Tokyo närmar sig...

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The thing is, it's very hard to see the Western idea of liberalism in the same innocent way once you've been to Japan. For instance, if you've been brought up with Western feminist slogans like "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle", it's hard not to be impressed by an entirely different gender politics, a politics of negotiated interdependence rather than pretended independence. And it's hard not to wonder -- in the face of an obvious deep delight in being female in Japan, an obvious glow, a dolly swagger -- whether the desire of some Western feminists to shun their own gender-specificity doesn't spring from a combination of detachment and disgust?

It's exactly this sort of mistaken Protestant conception of freedom as a kind of detachment -- at its simplest, the ability to say "No!" -- that also makes us Westerners see our own bodies as charnel houses. Many Western reporters on Japan imply -- or say quite explicitly, without apparently noticing how patronizing and rude it sounds -- that Japanese women are "behind" and are "only now starting to catch up", but it may be that, by refusing refusal, they've put themselves far ahead. (Actually, I hate that whole idea of one society being "behind" or "ahead" of another, but I suppose I mean by "ahead" something like "a difference that others may end up emulating".)

Refusal -- of our era, our situation, our society, our logistical system, our gender, our jobs, our bodies -- is an enormous waste of time. There is no neutral space to step back into, no high ground from which everything can be seen, no God, no "outside", no "above", no "universal", no "justice". Just here, just now. Can you hear the sound of your own breath? How does that Darjeeling taste?