One of the strongest and most enduring Western images of the Orient is that it is a once-great land, which, however, has long been in a state of stagnation. It lacks dynamism and has not changed for centuries. Notice the exotic snake charmers and their audience pursue their apparently bizarre pastime amid the ruins of a once-great civilization. Its ancient glory can be glimpsed in the impressive statuary in the upper right of the image. Such an image was the primary European justification for imperialist conquest of Middle Eastern lands--and may others.

It is this image of a stagnant, unchanging Orient that is most responsible for the view of Japan as some sort of a freakish paradox. As I mentioned before, however, all industrialized countries have within them older, premodern cultural forms, both in the form or remains and as living practices. Japan, then, is a typical industrial country. But because it lies within the broad, imaginary realm of "the Orient," somehow this perfectly normal coexistence of older and newer cultural forms comes to be regarded as a paradox.

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