Life in Tokyo, I presume, is like a constant oracle. What happens there, or what is projected in some part of the city and somehow reaches us, reflects what will soon happen in the West. Or was it already here first? Let’s start with a passage from the brilliant Haruki Murakami, one that I jotted down in my black notebook some time ago: “In this world, there are people who like to know the schedules of public transportation and spend their days checking them. There are also people who make meter-long boats by gluing chopsticks together.” It’s from his Tokyo Blues, and it reminded me of a photograph I saw recently by the Swiss artist and traveler Nicolas Bouvier.
I’ve never been to Tokyo or anywhere else in Asia. I’d love to, of course. Even so, in Bouvier’s images, you can sense something that isn’t revealed in travel brochures or typical documentaries. The photo in question is usually titled “Early train in Tokyo” and was taken in 1964. Visibly close to twenty men, dressed in virtually identical suits, are asleep in the seats of a train. The entire carriage. One of them is wearing a face mask (which has taken on a new meaning today), others are slumped against the opposite seat, crowded together, left to their own devices like a load of raw material. It is the productive man at his best. The black-and-white faces do not show normal tiredness but something very close to death. In the background of the scene, a map of the transport lines can be seen, the only sign of a language that has been reduced to the bare minimum. It is one of the most anti-poetic images I have ever seen.
In his book Japanese Chronicle (original version from 1975), Bouvier says: “The taxi that was supposed to be waiting for us disappeared. Returning down the alley, I found the driver dozing in a small grocery store, among the jars of sauerkraut and pickled turnips steaming in the early night” (translation by Glenn Gallardo and Martín Schifino). The entry is dated February 24, 1964. I think again of the sleeping epidemic. What is going on?
Two years later, in 1966, the Beatles sang “I’m Only Sleeping” on the album Revolver: “Everybody seems to think I’m lazy / I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy / Runnin’ everywhere at such a speed / ‘Til they find there’s no need (there’s no need) // Please, don’t spoil my day / I’m miles away / And after all / I’m only sleeping.” What wonderful lyrics, John. As if turning the meaning of Bouvier’s photo on its head, Lennon chooses to associate sleeping with pause, contradicting human mechanization. Sleep is countercurrent, not a consequence of oppression. It dialogues with that hippie trait of slow living (slowing down to watch the wheels turn) and spirituality. Photographers forgot the principles of zazen, that radical and complete pause in the present.
Without stretching these reflections too far, it is easy to transpose the idea and arrive at the following conclusion: in order to write literature, the author must also approach a philosophy that allows them to pause in time and shift their gaze from the flow before their eyes fall victim to the oppression of the clock.
