Tradition, Tradition

I'll never forget my first Coming of Age Day in Japan. If you don't know what this is (I sure didn't), it's the second Monday of January, the day that all young people who have reached the age of majority (twenty) are recognized and celebrated. Twenty-year-olds come out in kimono, having spent many hours getting dressed and made up, and a small ceremony is held to welcome them into the adult world. It is a big deal, and a very traditional occasion. Oddly enough, what I remember the most clearly is not the kimono-clad young women posing in front of the ward offices, clustered in giggling groups, showing off their fur stoles and expensive accessories (a full kimono and all the bits and pieces it entails can cost as much as a decent car), but a group of them huddled together, wolfing MacDonald's hamburgers and sipping cokes. It was so incongruous, this group of young women in their traditional attire, indulging in an entirely western snack, that it stayed in my memory.

Over my years in Japan, I saw a lot of tradition-meets-the-20th-century clashes. A portable shrine bearer kitted out in a traditional jacket, but wearing jogging shoes instead of the wooden geta his mates had on; a man in a festival done up in Heian Era kimono, but who had obviously forgotten to remove his wristwatch; tonsured Buddhist priests on mopeds, wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

It was funny, but a little sad in a way too: no matter how traditional people might look in their formal or festival attire, almost all of them, it was obvious, found western clothes and accessories more comfortable. The old ways were, it seemed, largely for show.

Last year, I was downtown shopping when a woman sitting in an outside cafe caught my eye. She looked quite young -- perhaps in her late teens or early twenties -- and she was wearing a sky-blue burqa; only her eyes were showing. You don't see that many women here in burqas, so I'm assuming she wasn't Turkish, but whatever nationality she was, she looked bored out of her wits. She had her chin propped in one hand, and in the other she held what appeared to be a Game Boy, her thumb clicking away. I had to look twice to make sure, but yes: she was playing with a Game Boy. And why not, really? Just because she happened to dress traditionally didn't mean she should forgo all the fads and accoutrements of modern youth, did it? After all, the Koran could not forbid people to use things that had not yet been invented.

But after seeing this girl and her Game Boy, I wondered if I would ever see anything purely traditional in this country. Here, like in Japan, westernization had obviously crept in and woven itself insidiously into people's lives. Television antennae, I noticed, bristled out of the meanest hovels; women in shawls and kerchiefs pulled out credit cards in stores; even the local call to prayer closed off with electronic feedback, obviously relying on a computer. Was nothing entirely safe?

And then one day a friend and I were driving through the mountains when I saw a flock of sheep in a field, surrounded by olive trees and thorn bushes. Right in the middle of the flock was a shepherd. Dressed in white, his head covered by a length of cloth banded around his forehead, he could have stepped right out of the Old Testament as he strode along, his eyes focused on something he held in both hands. I gaped at him, thrilled. "Did you see that guy?" I almost whispered, gesturing. "He was the real thing!" I shook my head in wonder. "I didn't think there was anyone like that around anymore!"

The friend I was with smiled. "Mary, he had a cell phone. He was texting on it."