12.10 First Seminar - Japan & Anti Semitism

Slim Novel 12 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage

10: Seminar

They all sit at table in Professor Edwardes' conference room: Ali at its head, Edwardes on Ali's right and, on her left, Dan with black mourning band on suit jacket sleeve; then, on same side, Alfonze in work clothes, and Brenda across from him; and then Moyshe, in his black yarmelka skull cap.

   Ali opens for question.

   Dan starts: “Why is it called Japan?”
   Ali smiles knowing she had asked Dan to ask that. “When Marco Polo got to China, he heard the Chinese word for Japan. In English it is ‘Sun's Source', because Japan, for the Chinese, is where the sun also rises." Ali smiles, adding "With apologies to Ernest Hemingway." Only Edwardes and Dan get her double meaning, "And in the Chinese language then, it came out ‘Jih’Pen’, and to Marco's Venetian ear and due to later changes this became “Japan.” They themselves call the same symbols ‘Nippon’, which explains them as ‘Nips’.”

   Edwardes interrupts. “Since we have a rather young lady here, I think it proper to remind: that Nip is a bad way to speak of Japanese persons.”
   Brenda pipes up. “Yeah, I know! We called 'em Japs.”
   Dan chuckles and the Professor sighs.
   “Thanks, Bren,” says Ali who loves her pal's Bronx way of saying things as well as she loves her kisses and caresses.

   “Let me lead off by saying how I come to be a expert.”

   “Shouldn't it be 'an expert'?" interrupts the always didactic Edwardes.
   "Yeah, it sure should, Professor", says Ali with a slight sneer to her voice. "'At's why you're 'Professor' and I'm 'Ali'.  Originality, creativity and just bein' different - an't those qualities more interesting - ear catching?"
   "Oh, gotcha," says Edwardes in Ali's slang to show he really does get it.

   “I got born in Japan; won't go into the bloody details. Just t'say it was because my mom was dumb enough to run away with a SDA!”

   “Wha?” This from Brenda.

   “S.D.A. is Seventh Day Adventist because the dopes believe in the end a the world on a Saturday. They are evangelicals who wanted to convert the heathen. And Japan seemed fertile for that, so Mom and Pop went to the SDA mission in Kyoto and had Tommy and me. Then we all moved to Yokohama and my folks got killed in the big 1923 earthquake and Tommy and I were brought up by a Japanese family and then we went to live with our Uncle Guy in Cambridge Massachusetts".

   “So that explains your snooty, Harvard University accent, when you are not trying to seem common, as you are now by speaking Bronx” says Edwardes, trying to be funny.

   “Yeah. But in Japan I got a Yokohama accent. They call kids like me there, brought up in Yokohama, ‘Hama-ko’. It means ‘beach kid’ because ‘Yoko-hama’ means ‘Side Beach’.

   "Now, to Japan: Its population is half U.S's. but it's 1/25^th of the U.S. area, which makes the population density 12 times USA. Let's stop and think ‘bout that".

   Dan volunteers, “If the U.S. were 12 times more densely populated, the people would be murdering each other in daylight”.

   “Dey do it at night, now, more den I like,” says Alfonze

   “How do the Japanese manage to stay civil?" Asks Edwardes

   “Whad about birt' control?” Asks Brenda, in her Bronx accent, and embarrassing the adults who do not expect a 16-year-old to know about it.

   “OK! OK!” says Ali. “The Japanese learned to live together even crowded; but they started out very violent. Almost certainly the violence is the Ainu influence. The Islands were originally Ainu, who are like the natives in Siberia. They are not Orientals and usually described as ‘Caucasoid’ but, really, I think they are an original race from which Mongoloids, Caucasians and American Indians come. They are more hairy, explaining why Japanese are the hairiest orientals; otherwise, Ainu look like Japanese: big boned, kinda tall.
   The oriental invasion of the Islands was begun by Koreans and Chinese. For a thousand years the Orientals battled the Ainu with a lot a rape and stuff so they interbred, gradually driving the Ainu north out of the southern islands until now the Ainu are beggars, living only in Hokkaido. But their warlike customs rubbed off on the Japanese.
   "By A.D. 700 a Chinese type court ruled the southern Island from Kyoto in the south, and Chinese & Korean Buddhist priests were bringing religion and Chinese writing to the Islands.
   “Let’s dilate on the writing, which is quite interesting.”

   “Dilate?” Queries Edwardes who is a stickler over language.

   “Yeah, ‘dilate', Y'know digress into, develop the subject further.”

   “Um, yes, now I see,” says Edwardes.
   Ali continues. "They were illiterate until Buddhism came from China and Korea."

   Dan interrupts, “Like the Oirish before the Christian missionaries.”

   “Dontchya dare say anythin' bad about my ma's folks!” Commands Brenda, a little tongue in cheek. Her father is French American but the mom is ‘Oirish’ American, ‘O’Brien Oirish to be exact.

   “Dan meant nothing bad,” soothes Ali. "Some of his best friends are Micks."

   “Yeah, dem Paddies, ain't bad when dey not drinkin’,” donates Alfonze, and Edwardes chuckles.
   Ali raps the table with her hand. “OK, OK, nuff a this ethnic stuff. So as I sez, they had no writing until the priests brought the Chinese writing. It was Chinese as the Chinese spoke it 1200 years ago. Chinese writing is characters with sounds, each one a idea, like the sign for water or man or fire" (She draws sample characters on a blackboard behind her - Water = 水,  Man = 人,  Fire =火)

   “So it means the Japanese can also speak and understand Chinese?” Asks Dan.     
  “No, that’s the rub,” replies Ali. "Just like we can't read the English of Chaucer, and even worse in Beowulf, so the Chinese of now can't understand the way they spoke 1200 years ago.”
   “You are saying that Japanese is a syncretic language, an amalgam of the original native with Tang Dynasty Chinese stuck to it?” Asks Edwardes, rhetorically.

   “Precisely, my dear Watson,” quips Ali.
   Moyshe, who has been following this seriously, raises his hand.
   "What you say is interesting and educational for me, Miss Ali. But my Rabbi, just the other day in his Saturday bar mitzvah talk says the Japanese are helping Hitler and if they win the war all us Jews will be killed. How can we even try to learn about such a country now?"
   Ali had actually hoped for this question - in fact she had asked Dan to do it, but Moyshe beat Dan to it.
   "OK, good question. The Japanese got one big flaw - they never question anything or anybody in authority. And the government is led by stupid sons of samurais who ain't got no idea what U.S.A. could end up doing to a country like Japan in a war. Also, the Japanese have no idea of what Hitler means for Jews. On a person to person level, they respect and admire Jews because Jewish rich guys helped Japan against the Russian czar in 1905 and because of Jewish scientists like Einstein. ..."

Ali wants to keep it short so she assures Moyshe she hopes USA and its allies win the war quick. Moyshe, being a good-heart, feels Ali's sincerity, and sits back with no further question. 
   Ali continues to give & take.
   Seminar ends. Then follows a delivery of the biggest pizza anyone ever saw. It is a steamy mozzarella, flagrantly fragrant, gigantic pizza topped with raw vegetable galore and cut into wedges. They eat it with cups of steamy hot lemon Tetley tea.
   Thus the first Sunday Seminar.    

   For next sect., click 12.(11-13) Ali Explains - A Walk on the Wild Side