When the Japanese promise radical change, howling disappointment usually follows. “New” flavours of canned coffee or “epoch-making” tatami-mat cleaning products turn out to be only modestly ground-breaking.
In Japanese politics, where general election campaigning will begin any minute now, the phrase is an outright fraud. The last truly radical change in the Japanese political arena was in 1954 when grudgingly — and only after furious debate — they decided to put a ladies’ loo in the parliament building.
But all of a sudden, Japanese friends are saying “radical change” with an earnest glint in their eyes. Japan may be about to get its first entirely new government for 53 years, and the phrase no longer rings quite so hollow.
Commentary on the forthcoming upheaval expands in proportion to alcohol consumption, ranging from the dry (change will be undetectable) to the still-sober (change will be tortoise-paced) to the manic (Japan will be unrecognisable within hours of the result).
The boldest prediction comes from Stephen Church, a veteran Japan economist whose latest research report claims: “It is little exaggeration to say that the radical change would have a parallel with the fall of the Berlin Wall.” Gosh. Could he be right? A bloodless tsunami wreaking instant destruction on the dysfunctional politico-bureaucrat structure and leaving a new country in its wake?
The problem with Mr Church’s theory is that, like so many who invoke the fall of the Berlin Wall to make a point, he discounts the significance of David Hasselhoff. While it is important not to overegg the role of the bouffant-haired troubadour and erstwhile Knight Rider, it is crucial not to underplay it either. Because of the former Baywatch star, the fall of the Wall had a theme song. In the weeks that preceded the first mutinous sledgehammer blow, Hasselhoff’s anthem Looking for Freedom stormed to the summit of the charts. By the time that Germany was ready for the end of history, everyone in my generation was defiantly belting out the Hoff’s cheesy stanzas of liberation.
In the absence of such a man and such a song, Japan’s revolution will surely fizzle. They could try shipping over the St Winifred’s School Choir to whip up some fervour over the impending demographic timebomb by singing There’s No One Quite Like Grandma or get Bros to reprise I Owe You Nothing as a paean to credit default and the rising bad loan crisis. Somehow, though, I think this election will be anthem-lite.
The rip-off kings
It was easy to snigger at the tale of Yasuyuki Yamada, his girlfriend and their €700 lunch in the Piazza Navona, Rome, last week. Hilarious stereotypes abounded: insouciant young Japanese far from home, naively placing the task of menu selection in the hands of a roguish waiter in full rip-off mode.
Sure enough (we read with a knowing nod) the Japanese were the perfect marks and the “expert” recommendation for an alfresco summer lunch was rapacious: a dozen oysters, a lavish plate of grilled fish, a 5lb lobster, a cauldron of pasta and a good bottle of sauvignon blanc. There followed, in quick succession, the crazy bill, the complaint to the Japanese Embassy, the prospect of a Japanese tourist boycott, official panic in Rome, the closure of the restaurant and the meek offer of a free holiday for the victims.
The thing is, Japan sends loads of cashed-up tourists around the world, so it gets this sort of thing a lot. So much so, in fact, that the Foreign Ministry has a special department that catalogues and analyses the various ways in which its travelling people are conned, fleeced, insulted and generally ransacked abroad. The 2008 report comes out today and I begged the department for a sneak preview to confirm statistically just how awful those Italians are.
I wish I hadn’t: when it comes to rudeness and rip-offs, Britain turns out to be much, much worse. The vilest place in Europe, in fact.
Silent running
The weekend launch of Nissan’s first mass-market electric car raises again the strange conundrum of noise: it doesn’t make any, and there is a strong lobby of health-and-safety types who think that it should. Japan frets that its swelling army of old people will not hear electric vehicles gliding towards them; other countries worry about the kerbside welfare of children and the blind; governments and international bodies are getting involved.
In reality the threat is far, far more terrible. Think of the evolution of mobile phone ringtones. The proposed solution to the electric car issue is the addition of little speakers near the wheels to broadcast the purr of a conventional internal combustion engine.
Of course, it will start like that, just as the first mobile phones sounded like conventional telephones. But Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi et al are disturbingly vague over whether they will allow other noises to emerge. Soon, surely, people will want their cars to play music, and it will go from there to novelty sound effects — the clip-clop of a shire horse, perhaps, or the menacing rumble of a German Panzer division.
Thinking about it, the whole musical car business could be hijacked by the Japanese election campaign to give the political revolution its essential soft rock theme tune: thousands of electric cars sliding through the streets of Japan with no engine sound, but Wind of Change, the Scorpions’ 1990 anthem, warning the elderly not to step out into traffic.
Leo Lewis