Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

SPECIFICITIES OF GLOBALIZATION 183Spiritual Hunger in JapanEven as late as mid-October 2007, well beyond the lastofficial day of my Fellowship (and whatever funds camealong with it), I was still bent towards making a finalstab at completing my work before time ran out, livingon funds I had set aside for our return to Malaysia.I found myself heading to Osaka again, to the city thathad shaped an early part of my father’s career when heserved as the Director of the Malaysian Pavilion at theWorld Expo ’70 there in Osaka. He had been in his 30sthen, just as I was during my two long spells in Japan.I had hoped and earnestly prayed that something of anencounter there would trigger me back to my sensesand awareness, and have me finding my way back intomy work.But as I stood before that famous Tower of the Sun, thatfamous tower I had seen so often during my childhoodfrom photographs of my father’s time there in Osaka,during which time I was left behind in Malaysia becauseI was still barely a year old then—I found nothing. I feltnothing.Just the sad blue sea of meaninglessness.For all the great resounding success I have had so manytimes before in snatching victory from the jaws ofdefeat, for all the times I have been so successful andeven excelled in working under the severe pressureof an imminent deadline or some against-sheer-oddssituation, I had absolutely no answer and no responsethis time. I was numb. Absolutely numb.I came back to Tokyo and to my wife, and told her,“It’s over. I’m finished. I’ve got nothing left that I cando here.”“Let’s go home.”I needed my home, I said to myself inside my heart.Home meant more than just a building, a place, a space,this time.Hence the abrupt response to the folks at the Foundation,and hence my absence from the API Workshop laterthat November.But then, even as I was busy packing up my things andpreparing to head back to Malaysia, and as I began tofeel a slight sense of relief and life flowing back into mein anticipation of heading back, I also began to feel atinge of sadness to be leaving Tokyo finally.I could not quite grasp what this sadness meant at thattime, but looking back now, I think I know.Once I had made the decision to leave Japan, I was notone with the people there anymore. I was not anothersardine in their tin can anymore, I was not another soulstruggling to swim in this metropolitan (miso) soup.Now, only now, could I finally feel detached fromthe state of being that pervaded every person’s life inTokyo.Then, and only then, I finally felt again what I usedto feel at the end of my previous long-stay in Tokyo:sadness… sadness for the people. Sadness… withoutany pity. Without any judgment. Without any feelingsof iniquity.But empathy. And brotherly affection. And also guilt—for taking the easy way out myself.Finally, finally, I had reached my point of arrival, forwhich I had long sought, just as I was about to abort,abandon ship and escape from Tokyo.I felt like Charlie Sheen’s character in Platoon as hewaited for his helicopter to take him home from hisblighted tour of duty in Vietnam. He was finished withVietnam but he still felt a strong sense of compassionfor his fellow unknowing soldiers just arriving by thesame helicopter that was about to take him home.Compassion that was beyond words. Compassion thatseeps through one’s eyes.Suddenly it all came together before me.I was taken back in time to my conversations andinterviews in 2002 from my earlier film on Tokyo,Glass Enclosure: Tokyo Invisible. I had sensed emptiness,then, within the young people I had spoken to. Theyhungered for another country to return to. Perhaps notphysically, but rather spiritually.A place they could escape to, that was in fact alwayshome. A spiritual hunger they had no name orconception of, even.When did home become just a place or a space onemerely laid a physical claim to? These young peoplewere yearning and aching for a home. A real home.Physical or spiritual. Social or emotional.Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows