Well, what I was trying to say was that Japanese stuff isn''t the be all and end all of storytelling. It does have a lot of cool stuff, and there are things we could learn from them...but I think the "manga craze" got a little out of hand. I don''t think the Japanese stuff is superior to ours or vice versa. But if we could just borrow elements from each other, then we''d be all the better.
And yes you are entirely right. The Japanese are a very contradictory lot. On one hand, they are supposed to be a very closed society, where the "nail that sticks out gets hammered down". And yet, Zen stresses the capacity to think for ones self and find his own way. On one hand the Japanese are very traditional, bordering on xenophobic, but on the other hand, they will take another country''s product without reservation and adapt it to their own sensibilities (baseball for example). And yes, to the Japanese, the attention is really in the details. I mean what other culture would make an art form out of pouring tea??
There''s an old Japanese saying, "you can tell the nature of a man by how he enters through a door, you cn tell a woman''s nature by how she closes it". The smallest things have great significance to the Japanese, so it is in the execution that matters...not necessarily the final product. One more old samurai tale....
Supposedly one day an old tea master bumped into a brash young samurai by accient. The master tried to apologize, but the samurai challenged him to a duel the next day. Knowing that he could never beat the samurai, the tea master visited a famous swordsmaster that lived in the area. He wished only that he wouldn''t show fear and to ask for advice on how to die honorably.
The swordsmaster sized up the team master and asked him to pour him some tea. With no hesitation or fear the tea master went through the ritual that he had performed thousands of times before, with no mistakes and perfect in execution. He had forgotten his fear totally as he did so. The Swordsmaster remarked to the tea master that his hands did not tremble. So the swordsmaster looked the tea master squarely in the eye and told him that just as he had conecntrated so intently on pouring tea...he must do so with just as much focus when he held his sword against the samurai. The swordsmaster said that he had already mastered the ability to concentrate..and it would be a simple thing to focus his mind on only one act....strike with the sword no matter what.
So on the next day, the young samurai faced the old tea master. But instead of finding a frightened old man, he saw only calm and peace in the tea master''s eyes. As he approached closer and was putting his hand on his sword, he still saw no fear in the other man''s eyes...only an intense concentration and one-mindedness. The young samurai began to grow fearful...he knew that he could strike down the old man, but he didn''t know if he would be able to counter the strike from the old man. The old man had already accepted the fact that he would die...but the young samurai had not. The young samurai was not prepared for ai nuke....mututal destruction. So the young samurai approached the old man, and bowed, asking for his forgiveness, and asking for a lesson in chado...the tea ceremony.
Does that make any sense? It''s not so much what is done, but how we do it that counts. And I think this gets lost on most Americans unfortunately. So perhaps I should say that isn''t that Japanse stuff isn''t better...the american fanboys reaction to it is.
