Zen and the art of sexual predation

Zen and the art of sexual predation
by David Benjamin

“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
— You-know-who

MADISON, Wis. — Motoko Rich, in the Times, reported last week that a Japanese bureaucrat has been forced from office for making unwelcome advances toward the young women who work for him. This comes as a shock. For decades, Japan has been battling France for distinction as the the G-8’s horniest nation.

Japan, of course, has more than its share of scandals, a lot of them hip-deep in sex. But until recently, the only complaint from the implicated women was that the diamonds turned out to be zircons.

In a way, the Japanese political system — scribbled on a cocktail napkin in a Shinjuku geisha house by an all-male committee of U.S. Army brass stationed 6,000 miles from their wives — is perfectly designed for big-shot hanky-panky.

Whether they meant to or not, the American generals devised a mock democracy that quickly divided itself into three power spheres. The co-equal leaders of Japan’s government are the business tycoons who handpick the politicians who seemingly run the government, and the career ministry bureaucrats who actually run the government. By distributing largesse strategically, the tycoons and bureaucrats assure that the vast majority of elected officials in Japan will be chosen by peasants who happily thrive on price supports and agri-welfare.

The political wing of this delicately rigged oligarchy is the Liberal Democratic Parry (LDP), which — as the saying goes — is neither liberal nor democratic. Since the U.S. Occupation forces restored Japan’s sovereignty in 1952, the LDP has retained an iron one-party grip on power — except for a few brief hiccups that sent the foreign press into a veritable tizzy.

This is not to suggest that the anti-LDP majority are completely satisfied. But the gerrymandered urbanites in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, etc, tolerate their subjugation because, well, nobody in Japan wants to be the nail that sticks up.

So, with few worries about getting re-elected or losing power — or bothering to legislate — the good old boys of the LDP are free to pretty much fool around in any manner than tickles their fancy. They don’t worry much about getting caught because ministry functionaries have cultivated the most pampered, myopic and supine “free press” in the developed world. Every ministry has a “press club” where reporters happily lounge about waiting to be handed today’s news. They carry the daily propaganda back to the newsroom in limousines underwritten by the taxpayers. As long as they don’t rock the boat, Japanese reporters have a life almost as cushy as the comfortable pols they’re supposed to be afflicting.

The only turds in Japan’s journalistic punchbowl are the gossipmongers and rock-flippers who work in the tabloid press. Japan’s weeklies are a rambunctious mixture of speculation, sensation, tits and ass and old-fashioned muckraking. Wildly popular weeklies like Shukan Bunshun (where I used to write a sumo column) proudly disdain the fatcat officials who spoonfeed the mainstream press. Tab reporters get no perks, so they give no quarter.

Every time a scandal breaks in Japan, it breaks in one of the fearless shukan. If the pesky weekly persists in its exposé, screaming for three or four issues in a row — with cover photos of pantsless pols in an ocean of topless bimbos — mainstream reporters are finally set loose into the feeding frenzy.

This is roughly what happened last month to the administrative vice minister of finance, Junichi Fukuda. His propositions, fondlings and outright maulings of the office ladies (OL) at Finance first popped up in the cheap newsprint of Shukan Shincho, where they percolated for awhile until — possibly motivated by the Weinstein/Cosby foofaraw in the U.S.A. — the respectable Japanese media decided okay, well, maybe nailing the odd pussy-grabbing pig will goose in our circulation.

Once exposed, a crooked politician like Fukuda tends to conform to a reliable pattern. After being confronted with nasty questions by his former poodles in the press lounge, he recoils in horror and falls terribly ill. For weeks, he remains confined incommunicado in the Disgraced Politician Wing of his favorite hospital (every hospital in Japan has one).

By and by, his illness makes it impossible for this slandered victim of tabloid persecution to continue in office. He issues a quiet resignation and a pro forma apology for “any errors I might have inadvertently made during my long and selfless service to the beloved people of Japan.”

The oddity in the Fukuda kerfuffle, and the part that got the attention of the New York Times, was that the scandal was focused entirely on sexual predation. Japan discovered the concept of workplace harassment long after it was acknowledged in the rest of the so-called free world. Even after noticing it, Japan, of course, didn’t take this fad all that seriously. The Japanese gave it a cute nickname, “sekuhara” and made jokes about women who were asking for sekuhara by wearing false eyelashes, smoking in public and crossing their legs suggestively.

Sekuhara remained a dirty-joke punchline for thirty years until hapless Fukuda-san got turned in by his exasperated OLs. Among the sweet nothings he whispered into their ears: “Can I touch your breast?” “I will tie your hands.” And the most tantalizing come-on of ‘em all: “Should we have an affair when the budget is enacted.”

Oh, Junichi!

Pre-Fukuda, Japan was never really scandalized by a powerful man using his wealth and position to intimidate women into sex. But even more special about this amusingly sordid incident was Fukuda’s alibi. After being forced to hear a recording of his indecent proposals, he turned his shame into a sort of Zen trance, in which his very senses departed his body and entered the pure pungent ether of testosterone ecstasy.

In the moment that he weightlessly floated out of office and into his government pension, Fukuda said: “I hear my voice through my body, so I can’t recognize my true voice when listening with my ears.”

Or, in the words of the sensei: “In order to become ear, grasshopper, first you must achieve non-ear…

“… Same goes for nookie, kid.”