Japan: To Do A Futile Thing Beautifully

For those who don’t know, I lived in Japan as a child, from 1992 to 1997. Most of my baby photos show me and my brother running around in color-coordinated jinbei and yukata. Tatami mats were the first beds I can remember. Hi-Chews, 7-Eleven onigiri, and Want Want rice crackers remain the most nostalgic snacks of my childhood.

For me, Japan is a country, a culture, like Atlantis: forever at risk of receding into the seas of time. Even now, the diffuse glow of Akari lamps behind soft shōji screens acts as an ignis fatuus, luring me back through the bogs of memory to that lost realm of childhood.

What a joy, then, to return, to see Japan anew through the eyes of my love on our honeymoon and her first time in Asia.

This time, I promised myself I wouldn’t let the memories slip through my fingers. Even as I shared with Marissa the Japanese concepts I hold so close — mottainai, ikigai, mono no aware, wabi sabi, yugen, shibui, ma, mujo — I couldn’t help but betray my Americanness, my commitment to materialism. The reflex to gather, to rescue, to hoard — scraps, stamps, and souvenirs — overtook me, like a desperate bowerbird, hoping against hope to preserve minutes, hours, days, weeks in amber.

Of course, I know this to be a fool’s errand, that the best moments of our lives — the ones we’ll cling to — are but gossamer.

But there’s a Bukowski poem I love.

It begins:

“Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it,
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.”

Lately, I’ve started to believe: to do a futile thing beautifully, for the sake of another, is what I call love.


So here’s to you, Marissa — I love you. And I will always try, perhaps in vain, to rescue your favorite seashells from the sea.