Sunday, March 20, 2011

Creatures



Creatures surround me in Japan. They have no blood or sinew to move around with but they are everywhere. There is nothing creepy or supernatural about them. They are just there, as the birds that reside in the trees and bushes of my backyard are, even if I cannot see them. Out a bus window, when an elevator door closes, in subterranean walkways, up the side of buildings; I am aware of them.

They are piled up in arcade games, hang off cell phones and backpacks, stand guard at temple entrances. They advertise on the side of shopping bags, enforce rules on roadway signs and adorn bento boxes. They are corporate logos and live on the front grills of cars.

The creatures can be sacred and profane, cajoling and demanding, edgy and cute, entertaining and menacing. And I mean “and”. What I have noticed about the Japanese is their comfortableness with the singularity of duality. I lack a better way to describe it.

Here in the USA life is more cut and dry. We have only two parties (usually), we like things simple, just give us two choices and that is enough. Be dam-ed with the complexities of the world. We want it one way or another and are comfortable with this even if we know it is a gross misrepresentation.

Think of our beloved city of Chicago. We are going to have a mayor not named Daley. And though we know this is for the best, deep down inside I am sure even strident opponents of the Daley regime are nervous. They had a well-defined foe in him. It was they against him, but those days are over.

Of course this duality does not exist for all creatures. Some are painfully cute and others, well, I know to give them a wide berth. They may be comfortably evil, but they are evil none-the-less.

I see “cute culture” in all walks of life in Japan. In cityscapes and on mountain trails, whether state sanctioned or anarchistic. It is hard to miss it walking down the streets of Tokyo. It seems a large part of the society participates in or consumes it in various ways.

I am part and partial to this. When I look around my house I see everything from trolls to saints perched on various precipices. Recently after my mother died I was sorting through her things and came upon several of my father’s beloved objects. He always had a small troll (who’s hair he had closely shorn) hanging from his keychain. In opposition to his worship of false gods my mother had a small icon of her namesake St. Teresa close by.

I suppose there is a certain duality in this but let’s get back to Japan. One thing I notice is that most the creatures are fuzzy save for one and that is the only reptile I see represented, the frog. Froggy is everywhere.

Somehow I missed froggy on my first trip to Japan. My senses were overwhelmed but not this time. This time I saw frogs on top of frogs with more baby frogs clamoring all over them. At one particularly large example I asked out loud to no one in particular, “What does this all mean?” and a friendly fellow traveler explained the play on words.

Frog or kaeru has the same pronunciation as the Japanese word for return. So frogs, because of this lucky coincidence, are lucky. They represent the returning of things (family, friends, money), which have gone or have been given away, as well as people or things returning to their place of origin. A frog croaks and brings good luck to travelers.

I guess we have St. Christopher who continues to show up on dashboards even though he was defrocked years ago. I tend to think I am above the fray but I am reluctant to take the St. Christopher medal off my trawler’s pilothouse wall. Why tempt faith when you have someone, be it an inanimate object, so willing to help you navigate through life’s shoals.

Volume 5846 (4), 3/18/2011