168
PAH..TISAN REVlEW
(designated by the sign of an upside-down jellyfish). And few but
Seidensticker, one suspects, would have the confidence - or the
irreverence - to link the selling of five million yo-yos in a single month
to Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations.
His in short is a genius for revealing to us the unconsidered trifle. In
the years following the
1923
earthquake, he explains, shopping habits
were revolutionized when department stores first allowed customers to
enter without removing their shoes; one
depato
even mandated the use of
underwear among its female employees (after several young women, at–
tempting to hold down their billowing Japanese skirts while they shim–
mied down a fire-pole, fell to their premature deaths). During the na–
tionalistic years that followed, one minister of education agitated, im–
probably, that the words
mama
and
papa
be extirpated from the lexicon,
and a "grenade-throwing contest" was held during a Tokyo Giants
game. And in the years that came after the war, "hubba-hubba" entered
the language, the hula hoop was seen on the kabuki stage, and the aim
of every aspiring actor was an
ameshon
(an acronym made up of
"American" and
shomben,
n1eaning "urination" - an An1erican tour, in
short, long enough for a good trip to the bathroom). You think Japan
is the apogee of modern efficiency? The first commercial shown on
Japanese television was run silently and backwards ..
Professor Seidensticker's heart, one feels, lies mostly in such vagaries,
and in such places as the Casino Follies, an unlikely cabaret on the sec–
ond floor of an aquarium, where children, taken to gawk at the turtles,
would steal up to catch an eyeful of the leggy showgirls. And his heroes
are such characters as the conscientious thief who, after taking what he
wanted from a house, "would stay for a while and talk with his victims,
pointing out to them the advantages of watchdogs and well-bolted
doors." Not for Seidensticker the anthropologist's labored analyses, or
the social scientist's mind-numbing G.N.P. figures. His is a history of the
city told through the appearance of new words in the comic books (like
zuzu-u-u zuzu-u-u
for the slurping of noodles), and the falling-off of
such arcane pursuits as cat-catching, silhouette paper-shows, and the art of
the
benshi,
the "human subtitles" who used to declaim the dialogue of
Greta Garbo and Gary Cooper in the pits of Tokyo movie theaters. As
perfect complement to his unconventional tour of the city, the book re–
produces a series of elegant, black-and-white snapshots of bawdy-houses,
famous murderesses, and such critical sites as the Cafe de Cancer.
Though Seidensticker has given most of his life to Japan, he remains
firmly unillusioned by it and does not hesitate to point out that the day
on which most of its laws are passed is April Fools' Day (the first day of
its fiscal year). He even suggests that the Lassie-like fidelity of Hachiko,
