Faces & Stories

Because there are still two slots left, I’ve decided to shift the deadline of the Namazu Fish Face Contest to the 15th of October. Call me Jesus, but I want 12 Apostel too choose from at least… it’s a magic number!

By the way magic and face, have you heard about the anonymus donation of 10.000 Yen found in a toilet in Tokyo? I’ve picked two reports, BBC and Japanprobe. Another source says that the complete note was „I’m all alone, I have no future and no use for the money, give it to the people of Tohoku.“. Is s/he sick or just old? Why did s/he not give the money to an organisation? Why do so many people in Japan donate without showing their faces? There’s a bad and a good reason for that. The bad one is that you loose your face if you show any weakness in Japan (think of the people which called the refugees from „the zone“ traitors), in ye olde times losers did commit Seppuku, better dead than dishonored. But it’s not only a sign of weakness if you beg for help, to give can be weak, too. Paradox? Ilogical? Not really. If you give to people which want to get up again on their own, you offend them. If you give to those which beg, you weak them even more. Being altruistic is a very tricky thing in Japan, sort of a twisted version of the Montessori motto „Help me to do it on my own!“. It’s not frowned upon to donate there, but rather complicated to keep all these Samurai standards. The good reason is that such an anonymus donation generates more public interest than an official one. And it’s easier to follow that example. The message is „If a nobody can do it, everybody can do it!“. In other words, it’s the act, not the actor, individualism in the meaning of Western culture is unknown in Japan. The Japanese rather follow an idea than a person (obedience is another thing). And that’s the reason why the money was rather safe in that public place, even the criminal minds have this philosophy of a community. You can steal from a person, but not from a nobody because nobody is everbody including yourself. Sounds good, but it isn’t. Why? Because in the most Asian cultures there’s no such a strict dualism like our good & evil what makes them look extreme and paradox to us sometimes…