Section 33 Entry 0001. 2003 March 26 Wednesday.
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Today's big, big, big shock came when I was folding the bed linen and discovered a cockroach, of all things, right in the middle of the bed - between the sheets that I had been sleeping between!

I was told once that if you squash a cockroach then the exploding bug will spray millions of eggs into the environment, contaminating the world with cockroach legions as yet unborn. This may be totally false - just another of those urban myths - but I have acted on that basis ever since.

Consequently, I got a tissue, pinched the cockroach between the tissue, then wrapped another tissue around the captive, and only then did I apply the George Bush doctrine. Then I ran water over the tissue to make sure that the package would sink, and flushed it.

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Section 33 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 March 26 Wednesday.
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A warm day in Japan. The war no longer dominates the airwaves, although TV newsbroadcasts on NHK One may still be extended to accomodate the extra news. On the 810 AM channel controlled by the American military, programming is pretty much back to normal - rock and roll broadcasts and news at the standard times.

Japanese reaction to the war continues to be negative. Two Japanese-language editorials from the March 25 issue of The Asahi Shimbun were republished today in English on page 24 of today's English-language edition of The Asahi Shimbun, bundled here in Japan with the International Herald Tribune, and both are negative.

One says the American and British troops should not "plunge recklessly into street-by-street fighting" in Baghdad and says "If the moral motives of war are stripped away, war is mutual slaughter of men and women on a massive scale."

The second, commenting on the Oscar won by the Japanese animated movie "Spirited Away," (in Japanese, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) has a small headline saying "Bush should see this film for its message of love" and ends with the words "We hope Bush will see it."

In between the small headline and the closing words, the editorial says, in part, this:-

The film portrays a world quite different from the fictitious world usually created in Hollywood in which good battles evil and good always wins. In Miyazaki's world, Chihiro, the heroine, finds herself in a complex society in which good and evil coexist and who lives on with the power of love and wisdom.

I've actually seen this animated movie, which was directed by Japan's Hayao Miyazaki. I saw it on video, and was extremely impressed by its visual originality. If you're into the weird and the bizarre, then this is it - and, believe me, if I say it's weird then that's your rock solid guarantee that, yes, this is indeed as weird as it comes. Highly recommended.

(I won't confess that I didn't understand most of what was happening most of the time. I'll keep that to myself. Of course, I was watching the Japanese-language version.)

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Section 33 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 March 26 Wednesday.
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2003 March 26: added a parabonlononomical poem called Zenvirus. This is a totally irresponsible poem in the dada tradition - but remember that just because the poem is nuts doesn't mean that the world at large is sane.

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Section 33 Entry 0004. Date: 2003 March 27 Thursday.
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Making Peace with Bombs

We are feeding the children with promises.
We are making a peace with our bombs.
We don't want a war so must fight one.
It will all come out white in the wash.

You offend by the fact you are living.
The darkness is where you belong.
We denounce you as demon, diabolus.
We will bury you along with our wrong.

We were buddies before but it's different.
It is clear that you don't understand.
We can change, of our choice, into angels.
But that choice is not granted to you.

You have raped them with acid and darkness.
You have razed them with terror and gas.
You're a thug you're a hoodlum we scorn you,
We have nothing to do with our past.

We have made the decision to kill you.
By resisting you force us to kill.
We don't like to kill but you force us.
We must kill you to force you to stop.

Now our message to you we must liberate,
The legitimate owners of oil.
If you bleed you must seek understanding.
We are here as the angels of light.

We could slaughter you all and stand solo
But have killed but a tenth of our could.
Our war is a limited conflict
And your lives are the proof of our good.

We have heard of your cries in the dungeon.
We have heard of your plight in the night.
We have come to your rescue, you need us,
We are bleeding, and dying for you.

We will bleed you a little then love you.
We'll be friends till the end of the night.
Submit to our freedom or perish.
Embrace us or die of our love.

As for you, dude -
Unwitting supporter of unlawful dictatorship, you
Misbegotten bastard, you -
Forget the little girl with her head blown off.

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Section 33 Entry 0005. Date: 2003 March 27 Thursday.
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Late last night, on the Japanese TV station NHK One, there was a serious current affairs program which raised the question "What will happen between America and North Korea after the Iraq war is over?"

I understood the question (more or less) but my Japanese proved far too weak for me to follow the answer, which was long and involved and complicated.

Today's English-language version of the Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun (bundled in Japan with the Japanese edition of the International Herald Tribune also addressed the North Korean problem.

In an editorial published on page 23 under the headline "South Korea's dilemma," The Asahi Shimbun says, in summary, that it is possible that America may strike next at North Korea, and that concerns over this issue are already hurting South Korea economically.

The South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, is doing his best to make soothing noises to persuade everyone that there are no monsters under the bed. However, The Asahi Shimbun seems unconvinced, and notes that if America were to attack North Korea, then "North Korea would undoubtedly retaliate and cause massive damage to South Korea."

The editorial seems to take the attitude that a sick North Korean dragon growling ominously in the background is less of a problem than a wounded North Korean dragon which has been provoked into breathing fire. It ends like this:-

In explaining his support for the Iraq campaign, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi keeps referring to U.S. military might as a deterrence against North Korea.

But what must be deterred is none other than America's rash action. Japan ought to be just as afraid as South Korea.

In the course of reading this editorial, I learnt something that I had not previously known: in South Korea, eighty percent of the public is opposed to the George Bush war with Iraq.

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Section 33 Entry 0006. Date: 2003 March 28 Friday
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Let's start with the important stuff, my personal disaster, the thing which really made me say "Uh oh!" As for the more remote stuff - war, nuclear war, the global plague which threatens to wipe out humanity and all that stuff, I'll get to that later. Anyway, my "Uh oh!" experience was because of the table.

At this stage, the new house (which was a construction site at this time last year) is almost furnished. That is to say, with two TVs, two stereo systems, four radios and so forth, there is not much room left for anything else to be added.

However, for some time now we've been feeling the need of a dining table capable of seating more than two people, and lately I've been making fairly regular visits to the junkshop to check on the latest arrivals.

Today, I found a suitable table, complete with four chairs (for 6,000 yen, about US $50) and carried the whole lot home (three trips). I got the table into the house through the freedom doors which open onto the handkerchief-sized lawn, and was feeling pretty pleased with myself until I swiped the wall with the leg of a chair as I was muscling all this stuff into position.

"Uh oh!"

There, on the brand new wallpaper (well, brand new last year, like the house) was a nasty red scar. The red (paint?) had come off the chair leg. Someone was going to come home and was going to (inescapably!) see that scar.

However, then I remembered the morning's work, when I had used whiteout fluid to fix up a document for photocopying. Whiteout fluid ... white wallpaper ... that sounds unorthodox ... but ....

Two minutes later, the scar on the wallpaper had vanished. A tiny little scar, really - it only scratched the surface of the wallpaper, without digging right through the full depth. In fact, ten minutes later, when I looked again, I couldn't tell where the injury had been.

That "Uh oh!" experience was diagnostic, telling me that the woes of the world are still pretty far off in the distance, at least from my perspective. Even so, it is hard to keep from thinking about the war.

Today, in The Asahi Shimbun, the English-language version of which is bundled in Japan with the International Herald Tribune, there was an opinion piece on page 25 with a headline which sums up my feeling. The headline is "War in Iraq is deeply invading our souls, too".

The writer is Yo Hemmi, a sometime journalist who "will be teaching literature and contemporary media theory at Waseda University as a guest professor" from April. His opinion piece is like a blast from a sawn-off shotgun, and the target is America. The first paragraph sets the tone for the whole:-

For its sheer brutality, the scene that has emerged before us has hurled the world into what I might call a "new Dark Ages." Wielding high-tech weapons, a barbarian "empire" is set to dominate the world with absolute violence. This empire's intentions are "medieval".

I experienced a certain degree of shock and awe as I absorbed the impact of this diatribe. Where does this "absolute violence" come from? George hasn't even nuked anything yet!

However, that said, what Yo Hemmi writes most definitely resonates with me, particularly when he writes that "Our souls, too, are being blitzed by American and British bombs and trampled upon by American and British military boots."

Last night, I had a confused and tangled dream, a war dream that, upon awakening, was impossible to sort out into a logical, sequential form.

The war contaminates everything. Is it legitimate for me to worry that a chairleg has scraped a wall? Is it too frivolous for me to dig out my dogfish poem and post it on the Internet? When I see George Bush on TV talking about "war criminals," do I have a duty to respond, or do I say to myself, "Well, George, I think I'll just let that one pass without comment."

Today I received a letter from England, a letter from a woman who, as a child, lived through the Bliz, the German air campaign which aimed to crush British resistance during the Second World War.

Listening to the attacks on Iraq by radio (for she does not have TV) this woman was intensely reminded of her childhood memories. And now, thinking of that letter, I am reminded of all the second-hand memories of the Second World War that I grew up with.

The bombs fell and the bombs fell and the city burned. And I had these stories drip-fed into me as I was growing up ... my maternal grandmother, who has now passed away, was an air raid warden ... she watched a wall of fog come rolling up an English river in the dim light of evening, and she wondered whether it was gas, and whether she should sound the alarm, and persuaded herself that it was not gas, that it was just fog, and yet, even so, was afraid she might be making a mistake ....

And it is (presumably) this same drip-feeding of memories which is conditioning the Japanese response to the war, since Japan is a nation which suffered most terribly during the Second World War.

I am the child of people who were children during the Second World War, and who therefore did not participate, not in any sense whatsoever, in the political decision-making associated with that war.

The same holds true for most people in Japan who are in their thirties, forties and fifties. They are the children of children who suffered during the war, and they will have had information communicated to them even by those who say nothing -

For example, the Japanese woman, now living in retirement, who always keeps food in the refrigerator, more food than is necessary, more food than can be eaten, because during the war there was not food but famine ....

As a child, at the dinner table, I heard, repeatedly, a hundred times, a thousand, the same word from the Second World War, the resonant word, the word which ate its way into the consciousness of those who lived through that war as its children, and that resonant word was "food".

And now, having got this far, I find I have no stomach for digging into the latest problems between India and Pakistan (tension, again, with the fear of nuclear war lurking in the background), the North Korean problem (as bad as ever, or maybe worsening), or the SARS epidemic, the outbreak of a killer pneumonia which began in China and has now led to quarantine and school closures in Hong Kong.

I just think I'll close with this quote from Yo Hemmi:-

There is no question that Saddam is a true tyrant.

But America and Britain have proven just as tyrannical. Their action must be remembered forever as a war crime and duly tried.

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