Folderol
Once upon a time, when I was living ever so briefly in Japan, I became confounded by everyday Japanese behaviour. Often it seemed neither rational, nor irrational; neither intelligible, nor mysterious, nor fuliginous. Reading their superb mediaeval literature in translation, especially novels from the Heian period (IXth through XIIIth centuries), I could speculate about their past and present attitudes and customs, and become lost among them. But while Japanese men were enigmatical to me, Japanese women were completely indecipherable.
Those were the days when “feminism” was at large in the West. This was supposed to be true in the East, too, thanks I suppose to neo-colonialism, or rather to a contradictory definition. For the Japanese woman, feminism apparently meant that women should be free of constraining tradition, and have what they want. But for the American or European woman, it meant they had declared themselves subservient to the totalitarian feminist agenda. This had made especially the young American women (“girls,” we used to call them) tedious and one-dimensional, although available for casual sex.
Whereas, when I told a “liberated” Japanese woman that I was married and had two delightful little boys, she replied, “Good men are hard to find. Women have to share them.”
It was a lyrical observation, not a sexual invitation. She was philosophizing, in an inscrutable way. This was a woman who had brilliantly observed that, “Democracy is impossible without slavery.”
On her inspiration I wrote a suite of poems, with the title: “Neither Monogamy nor Polygamy, but Origami.”