Green Moss

No time to wander places these last days. Just grabbed the picture of this green moss on a tree at Yasukuni shrine while crossing the place at high speed for an errand this afternoon. Green moss fits the mood for the following story heard yesterday.

It is the story of a physician at a daycare center of a famous Tokyo university hospital. 90% of the mothers who have their children looked after there are employees of the hospital. As this daycare center is privately run, it is custom to ask the mother to financially contribute for the purchase of equipment. Part of the money received is also used to buy gifts to the physician. No monetary gifts but goods gifts. This too is custom, despite the fact that in hospitals, posters remind the patrons that gifts are not authorized. Not authorized or not, social custom bribery is deeply entrenched in Japan. The ethics of gifts and favors barter goes against custom. Still. mothers of that daycare center loathe at the custom but none would dare and call it quit. Recently, the physician whose unique competence is to be attached to that daycare center is said to have requested that the next gift be in the form of goods vouchers. Those vouchers - an industry in Japan - are easy to sell for hard cash.

There are two times of the year where traditional gifts giving take place. This formalized bribery happen on view of all. I know that some who consider harsh to call this bribery. Indeed, not all gifts are the result of compliance to tradition and a strategy to gain the good grace of people hierarchically superior. But yet, this exchange of gift is the tip of an iceberg of favors and forced upon customary exchange of goods for good grace. That physician is the superior of many mothers who cannot even think about going against that matter of fact bribery.

While writing or you reading these lines, one has to be aware that bribery is by no means specific to Japan. And by no means perceived as bribery for many locals I bet.

This story I did not read in the papers but heard indirectly from a mother involved in that nasty ring of human relations. But this one I read in the papers. That infant mortality rate in japan is 30% higher than in other advanced, rich countries. The most shocking comment was to read that the reasons for this discrepancy are unknown. Appalling to dare claim that this is unknown. Why can't it be investigated?

Green moss is especially striking these days, thanks to the damp and the milky quality of the light that is not fit during the rainy season for photography. Moss is both beautiful and repulsive at the same time. The fluffy gentle to the touch vegetal knitwear is somewhat like rot without the smell. Rot in social customs. Without the smell.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo