Volume 48, Number 11 · July 5, 2001
The Japanese Malaise
By Ian Buruma
Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan
by Alex Kerr
Hill and Wang, 432 pp., $27.00
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel
Vintage, 366 pp., $14.00 (paper)
Many things came to mind as I strolled through Shibuya, in western Tokyo, on a balmy afternoon in the cherry blossom season this year. But the economic crisis was not one of them. Dense crowds of mostly young people rushed about in a frenzy of consumption. Coffee shops were full of teenagers chattering on their candy-colored cell phones. The designer boutiques, record stores, video and DVD stores, short-time 'love hotels,' cinemas, pinball (pachinko) parlors, discotheques, and a wide variety of eateries and bars all seemed to be doing good business. The fashion for hair dyes mottled the usual sea of black hair milling around the railway station with patches of yellow, red, and purple. The average age of these crowds cannot have been much over twenty-two, and the screeching advertising jingles, featuring dimpled teenage television stars and loony cartoon characters, projected on giant screens on multistory shopping emporia, were clearly aimed at them.
Review, 4187 words
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