Why Japan?

What is it about Japan? where does Japanophilia come from? Why do some people go crazy for it, whilst others only last a weekend if that, (I've heard of people get off one plane, just to take the next one back). Of course, as with anything it's a combination of factors, but in Japan's case, I put it down to a delicious paradox- the fact that it is the home to so much that is ultra-new and also the birthplace of the uber-old. What do I mean? Well, where else can you find manga and cosplay 15 minutes from a silent, serene temple garden, with carp swimming lazily around the water-lilies? What other country has given birth to such diverse social stereotypes as the salaryman, the otaku, and the freeta?

Beneath this is the realisation that underneath all the seeming diversity there lurks the same basic premise- of taking the aesthetic to the logical extreme and seeing where it goes from there- a dislike of half-measures and compromised affections and a search for the 110% of everything. Yes, the otaku is just as driven o do what he does as the salaryman is for his thing. The freeta is just as judiciously avoiding work as his father is in going to it. Cosplay may look flashy but it is really quite a silent thing, just a pose for the camera and an effort to fulfill the look, but almost none to really get in character as such. The sheer effort is not too different from a Buddhist monk's attempts to achieve satori, through the endless private rigours of silent za-zen meditations.

Japan is a pose, nothing more. The appearance of a philosophy but not it's debate. It offers endless, visual stimulation that tells of the exotic, the determined, the end. Japan is popular for the craziness and the silence and with those who can see that they amount to the same thing? Am I exaggerating? Of course I am! Am I merely having fun with words and during parallels that don't even exist? Maybe... but the fact remains that Japan has a reputation for being a land of the old and the new- and not much in between.