September last year; and we are currently being barraged, wherever we live in the world, with the with-us-or-against-us, good-versus-evil bent of American public life. In 2002, at least, the American media is feeding on itself and getting increasingly self-satisfied with the result.

How does Japan, for instance, respond to this unabashed cultural onslaught? Should there be surprise or disappointment when world-class Japanese figures are not given their due in the American press? Might this mean that these figures are not really as excellent and worthy of recognition as we in Japan may believe? Heaven forbid.

I am an avid reader of obituaries in the Japanese press, and I can tell you that every second-rate American songwriter, whose name even I do not know, and every third-rate American television actor, from sitcoms that never went to air in Japan, are given their five or more centimeters of space. If the American press ignores Japanese creators and innovators, it is clear that the Japanese press is jumping at the chance to honor American ones, whatever the caliber of their originality or true importance may be. Japan appears to be eager to feed the American appetite for the limelight and its many commercial fruits.

I merely happened along that performance in Sydney that day. For me, the man performing on that beach — young, handsome, skilled — is a metaphor for today's America. People from other countries who crave a spot beside him are his willing and often zealous audience.



Shukan ST: June 21, 2002

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