I lived in the Yokosuka Naval Base for several years when I was a kid between the ages of 8 and 11 (1967 - 1970)
Suffice to say that for an eight year old Naval dependent gaijin kid, Japan was a very strange place. Odd toilets that you had to squat over...open sewers...the smell of fish...large groups of people walking around wearing face masks, pachinko ball machines...restaurants with bizarre plastic food in the front windows...
But one of the oddest things to me was that whenever an aircraft carrier came into port, there would be these HUGE demonstrations outside the base.
At around 9:00 AM several hundred Japanese riot police would assemble in a field near my house, then on cue shortly thereafter, the crowds would assemble outside the fence near the main gate with banners and megaphones...I seem to remember large groups, but it might have only been 500 or even a thousand. They would get vocal and demonstrate for a while, then again, on cue, some of them would go over and begin climbing the fence. The fire trucks inside the base parked nearby would begin spraying the demonstrators on the fence with fire hoses, knocking them off, then they would begin spraying the other demonstrators through the fence.
Shortly thereafter, the demonstrators would disperse, the area would be quickly cleaned up, and when the water evaporated, there was no indication that anything had transpired.
When I think of it now, it seemed like one big, huge, ritualized kabuki dance. Everyone knew their roles on both sides, the whole thing went down like clockwork, and then it was over until the next time.
I remember my brother and I going over and talking to a bunch of the Japanese riot police, and inviting them back to our house after the demonstration was over. We went into the cabinets and opened up a bunch of cans of stuff and poured them into bowls. I recall that we had maybe ten bowls of things like chick peas, corn, whatever.
My mom came home, and politely told the Japanese guys to leave, which they did. I have no idea what my mother thought of that. I think she must have thought we were just crazy.
“But one of the oddest things to me was that whenever an aircraft carrier came into port, there would be these HUGE demonstrations outside the base.”
That was before my time, but you may have seen something that was part of the Zen-Gaku Ren. That was the Japanese version of the 1960’s civil unrest that we had here with college students. Did the protesters look like Japanese hippies?
“I remember my brother and I going over and talking to a bunch of the Japanese riot police, and inviting them back to our house after the demonstration was over. We went into the cabinets and opened up a bunch of cans of stuff and poured them into bowls. I recall that we had maybe ten bowls of things like chick peas, corn, whatever.”
Lol, that's quite an image. I can't believe the police came over to your house for lunch, have to wonder what they thought of the vitals.
“To me, the Japanese are an extraordinary contradiction. A culture so capable of understanding real beauty and gentleness, but capable of such terrible ferocity and inhumanity all packaged together.”
Yes. A country with no borders that was totally free from threat of invasion and hostile neighbors for most of it's history, but spent much of the last 1000 years as a military state under the direction of a dictator. An incredible sensitivity to beauty, yet they have some of the most dense and hard hearted bureaucrats you could imagine. As a kid, I thought it was pretty cool that their tough guys painted, composed poetry and appreciated art.
We can learn a lot from the Japanese, but we have to keep in mind that not everything in that culture makes sense.