Dave Barry Does Japan by Dave
Barry
Dave Barry Does Japan
Is this comedic tour of Japan discreet, tasteful, or politically correct? The
answer, thank god, is Naaah! Yet Dave Barrys travelogue never grows
mean-spirited, and hes always ready to laugh at his own country--and by
extension, himself. An example: I understand that, even if two Japanese
have worked together for many years, neither would dream of using the
others first name. Whereas Americans are on a first-name basis
immediately, and by the end of the first day have generally graduated to
Yo, Butthead!
Personal Review: Dave Barry Does Japan by Dave Barry
In September of 2008, I went to Hiroshima with The Boyfriend. I knew it
would be a more serious place to visit than a lot of the other places I've
been to in Japan, for obvious reasons, and as I thought about it, I
remembered this book. You see, while Dave Barry is enormously funny,
and I always have a hard time holding in my laughter when he writes, he

also knows exactly when to turn off the funny and talk seriously about a
topic. Such was the case with this book, and the chapter on visiting
Hiroshima.
But I'll get to that later. Let me start by saying that yes, this is a very funny
book, as so many of his books are. I can only imagine, though, how funny
it is to someone who's never been to Japan, much less lived there. I'll bet
that, while reading some of the more ridiculous examples of how different
Japan is from the US, a lot of readers were thinking, "No, it can't be that
weird. He must be exaggerating for comic effect."
No, no he's not. Not in the least. Well, some, yes, because that's his job,
but all of the things that he points out as being "strange" about Japan - the
ubiquitous vending machines, rockabillies dancing very seriously in a
circle, kids practicing their English with strangers, plastic food shops, all of
it is absolutely true. He is not, in fact, making this up.
He says at the beginning of the book, "So this book is not authoritative. If
you want authoritative, go buy a real book." At no point does he claim to
be an expert on Japan, or that spending three weeks here would make him
one. In fact, the main aspect he plays on is his eternal cluelessness. As
he points out, Japan is like one big, very exclusive club into which you
must be born if you want to become a member. There are rules that no
outsider can ever really learn, much less on a three week whirlwind tour.
There are people who try - there are a lot of foreign-born residents in this
country who do their best to live according to the rules, but no matter how
hard we try, we'll never really become members of Club Japan. So, Barry
just decides to do his best and try not to make himself look completely
stupid.
He marginally succeeds, which is good - otherwise there would be no
book.
With his family, Barry goes from Tokyo to Kyoto to Kyushu and back again,
stopping to see temples and shrines, sumo, ceremonies, kabuki, rakugo
and car factories, among other things. Through it all, they do their best to
adapt to the strangeness of Japanese life and Japanese food, and he
comes out with some wonderful stories that had me cackling on the bus
ride down to Hiroshima.
Which I believe I mentioned before.
It's an interesting chapter in the book. The chapter itself is flanked by two
grey pages - a signal to the reader that this is a no-funny zone. There will
be no jokes between these pages, and rightfully so. Barry and his family
went there on the anniversary of the bombing, August 6th, and observed
the Peace Ceremony. They looked at the statues and the monuments and
the dome, and went to the museum, and came out with an enormous
sense of... conflict.

There is no question in anyone's mind that what happened in Hiroshima -
and Nagasaki - was horrific. All you have to do is read the testimonials,
look at the photos and the drawings in the museum, look at the charred
and burned school uniforms, pieces of flesh on display, dioramas of the
flattened city and you know that the nuclear bomb is nothing that you can
really joke about. Hundreds of thousands of people died because of those
bombs, and not all of them died right away. Soldiers, yes -Hiroshima has a
history as a military city - but babies, students, innocent men and women
also perished in fire, blast, trauma and, of course, the long, lingering death
of radiation sickness.
No city deserves that. Ever.
At the same time, Barry feels that the bombing is presented without
context, and he's not the only one to think so. From what he could see, it
looks like America just decided to do this horrible thing, and there's not
sufficient explanation to visitors as to why this was done. What would
make a supposedly civilized nation do such a patently evil thing to so many
people?
It's very hard to justify what was done. I know the arguments - that Japan
was training civilians to defend the home islands to the death, that millions
more might have died in a long, drawn-out battle, that the Soviets were
ready to swoop in and take over - but all those justifications kind of sound
hollow when you see the photographs of people with fifth-degree burns,
and read about the thousands of children who were orphaned in a fraction
of a second. To those leaders, however, at that time, the dropping of
those bombs was a necessary option, and I don't think even they knew
how bad the effects would be.
Regardless, the bombs were not dropped capriciously. They were
dropped following a long chain of events, decisions and ambitions that
reached back decades. And I think I agree with Barry that more attention
should be paid not only to the aftermath of the bombing, but also to what
led up to it. Maybe just because I don't want my country to look like a
monster.
Anyway, the Hiroshima chapter aside, it really is a very funny book. Even
funnier if you've ever been to or lived in Japan. It's not the kind of book
you buy if you're actually interested in learning about Japan, but if you
want some good laughs, go for it.
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