Going to Japan / 去日本

這個夏天Caterina在某張明信片裏提到，大人閱讀時也需要插畫，讓閱讀變得更愉快，所以也許我可以試著為現有的故事或小說插畫。我認真想了她的建議，的確，用別人的作品不僅可以給我學習故事敘述的技巧，更重要的是，把作家筆下的描寫化成圖像對我是很好的訓練，特別是在構圖和圖面表達方面。剛好八月份學校來了幾個美國中學老師，其中一位叫朵拉的女生幫大家上文學課，教材用的是一篇有關文化差異適應的短篇故事，我便就地取材，先拿這個故事來做實驗。

This past summer in one of Caterina’s postcards, she suggested that I illustrate for existing stories or novels because pictures also bring delight when adults read. I gave much thought to her advice. I understand that in doing that, I get to learn not only how others narrate the happening of an incident. More importantly, materializing the images under their pen into pictures is excellent practice if I would like to make progress in pictorial composition and translation from words to imagery. At work, we happened to have some American teachers visiting back in August. One of them, Tora, gave a lecture on the following short story written by Barbara Kingslover about the attempt to adapt to cultural differences. Not wanting to waste the story, I gave my own pictorial interpretation.

Going to Japan / 去日本

芭芭拉金索芙作

by Barbara Kingsolver

我的姨媽賽達去日本，帶了算盤、深海球型潛水箱、難題、誹謗和茄子，那是我們以前會玩的遊戲，你只要用字母排序記住所有的字，一直輪到賽達姨媽。
（註：上述之五個名詞開頭即為：a, b, c, d, e）

My great-aunt Zelda went to Japan and took an abacus, a bathysphere, a conundrum, a diatribe, an eggplant. That was a game we used to play. All you had to do was remember everything in alphabetical order. Right up to Aunt Zelda.

然後等到我長大，而且真的受邀去日本，倒不是和了不起的賽達姨媽去，而是和我自己。我一點也不知道要帶甚麼，我只知道計畫要做的事：研究有關廣島紀念碑的故事、拜訪朋友、試著不要在連路牌都看不懂的地方迷路。不管是甚麼時候，我都盡量尊重文化差異、避免我不瞭解的敏感話題，總之，當甚麼都好，就是不要讓別人覺得我是醜惡的美國人。當我旅行的時候，我喜歡和大家打成一片，我發現只要有準備都會有幫助，所以我到處打聽，大家警告我要去的是非常現代的地方。

Then I grew up and was actually invited to go to Japan, not with the fantastic Aunt Zelda but as myself. I had no idea what to take. I knew what I planned to be doing: researching a story about the memorial at Hiroshima; visiting friends; trying not to get lost in a place where I couldn’t even read the street signs. Times being what they were—any times—I intended to do my very best to respect cultural differences, avoid sensitive topics I might not comprehend, and, in short, be anything but an Ugly American. When I travel, I like to try to blend in. I’ve generally found it helps to be prepared. So I asked around, and was warned to expect a surprisingly modern place.

我的姨媽去日本，帶了電器、電池組、手機科技，好像該這麼想。

My great-aunt Zelda went to Japan and took Appliances, Battery packs, Cellular technology….That seemed to be the idea.

於是我來到了京都，對這個城市完全陌生。沒錯，到處都有電車，有極現代化的加油站，穿著制服的人員會同時從各方來為你服務，閃閃發光的湖上有廟塔、森林間有神社，有竹林和夜鶯，更有遠超過我理解的隱藏版禮節規範。當我踏上電車，足足比其他乘客高一個頭，我便成笨拙的巨人，我占了太多空間，我就像高大的巨人伊格和天鵝湖的芭蕾舞團格格不入，我老是撞到別人，當我聽旁人說話時，我雙臂交叉，而這樣的姿勢在日本的肢體語言中代表無恥地宣告：我感到無聊。

(註：此處的伊格指的是美國最高的男性Igor Vovkovinskiy。請參考影片：http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaDs5RcH8kM)

And so it came to pass that I arrived in Kyoto an utter foreigner, unprepared. It’s true that there are electric streetcars there, and space-age gas stations with uniformed attendants who rush to help you from all directions at once. There are also golden pagodas on shimmering lakes, and Shinto shrines in the forests. There are bamboo groves and nightingales. And finally there are more invisible guidelines for politeness than I could fathom. When I stepped on a streetcar, a full head taller than all the other passengers, I became an awkward giant. I took up too much space. I blended in like Igor would blend in with the corps de ballet in Swan Lake. I bumped into people. I crossed my arms when I listened, which turns out to be, in Japanese body language, the sign for indicating brazenly that one is bored.

(PS: Igor here refers to Igor Vovkovinskiy, the tallest man in America. Please refer to the video clip:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaDs5RcH8kM)

但我一點都不無聊！我日日夜夜掙扎的對象是無聊的相反，也就是恐慌，我不知道如何用筷子吃湯麵，我吃的方式錯得離譜；我也不知道如何點菜，於是我禮貌地順從我的東道主，不只一次我吃到連頭一起上的料理，包括眼睛，我設法把這些生物用筷子往我的嘴邊塞，但等到我被告知不可以吐掉任何食物時，為時已晚。

But I wasn’t! I was struggling through my days and nights in the grip of boredom’s opposite—i.e. panic. I didn’t know how to eat noodle soup with chopsticks, and I did it most picturesquely wrong. I didn’t know how to order, so I politely deferred to my hosts and more than once was served a cuisine with heads, including eyeballs. I managed to wrestle these creatures to my lips with chopsticks, but it was already too late by the time I got the message that one does not spit out anything.

我在夏天旅行，當時的日本南部驚人地潮濕炎熱，我無法想像在如此悶熱的天氣，女性還得穿絲襪，但京都的每個女人都穿，連網球場上穿短褲的女大生也穿絲襪，我只帶了裙子和涼鞋，大家看到我都避開目光。

I undertook this trip in summer, when it is surprisingly humid and warm in southern Japan. I never imagined that in such sweltering heat women would be expected to wear stockings, but every woman in Kyoto wore nylon stockings. Coeds in shorts on the tennis court wore nylon stockings. I had packed only skirts and sandals; people averted their eyes.

我去日本時帶了我的身高、裸露的雙腿和毫不敏感的西方作風，其實我內心滿是羞愧。

When I went to Japan I took my Altitude, my Bare-naked legs, my Callous foreign ways. I was mortified.

我的主人朋友向我解釋，日語中並沒有羞辱的字眼，只有無限程度的道歉，我立刻背了緊急用法：對不起，還有特別緊急案例可使用的說法：我非常非常抱歉，這句話大概可以翻成：假如您同意的話，我的逾矩是如此無法令人原諒以至於我希望自己立刻死掉。

My hosts explained to me that the Japanese language does not accommodate insults, only infinite degrees of apology. I quickly memorized an urgent one, “Sumimasen,” and another for especially extreme cases, “Moshi wake gozaimasen.” This translates approximately to mean, “If you please, my transgression is so inexcusable that I wish I were dead.”

我需要這些字眼，當我出於好奇心而撫摸宮殿城牆的外圍，我觸動了刺耳的警鈴，然後警車馬上急奔於草坪間的碎石路，「警官，我實在非常抱歉，我但願自己死掉！」還有在公共澡堂裡，儘管我盡力了，我還是無法學會如何和陌生人只坐離十四英吋使用手動的蓮蓬頭淋浴，我噴冷水在身旁老婦的臉上。

「我真的非常抱歉。」我充滿羞愧地說。

她只是瞪著我，被外國人的威脅嚇壞了。

I needed these words. When I touched the outside surface of a palace wall, curious to know what it was made of, I set off screeching alarms and a police car came scooting up the lawn’s discreet gravel path. “Moshi wake gozaimasen, Officer! Wish I were dead!” And in the public bath, try as I might, I couldn’t get the hang of showering with a hand-held nozzle while sitting fourteen inches from a stranger. I sprayed my elderly neighbor with cold water. In the face.

“Moshi wake gozaimasen,” I declared, with feeling.

She merely stared, dismayed by the foreign menace.

我去拜訪一位日本朋友，在她小卻美的房子裡，我吐露所有的悲慘。「我做的一切都是錯的！」我像孩子般大哭，「我是你們國家的禍害！」

她平靜地回答：「不，對我們來說，原諒別人帶來最高的滿足，至於原諒外國人，更好！」她笑道：「你可能已經讓這裡的許多人開心了。」

I visited a Japanese friend, and in her small, perfect house I spewed out my misery. “Everything I do is wrong!” I wailed like a child. “I’m a blight on your country.”

“Oh, no,” she said calmly. “To forgive, for us, is the highest satisfaction. To forgive a foreigner, ah! Even better.” She smiled. “You have probably made many people happy here.”

我認為大搖大擺遊走於全世界，忽略文化差異是傲慢的，但如果我們真的相信能夠在不同文化之間建立一座完美的溝通橋樑，或以為我們知道所有的模糊地帶，這是另一種傲慢。當我終於抵達廣島原子彈的投擲點，我無語地站著，我在那裡發現的是巨大的、精緻的、沉默的紀念碑，象徵著原諒，想著那些在出於善意和其結果的鴻溝之間所有的獲得和失去，我感動到說不出話來，也沒有眼淚能夠表達，在企圖了解他人但失敗的過程當中，我們還有好多要學。

To stomp about the world ignoring cultural differences is arrogant, to be sure, but perhaps there is another kind of arrogance in the presumption that we may ever really build a faultless bridge from one shore to another, or even know where the mist has ceded to landfall. When I finally arrived at Ground Zero in Hiroshima, I stood speechless. What I found there was a vast and exquisitely silent monument to forgiveness. I was moved beyond words, even beyond tears, to think of all that can be lost or gained in the gulf between any act of will and its consequences. In the course of every failure of understanding, we have so much to learn.

我想起日本朋友堅信原諒是最高等級的滿足，而當下我第一次明白：我們得到的快樂如果不是來自於達到個人的完美、而是出自於瞭解不完美的不可避免性，並且能夠原諒同樣犯錯的人，這會是多麼豐富的智慧，我們會有多麼富足的豐收。

I remembered my Japanese friend’s insistence on forgiveness as the highest satisfaction, and I understood it really for the first time: What a rich wisdom it would be, and how much more bountiful a harvest, to gain pleasure not from achieving personal perfection but from understanding the inevitability of imperfection and pardoning those who also fall short of it.

我行走於世人之間，犯下無數錯誤，當我去日本時，我帶著自卑的善意、邪惡的藉口和蜷縮的悔恨，我記不住所有事，也背不出五十音，於是我完全地奉獻自我，很明顯地當做某種公共服務的形式，我打算雙手空空，甚麼也不帶回家。

I have walked among men and made mistakes without number. When I went to Japan I took my Abject goodwill, my Baleful excuses, my Cringing remorse. I couldn’t remember everything, could not even recite the proper alphabet. So I gave myself away instead, evidently as a kind of public service. I prepared to return home feeling empty-handed.

在大阪機場，我坐在跑道上的機艙裡，等著回美國，而窗外颱風的凍雨和狂風連續地敲打著飛機的鋼鐵機身。我們等了一個小時，甚至更久，駕駛艙沒有發佈任何官方消息，但我們的航班突然就被取消了。東京的塔台被雷擊中，所有航班都必須延至隔天。

「我們很抱歉，」飛機駕駛告訴我們，「我們會為您準備食宿，明天也會帶您回來搭機。」

At the Osaka Airport I sat in my plane on the runway, waiting to leave for terra cognita, as the aircraft’s steel walls were buffeted by the sleet and winds of a typhoon. We waited for an hour, then longer, with no official word from the cockpit, and then suddenly our flight was canceled. Air traffic control in Tokyo had been struck by lightning; no flights possible until the following day.

“We are so sorry,” the pilot told us. “You will be taken to a hotel, fed, and brought back here for your flight tomorrow.”

當乘客慢慢起身下機，有位航空公司的長官駐於出口處只為了和我們每一個人說：「真的真的很抱歉。」其他乘客漠然點頭，但我不是。這位先生被我的熱情嚇到，因為我握住他的手，幾乎親上他。

我告訴他：「你不知道我有多原諒你。」

As we passengers rose slowly and disembarked, we were met by an airline official who had been posted in the exit port for the sole purpose of saying to each and every one of us, “Terrible, terrible, Sumimasen.” Other travelers nodded indifferently, but not me. I took the startled gentleman by the hands and practically kissed him.

“You have no idea,” I told him, “how thoroughly I forgive you.”