The Japanese are coming! Now there's a fresh twist
and just when Pearl Harbor seemed poised to become
another Asiamerindian household word amid
electronics, megavision and technological hoopla.
Surprise. They're outslugging us. We're cannon
fodder amidst cunning economic wiles. The "sneaky"
Yellow Peril (updated and given a newer "slant" from
that 19th century prejudicial posturing) has gone
awry. No death march at Bataan. No G.I. blues. Old
Cornpipes General MacArthur at ease; Inchon still
years away. Where is Emperor Tojo when we need
him? Who remembers the Aryans of the East? A
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?
Is SEATO still intact? If Korea, Formosa, Singapore
and Hong Kong are "little Japans" does that mean
we're to become, by default, the new coolies?
Tha land of the Rising Sun is broader than a battleship
listing in heavy seas -- it's the New world Order. Is
North America being prepared as hewers of grain and
drawers of petroleum? Alas, co-existence brings
dilemmas: the Toyota outwits even a "K" car. And
them outpacing our GNP at 6% per annum. It's enough
to rethink the whole scheme of things. They're
obviously in the forefront of the New Economic
Policy. More than just "Nippon" -- that's simply a bad
press release from the dark days of a misunderstood,
but euphemistically labelled "second global conflict".
Rubber and fibre sanctions will do it every time. The
Arizona and Oklahoma will testify to that. Feudal
Japan would never have tolerated it, either. Who's to
say the Samurai are caught up in splitting hairs?
Admiral Perry should have stayed out of Tokyo Bay.
The Earthquake of 1923 just made things worse.
Land's End means more than Manchuria and resources.
Industry and wily opportunism have broader vistas.
The Kuril Islands are a No Man's Land but so are the
Ainus, a primordial white race of Asia.
What's red and white and comes in with the tide?
America. Compared to the Japanese miracle, it's all
washed up. It's hard to contemplate N.Y.C. as a
suburb of Osaka, but try. The Japanese believe in
communal bathing, so will North Americans when the
recession hits full stride. Remember, shower with a
friend.
Japan is a land of aura. Of mystery. Genghis Khan
never got there in one piece but sent his legions
anyway. Flotsam and jetsam. A bully vanquished.
1066 in reverse.
Britain was the workshop of the Victorian world.
Japan is the Britain of the universe. The whole cosmos
is borrowing her tricks. No one does things so
efficiently. No one has developed cooperation to such
a fine "T". Nowhere is individualism shepherded to
the goal of the "greater good".
Pierre Trudeau would be pleased. "To each his own
according to his worth." Sounds impressive. Does that
mean Jaffa oranges are safe to eat -- mercury and
cyanide poisoning notwithstanding. Will the Levant
acknowledge the supremacy of the Orient?
What's new about mulberry leaves? Are silk worms
interlopers, too?
Shogun is too realistic for the narrow orchestration of
facts. The difference? They play to win.
Hands down, Kirin makes a wonderful beer. Sushi
bars are all the rage. Leyte Gulf was more than a
tempura explosion, Corning Ware or "Made in Japan"
labels produced in bulk.
Coral Gardens is a real and legitimate extension of the
Rice Factory idea.
Cipangu. As you like, what you will. No race has
undergone a swifter transformation in the world's
eye.
They deserve more than groping admiration. They
deserve our admirals, too. Who else outfoxed military
victory reversing it from the insides cadaver out? The
peter principle enshrined. The victors don't enjoy the
spoils.
The Lion's Share is as it should.
55, 56, 57
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HOMUNCULAR FORMS
Cape aux Morts.
Cape Diable,
Points of Massacre
Rocks and Island
a plethora of Wreck Bays.
But on Funk Island, nothing matters.
Brahmsian rhetoric could describe the island
Prokofievian,
the sound of Mars
homuncular forms;
an imperative monotone.
Murrelings fell from cliffs into the sea,
rose and floated in foam, screaming.
Olivaceous puddles.
Murres and gannets, kittiwakes,
sun splashed white & pitiless
light on rock --
argon, radon, krypton
seasons of millennia suffocating
in the original gases of earth:
xenon, neon.
Granite intestines
with its outer edge lost
in the darkness between the stars.
58
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ANTARCTICA
Perhaps it is needed to balance the planet: to provide
employment for penguins, or that ice in the form of
crystals calls forth tiny sleighs.
That the orange hibiscus be associated only with
deepest tropics
...plankton learn to feed Baleen whales
And iron hulks, off ships. submit to greater Masters.
the elements.
SECOND THEORIES
Another supposition projects...
snowy wastes are but vapour trails of jets and tatter
sails.
Sleet comes only from cannonized rain, galvanized by
inclement ironmongers.
Yet a third hypothesizes frozen energy is stored in the
form of ice caps and that the lost amongst departed
souls are reborn with every powdery breath.
Ptolemy knew of a southern polar continent. Cook
and Shackelton attempted separate conquests. Ships
voyaged as early twentieth century probes amid
frozen stellar space nudging Earth's feet.
Footprints the size of muskets where left as evidence.
So were a few red flags. No oxygen bottles trailed the
ascent like those that packed Everest. Amundsen as
to Hillary across the South Sea face, yet this
Matterhorn has a logic and bedevilment all her own.
Norway and Russia claim exploration of her frigid
body. The British in the first virginal thrust
christened Queen Maud Land after a brilliant
courtship. Shades of Spencer and his Faery Queen;
the Kron Prins Olaf Coast, anyone?
Ice. South of the Antipodes. The floor of the world.
Magnificant pack to the drunken global jaw, growlers
or submerged ice packs. A cold porterhouse steak to
ward off the combattive edge, the chronic boxer's
inflamed orifice and eye -- the nosebleed's staunchest
friend.
Terra Australis Incognita, the supposed southern
continent; hoof of the Cenotaur stringing men like a
bow across nipples like raw wounds. clotted hair and
blood on a precipice for a chest.
59, 60
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