Day 56: I think I’m turning Japanese!

So recently I have been learning Japanese, now I tried learning Japanese before when I was about 17, but due to multiple distractions in my life at the time I really didn’t take it seriously. But it’s very interesting that I’ve had a fascination with Japan, which is something that I have had for a long time in my life which really started in early teenage life, and so I want to investigate this, because my starting point is not clear.

I can remember when I was 13, me and my mum went to London to see one of her friends, and so I could see a few of mine. And it was the first time I met a guy who introduced me to Japanese animation films, which at the time I had never seen before. 

He was a pretty wacky kind of guy that tended to like anything which people considered to be “weird” in society. Anyway my mum and her friend went for a night out dancing and this guy was left to babysit me and my friend, and I can remember that as soon as my mum and her friend went out of the door, my friend asked him “where are those violent cartoons you’ve got? Can we watch one?” At first he didn’t agree, but after I started reading the dvd boxes, I started trying to persuade him as well, and eventually he cracked and said we could watch some anime. 

He only had two films with him though, which were both 18 ratings, which I specifically remember was the films “devil man” and “urotsukidoji” which a few years later I would buy myself. Now while I was watching these two violent animated films, I remember being absolutely mesmerized by the fact that although it looked like a cartoon, it was full of swearing, violence, and sex, which I had never seen in a cartoon before. I felt like I was doing a naughty thing just by watching these films, and I remember the guy kept saying while we were watching it that “your mum is going to kill me Marley if she finds out I let you watch this”. Watching these films definitely had an imprinting effect in my mind. 

So when my mum and her friend got back later, we said nothing about these animated films we had seen, and instead just fabricated a story about watching kid’s films. So right off the bat, my introduction into Japanese animation was something that I had to keep secret so I didn’t get in trouble, developing mental relationships straight away. And ever since then I had a constant secret desire to see more animated films like these, where I would start saving money to buy anime videos in my spare time, trying to keep it a secret from my mum along the way. Needless to say she eventually found out about me buying anime films when I was 14, but she wasn’t really that bothered, so I remember thinking “great, well if she doesn’t mind then I will keep buying and watching these films”. So the fact that my mum didn’t mind that I was watching violent Japanese animated films, at the time I saw as a sign that I should just develop this interest further.

 

What I can see happened here though is this interest became an addiction that developed towards these animated films, a complete obssession to the point where at one stage I much preferred watching anime to ordinary films. And also I can see that through my teenage years, watching these anime films really did charge the sex and violent criminal systems within me that were developing. This addiction to anime started spanning into anything Japanese based, where I started doing martial arts, taking an interest in advanced technology, researching japanese history, having secret desires to have sex with a Japanese woman, tried learning the language, and anyone that I have ever met since this Japanese addiction developed that likes or has been to japan, I would automatically want to be there friend and would define them as a “cool person” just because they like japan. 

So I can see within this how I have limited and defined myself to a system as a mind possession through placing value in japan as being of more worth than any other country, and because i haven’t corrected my starting point in relation to japan, then I can see that an accumulation effect is happening, where I now experience a constant desire to want to go there, which in self-honesty is purely to indulge my self-interest, rather than from a starting point of what is best for all. I’m not willing to accept this limitation of myself any further, so join me in my next blog where I will be investigating this point further and walking self-forgiveness/corrective statements.