Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
I think my key summation of the philosophy of the Japanese people may be described with the adjective "deliberate"; although other phrases such as "with elegance" or the Japanese "きれいに" might illustrate the idea more charmingly. I am using this word to describe a wide scope of the Japanese condition, although it can most plainly be demonstrated through its realisation in the way the Japanese conduct themselves day-to-day. Every action, at least when in public, must be taken deliberately and with care. Everyone must think several steps ahead to prepare their future action and to develop responses to different eventualities, this is in pursuit of being able to carry out the required response with precision and elegance. Every action must be carefully planned before executed, and when executed should be done so without any unnecessary haste, as if you were approaching a skittish animal. The Japanese tea ceremony is maybe the archetypal example of this inclination. Here each step of the process is fully understood before the ceremony begins by both the server and the served. Each participant is to follow the correct procedure slowly and carefully in a collaborative dance. Neither side wants to upset the other's performance, and each requires the other to do the same to properly carry out theirs. This social dance can be seen throughout everyday life in Japan: being served in restaurants, waiting in a queue, shopping, talking with friends, riding the train, bathing, visiting shrines. Every activity has a carefully defined set of rules to be followed, to an extent that is reserved only for ceremonial occasions in the West.
As a Westerner in Japan you can't help but feel like you're stepping on peoples toes. We haven't been taught the moves and as such are just unable follow the invisible dance, even if you can certainly feel the pressure of it. Its not that Westerners are necessarily rude, in Britain we also have a complex ruleset that, while not as strict as Japan's, still trips up foreigners constantly (Japanese tourists very much included). But Japan's seems special in its prevalence and ubiquity. There's a strange phenomenon of social anxiety in tourists coming to Japan not often seen for other countries: so many guides, articles and youtube videos have been made preparing tourists on Japanese etiquette, or "what not to do" to avoid offence (although it seems the Chinese haven't come across them yet). This seemingly peculiar deference to Japanese culture is often chalked up to Western Orientalism, but in reality is merely a representation of the much higher pressure to conform that does really exist here. Every train is covered in posters outlining the way to behave, long lists of rules garnish the entrance to every establishment, even public loudspeakers ring out occasionally instructing the populace on proper etiquette. To a much greater extent than the West, Japanese society instructs people not only on what they cannot do, but what they will do.
For me the most direct way to find the core of any culture is to understand their definition of "freedom". This methodology comes from Socrates' description in "The Republic" of the differing definitions of "justice" that can exist throughout mankind. But while a culture's definition of "justice" will describe their attitude towards negative morality (that is, the punishment of misdemeanour), I think "freedom" is able to describe their attitude towards positive morality (being the natural objective of good people). For the old-fashioned American "freedom" is the individual's ability to do anything he wants to without state intervention, whereas in Europe freedom is something granted to the populace by collective effort such as education or welfare. In Japan "freedom" seems not to involve any sense of the right to individual happiness, but rather a right to live in a harmonious society without inconvenience from others. Their strict social rules grant freedom to the people as a whole rather than the individual: freedom from chaos and freedom from ostracisation. And if the primary aim of a society can be described as "freedom", the way in which that society is constructed and the way those inside it live can all be seen as being in pursuit of that freedom. The Japanese deliberateness is therefore in aid of achieving the Japanese freedom.
While the tea ceremony is useful as a metaphor for Japanese society as a whole, it is after all a ceremony, and precision and grace is expected in a ceremony. So instead the Japanese bathhouse may stand as a better indicator of their deliberateness. While in Japan I visited an onsen, and was thrust into a world of heightened social expectation foreign to me (but luckily described in a little pamphlet and accompanying Youtube video on bath etiquette). First are the shoes. Obviously outdoor shoes are taken off when entering the building, but also there are a truly autistic number of other shoes different for almost every room in the building. Straw sandals for the corridors, wooden clogs for the outdoor areas, special socks for the tatami-rooms, two separate sets of shoes for the toilet: one for the sink area and one for the lavatory itself, different sandals for the space between the bath entrance and the changing room, and then obviously no shoes at all in the bathroom itself. You also have the intricate bathing etiquette. First is the diligent and silent activity of washing yourself; often a ten minute activity for the Japanese guests consisting of a showerhead and cool wooden bucket. Then the baths are taken in their predefined order (for us the larger "Bath of Silver Water" was first, then the outdoor "Bath of Golden Water", and finally the smaller "Bath of Silver Water"), all followed with another washing session at the shower stations. All of this is done is near silence, with special instructions not to disturb the water too much when entering or leaving each bath, and a mindfulness of other guests so as to not interrupt their procedure. Each little thing slows you down, forcing you to take your time over the smallest of tasks and think carefully on what the next step in the process will be. And thus the intended mental deceleration is enacted, calming you into a state of Buddhist relaxation. Theology itself may also be a reason behind the Japanese condition, with Buddhist teachings of inner peace seemingly in alignment. However in my mind Buddhism, as it has done wherever it takes hold, has instead warped to accommodate the indigenous Japanese tendencies rather than impress new ones onto them. The Japanese "Zen" branch of Buddhism has distinctly Japanese practises and theology nearly unrecognisable to Indian Buddhism (at least to an outward observer).
I must admit that this form of "deliberate action" is very appealing to me, and is something I admire. The ability to slow yourself down to a level at which you have full mastery over your every action allows a precision and grace unachievable when operating at your limit. It does however, come with the downside of restricting your actions to those within your personal comfortable operating limits, which is why it is not a philosophy favourable to experimentation, but one for perfection (as I talked about recently). To act with perfect elegance is to turn the mundane into an art and be comfortable with yourself, and to comfort those around you.
