The toilet naturally calls to mind once more the toilet museum of ghosts and postings past.
One more time, the proposal from Nov. 14, 2005, for those readers who may have missed it the first time:
"Toirebijutsukan, to which, among the Japanese neologisms, you gave special attention and pride of place, raises possibilities for Westerners willing to fill a felt need: pre-fabricated packages of selected material for the salary-woman who hasn't time to properly prepare her bathroom, her toilet museum, to "stock it with interesting literature" or -- let's not stop there -- other items of cultural significance that might impress a suitor who has come to call.
Gift Boxes are now ready for the current season --we work very fast here - as the Western holiday of Christmas must, we know, be celebrated by the thoroughly-modern Japanese female employee. That modern East/West woman must be careful about faux pas, and should certainly avoid buying any of those crucified Santa Clauses that some Japanese department stores, in their uncomprehending enthusiasm, have been known in the past to put on display. What better way to meet the demands of the season than to get, and receive, prepared by Western hands in distant lands, in the ultimately mysterious West, collections of cultural material that will be expressions of the authentic, and not the ersatz, boxes of "cultural productions" that no doubt can be found in those large Japanese department stores where white-gloved girls bow to you as you enter, and where the shopping experience is so very different from that in Bloomingdale's or Nordstrom's or Harvey Nichols or Harrods or Au Printemps.
At present we can offer the discerning client one of three distinct Gift Boxes of "cultural material" which will enhance anyone's Toirebijutsukan or "toilet museum":
The "Amanogawa" Box includes:
Two recent but not brand-new copies of the TLS, obviously carefully read, along with ten New Yorkers that may be rotated for display purposes, one New Criterion, two Encounters, one from 1969 and one from 1972, and a copy of either L'Express in French or Espresso in Italian, for that continental touch. A program from the Arena at Verona(last season), and an exhibition catalogue from either the Metropolitan or the National Gallery -- completes the picture of the globe-trotting lover of Western culture. A copy of Weidle's small-format "Mosaici Veneziani" with a postcard placed inside, containing English writing ("Streets full of water. Please advise") that will be incomprehensible anyway, with the picture of a famous fresco in a church in Torcello; a copy of "The Poetry of Keats" (Ecco Press), with pencil marks on the side discretely indicating to the new owner where she should place, generally but not exclusively in Japanese, her own marginalia, with a card of some suggestions -- Shizukesa-ya! or "Davvero!" or "This is hauntingly beautiful" or "cf. Wyatt" placed right there for her to copy out, in that strange bleak uninteresting alphabet.
A collection of photographs of Great Men of the Mysterious West, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Casals, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Winston Churchill, to be slipped into whatever books are to be left lying about in piles of sweet disorder, whether those books be foreign-language ones supplied by Our Firm, or Japanese books by Banana Yamamoto or Hiroki Murakami that the client has pre-bought and now wishes to place in her carefully individualized "toilet museum."
A book on the films of Satyajit Ray, published in London, and just to remind everyone that you are Japanese, and not slavishly interested only in non-Japanese things, a copy of Cahiers du Cinema, the issue devoted to Kurosawa, of which we are delighted to announce that we have acquired, thanks to the cooperation of the current director of Cahiers du Cinema, Monsieur Jean-Michel Frodon, the entire remaining stock of that particular issue. A print showing the glowing colors of fall in Newfane, Vermont in October, beautifully set off by our "traditional New England" frame, is the final touch in this, our most popular, and at $950, our most affordable "toilet museum" accessory box.
The "Hironaka" Box includes everything in the "Amanogawa" box but also includes works that indicate someone interested in mathematics and science, in case the Japanese young man you are hoping to impress is involved in R & D at a big company, so along with all of the above are included:
G. H. Hardy, "A Mathematician's Apology"
J. D. Watson, "The Double Helix."
David Smith, "A History of Japanese Mathematics."
Photographs of Bertrand Russell, Ernest Rutherford, Richard Feynman, Lev Landau, to be placed inside books in the bathroom so that they may carelessly fall out when opened.
A cover from one of the Bourbaki publications, possibly with a nice French editeur listed, circa 1947, with the oulipoesque, tel qu'en lui-memesque contents, so crazy and withal so serious contents, listed on that cover, which has been matted in museum board and framed to museum specifications, with a choice of three distinct frames: rustic, gilt, and celadon. The "Hironaka" will not exceed anyone's soroban calculations at a mere $1,250.
The "Murasaki Shikibu" Box includes everything that is in the other two boxes, and in addition, for those of the most refined tastes, copies in English of "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon" (in Ivan Morris's Columbia University Press edition), "The Tale of Genji" by the eponymous Lady Murasaki, and "The Life of an Amorous Man" by Saikaku. All three books, in English or with one possibly in another Western languages, not necessarily English, should be placed near the modern editions of the same texts in the original Japanese. The box also includes, for the wall of the "toilet museum," a New York scene by Kuniyoshi, painted during his Art Students' League period. The price for the "Murasaki Shikibu" Gift Box for the Toilet Museum is $1,995.00 until January 5, 2006 [2008 at this point, of course].
If the "Murasaki Shikibu" is ordered before December 10, not only is receipt guaranteed in time for the Western (and therefore) holiday season, but a container of dirt from the high school in Belmont, Massachusetts, once attended by the present Princess of Japan, will be included -- absolutely free, and suitable for a small shrine in the Toirebijutsukan.
The yen is rising, the Euro is falling. And the Euro will continue to fall, the yen continue to rise. The reason is not hard to find. The "two models" for dealing with immigration that have been endlessly discussed are, of course, the American and English "multicultural" model, where no pressure is put on immigrants to learn much about, much less to adapt or wholeheartedly embrace a new identity, though no one is stopped from doing so, and is indeed welcome to do so, and the "French" model where all are welcome, but must prove that they have embraced France, and French ways, to become fully French -- a cultural requirement but with no ethnic or racial overtones.
No one has been discussing publicly still a third model of how to deal with immigrants, the model that one finds in force in Japan and, to a slightly lesser extent, elsewhere in the self-confident, self-conscious, proud, and far-seeing nations of East Asia. And that third model simply does not allow for the possibility of mass immigration, and certainly not of immigrants ever becoming fully Japanese, or Korean, or Chinese. No matter how long they have lived there, or how knowledgeable they have become, even if they master the language, the customs, the manners, and want nothing more than to be accepted as Japanese, or Korean, or Chinese, it will not happen. This model of course is anathema to the advanced West, but it is looking more attractive, for obvious reasons, every day. Whatever happens to Japan or Korea, they will not be subverted from within by a large population that does not wish Japan, or Korea, well, and wishes only to transform those countries and to rid itself of their customs, manners, laws, cultural and social understandings.
So, with those currencies rising in the East, and those girls getting ready to prepare those hundreds of thousands of toilet museums to impress potential guests, now may be the moment.
Interested?"
[Posted by: Hugh at November 14, 2005 10:40 PM]
Replies by those interested in our offerings should be sent to this website care of Rebecca Roister-Doister at rebecca@newenglishreview.com.
