The other night I watched Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 film Wandafuru Raifu (US title: After Life) on DVD. The film is based around the fanciful but intriguing premise of a way-station between death and the after life, where those recently departed have a chance to select the happiest memory from their life, have that moment reenacted for them, and then take it with them as they pass on to the after life, everything else about their lives forgotten.
The youngest subject (we are never told how any of these people have died, Kore-eda is concerned with much more important matters) is a high-school or college-aged young woman. After not very much deliberation, she selects a trip to Tokyo Disneyland as her most cherished memory. One of the case workers, herself a woman barely older than the subject, can hardly keep from rolling her eyes. Later, the two meet outside and the case worker attempts to delicately tell her that since she has worked at this way-station, over 30 young women have selected a trip to Tokyo Disneyland as their happiest memory. Perhaps the young woman might want to reflect a bit deeper into her life, and select a memory less, well, trite?
You can probably look at the title of this post and the lengthy introduction and figure out where I’m going with this. Tonight as a warm-up, I asked one of my English students, a pleasant woman in her 20’s, a researcher with a pharmaceutical company, with steadily improving English, what place she considered the most beautiful in all of Japan. Kyoto, perhaps? Nikko? Koya-san in Wakayama? Miyajima Island? No. With nary a pause, she unabashedly proclaimed Tokyo Disneyland as her choice for the most beautiful place in Japan.
I’m not sure what’s more offensive: Disneyland as “the happiest place on earth,” or Tokyo Disneyland as the most beautiful place in Japan. At any rate, I didn’t roll my eyes at the woman, or try to talk her out of her choice, or consider that moment as a good time for a vocabulary lesson on “trite,” “cliche,” “tacky,” “banal,” etc. I did think about Kore-eda and his film of cherished memories as I resolved that from here on out I should go back to the standard “where do you live, what are your hobbies, and what’s your favorite food” questions lest I want to further exacerbate a growing malaise I’m experiencing with respect to the outlook of women in this country, what I see as the overall impoverishment of Japanese imagination, and what it all means for my childrens’ future (be they daughters or sons).
I can’t help but feel that there are some people who live trying to see the world as it should be or how they want it to be rather than it actually is. And not necessarily in the “dreamer” or “visionary/activist” type way.
I guess the stereotype is the mother (why is it usually female?) in a dysfunctional family who goes about life living as if everything is fine and that everyone is really happy.
So since Disneyland, at least as the folks at Disney would want us to believe, is supposed to be the happiest place in the world, some people actually act as if it is. Not that they may genuinely or deeply feel this way, but it’s not like they prod themselves to truly question whether or not it really is the happiest place.
I dunno, I puzzle about people like this – and it’s not as if Japan has a monopoly on them… but sometimes, you just got to shake your head in disbelief.
-Jason
I’m too much interstad to study in your college.