Among all of the other market meltdowns last week, the Japanese stock index Nikkei suffered its worst one-week loss in history, shedding nearly a quarter of its value — this, after a long and painful recession.  So, in the spirit of anachronistic contrarianism, here’s a souvenir in verse from late in 1991, when I was living in Japan and it appeared to be on the verge of conquering the world economically.

I remember being skeptical about the Japanese “threat” for a long time, but eventually, like everyone else, I succumbed to the “madness of crowds” and wrote this poem.  As it turns out, it was almost literally at the peak of Japan’s dominance — its economy started to sputter almost immediately thereafter. 

But it works in the other direction, too; often, at the very moment when the majority of the investing public is convinced that a given market or economy is in permanent decline, it begins to recover.  The sun also rises — in the U.S. and Japan alike.

Incidentally, one explanatory note:  The last stanza refers to the massive green nets that were draped around buildings under construction in Japanese cities, as well as to the controversy over the Japanese hunting of whales and the other forms of environmental despoilation they committed. I suspect Japan, like the United States, has since become more conscious of environmental stewardship, and hope that this attitude, as well as our industries’ investment in solar energy technologies, bio-fuels and other alternative energy sources, will survive both the hard times we’re experiencing now, and the next wave of prosperity as well.

Expatriate, Waking
(Japan, 1991)

The rising sun assembles itself in the East
With matches, scraps of silk and kerosene,
And, hot off the line, lacquers our door before
The pale plodders stateside even dream it.

Like all we consume, sunlight is made here,
And in its export West, warms only those who work.
Witness these pigeons, diligent at dawn:
Setting the tone from below, they’re selecting

From a soggy salad of string and twig
Sufficient bits from which to build a home
Across the yard from, and a comment upon,
In its sense, and compact cleverness, ours.

Outmanned in every sphere is how we feel:
We’ve the better materials, not they!
But across from my office has materialized
A nineteen-story tower in the time it took me

To skim three magazines and eat a bun.
I swear, an hour ago, it wasn’t there:
Just a lot of rubble, flattened sacks of rice,
And a crumbling cistern choked with twiggy moss.

Now, nearly done, its bloody beams are dressed
With massive, block-wide, kelp-green drifting nets
That sift the swimming breeze and hide the doomed
Whales, spirits, haunting its empty halls.

 

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