Asia.

What's red and white and comes in with the tide?
America. Compared to the Japanese miracle, it's all
washed up. It's hard to contemplate N.Y.C. as a
suburb of Osaka, but try. The Japanese believe in
communal bathing, so will North Americans when the
recession hits full stride. Remember, shower with a
friend.

Japan is a land of aura. Of mystery. Genghis Khan
never got there in one piece but sent his legions
anyway. Flotsam and jetsam. A bully vanquished.
1066 in reverse.

Britain was the workshop of the Victorian world.
Japan is the Britain of the universe. The whole cosmos
is borrowing her tricks. No one does things so
efficiently. No one has developed cooperation to such
a fine "T". Nowhere is individualism shepherded to
the goal of the "greater good".

Page 57
Pierre Trudeau would be pleased. "To each his own
according to his worth." Sounds impressive. Does that
mean Jaffa oranges are safe to eat -- mercury and
cyanide poisoning notwithstanding. Will the Levant
acknowledge the supremacy of the Orient?

What's new about mulberry leaves? Are silk worms
interlopers, too?

Shogun is too realistic for the narrow orchestration of
facts. The difference? They play to win.

Hands down, Kirin makes a wonderful beer. Sushi
bars are all the rage. Leyte Gulf was more than a
tempura explosion, Corning Ware or "Made in Japan"
labels produced in bulk.

Coral Gardens is a real and legitimate extension of the
Rice Factory idea.

Cipangu. As you like, what you will. No race has
undergone a swifter transformation in the world's
eye.

They deserve more than groping admiration. They
deserve our admirals, too. Who else outfoxed military
victory reversing it from the insides cadaver out? The
peter principle enshrined. The victors don't enjoy the
spoils.

The Lion's Share is as it should.

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Page 58
HOMUNCULAR FORMS

Cape aux Morts.
Cape Diable,
Points of Massacre
Rocks and Island
a plethora of Wreck Bays.

But on Funk Island, nothing matters.
Brahmsian rhetoric could describe the island
Prokofievian,
the sound of Mars
homuncular forms;
an imperative monotone.

Murrelings fell from cliffs into the sea,
rose and floated in foam, screaming.
Olivaceous puddles.
Murres and gannets, kittiwakes,
sun splashed white & pitiless
light on rock --
argon, radon, krypton
seasons of millennia suffocating
in the original gases of earth:
xenon, neon.
Granite intestin