12 Hours in Tokyo: Faces, Smiling Everyone
Americans, be warned. When you visit Tokyo, be prepared to abandon familiar frames of reference. Like the world of Studio Ghibli, an American visiting Tokyo for the first time must be prepared to enter an alternative, fanciful, and unfamiliar world.
I am sitting in Narita International Airport at 5 a.m. after a whirlwind 12-hour layover took me strolling through the streets of downtown Tokyo.
For someone who has never been to Japan before, particularly for an American, Tokyo is disorienting. Before you roll your eyes, I wasn’t in Tokyo for pleasure. I was just passing through, but that’s another story.
There are people everywhere in Tokyo, and not just pedestrians on the sidewalk. There are people everywhere -- people to help, people working, people producing.
Around a bend, you might find someone directing traffic in white gloves, or just making sure you get to the right place. At customs at Narita, a line of uniformed officers in a row whirlwind their arms to keep the crowd moving in the right direction. "Move along, please," they say in their best English. Tokyo is a city full of people eager to please.
... but then takes a rather bizarre turn.
This newness is no accident.
Boeing’s bomber – the B-29 – had something to do with it. I flew to Tokyo from Guam today. It is a three-hour plane ride in a Boeing 777, and six hours each way in a B-29. Before the B-29, American power was mostly confined to confronting Japanese power on the beaches and in the caves of the Pacific. With the B-29, America took the war to the Japanese homeland.
Guam, Saipan and Tinian were turned into enormous B-29 bases after thousands of Americans lost their lives on the hard pebble beaches and sheer cliffs. Tens of thousands of Japanese died on these small islands in their failed cause. Americans took Saipan from the Japanese, then Tinian and Guam. A Medal of Honor winner named Thomas Baker was on Saipan and his story will send a chill up your spine.
Waves of Boeing bombers then incinerated Japanese cities from these captured airstrips, including a devastating firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 that still failed to get the Emperor to reconsider the war. It was called Operation Whirlwind, and it was the greatest destruction unleashed from the air, before or since.
A B-29 named Enola Gay and another named Bockscar made the twelve-hour round trip to incinerate two more Japanese cities, and finally brought an end to war with Japan.
So why is everyone I meet in Tokyo so astonishingly warm and friendly? Is this a story of cultural redemption, societal surrender, or just extraordinary decency? This question nags me like a killjoy all through my visit.
[...]
Then there are the dandies. How a nation that was pressing bayonets into the backs of marching Marines 60 years ago can produce men like you see in Tokyo is a mystery. Is this a byproduct of mushroom clouds and demilitarization?
If you’ve never seen the dandies, let me explain. Imagine Flock of Seagulls. Imagine Boy George. Imagine bright green shoes, deliberate juvenile-ism, and clothes like Madonna wore in Desperately Seeking Susan. They sometimes suck on pacifiers. These are men from the same nation that launched Banzai charges against American machine guns?
What happened?
howaito naito becomes s
