For foreigners, Japan seems quite often to be a place of paradoxes. Contradictory values seem to hit us in the nose every time we set foot in a populated, densely packed area. More people means more advertising, and in modern Japan, where the product dictates life and consumer value seems to be the prevailing ideology, people tend to get caught in the cross-hairs of commercials aimed straight at their heartstrings and purse-strings. Take, for example, a walk I took here in Sendai last week on the way home from work. I passed two vending machines, each with a photograph of a lady on the front.
One of the photos, advertising green tea, showed a serene and motherly woman, wrapped in a grass-coloured kimono, and recalled a nostalgic sense of a Japan which is (according to some nationalists and even sensible people) being erased by the culture presented by the photo on the vending machine to the left. That vending machine, advertising a soft drink, showed a young woman covered in light perspiration, holding a can of said zero-calorie cola in her hand and staring at the pedestrians on the street with a look of anticipation. Sitting there next to the older, environmentalist lady, she doesn’t look much like the type who cares much about preserving the environment or the ancient Japanese culture that brewed up the elaborate “chado” (茶道) tea ceremony, the culture that has given a fair amount of inspiration to the modern “green” movement.
Even after living in Japan for 2 and a half years, I still am confused by all this banter back and forth about buying more and producing less waste! I still find it incredibly wasteful to have to unwrap each individual cold-medication pill. It’s bad enough to throw away mounds of plastic and paper unwrapping each Oreo cookie (ok, every pack of 3 Oreo cookies in a pack of 12), but when you are fighting a throbbing head and sniffling, fumbling with one tiny pill is a bit more than I’d like. With all this excess packaging and baggage – try spending more than 10,000 yen at a decently upscale department store and see watch all the fancy paper bags fly out like expensive butterflies – you would think that more people would complain. However, every Japanese person I have ever asked has given me a similar response. All the packaging and ornate bags are there to make you feel good. After all, presentation and hygiene is paramount to the comfort level of Japan. If you have 12 cookies banging around together, imagine the crumbs! You’d have basically 16 smaller Oreo cookies – and they’d all be misshapen! If you spent 10000 yen and only got a simple bag saying “Fujisaki” on it, would you ever feel gratified? Where’s the thanks in that?
Having said that, Japan does have very strict and specific waste management. Recycling isn’t just a nice thing to do here, it IS the thing to do. You put a piece of paper in the wrong bin at the train station, and don’t be surprised if someone motions you to correct it. Here in Sendai, the self-labeled “City of Trees,” the rules are very clear and adamantly upheld by the citizens. In the course of my job, I have had to explain the importance of sorting garbage to newcomers on a bi-monthly basis, and I have to say that it does impress me. The rules, the inherent and implicit gravity of the garbage laws, do their job in keeping the people sorted. They feel, after hundreds of years of Shinto-based environmental worship, that the only way to do things is if they harm the environment as little as possible. This is an important part of the ancient Japanese character, which still has roots visible in today’s fast and furious society.
It still confuses me though – would the priests at the Shinto shrine really mind that much if there cookies were a bit crumbled? Would they really mind if they saved a few trees in order to process a few less paper bags? I’m sure they would appreciate the effort taken to make these bags, but I have a feeling that to some people in Japan, ostentation would take a backseat to green sustainability.
