About plastics in Japan

English edition by Kathelijne Bonne.

Omnipresent. Polyform. Opportunistic. They have the misfortune to linger. Japan loves them, perhaps because they reflect the values they adhere to. Plastics prevent skin contact with objects and with other beings.

No odors, no noise

One of the most striking things when you arrive in Japan is that nothing has a distinctive smell. Neither clean places nor dirty ones. That, in principle, is good. But then you realize that the smells we once disliked act as warnings of things that come your way or are about to happen.

In this country nobody warns you about anything.

In Spain, I’ve been fed up with the old ladies I couldn’t avoid bumping into in the street, telling me what to do. They look evil when they talk, until you realize that they are part of the local fauna and, as such, they make sounds.

In Japan that does not happen.

And just as the Japanese don’t shout, they don’t smell either.

They are like ghosts sometimes.

The quest for cleanliness

What better way to avoid odors than plastic? But this material does so much more.

It insulates. It preserves. It modifies. It takes beauty away (plastic wrappings tend to be ugly). It’s awkward to the touch. It numbs the finesse of the senses. It warns for pain. And for aromas.

Supermarkets in Japan are like jewelry stores. Each object beautifully on display. The grapes. The melons. The wrappings. The singular beauty of every piece. No bruises nor bumps, no evidence of a dark past.
Nobody mistreats vegetables. At least, in public.

I grab a banana. I can’t smell it or feel its softness. It’s concealed by plastic. Not three or four pieces, but just one. By now one already knows that there are many people who buy just ONE banana. They must be the ones who come every day to buy THEIR banana.

I’m told that the plastic is for hygiene, but nobody is going to eat a banana peel, are they? Isn’t the banana peel itself an excellent insulator of dirt on our hands? It’s not fabric, it’s not plastic, it’s a beautiful wrapper created by nature that self-destructs as soon as it’s discarded. Its texture is unsurpassable and has such a lively color, what else can it be than beautiful?

Meanwhile, I keep thinking about all the properties of plastic.

It insulates viruses. It contains. It separates. It preserves. It cuts off our breath.

It can even make us ill, if need be.
Its durability is paradoxical. Its permanence, a problem. Its transparency, its best gift. Its ability to take on unusual forms. Its mania for being at the service of abominable causes such as toys, bags, bottles.

This obsession with combining efficiency with ugliness may well be fascinating. Because after all, a plastic bag is the maximum expression of technology at the service of humanity, and we already know that technology does not have to be beautiful.

Someone eats plastics

I dive deeper into the paradox of plastic. Its properties are infinite. It shrinks, it never wrinkles. It neither feels nor suffers. They say that some unscrupulous microorganisms eat it. Or maybe we are all eating it. I know that PET bottles are currently NOT biodegradable. However, it seems that these bacteria are capable of destroying the product.

How did we get to the point of creating a material that stays around forever? How is it possible that we then have to figure out how to get rid of it? This is the perversity of economics: The art of creating problems that then have to be solved. We consider ourselves intelligent for having invented a great solution for things. But it resulted in a myriad of problems we would never have had if it were not for our shortsightedness.

And so, we realize that rotting was a good thing after all. Decomposing was wise. Ladies and gentlemen, clap your hands in praise of decay. In a plea for putrefaction.

Infinite travelers

Plastic bags make any tourist’s dream come true. With their owners, they travel unimaginable distances. They spend their time traveling, following the strangest trajectories. They fulfill various functions throughout their lives. They live with different social classes. They are not fussy. They are groped, stretched, rubbed to exhaustion. There may be something about survival of the fittest as Olga Tokarczuk reminds us in Flights:

The experts say these plastic bags open up a whole new chapter of earthly existence, breaking nature’s age-old habits. They’re made up of their surfaces exclusively, empty on the inside, and this historic forgoing of all content unexpectedly affords them great evolutionary benefits.” [1].

And they are also a status symbol. Because the plastic bag may hide what’s in it, while the brand is visible on the outside. Knowing how to hold a bag is an art and it must be carried with grace. I no longer ask for bags, I go happily with my lady’s trolley. But I must confess that the bag on my head did save me from a storm.

We still appreciate plastic bags when we take out the garbage. We like the fact that it isolates the smells and miseries of what we discard. Plastic bags continue to challenge us, reminding us of our own waste. Our own existence in which what we get rid of, is bigger and bulkier than what stays with us.

Today I happen to take out a huge bag of plastic trays. It is unavoidable. There is a lot of eating out. Prepared food is everywhere and it’s often cheaper than cooking. And the richer and more sedentary our societies become, the more waste they generate. Those mass consumers are also mass producers of garbage and it occurs to me that it is like an augmented reflection of our existence. A reflection of something big and dark that lingers. And it seems that as we grow older that amount of indestructible waste increases until it is we ourselves, who become waste.

A body that feeds other bodies. Circular economy.

And what is left from all of it? I leave you with these beautiful verses by Ida Vitale that inspired a story of mine that was published in the anthology Si cerca hubiera un mar [If there were a sea nearby], a tribute to the Uruguayan poet [2]. Enjoy.
Residue [3]

Short or long life
everything what we live is reduced
to a gray residue in our memory.
From the old journeys remain
the enigmatic coins
pretending false values.
From our memory rise only
a vague dust and a perfume.
Maybe it’s poetry?

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[1] Tokarczuk, Olga. Flights. Riverheadbooks. 2018 (Kindle version)

[2] Almada Sonia (Ed.) Si cerca hubiese un mar. Las lolas. 2023

[3] Translation: Stanley Barkan