Strange Days in the Fabulous East

* the title of this blog post is on page 85 of DeLillo's work

As I was reading the “In Atsugi” chapter, I was expecting more focus on the military action at the base in Japan, but was surprised to find that most of the reading was about Lee’s experience in the city. In particular, the first half of the chapter describes in detail his experience in Tokyo with Matsuki and Konno. The effects that these characters have on Lee start to reveal a lot about him, not only to us as readers, but also to himself, as he is starting to understand his own worldviews.

First, his budding relationship with Matsuki shows his ability and willingness to let himself go for pleasure, regardless of any work that needs to be done. He briefly mentions seeing “Japanese girls walking hand in hand with U.S. servicemen” in the beginning of the chapter, and sooner than later he becomes one of these war-men that he described. They’d have intercourse in a traditional yet seemingly “imitation” Japanese room, and they’d do the same later in an apartment block set. She told him she was thirty-four years old while he was still 18, and the narrator simply says “Strange days and nights”. The only description of what kind of work he was doing at the base is given in a total of 9 lines out of the several pages about his time in Japan, basically saying that he observed air traffic with the oscilloscope and asked engaged officers questions about world affairs, finding out that they were badly informed unlike him. Quite obviously, he enjoyed being out in the city more than being at the base, and although Matsuki plays a large role as to why this is so, Konno is a huge factor in Lee’s liking of Tokyo.

Konno believed in a lot of things that would have been controversial from an American perspective during the Cold War, and he shared these beliefs with Lee as they sat and talked in nightclubs together. Being a member of the Japanese-Soviet Friendship Society, the Japanese Peace Council, and the Japan-China Cultural Exchange Association, he firmly believed that a) foreign capital and foreign troops dominated his country and b) capitalism must be destroyed in order to have true socialism. If it wasn’t already obvious, Konno is a supporter of communism, and his views seem to resonate with Lee. Konno was “able to argue Lee’s own positions from a historic rather than a purely personal viewpoint”, helping Lee to articulate his opinions, and letting him do so without undermining or ridiculing him as he was used to back at the base. Stepping back from the book, this part of the plotline makes complete sense in Lee Harvey Oswald’s backstory: he didn’t see the reason to hate communism, and he shared those thoughts with the other marines on the base who ridiculed him and thought he was absolutely stupid. (I mean, he was serving as a United States Marine in the middle of the Cold War against communism in the Soviet Union, so they had a point to say his viewpoint was pretty absurd…) Mr. Mitchell mentioned to us that he later visited Soviet Russia and almost immediately became a Soviet citizen. In this chapter, we can see Konno sparking Lee’s understanding and articulation of what communism really is, and this later develops into his trip to the Soviet Union to further his support of communism and applies for and receives his full-blown Soviet citizenship.

So, these “strange days and nights” in Japan weren’t just strange after all… In fact, they were vital for Lee’s realization of who his “enemy” was. With Matsuki, he realizes that he takes pleasure in the leisure, and that the Marine work doesn't interest/challenge him enough (from what we can tell from the narrator). With Konno, he begins to understand what the voice in the back of his mind was telling him to believe. As it turns out, he was physically fighting for the wrong side for him, and mentally was a supporter of the Russian Soviets. I wonder how and where DeLillo will take us through the rest of Lee’s journey until the assassination, and if there will be more characters like Konno who will fundamentally shape Lee’s views and lead him on the path to Soviet citizenship.