Tangible Society
lxxv · April 27, 2026I haven’t written here in a year and a half, but let’s see if I can finish an entry in the few minutes before the babysitter leaves.
I went to the doctor about a bout with my bad lungs, and in the waiting room the television was tuned to a segment on one of the major Japanese networks presenting archival footage from throughout the station’s history, mostly from the mid to late 20th century. It put me in mind of one way of summarizing what I like about living here: this is a country that, for now, holds on to a mode in which the workings of society are made tangible.
From looking at people, places, and things, you can generally tell what they do. In the 1940s this meant that a bus attendant wore a special uniform involving a cute hat and had a ticket-stamping device, and could be relied upon to help you ride the bus. In the 1960s, computer data operators sat at specially-designed desks and referred to special manuals in order to to their job. In the 1980s, you could buy computer programs from a special disk-recording kiosk. Throughout the century, you might spot identifiable archetypes on the train. A writer hunches over a notebook with a fine fountain pen. Someone keeping up with current events crinkles a big newspaper. A studious teenager memorizes lessons from a textbook, using a special transparent red sheet to obscure the answers. A musician carries an instrument in a special case; a member of the archery club carries their impressively long bow, also in a special case.
This is, of course, in contrast to the flattened present, in which most everyone’s job and everyone’s leisure can be boiled down to “look at a lil screen”. But more than one would expect, here where I live, you still see the notebooks and pens and textbooks and instruments and bows. I enjoy that, for now, the culture still generally supports these distinct and recognizable activities with distinct and recognizable paraphernalia. The businesses that support these practices are still here, blended into the everyday landscape. You still go to a special municipal office to handle sheafs of intricate paperwork and stamp your personal stamp in order to carry out the business of being a citizen. The fussy fractal bureaucracy generally works.
I enjoy that even while surrounded by people mostly on phones doing who-knows-what, I am not always the only one choosing to read a book on paper or to write in a notebook with a proper pen. I enjoy that the activity and the identity that I undertake, practicing writing, is manifest in the physical trappings of pursuing it. And I especially enjoy that I’m often not the only one doing so. I don’t feel weird or, the Eternal forbid, performative by reading or writing on paper. (Book cover culture helps dampen the worry by obscuring just what everyone is reading in public anyway.) I feel like just another person practicing a life of letters.
So, at the Katsushika Central Library while waitingfor my children to emerge from the Kumon, or at Neis while they are doing their gymnastics, I have been writing fiction and memoirs on paper. The fiction won’t have my name on it, but is going up on a website and going out via a newsletter. This shall be my modest but heartfelt foray into publishing creative work.
Thank you and be well
I will tell you where to find the fiction I’m writing, if you ask. And whether you want to see it or not, I’d enjoy hearing from you. What’s going on in your world? I’d especially like to know if you’re coming through Tokyo any time soon! We’re moving to Musashino-shi this summer.