My failure to capture the archetypes indicated that perhaps they didn’t really exist, and this was
further confirmed when my Japanese acquaintances would laugh about me being more Japanese than they,
and taking interest in cultural rites which they were indifferent to. I’d ask people if they would like to check
out this or that temple, this festival or that festival, but the Japanese kids I spoke to weren’t interested. I
equated this with my own New York indifference to the Statue of Liberty, or Empire State Building for
example, and realized that perhaps they and I weren’t all that dissimilar.

I started doing Zazen meditation, not as an engagement with another cliché, but because I thought that
it would be a genuine eye-opening experience, and too good to pass up. It also occurred to me that while in
Japan I should attempt to learn as much about the things that were surrounding me as I could, so I picked
up several of D. T. Suzuki’s books on Zen Buddhism, plus some others on Japanese gardens. Zen, as far as
I could understand, promoted dissolution of the self which was really the antithesis to American thinking,
and an extremely foreign and dangerous concept for me to consider. I noticed its prevalence within
Japanese daily life. The people did seem extremely similar to one another, but not in a bad way, just less
egocentric. Even the arts of Japan are not a testimony to personal achievement, but to nature, and the subtle
beauties of the world without. After reading these books, I learned a new way to appreciate the Zen garden,
the Ikibana display, or even the Haiku. I came to realize Japan as a place whose people are historically and
culturally concentrated on their Island, and who define reality through it. Indeed, all the Japanese
involvements with nature are in some ways more involved with the nature of Japan specifically. I had never
seen a place whose language, culture, people, and land were so intertwined and involved with each other.

Though not Japanese, I could still understand the benefit of selflessness, and the beauty of such a concept.

To truthfully invest in it would mean the shattering of all my previous ideas of structure in my life, and
making a valiant and honest effort to not find happiness per-se, but the non-duality between happiness and
suffering, and the non-duality between myself and the world. Zen doctrine states that everything is one and
nothing simultaneously.

In practicing Zen, and reading its literature, my eyes became wide open. I began to remember the
inconsistencies between different people, and through that, was liberated of stereotypical thinking. I
remember having previously thought that being an American would automatically make me a romantic
with Japanese women. The three girls that I remember from Japan actually gave testimony to a dynamic
much less general than that. Firstly there was Midori who called me “kiza” or “pompous” when I tried to
kiss her on our first date, but later became my friend after I apologized. Then there was that passionate
stranger I met one night at a club within Kyoto’s city center who I fell deeply in love for a second before I
lost her to the night. Thirdly there was the charming Moeko, who I met at school, and actually still speak to.

Not a “girlfriend” per-se, but a companion at times, and very pleasant company, though all too familiar with
the same cat and mouse game I was used to from back home. How can I qualify any of these girls as
signifying a Japanese cultural consistency, and not specifically a “Midori”, “Kyoto Stranger”, or “Moeko”
one? Everyone I met was different in their own way.

The deeper I investigated the Japanese cultural idea that I had had in America, the more that idea
became realized as generality that harbors much nuance. Surely some sweeping ideas can be made about
Japan, and I have some photos or memories of people to prove them, but within those front-running labels,
more elusive truths are revealed, and “Japan” really becomes a place of diversity, not unlike America, and
perhaps even like every other place in this world. Stereotypes are derived from vague truths, but in reality,
as Moeko succinctly put it in her very last words to me, “life is unexpected, desyoo!”
10



Selected Essays
from Second Competition
(2006-2007) 11