Japan Blood, sex and tears (interspersed with a bit of surfing)
My interest in Japan is twofold: On the one hand, I’m curious about Japanese surf culture, how a sport that’s fundamentally individualistic and renegade fits into a society built on the group, obedience, playing by the rules. On the other, I’m trying to purge myself of sins committed in Japan some two decades ago.
I grew up in Southern California, came to surfing at age twelve, rose up the amateur ranks, and joined the ASP tour in ‘86. This was the era of Carroll, Curren, Occy, Pottz, a time when surfing was trying to shake off its dubious past and step into its professional and mass-marketed future. I did pretty average – my best results were a couple of thirds; I finished most seasons in the mid-40s – and when my career came to an abrupt end in 1991, I fell into a severe depression. I’d spent five years living my dream and suddenly I was put out to pasture, a has-been at age twenty-five.
I drank a lot of beer, sabotaged a perfectly good relationship, and moped around for a few months, until I realised that it was the self-expression part of surfing that I so loved, and if I couldn’t make my living riding waves, I could make my living writing about riding waves. You see, unlike most publications that require its writers to have college degrees, surf magazines demand only firsthand immersion, a willingness to sleep on couches, and a strong constitution.
For the next fifteen years I would travel the world writing for Tracks, Waves, Surfing, Surfer, The Surfer’s Journal, The Surfer’s Path, Adrenaline, etc. And while it’s been a wonderful, saltwater-drenched ride, I recently hit something of a dead end. I felt like I’ve said all I could about the WCT, the hot young upstart, the A-list surf trip. I found myself viewing surfing from a more pulled-back, anthropological perspective.
Thus, I applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to “better understand Japanese culture through the lens of surfing”. I got it, and so here I am, scribbling away in a tiny nomiya bar in Shibuya whilst the non-English speaking proprietor sings along perfectly to Jerry Lee Lewis.
My first few weeks in Tokyo were filled with the standard observations that whack most gaijins (foreigners) over the head upon arrival: the ubiquitous drink machines, the conveyor belt sushi, the pigeon-toed women, the magazines that read back to front, the taxi doors that open automatically, the surname first, Christian name second, the sing-songy irasshaimase that’s sung when you enter stores, the over-wrapping of even the most basic items that completely contradicts Japan’s advanced recycling program, the slurping of noodles that your mother told you was bad manners but here is standard practice, the way the Japanese will wait for the light to change before crossing the street, despite the fact that it’s 4am and there’s not a car in sight. That I wasn’t more cognisant of these differences during the eight or nine visits I made to Japan in the late eighties bespeaks the myopic, blinkered nature of pro surfing. I remember miso soup, broiled fish and pickled vegetables for breakfast, and the fact that nudey magazines had the private parts scratched out, but beyond this, I remember only jockish narcissism.
I surfed Chiba, Shonan, Shimoda and Miyazaki, and though the waves were terrible, the people were fantastic. Japanese are astonishingly methodical in the way they go about surfing. They carry portable showers, change mats, and coat hangers to dry their suits. They do extensive stretches at the shoreline before paddling out. I watched a guy in Shimoda pull first a pair of knee-high stools from his customised van, and then his spit-shined longboard, which he deftly set on the stools so as not to let it touch the pavement. It struck me as ridiculous, the pageantry trumping the act itself.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but surfing is innately improvisational. The fact that Matt Johnson shows up at Malibu drunk and boardless in the opening scene of Big Wednesday is not an embellishment, but a truism. The fact that Tom Curren did some of his most genius surfing ever in the nineties Search era on borrowed boards speaks volumes. Being unkempt, barefoot, half naked – winging it, in other words – is half the allure.
My friend Naki, a Japanese surf photographer who’s lived between Kamakura, San Clemente and Kauai since ‘94, has an interesting take. He says that because of the heavy work schedules and inconsistent surf, there are these long incubatory periods during which videos are watched, magazines are read and imagination is stoked.
“California is where it’s original and cool. Japanese try to copy and digest. It’s like a father/son thing. We watch: how the top pros walk, how they wax, what car they drive.”
He goes on to say that Japanese surfers are a lot more self-conscious than surfers elsewhere. Because it’s built on the group, because ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’, there’s a kind of sheep mentality. Surf magazines in Japan, for instance, contain pages of ‘How To’s’ – how to bottom turn, how to cut back, how to hit the lip – and according to Naki, these are studied religiously. Not until one’s mastered the basics in this ‘by the book’ manner will they try and put their own spin on it. I find this fascinating because it completely counters my introduction to surfing. At Malibu in the seventies, if you gave any indication of deliberate, methodical effort you’d be laughed out of the water.
To read the full feature, check out Huck #012.
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