The Human Condition: Apple Pie

By Daniel Schnee on July 13, 2022.

On any particular sunny day I am inclined to think of other such days that I enjoyed while living in Western Japan.

Often, I spent a leisurely weekend in Nara, home to the world’s largest bronze Buddha statue, which itself is not far from “Narahaku” (the Nara National Museum) filled with the world’s most stunning collection of Buddhist art. Since Japan is severely hot in the summer, the Narahaku is a great place to escape the heat while enjoying incredible art and artifacts.

Nara is a great place. It is also the last place in the world you would expect a public assassination, like that of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last week. It is absolutely shocking that such a thing would occur, not only in Nara but anywhere in Japan, at any time. The following story will explain why:

One morning while living in the suburbs of nearby Osaka I headed off to work, not realizing I had left my apartment door wide open (swinging back and forth in full view of all passersby).

When I returned some fourteen hours later I saw what I had done, and my heart sunk. I had just moved to Japan after living in a rather dangerous area of Brooklyn, New York, so I assumed anything of value would be long gone. Upon entering my apartment I discovered the truth: the apartment had not been ransacked, nothing had been taken, and there was an apple pie sitting on my kitchen table, left by my elderly neighbour as a welcome gift (since she had assumed I was American).

This is the Japan I know and love; the nation the Japanese people themselves have known and loved for the last 77 years. Their pursuit of social harmony does have its downsides, but Japanese people in general live in such a beautiful social space that to have it interrupted by extreme violence is all that more heart-breaking.

That is not to say ultra-violence does not happen at all though. While I lived there a young man threw an explosive into a video store because he wanted to see what human beings on fire looked like. In another instance a man was too afraid to commit suicide, so he entered an elementary school and killed several children with a knife, assuming he would get the death penalty, and not have to do the work of killing himself.

But such acts are so rare it feels like they cannot happen at all, once society gets over the shock and life gets back to normal. And indeed though Japan is not a perfect place, so much of what its citizens call “normal” is so thoroughly paradisiacal it is a shock to see that Paradise turned hellish.

Heaven and Hell are built on personal choice, and in that sense we can create our own “Japan” right here and now, in every moment. So I choose to honour Mr. Abe’s memory by continuing to live as peacefully as I can; be the kind of person that leaves a pie instead of stealing a TV. It is not just the Japanese way … it is the right way.

Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist and jazz/rock drummer

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