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Virus Diary: Uses and Abuses of a Pandemic

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Today is Constitutional Memorial Day, the last public holiday in this strangest of Golden Weeks.

We walk to Meguro Fudo, a major temple of the Tendai sect with a history dating back to the ninth century. It occupies an impressive tract of land bang in the middle of suburban Tokyo, with its labyrinths of narrow streets, cars parked in impossible places and architecture improvised like three-dimensional jazz.

You know this sect is a big deal because of the amount it owns of the ultimate luxury item – empty space.

Tokyo’s soft lockdown is meeting ever softer compliance. In the local parks, the swings are chained up, but the little kids rush around on bikes and throw balls around. What else are the parents supposed to do with them?

At the temple entrance, a notice advises the devout to do their praying at home, in line with the edicts of Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. But, unlike some other temples, Fudo has not barred its gate and a flow of visitors courses through the extensive grounds. The scent of incense sticks they’ve lit wafts through the air.

PrayatHome

You’re supposed to go up the “Man’s Slope” and descend via the “Woman’s Slope.” We get it the wrong way round, with unknown karmic consequences.

On the way, we pass a grotto containing a bronze image of En-no-Gyoja, the mystic who organized Shugendo, a pre-Buddhist religion drawn from folk practices, Taoism and Shinto. Touching the statue is supposed to be a cure for leg and back afflictions, but a notice tells visitors to refrain in order to avoid coronavirus infection. Undeterred, the elderly gentleman ahead of us reaches into the grotto and gives En-no-Gyoja’s knee a good rub.

A raw, heavy scent hangs in the air, redolent of growth and fertility. This is the time of year when the chestnut trees are flowering. I’m not the only person to think the pollen smells like semen. Singer-songwriter Ringo Shiina noted the similarity and used it as the title of an album, Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana (“Chlorine Semen Chestnut Flower”).

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In the temple grounds

Scent of incense and semen

Chestnut trees in bloom

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In 1980, the flamboyant publisher and impresario Haruki Kadokawa produced a cinematic adaption of Sakyo Komatsu’s apocalyptic science fiction novel, Virus: Resurrection Day. It is one of those unusual cases of the film being far superior to the book it was based on.

As was his style, Kadokawa spared no expense. He hired an international cast that included Robert “Man From UNCLE” Vaughn, George Kennedy, Bo Svenson, Chuck Connors, Glenn Ford and Olivia Hussey, who was famous in Japan for marrying heart-throb singer Akira Fuse and appearing in a long-running TV campaign for cosmetics.

The director was Kinji Fukusaku, best known for his yakuza series, Battles Without Pity or Honour (“Jingi Naki Tatakai”). The shooting involved 200 days spent on overseas locations, ranging from Alaska to Machu Picchu in the Andes. Unsurprisingly, the film lost money, even though it was the second highest-grossing film of the year in Japan, beaten only by Kurosawa’s Kagemusha.

A shortened version was made for English-speaking audiences, but had little exposure at the time, which is a pity. The full version is well-acted, tense and believable, within the constraints of Komatsu’s rickety plot.

In addition to the soundtrack, the production team commissioned a jazz-rock album called Impressions of Virus, written and arranged by Teo Macero, the producer of several important albums by Miles Davis, and featuring well-known American jazz musicians, such as Ron Carter, Steve Gadd and David Sanborn., as well as Japanese fusion guitarist Kazumi Watanabe.

Also playing on some tracks is the great alto saxophonist, Lee Konitz, who passed away this April from a Covid-19 related illness.

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“Look here, Monsieur Cottard, why don’t you join us?”

Picking up his derby hat, Cottard rose from his chair with an offended expression.

“It’s not my job,” he said. Then, with an air of bravado, he added: “What’s more, the plague suits me quite well and I see no reason why I should bother about trying to stop it.”

From The Plague by Albert Camus

Cottard is a minor but fascinating character in Camus’ novel. We first meet him failing to commit suicide, having written on the door of his tiny flat “Come in, I’m hanged.”

Before the plague hit town, he was in the depths of despair, but as the catastrophe unfolds, his spirits and fortunes mount ever higher. At the plague’s peak, he is “the one man in the town who never appeared exhausted or discouraged and remained a living image of satisfaction.”

Christopher Watkin, a specialist in French literature and philosophy at Monash University, has some sharp insights about the novel on his blog. Cottard reveals the unspoken, unacceptable side of our attitude to the plague;why some of us, sometimes, enjoy it so much.

In today’s world, there are plenty of people and companies who qualify as “living images of satisfaction”, having prospered mightily from the coronavirus crisis and the associated lockdowns.

Think of the Japanese Uber-Eats delivery man who pulled in 470,000 yen ($4,440) in the month of April.

Think of Netflix, Facebook, Zoom and all the other beneficiaries of the enforced “Stay Home” / remote working boom. The online economy has gone from strength to strength, whereas the world of bricks and mortar and production lines is flat on its back.

There is one industry in particular that, like Cottard, was in seemingly terminal decline before the crisis arrived, but subsequently made a near-miraculous recovery and has been enjoying the pandemic with gusto. That is the mainstream media, now riding the virus for all it’s worth.

As Chris Watkins says of Cottard, it will be sad to see the plague pass.

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There is another resident of Camus’ plague-ridden town who finds the death and devastation useful. That is the Jesuit priest Father Paneloux, who now has the opportunity, quite literally, to put the fear of God into his usually free-and-easy parishioners.

To a packed audience in his church, he starts his sermon thus: Calamity has come on you, my brethren, and, my brethren, you deserved it. He goes on to recount the story of the Christians of Abyssinia who saw in the plague an effective means to win eternal life and deliberately rolled in the bedclothes of the infected.

Spoiler alert: the story does not end well for either Cottard or Paneloux.

***

I am inside you

In your breath blood ticking brain

Your sweat of panic

***

Bodies were carelessly left at the roadside like bags of garbage, muddy shoes sticking out from under woven mats of bamboo grass. Long, long trains of squirming, soft maggots were wriggling across the wet asphalt roads like tangles of beige threads…

As the minister of health and welfare was speaking, he abruptly recalled tragic images from the picture scrolls of the Heian and Kamakura periods – the Scroll of Pestilence, depicting all manner of horrible disease in striking detail, and the Gaki Scroll, which shows the eternal suffering of the hungry ghosts of myth.

From Virus: Resurrection Day, by Sakyo Komatsu.

Sakyo Komatsu was a best-selling science fiction author who specialized in spine-chilling, near-future stories of utter disaster. His most famous work is Japan Sinks! (“Nippon Chinbotsu”), which captured the pessimism of the mid-1970s by depicting the Japanese islands being devastated by a series of enormous earthquakes.

He published Virus in 1964, not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is a curious work, with a level of scientific detail, especially relating to bio-weapons, that is impressive for the era. There is vivid description of the unfolding disaster, but also cardboard characterization and long, turgid lectures on pacifism.

A former member of the Japan Communist Party, Komatsu makes the war-mongering U.S. and Britain the villains of the story and repeats as solemn truth the Soviet black propaganda that General MacArthur used bio-weapons in the Korean War.

Like the painters of the scrolls of pestilence and eternal suffering, he uses horrific images to hammer home his ideological message.

Like Camus’ Father Paneloux, he tells us brothers, you deserved it.

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There is one exception to the general rule that the virus has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities. That is geographical.

In most developed countries – the U.S., France, Britain, Italy, Belgium – the richest cities and regions have suffered the most, to the extent there seems to be a correlation between infections and real estate prices.

Even in relatively unscathed Japan, Tokyo and Osaka have borne the brunt of the damage, whereas some outlying prefectures have been barely affected.

Iwate Prefecture, in northeast Japan, has one of the lowest per capita GDPs amongst all Japanese regions and was devastated by the 2011 tsunami, villages and small towns being washed away in entirety. So far, it has not recorded a single infection. Seventeen of Japan’s 47 prefectures have not recorded a single fatality.

Human connectedness is the leading indicator of vulnerability to the virus. The cultural dynamism and economic opportunity that it fosters is the reason why people flock to huge metropolises, despite the overcrowding and cramped living conditions.

Will this change, as the ghost of Covid-19 lingers in our consciousness for years to come? Or will the force of our social animal nature re-assert itself as we become free once more to move around as we choose?

Shigenobu Nagamori, the founder and CEO of Nidec, is a tough, hard-driving businessman who runs the world’s leading producer of precision motors. Nobody would accuse him of being a starry-eyed dreamer. Here are some of his thoughts, taken from an interview in the Nikkei Asian Review.

The landscape will be completely altered after the coronavirus crisis ends. We’ll see a rapid change in which telework is embraced. We’ll see more cases where a person working for a company in Tokyo builds a big house with a home office in Yamanashi Prefecture [west of Tokyo]…

For fifty years, I did business by believing that my methods were all correct. But the current situation made me realize that I was wrong. I did not trust telework. But now I want to make the company a worker-friendly one where employees are happy, even if profit temporarily declines.

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R.I.P. Lee Konitz

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Quotable quotes –

The world is experiencing something akin to an alien invasion. Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and former chief economist at the IMF.

The higher you go, the more incompetent institutions are. The most incompetent people are in places such as the World Health Organization and the US Centres for Disease Control; the most competent people are in small villages. Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author.

We are all embarking on the unthinkable… we all face the profound need to embark on something new. Emmanuel Macron, President of France.

Not for half-a-second do I believe declarations of the “nothing will be the same again” genre… When the lockdown is over, we are not going to wake up in a new world. It will be the same world, just a little worse. Michel Houellebecq, novelist.

Much in the way we lived before the virus is already irretrievable… The old life of carefree human intermingling will fast slip from memory. John Gray, philosopher.

Aren’t you following just the bad news about the virus? Are you obsessed with the virus all the time?  Are you spending less time on hobbies and connections with those close to you? The virus grows its power on us through a negative spiral. From an advisory issued by the Japanese Red Cross.

Even before the pandemic hit, I realized that we were in a revolutionary moment where what would be impossible or even inconceivable in normal times had become not only possible, but probably absolutely necessary. George Soros.

New forms of communication, print technology, and advertising practice had given rise to a highly competitive news industry that greatly expanded the scope of what was considered “fit to print”… Editors had already learned… that disease stories sold papers. Historian Nancy Tomes on the Spanish Influenza of 1918/19.

Dear Peter, We understand that you and your loved ones may be feeling more isolated than usual at this time. So we’d like to invite you to stay connected with our free one-month Telegraph trial. Personalized online advertisement.

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You foolish bipeds

Believe you rule the planet

I rule the planet

Multitudes of me

Shape-shifting, dancing through time

Nanoscopic gods