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The 1992 Boston Marathon was held on April 22nd, "Patriots Day" (a holiday in Maine and Massachusetts.) I joihis marathon last year as well as this year. The Boston Marathon in spring and the New York City Marathon in fall, these two races are the greatest pleasures in my life in the U.S. Some of you might have watched these races, often broadcast on TV in Japan, too. Similar to the New York City Marathon, the Boston Maratho have a "go aurn" course with a turning point, but it has just a "one way" course from one place to ahe starting point is a small town i<s>藏书网</s>n the suburbs of Boston, Hopkinton, and the finish is in the ter of Boston. When you feel that the goal is approag after about a 30- kilometer run, you have to tackle with the famous "Heart Break Hill" in Boston which is ing into sight. This naming of the hill might sound a bit exaggerated, but youll notice what a tough hill it is after actually running it yourself. Running up the hill is not so hard, but after reag the top, itll get arduous itself. You climb up the hill with all your energy, encing and saying to yourself that theres no more steep hills after this and that now is the time to endure. After a short break when youve got to the top and you think the rest is the flat course leading to the downtown of Boston, the sudden fatigue thuds into you as if it were waiting for you to e.This fatigue resembles the middle age crisis around 40. The instant you reach the age, when you have some rest after clearing the difficulties in the 20s and the 30s, the crisis falls upon you with a thud. (Some people might never uand how it is without actually experieng it though.) Several gentle slopes iown, which are far less equal to the "Heart Break Hill" in steepness ah, start t you. I felt so this year as well as last year. Especially this year, the rapid rise of temperature exhausted me. My record of this year was 3 hours and 38 minutes, which was 7 minutes slower than that of last year. But the starting point is so crowded every year due to the narrowness of the street, and it takes us over 5 minutes actually to start running after the "Go" signal. Taking all these things into at, I guess my record this year is not so bad.
Anyway all of us e from Boston to this small, starting town on board the coaches chartered for us runners, and we wait here for the Go signal at noon. This little, suburban town, populated by some 2,500 people, es to be overflowed for a couple of hours with the "enthusiastiners" reag the approximate number of 8,000, who join the race from every er of this try and the world. Literally it is a big festival held once a year iown. Hopkinton is a typical residential suburb that one find anywhere in Amerid it has nothing outstanding from a strangers viewpoint: one church, one high school, one fire station, and one short main street. After passing along the main street with a gas station, a pub, a real estate agend a florist , youll find nothing but an endless series of cozy houses with front yards. Every house looks well attended and the lawn in the yard is detly trimmed, but there exists nothing to stimulate your imaginatioher extraordinary geous mansion remely shabby house attracts your attention. This row of houses looks as if to insist that the most valuable virtue in life is not to attract peoples attention. This unity happeo be chosen as a starting point simply because it is located exactly 26 miles or 42 kilometers from Boston, otherwise it would remain as if it were dozing with ners care, which this towo hope for after all.
But participating in the Boston Marathon for the last two years brought me to this small starting town and gave me the ce to observe this peaceful town carefully.
America was in the midst of the Gulf War when I ran in the Boston Marathon last year. Everywhere I went in America, I saw yellow ribbons, the Star-Spangled Banner, and patriotic slogans. It was not exceptional here in Hopkinton, which was seemingly peaceful itself. In the yard of a house he church, I found an
old jalopy, a Chrysler Dodge, with SADDAM painted on the hood. o the car, a hammer laced. Think the jalopy is Saddam Hussein and hammer it until you feel satisfied. One hammering was one dollar. With the collected money, I heard they were going to raise the funds of the scholarship for the youngsters iown.
I dont know who hit upon this idea, but it was rather popular and even while I was watg, several town people paid oer another one dollar, took the hammer, and bahe car with all their might. I doubted whether it might be a suitable spectacle for the starting town of the dignified Boston Marathon, but it was iable, I thought, judging from the fact that this try was at war.
This year I visited Hopkinton, thinking that there wouldnt be such a thing any more. But to my surprise, a similar car laced in the same place. I could not help suspeg it was the same car, for the shape and damage degree was quite similar to that of the car last year. Probably it was a similar but different oched from somewhere. A car that had been hammered so terribly last year could not serve as their banging target again. Anyway I found no message painted on the hood this year. A hammer o it and a signboard saying "One Pounding, One Dollar" only reminded me of last year. It also told, just as I guessed, that the collected money was to be used for the scholarship. A runner asked a middle aged man standing aside "Is this a Japaomobile?" Mumbling for an instant, the man replied that "Um...I dont think so." As far as I noticed, no one hammered the car for one dollar this year. Smashing an automobile with a hammer is, I think, only an outlet for stress and it needs no specific reason, but now Ive realized that we need some more practical motivation for hammering after all.
If they had found the words "Japanese Car" written on the hood of the car, some of them might have paid one dollar and pou with a hammer. Or they might not have. I t say anything definite about it, for <u>?</u>it is only the matter based on an assumption. But anyway the old car, waiting for someoo batter it, was tinged with some ominous atmosphere of violence. Imosphere was involved something grave which ot be transmitted by words or expressed in messages. That is why the middle aged man beside the car had to murmur, "No...Um.." after a short interval to the question given by a passing-by runner, instead of giving back a definite, quick reply that "No, this is not a Japaomobile." Behind his silent interval, I guess, there lies some vague scioushat "It is no wonder even if this is a Japanese car." His "um..." must be the words unspoken and the message not expressed.
Generally speaking, Ameris sense of aipathy shifted from Saddam Hussein to the Japanese ey this year. This shifting is very obvious in any field of the news media. The neers are fully loaded with the letters from readers and the editorials denoung Japan and the Japanese. But average Ameris, except for the local automobile workers, will not yet pound on a Japanese car with a hammer. They are just listening carefully for the untold words hidden in the air and intercepting the unwritten messages.
heless, just oime I actually experienced something nasty because "I am Japanese." It happened when I asked them to switch the car I re an Avis in Honolulu because of its brake malfun. A clerk said to me, "How you fn Japanese have su impudent face, ing into our try?" But there is ioween the malfun of the brake and the fact that Im Japanese, and the words just left me at a loss. Sihis i, Ive been avoiding Avis as much as possible, but it is a story that happened five years ago and has nothing immediate with todays rising antipathy against Japan.
My Prion is a calm residential town having the uy for its ter and inhabited by wealthy people. The people here are either rich or intelligent, or both, and they show no apparent hostility toward the Japanese. But Trenton, a little way from here, has a GM factory in the suburbs and there happehe Japaomobile-hammering caused by the layoff of a number of employees due to a large scale operational redu. A "Buy Ameri" rally was held by the factory workers in front of a Toyota dealer on Route Oherefore something like this is actually developing in some area of this try, but it doesnt spread as far as this quiet, snobbish town of Prion. You see a lot of Mercedes, Porsche, Lexus, Saub, Jaguar, and BMW cars here. No other town has so many fn cars. Prion is indifferent to the "Buy Ameri" movement.
The only anti-Japan message I have found in town so far is the "Japan-bashing" sticker shown in Figure A. It ut on the back shock-absorber of a rather old big-sized Ameri car. The car was ahead of me while I was waiting for the traffic signal treen at an interse near home. At first sight, I could not figure out what it was, for the ter red circle was too small. So it looked more similar to a Japanese box lunch with a red pickled plum on the ter of rice than the Japaional flag. It must be like the Figure B, if it is properly drawn. It gives us the message "Stop Japan." Figure A shows nothing but "ning in a Japanese lunch with a pickled plum on rice." I doubt if the pany selling this sticker knows the Japaional flag correctly, and they might have made it too easily, "drawing a red circle on a white background anyway." This kind of easiness implies something ical, though. No doubt the sticker looked more humorous to me than Figure B. But either way, it is not very agreeable
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This way within a year, the Ameri peoples feeling toward Japan has bee worse all of a sudden (I feel its getting a little better in the ret one or two months though), and Im often asked by Japanese, "Isnt it tough to live in America?" Whely I was talking to a Japanese female student studying at a uy in Pennsylvania, she said to me "In my childhood I spent a few years iates and after going back to Japan, I was still in favor of this try, but this time ing back here again and after living for a while, Ive e to feel that I love Japan after all. How about you, Mr. Murakami?"
Asked by her like this, I feel quite puzzled how to answer her question. That is because I think there is no great basic differen our daily lives, whether you live in Japan or iates. Of course, it might depend on the age or the social status of the person iion. If one lives in a fn try in the early stage of life, he or she might be more likely to be influenced by the external ditions and disturbed emotionally. It is quite natural. That is the usual way with younger people. But as for me, there is no remarkable differen the attitude of everyday life. Here in America, you might meet unpleasant scumbags who make you sore sometimes. You might suffer the invisible racial discrimination. The barrier of a different language, irritatingly enough, might lead you to be misuood by someone else. You might enter someone arrogant or someooo stubborn to have some flexibility. Someone might be always finding fault with you. All these kinds of humaionships might frustrate you to some extent. But you have to remember the same kind of things will happen to you in Japan nearly as often as here iates. Now I recollect several occasions in Japan when, frustratingly, I couldnt even make myself uood in Japanese. You will find quite a few scumbags in Japan, too, as you know. I imagihat the pertage that these nasty, arrogant, speaking-ill-of-others people occupy among the one hundred n<big>９9ｌｉｂ?</big>oive will be almost the same in both tries, if examined carefully. That is also the case with the pertage of the kind or the iing people.
If asked whether I have some difficulties in living here iates as a Japanese, I will admit that it is true. But I suffered various sorts of discrimination even while I was living in Japan. Before being a writer, I was running a bar and coffee shop in Tokyo, and I experienced disagreeable things on a while. When I was trying to find an apartment, the real estate agents ofteed me by saying that "Oh, you are in the bar business. No, no, we have no apartment to rent for the people of that kind." Even after being a , I came across the similar rejes when finding a place to live in. "We only rent for the people who belong to the big panies listed in the Primary Tokyo Stock Market.." pared with the unfivingly severe history of racism against fners or non-Japanese in Japan, the discrimination that I experienced might not be even worth telling, but it is nothing but discrimination after all. You will not figure out how the discrimination is until you stand on the side of the discriminated.
Undergoing this kind of hardships in the course of life weakens the value of alternative thinking whether "I prefer to live in Japan" or "I prefer to live iates." If I were young, I would choose one from these alternative preferences. But as a matter of fact, Im not so young anymore and Ive been traio think in a more practical and skeptical manner. My only possible reply to the question that "Isnt it tough to live iates?" is "It was also tough for me to live in Tokyo." I know quite well that nobody expects such a reply as my ahough.
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