Thoughtcrime

This is some graffiti I found on the train this morning, scratched into the metal of the window frame. It made me a little depressed.



Here's a closer look



Somebody spent a lot of time scratching this very accurate and delicate picture. What was the message behind this melancholic act of defiance? Was this person lonely? Certainly they were sad. Were they drunk? I'd normally say that was a cert, but as you can see there was no small amount of concentration involved in this most polite of vandalisms. I can only conclude that it is only too Japanese.

A friend of mine was telling me the other day about some of the third graders in his school who came back a day or so after graduation to say hello to their teachers and generally check in. As soon as they'd been set free they had rebelled against the rules that had kept them in line for the last three years by changing their clothes and dyeing their hair. Unfortunately, they only swapped one conformity for another - they all wore exactly the same punk clothes and dyed their hair exactly the same colour as every other high-school graduate in Japan.