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 an enigma to me, Japanese women, then as now, remain 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 contrasting definition. For a Japanese woman, feminism meant that women should and could be free of constraining tradition, and have what they want. But for an American or European woman, it meant they were declaring themselves subservient to the totalitarian feminist agenda. This was what had made especially the younger American women (“girls” we used to call them) so tedious and one-dimensional, albeit available for casual sex.
Whereas, I discovered, when I told a “liberated” Japanese woman that I was married and had two delightful little boys, she commented, “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. It was under her inspiration I wrote a suite of poems, with title: “Neither monogamy nor polygamy, but origami.”