Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Chapan !


When I was in sitting in a bus driving through Basel the other day looking at public flower arrangements it suddenly struck me: there are strange parallels between the the Swiss and the Japanese...
The more I thought about it I realized: brains are great. They help you convince yourself of just about anything. with the help of stereotypes and unfounded personal conjectures about these two massive groups of people, let me persuade your brain too:

If you would have seen it, you could have only agreed, that the Swiss not only have refined talent for botanical composition, but a similar fondness of the imperfect, unbalanced, and contrasting qualities that also define Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arangement. The plants at this bus stop were just so subtle and sophisticated. A lot of quiet greens and muted colors infront of the dark contours of knurly italian stone pines.

The Ikebana argument ties to another aesthetic similarity, which is the general visual style. Both are very minimalistic in the graphic as well as the three-dimensional realm - just compare the simple, rational look of Japanese laquer ware with the Helvetica typefont! wow!

Then there is of course the insular factor. While Japan is actually an island surrounded by water, Switzerland is surrounded by the EU. Or previously by warring countries or what have you. They never want to join the party. They're a rock. They're an island.

Onwards to the krass stereotypes: while the Japanese are generally private fetishists of various inclinations, the Swiss, as one Schweizer once explained to me, "go hide in the basement when they want to have sex or laugh". They're both uptight - with differing results, but the predisposition is clearly identical.

As it turns out, their Human Development Indexes is also damn close: Switzerland at 0.955 (7th) and Japan at 0.953 (8th).

Eventually it dawned on me: the flags! It was there all along and I never noticed it. Now I'm suspecting an ancient conspiracy, pacts made long ago, to what end...who knows?

1 comment:

kate said...

I love this. Isn't it much more fun to connect the dots, even if we are making it all up? Though the facts are real, and the observations definitely worth pondering, even if for our own entertainment.