We Are The Zulu Warriors of Japan

I don’t think we were actually lost. We knew more or less where we were, it just wasn’t clear where we would be next. Our walk from rural Japan to even more rural Japan had taken longer than we expected, and now the approaching evening brought autumn’s first nip to the air. All we wanted was to find the quickest way home.
However, according to the half hour consultation with the inevitably overly-helpful lady at the village office, my fellow JET Keith (who fortunately CAN speak Japanese, unlike his hiking partner) gleaned that our only option was the long process of taking a bus to the nearest city, walking across town to the train station, and from there catching the train home.
When the bus arrived it was completely empty of passengers, which was a blessing for me since this was my first time on a Japanese bus and I made at least three protocol mistakes before even getting into a seat. We sat immediately opposite the doors, and basked in the countryside that rolled by outside, keeping our eyes peeled for sudden flashes of “the Real Japan”; a hidden shrine here, an old woman in a colorful kimono there, and everywhere covert double-takes from people who noticed the two pale faces peering into their world from behind the bus window.
After a few stops without any addition to the short passenger list, we came to a stop that, from our perspective, appeared to be empty as well. But when the double doors to our left slammed open, we were instantly caught in the beam of 20 saucer-sized eyes gaping up at us. Ten knee-high, uniformed, speechless elementary school students stood outside, frozen in... in what? Not exactly terror, or interest, or confusion. Maybe it was a combination of all these, or simply a shock strong enough to shut down their brains for a second, like the deer in the headlights that pauses for a moment to contemplate whether it’s about to be raptured into deer heaven, be abducted by aliens, or hit by a truck. It’s a look that every foreign resident of Japan must learn to accept, and ideal even enjoy.
After a long moment the children managed to push one of their number up onto the bus stairs to test the waters, like penguins testing for seals. Keith and I had no intention of passing up this chance to fulfill our duty to “nurture grassroots internationalization,” and as each pair of saucer-eyes scurried by we let out a cheery chorus of “Hello!”, which caused each saucer-sized pair of eyes to upgrade to frying-pan-sized and sent them all diving for the very back of the bus.
As the bus moved on our attention was entirely shifted to the inside of the bus. And no wonder; we could practically feel the undivided attention focused on the backs of our necks. Keith and I started a conversation about the reaction we so effortlessly elicited, and tried to put ourselves in the tiny shoes behind us.
“Wow, they were really shocked! It’s just so easy!”
“Yeah, I wonder what’s really going through their heads....What do you think would cause us to have the same reaction to something?”
“Well, it’d have to be on our own turf, so say you’re nonchalantly getting on a bus back in America, and on the bus is sitting... what?”
“An alien?”
“Not really, it should be something that you knew existed, but you never expected to see, at least not there.”
“Someone from some very obscure part of the world, who looks very strange...”
“Like a Zulu warrior or something! Yeah, imagine you’re getting on the same bus you’ve taken every day for years, only this time the doors open and there’s a Zulu warrior in full regalia sitting there looking at you! That’d give me a few seconds pause!”
As we contemplated our presence in rural Japan as comparable to a Zulu warrior walking around New York city, the thought became both more humorous and more depressing. To a certain extent I think all of us enjoy the attention we get here, the celebrity of standing out in (and above) any crowd, feeling just a little bit famous. Last week I was swarmed by a group of my elementary school students who wanted my autograph, and one little boy who couldn’t find a piece of paper tore off his shoe and held it up to me with a pen. “Sign, please!” I’ve never felt closer to being a rock star in my life.
At the same time, the image of the lonely warrior wandering around New York underlines the fact that we are indeed far from home. We will never blend in, never be Japanese, and never stop getting pointed at and watched. There will never come a day when we are no long treated a little like aliens, for “alien” (at least in terms of nationality) is what we are, and Keith and I had the undivided attention of 10 huddled children to prove it.
Several stops down the road, we heard the children gathering their things and preparing to leave. Screwing their courage to the sticking post, one by one they marched by us. And low and behold, as easy student passed by, an exuberant “good-bye!” was bestowed upon us. When we responded in kind they laughed, and dashed happily off the bus, waving to us from the sidewalk.
There is certainly a lot to be said about the closed communities of Japanese society, the often dire lack of English ability, and the absence of awareness or sensitivity regarding anyone from “the outside,” and we who are from “the outside” often get fed up with it. After all, we are trying to be multi-cultural and multi-lingual, we are giving years of our lives to open up communication with these people who point and stare at us. And of course America especially is much more a melting-pot than Japan will ever be, full of multi-ethnic people who don’t consider it impossible for outsiders to become one of them. Try asking a Japanese person about how to understand Japan, and you’re likely to hear some variation of “impossible.”
Say what you want about this island nation, still one fact remains. Of course New York is a more comfortable and open-minded environment for a foreigner than rural Japan, but these elementary school students made me realize something about my own subtle feelings of superior multiculturalism. If I were to step onto my bus in New York and found a Zulu warrior staring at me, I’m sure I would exhibit the same bewilderment, staring, and rushing to the back of the bus as those 10 year olds. But when the time came to disembark, I really doubt that I’d have the courage to engage him with a wave and a friendly “good-bye!” For one thing, I certainly wouldn’t be able to say it in nearly perfect Zulu.

At Any Price

Human life is shaped and formed by countless factors. These factors can be physical, logical, emotional, or even supernatural, but perhaps the strongest motivators are instinctual. And no instinct holds more sway than the instinct to survive. Given free reign, the survival instinct will go to any lengths to achieve its purpose. It gives nearly irresistible commands in moments of danger, and when danger is present for longer periods of time then it can create seemingly absurd behaviors and structures as a means of defense. The more extreme the danger and the longer it lasts, then the more unusual and desperate will the structures become.
The most extreme example of this phenomenon is human war. Those who must find a way to exist in this most threatening and torturous of environments inevitably create otherwise impossible structures of friendship, manipulations of human nature, irreversible transformations of their thought processes, all to “on living at any price” (100). As is demonstrated in Erich Maria Remarque's book “All Quiet On The Western Front,” this radical process is the only hope for survival.
Here “survival” does not mean physical survival, since all the soldiers quickly come to realize that “it is simply a matter of chance whether I am hit or whether I go on living” (72). The long-term practical effects of the survival instinct in war exist primarily in the social realm. Nowhere else is it so evident that humans are social creatures with a life-and-death need for community.
The first factor to understand is that these young soldiers have been utterly removed from every aspect of their previous social existence. All that they had been taught both directly and indirectly by their previous life was found to be wanting on the battlefield. This means that every foundation and trust of their young minds was shattered to its core. The main character Paul Baumer says of their teachers, parents, and role-models that “we believed in them. In our minds the idea of authority – which is what they represented – implied deeper insights and a more humane wisdom. But the first dead man we saw shattered this conviction” (9). The teacher who pressed them all into the war to begin with, whom they all formerly respected and who had the best of intentions in pushing them to war, is now perceived as being completely morally bankrupt.
The rawness of war, and the essential changes it works on the nature of young men completely severed their connection with any environment that was not war. When visiting home it is painfully obvious to Paul that “I'm sure that I was just like them myself, before: but now I can't find any real point of contact... These people are different” (121). In fact the people are not different at all, it is Paul and his comrades who have completely changed. The way that their survival instincts have completely remade them causes Paul to feel that even if they physically survive the war, still “I don't think we'll ever get home” (62).
Of course other young people experience this feeling without any involvement in a war. But they have other ways to build a new “home” and other social shelters to run to; namely to romance. But on the battlefront there are no women at all, and thus the soldiers are deprived of another “natural” survival mechanism. The absence of the “fairer sex” has as profound an effect on the soldiers as the disconnection from their homes, though it might be subtler. In the book it is most clearly seen when there appears a poster with a beautiful woman on it, and the reaction of two of the young men is a sudden desire to wash themselves, find clean clothes to wear, and make themselves “presentable,” even though they've given no thought to presentability for nearly two years. From this it can be seen how influential women have been on the development of a cultured and civil society. Without this influence it quickly becomes clear that “a man is basically a beast, and it's only later that a bit of decency gets smeared on top” (31).
Man cannot survive without a social community. In the absence of family, role-models, and romantic interests, the survival instinct finds more unusual ways to fill the void. One way is to make seemingly unfeeling jokes and fun of their deadly situation, even though “it isn't because we are naturally cheerful that we make jokes, it's just that we keep cheerful because if we didn't, we'd be done for” (101). They throw off many of the morals and taboos which aid the construction of “civilization,” but here are only baggage to weigh them down. Those who would never think of stealing do so here without even missing the non-existent guilt, and the embarrassment of public toilets is a an idea from a past life. “Earlier values don't count any longer. And nobody really knows how things used to be” (191). These are all far-reaching creations of the survival instinct, far removed from the form of man in less threatening environments, but vital here.
But the strongest structure created for the sake of survival is “the best thing that the war produced – comradeship in arms” (19). The bond between the soldiers, in the absence of anyone else to bond with, is as intense as any social bond in non-war conditions. It isn't talked about, just understood, that their fellows are all they have to hold on to, all that gets them through another day without losing all will to live. The feeling that someone is dependent on you just as you depend on him is so vital to the human psyche, especially under such circumstances, that the survival instinct creates it through virtually anyone who is available. The result is that “we have a greater and more gentle consideration for each other than I should think even lovers do. We are two human beings, two tiny sparks of life: outside there is just the night, and all around us, death... Before the war we wouldn't have has a single thought in common – and now here we are... aware of our existence and so close to each other that we can't even talk about it” (68).
While this fraternal bond is the only thing that keeps them alive and feeling like human beings, at the same time it is this bond that blocks their road back to human civilization. It is the common experience, the intense daily stress survived side-by-side that forms the fabric of their lives, and that very experience is something that no one in the “real world” will ever be able to relate to. No one will ever be able to understand these young soldiers, and their awareness of this only pulls them closer together in increasing rejection of the outside world.
Besides the growing disconnection with their former homes, another rejection occurs in the realm of political thought. Previously they had either ignored the political world as irrelevant to their lives, or else taken everything at face value when presented with authority. But suddenly politics has a very real effect on them all, and they begin to question the powers-that-be. They are shocked by the realization that “on some table, a document is signed by some people that none of us knows, and for years our main aim in life is the one thing that usually draws the condemnation of the whole world and incurs its severest punishment in law” (137). From here they are able to begin questioning the leaders of their country, even the Kaiser himself. They start to accept the idea that he is human, that he can be questioned, that he might make mistakes or be motivated by selfishness. The knowledge that “the war has ruined us for everything”(63) further embitters them and further isolates them from their own command. No longer are they content to leave the affairs of the world in the hands of the “bigwigs,” they want to have their own say. Beyond this, however, is a feeling that they've been betrayed by a system they trusted, by an existence they trusted. More powerful than any plan for change or hope of deliverance is the the lasting impression is that “everything must have been fraudulent and pointless if thousands of years of civilization weren't even able to prevent this river of blood” (186). Their “political awakening,” so to speak, did not motivate them to greater political involvement, but rather further convinced them its futility.
Along with the self-granted permission to question authority came the ability to question the very tenants of their war-time existence. Their sole function as soldiers is to kill the opposing soldiers, despite the dawning realization that they really have no personal motive for doing so beyond the fact that “if we don't destroy them they will destroy us” (83). Their expanded political understanding leads them to the conclusion that war is caused by a few men in high positions, and that “...out here...the wrong people are fighting each other” (29).
They develop almost a sympathy for those on the other side of no-man's land, seeing that in many ways they have all been thrown together into the same mess for no good reason. “It's funny when you think about it... We're out here defending out homeland. And yet the French are there defending their homeland as well. Which of us is right?” (144). Of course these thoughts cut them off even more from their leadership, from their patriotic parents and teachers, and from their former innocent and trusting selves, and pulls them closer together an unusual substitute family.
The ultimate end for the main character Paul is not his physical death, which is little more than a footnote at the end of the book, but rather the loss of his “family,” his fellows. They represent the only community he has left, the last scrap of safety net his survival instinct has been able to hold together, and when that community vanishes then there is nothing left to live for. He feels that if they all could have returned home a year ago, together and strengthened by their common experience, then they could have changed to world with their righteous indignation. But “if we go back now we shall be weary, broken-down, burnt-out, rootless and devoid of hope. We shall no longer be able to cope” (206). It is the loss of comradeship that takes all the life out of Paul, and the shrapnel that later kills him is little more than the physical manifestation of that lifelessness.
Through all this it can be seen how far humans will go to create a close community, and that when absolutely no material for community can be found then the result is dire. For Paul and his fellows, cut off from every other social interaction, they bond with each other to an extent that is inexplicable for anyone who has not experienced war. The thing that makes this account of the war more terrifying than anything else is the loss of that bond, and the destruction of everyone left behind. As Remarque says in his introduction, the purpose of the story is no more or less than to “give an account of a generation that was destroyed by war – even those of it who survived the shelling.” For anyone who is temped to count the cost of war accounting to the statistics of deaths and survivals, it is vital to remember that true war does not allow any survivors at all.

The Days of the Madman

“I think you cope quite sensible with the difficulty of living. We build useless war machines, towers, walls, curtains of silk, and we could marvel at all this a great deal if we had the time. We tremble in the balance, we don’t fall, we flutter…” (Kafka 45).
Franz Kafka wrote these lines in 1909, from under an atmosphere of intense occupation. This may seem a strange statement to make, since although modern Czech history offers a number of severe political and military occupations, Kafka did not experience them. When he was born in Prague, the Czech lands were part of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, which may be called a kind of occupation, except that after 200 years this arrangement was status-quo, and as a German speaker himself Kafka would be expected to have more sympathy with Austria than with the “Czech” nation. So how can it be said that his writing is influenced by an occupation?
In the context of the Czech experience, the word “occupation” wears many masks. It can be applied to the military presence of Nazi Germany during World War II, or to the political influence of Soviet Russia from 1948-1989 (including their own military period, starting in 1968). It could even apply to the cultural oppression of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries. All definitions of the word, however, have two common factors: the existence of an unwelcome outside presence, and the restrictions enforced by that outside presence upon the subject. Under these terms, this essay is aimed at exploring a very different manifestation of the word: the occupation of the psyche.
To begin shedding light on this concept we will leave Kafka for the moment and turn to one of his contemporaries: Gustav Meyrink. In The Golum, Meyrink writes about an individual living in the Jewish Quarter, which in the early 20th century was a ghetto that embodied an atmosphere of extreme claustrophobia, despair, and isolation. The residents were held there by force, meaning that legal, religious, or financial factors strictly prevented them from leaving. Thus stagnation, in every conceivable sense of the word, permeated the ghetto. “The dark, sullen life which clings to this house refuses to leave me in peace, and old images keep looming up inside me” says Athanasius Pernath, the main character of The Golum (Meyrink 13).
When applying the word “occupation” to the Jewish ghetto, it is important to understand that a “psychic occupation” need not be planned or intended by any person or entity. It is necessary only that a foreign (and probably unwanted) presence impose restrictions on the natural course of life. With this in mind it is easier to imagine the ghetto as being under occupation, not by military or political force but by the heavy psychological burden which all inhabitants lived under every day. Their lives and minds were not their own, being held captive by the environment in which they lived. No individual exhibits this better than Mr. Pernath.
Pernath finds himself caught up in a convoluted psychic haunting of the ghetto by an ancient intangible entity, the Golum. The embodied emergence of the Golum is explained as being the result of the long term psychic trauma of the ghetto: “As the electric tension builds past endurance on humid days and at last gives birth to lightning, might not the constant accumulation of the never-changing thoughts which poison the air here in the ghetto inevitably lead to a sudden, fitful discharge? – a psychic explosion which whips our dream-consciousness out into the daylight…” (46).
This “psychic explosion” that is the Golum chooses Pernath as its host, and a second level of occupation occurs in the story as he is gradually possessed by the Golum. As a result of this Pernath’s behavior changes radically, quickly isolating those around him and throwing him into a spiral of thoughts and actions that would certainly invoke the diagnosis of “insanity” from any outside observer. He begins to attribute consciousness to inanimate objects: “Often I dreamed I eavesdropped on these houses’ sinister doings and learned to my horror that they were the true secret masters of the street” (25), he has dreams and visions that are increasingly difficult to separate from reality (even for the reader), and the encounters with the Golum begin to seem more like encounters with himself.
The question is whether it is wholly justifiable to call Pernath’s reaction to this psychological occupation “insanity.” To that end we will turn to another character and another period in Czech literature. In Fuks’ Mr. Theodore Mundstock, there is no need to make a case for the existence of a hostile occupation, as the main character is a Jew during the Nazi reign in Prague. But our interest here is not the physical occupation, but rather the prying into peoples’ psyches, which in this case is very deliberate and intentional.
Mr. Mundstock exhibits seemingly “insane” behavior in two ways, which correspond to the two halves of the book. Indeed, insanity seems to be the driving point of the story, and the first introspective piece of information the main character gives the reader is that “my nerves have gone all to pieces” (Fuks 2). He comes home every day expecting to find a summons for the daily Jewish transport to concentration camps, and he spends every waking moment at home waiting for the decisive knock on his door. He explains his stress about all this to his companion, Mon, and also often receives ridicule from him. Mon, as far as can be determined, is Mr. Mundstock’s shadow personified. The conversations between these two sometimes become so animated as to alert the neighbors, and while Mr. Mundstock puts great effort into ignoring Mon, he isn’t quite strong enough to be left alone.
If Mon were to vanish, Mr. Mundstock would truly be alone (besides the ambiguous bird he keeps as a pet, a relationship which could be an argument for insanity in itself!). His reportedly active social life before the invasion has shriveled into little more than furtive glances and secret, whispered meetings. This applies to all members of the Jewish community, who live in fear of drawing attention to themselves or of implicating a friend by their presence. There is no law specifically which states that Jews must remain hidden behind locked doors and dart quietly from shadow to shadow, but the constant fear and dread enforces this behavior as firmly as any chains could. They realize that “we have been flung into a terrible hell” (95), but the whispers of news from the concentration camps constantly reminds them that a single knock on the door could trigger much worst.
It is in this environment that Mr. Mundstock has endowed his shadow with a personality which he is no longer able to control. He can talk to Mon, ignore him, but he cannot uncreate him. Clearly this is not sane behavior, but can we blame him? Stripped of all traditional and healthy social interaction, he has adapted an imaginative solution to his need. And in this we hit upon a crucial point.
Often we hear that mankind is the most adaptable creature of the animal kingdom, being able to adapt to life in nearly any environment this planet can throw at us, and for this reason we dominate the globe. In a physical sense this might be true, but in our progression we have also developed a vulnerability to a metaphysical environment of which the animals need know nothing. Our needs within this metaphysical realm are many, and while they may vary slightly from person to person it is vital that they not be underestimated. For example, while there are animals that lead a social existence, there is no other creature that relies so fundamentally on communication that the lack of interaction becomes a question of life or death. Other needs (those which will be addressed here) besides social interaction include a sense of place in time, and hope (in one form or another), among many others. These metaphysical needs are so absolute that man is utterly unable to adapt to life without them, just as our lungs cannot adapt to life on the moon. Rather, the reaction is to drastically adapt our perception of the very fabric of reality until it becomes bearable. If we cannot successfully fool ourselves into believing that those needs are being met, then we whither and die.
In this light it becomes more difficult to label Mr. Mundstock as being insane. The military occupation has deprived him of all meaningful interaction, and in so doing has forced its way into his psyche. He must have human contact, or perish (and the number of suicides amongst his friends confirms the reality of this threat). The restrictions placed on him press from all sides except one. Every traditional and accepted path to social interaction has been systematically blocked, but there is no way (or need) to block the full extent of human creativity. Mr. Mundstock takes the only road left to him, the road that fulfills his needs through a detachment from reality. After all, “there was probably nothing on earth that you couldn’t explain away if you found the right reason” (35), and he has found the right reasons to explain away the fact that it is impossible to have a real conversation with one’s shadow. That reason is a life-or-death need for companionship. In truth he is not insane, but merely following his logical survival instincts in an insane environment. However, he goes on to provide further grounds for suspicion!
When Mr. Mundstock becomes more certain that his summons to the concentration camp is coming soon, he begins to panic, and another need quietly rises to the forefront: “The worse thing of all is to lose hope” (8). Hope, too, has been systematically and deliberately barricaded in every conceivable way. But suddenly he is struck with the thought that “method and a practical approach could save him” (111). He begins to put himself through a rigorous training routine, practicing not sleeping, not eating, doing hard labor, etc. This is clearly madness, since being prepared for a bullet will not save anyone from it. And as he vividly imagines watching his closest friends being dragged to the camps and beaten, coolly taking notes in a very “practical” manner, then the reader is left with no question as to his slipping hold on sanity. But this would be taking Mr. Mundstock at face value, for while he thinks that the purpose of these actions is to survive the camps, the subconscious and true goal is to acquire a reason to hope.
Mr. Mundstock’s callousness is appalling, and the extent to which he drowns himself in his hallucinations is disturbing. But as he himself says: “Where can you turn for strength? I don’t blame people for escaping into dreams, I don’t. You’ve got to find a refuge somewhere. How can we just go on holding out?” (153). This is the mark of the occupied psyche; he is so confined that he is unable to go on in any socially acceptable way. It forces him to a choice: a despairing death, or a disengagement from reality that equates to madness. More often then not the end result is both. There’s no question that “there are thoughts that crush” (17). In the end, after the enormous struggle for survival, Mr. Mundstock is prepared, and while crossing the street to join a transport to the concentration camps he is hit by a truck and killed instantly. The Nazis did they work thoroughly, systematically pursuing and claiming his companionship, hope, time, sanity, and finally his life.
Now we can step back to Pernath and the Golum, whom we left awaiting our verdict on his sanity. His psyche has also been invaded, pried open, and occupied by the deep communal distress of the ghetto. Before any serious entanglement with the Golum, this atmosphere had restricted his options and actions, even blocking the road to certain essential metaphysical needs. These needs rise to the surface of his consciousness, and he becomes nearly obsessed with what another Czech author of a different period of occupation called “the unbearable lightness of being” (Kundera). Seeing the wind catch up a piece of paper and wave it around in the air, Pernath wonders: “What if, in the end, we living creatures too are something like those scraps of paper? – Might an invisible, ungraspable wind chase us back and forth as well, determining our actions, while we in our innocence think ourselves governed by our own free will?” (Meyrink 41).
This notion becomes even more frightening for him as he begins to realize that he has no knowledge of his past, that almost all memories had been blocked to protect him from some tremendous trauma. That lack of memory was “making me homeless amidst the life surrounding me” (52). A man with no knowledge of the past, no hope for the future, and no link to the present desires one thing, connection. He longs to be a part of the time and space he inhabits, to know that he exists by the impact his life has on the people around him, and to affect something, anything, in the formation of the future.
This is the need, and all the restrictions of his environment are aimed against him achieving it. The solution (whether of his own psychological creation or simply a rare opportunity that appeared just in time to save him from devastation) is the insane behavior involving the Golum. The Golum embodies the tortured consciousness of the entire Jewish community, and through their surreal interaction Pernath obtains a connection to his time and place. He sees a vision of many faces “on through the centuries, until the features grew more and more familiar to me and converged in one last face: the face of the Golum, ending the procession of my forebears” (144). As abstract, untraditional, and “insane” as this connection might be, that is precisely the point. Psychological occupation leaves room for nothing else.
In prison Pernath meets another man who has shared some of his experiences with the Golum. This individual has been taken to the extreme of committing murder while under the influence of the Golum, but he coolly accepts this in a way that seems like madness even to Pernath. His response is instructive: “But I am not mad. I am something quite different – something which closely resembles madness, but is its exact opposite” (238). Although it is taking his statement slightly out of context, these words eloquently communicate one point of this essay: the bitter irony of psychological occupation is that the insanity it produces springs from an entirely logical reaction to the circumstances. The most irrational deeds can be understood as absolutely imperative when taken in the context of the significance of mankind’s metaphysical needs.
At last we are prepared to return to Kafka. The quote at the beginning of this essay comes from the short story “A Description of a Struggle,” and a quick perusal of the story should reveal its similarities with the other pieces of literature already examined. In regards to the presence of insane behavior, the story jumps from one restless hallucination to the next and switches suddenly between narrators without warning. Concerning the analysis of this story, it would be difficult to even separate the characters from one another and determine what their behavior actually is, much less what needs provoke it. In fact one must wonder if the author himself is not under some sever psychological occupation, and this is where it fits.
Kafka lived in the ghetto at the same time that Meyrink was writing about it. In fact if Pernath had been a writer, we could imagine him producing something similar to Kafka’s works. Kafka was also a German speaking Jew in the Czech lands, a condition that much increased his feelings of isolation and oppression. His writing was a compulsion, his own creative way of addressing a need within him. And anyone who can write about a man waking up to discover that he has become a giant beetle is no stranger to the accusation of insanity. Therefore it is an easy jump to hypothesize that he was driven to this form of expression by a psychological occupation, the same plague which weighed on Fuks, Meyrink, Kundera, and many other principles of Czech literature.
Without going into unnecessary details, the very elements that can be identified as “insane” in Kafka’s works point to the driving force behind them; that is, a feeling of isolation and lack of intimacy, and a need to communicate those feelings. Seen in this light, Kafka becomes not nearly so Kafkaesque. After all, as he himself says, in an insane environment that restricts the natural course of the pursuit of needs, insane behavior is the only way to “cope quite sensible with the difficulty of living” (Kafka 45).
Mankind has shown itself capable of momentous things, of mobilizing mighty armies and sweeping across continents, of digging deep into the human consciousness and turning a man into a puppet, of building cities for vast masses and altering the very structure of the earth. Even though these things might be worthy of wonder, Kafka calls them “useless.” They fall on the well paved path that we have used for centuries to fulfill our needs of social intimacy, of hope, of meaning, and the road has been transformed into a battlefield full of mines and barbed wire. The human response to the dehumanizing effects of the modern age, thus far, has not been to strengthen ourselves for the fight, to charge into battle, or even to adapt to a new way of life in this distorted landscape. Even if this would end in disaster, it would be an act of courage and determination to fight and fall heavily. But no, “we don’t fall” (45); our response has been to wander bewildered across the land, tip-toeing from shadow to shadow, losing our minds to save our lives. Thus “we tremble in the balance…we flutter” (45).
It is safe to say that the human race is not as strong as we would like to think, not as prepared to adapt and overcome any obstacle. The rising frequency and strength of psychological occupations in last hundred years of turbulent history is frightening, especially when one gains an understanding of how effortless it can be for this condition to be put into effect. The effects are such that even our defenses are self-destructive, and defeat is fatal either physically or metaphysically.
Also instructive is the realization of how frail and dependent our psyches really are. The emotional and philosophical needs of our species are not luxury items that we can learn to live without. They are of mortal significance, so that our instincts will drive us to the very edge of sanity and beyond in search of these that we rarely notice until we lack them. As the world shrinks, as pressure on our instinctive way of life increases, our environment will become more and more reminiscent of the Jewish ghetto, and our desperation will likely lead us to new levels of “madness.” Kafka’s premonition of the future, of the increased restrictions imposed by the psychological occupation of this modern age, is even more chilling: “One day everyone wanting to live will look like me – cut out of tissue paper, like silhouettes… – and when they walk they will be heard to rustle” (38). In the words of Fuks, “this [is] nowadays, the days of the madman” (Fuks 118).

A Long Road Home

Exactly one month ago, On November 10th, 2007, a demonstration of a Neo-Nazi political group took place in the center of Prague. While the reported intention was to protest the war in Iraq, the date is telling: it is the anniversary of Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), when in 1938 Jewish homes and shops were ransacked across Germany and Austria by Nazis, who killed more than 100 Jews. The Neo-Nazis last month were met by thousands of protestors who blocked the planned march through Old Town Square and shouted down their speakers. One leader of the Neo-Nazis shouted at the crowd of protestors that “there never was a Holocaust, but there will be one!”
The reaction to this demonstration shows that people have not forgotten the lessons of history, but the fact that the event took place at all shows that we will never completely escape the risk of history repeating itself. This is an especially potent truth for one of the protestors who blocked the Neo-Nazis on Old Town Square, 87 year old Jan Weiner. Jan was a young Jewish man when the Nazis first occupied Czechoslovakia, and he lived to experienced first-hand many of the trials and sorrows of the Czech people throughout the 20th century. He now teaches 20th century European history to foreign students in Prague, which is where I met him and have had the privilege of studying under him for the past four months.
Jan was born and spent his childhood in German, where his father worked. In face of the rise of Nazi anti-Semitic sentiment in the early 30s the family moved back to their native land, hoping that there they would be safe from the growing storm. Jan quickly connected with the Czech people, attended a Czech school, became very involved with the Sokol movement (as did most of the young people at this time), and “learned to love the country and the people who had given us – and many other refugees – asylum and a new home” (Weiner 1). Jan’s mother worked closely with immigrants such as Remarque, who fled Germany to Prague, where they were granted asylum and Czechoslovak citizenship. It might be this very work which proved disastrous for Mrs. Weiner a few years later.
With the annexation of Austria in 1938, and observing the covetous rhetoric of Hitler directed at the Sudetenland boarder regions of Czechoslovakia, the Czech people began bracing themselves for a struggle. The Sokol movement, a national fitness society designed to encourage physical and mental strength as well as nationalistic and community sentiment, was a significant conductor of determination to resist German encroachment. As tensions rose, Czechoslovakia mobilized in 1938. Jan, and most of his young friends, volunteered for the army and were sent to the Krkonoše mountains bordering Germany, where they expected to engage the Germans at any moment. But the Czech fire for resistance was extinguished on September 29th, 1938, when France and England acknowledged German’s right to occupy Sudetenland. When the support of their former western allies suddenly evaporated, there was no hope in armed resistance, so Jan and the rest of the young soldiers were called back to Prague and the Germans took ownership of a massive swath of Czechoslovak land.
As the optimism swiftly deteriorated the atmosphere turned gloomy. In less than 6 months the Nazis violated the Munich Agreement and militarily occupied Prague and the rest of Czechoslovakia. Although crowds of Czechs came out to watch the German tanks rolling by “no one shouted. Through the steadily-falling snowflakes one could only hear the engines...” (4). And before armed combat was sparked anywhere, the war began in Czechoslovakia. All legal rights of Jews were abolished, and in light of the Kristallnacht their future looked grim. Thanks to the help of his mother’s connections, Jan was able to acquire a fake passport and escape to join his father in Yugoslavia. His mother remained.
In the film “The Fighter,” a documentary of Jan’s life, the camera follow Jan as he returns to a house in Yugoslavia, 60 years after he and his father lived there. While they waited to see what would happen, the disaster struck. Poland fell to the Nazis, then France, and in April 1941 the Nazis quickly surrounded Yugoslavia and occupied it. Jan and his father were trapped. That night in despair his father told him that he intended to kill himself. “The Fighter” shows a scene in which Jan stands over the bed where decades ago he watched his father breathe his last, remembering the panic rising in his chest. Afterwards 20 year old Jan snuck out the window, and made it to Lublyana, where he found a place to hide out for a week. He then caught a train and traveled underneath the cabin for dozens of hours across the northern length of Italy. In Genoa he was caught and threatened with being sent back to Prague. “If you do that,” he shouted, “it would be kinder and cheaper to shoot me right here! I will certainly be shot in Prague!” (55). In the end the Italians put him in one of their own prisoner camps in Southern Italy, which made him feel “delighted.” He would spend 2 years in an Italian prison.
During these two years back in Prague conditions grew steadily worse, and Jan was definitely right to feel delighted at being imprisoned in Italy. Jews were deported daily from Prague, mainly to the concentration camp in the north, Theresienstadt, before they were sent to Auschwitz or Mauthausen for extermination. All Jews expected their deportation papers at any moment, and the slightest miss-step could instantly cause fatal attention to fall upon them. Social interaction largely ceased, and most Czechs, especially Jews, were pushed into a survival-mode of life, unable to be concerned about anything else except getting through another day alive.
There was, however, a small but very professional resistance movement, built most significantly around the double-agent “A-54,” and reporting directly to president-in-exile Beneš in London. A-54 was Paul Thummel, a high ranking German undercover spy in Prague, who for some reason decided to turn double-agent and report his knowledge of highly classified information to the Czech resistance. He reported detailed information predicting the invasion of France, the German betrayal of Russia, and the invasion of Britain. When Beneš (and Churchill) realized what a powerful advantage they had in A-54, there was much more motivation to support and build up the Czech resistance from London. Czech soldiers were specially trained in espionage, explosives, and assassination, and were parachuted at great risk into Czechoslovakia to bolster the Prague underground movement.
At the same time the Nazi leadership began to realize that they had a serious leak of information in Prague, and none other that Reinhard Heydrich decided to take care of the situation himself. He arrived in Prague in September 1941, and lost very little time breaking down the resistance. In his first week “163 people were sentenced to death and 718 to concentration camps,” and after two weeks he wrote Hitler that “approximately 5,000 people have been arrested...” (44). This reign of terror was brought to the attention of Beneš, who for a long time had considered the benefits of arranging for the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi by the Czech underground. Now he knew who the target should be.
Two specially trained soldiers of the Czech army in London, Gabchik and Kubish, were parachuted in and made contact with the Czech resistance leaders. After many delays and complications, and after A-54 had already been captured and sent to Theresienstadt, in May 1942 they were ready. They knew the exact place and hour when Heydrich’s car would come around a hair-pin turn, and so they lay in wait. But as the car came around the corner and Gabchik aimed his gun, the trigger jammed. Kubish leaped into action and threw a tank grenade into the car, which exploded but only wounded Heydrich, who drew his pistol along with his driver and began firing on the would-be assassins. Kubish and Gabchik had to flee.
While the attack was a disaster from the perspective of the paratroopers, in the end it was successful. Several days later Heydrich suddenly died in the hospital, possibly from blood-poisoning. But whether the entire plan was a “success” is another question. The reprisal was terrible.
In the former location of the village Lidice there today stands a statue depicting the 98 children who lived there in 1942. They look frightened and bewildered, as they must have looked on the night of June 9th. Acting on specific instructions from Hitler himself, German troops surrounded this tiny village and raided it without warning. Every person was dragged out into the night, the buildings set on fire, and 173 men shot. The women and children were almost all sent to Theresienstadt. The village was erased from all maps. The point was impossible to misunderstand: Hitler had the power to cause whole villages to cease to exist, and for every assassinated leader he would kill thousands.
In Prague martial law was enforced, and Hitler himself ordered that 10,000 Czech suspects should be arrested and all political prisoners be shot (98). The “shock and awe” effect of the persecution was more brutal and effective than anything Heydrich had ever initiated. The Czech resistance was completely decimated, and thousands of civilians were shot outright or sent to concentration camps.
For a while the two assassins and five other paratroopers were able to hide in the crypt of the Karel Boromaeus Greek Orthodox Church. This church stands on Pštrossova street, a few houses away from where I now live. The paratroopers kept constant guard, slept in the tombs, and tried not to despair over the torture that they felt they had unleashed on the Czech people. They were protected by four priests, and for a while they were safe. Then another British-trained paratrooper, Karel Curda, who had been hiding in the countryside, suddenly turned himself over to the Gestapo and agreed to give them all the information he had on the assassins. Maybe he truly believed the Nazi promise that the civilian executions would stop if the assassins were found, or maybe he was motivated by the one million German mark reward. Whatever the case, his cooperation led directly to the discovery of the secret crypt. A fierce battle of several hours took place between the 7 paratroopers and hundreds of German soldiers. One the side of the stone church the damage from machine-gun fire has been left as a tribute to that struggle. Each of the paratroopers fought fiercely until one by one they had only one bullet, which they used to kill themselves. These final seven shots signaled the total death of the Prague resistance movement. On the church today there is a plaque which reads “in memory of the members of the CS abroad army, who here lay down their lives for our freedom...”
In the fallout of Heydrich’s assassination, one of the casualties was Jan’s mother. While he has no specific information about her death, she was most likely transported to Theresienstadt. There Jan leads several class trips every year, pointing out the women’s quarters (where he refuses to go after the first visit with his daughter), the hundreds of graves of unknown victims (one of which may be his mother’s), and the train tracks that lead to Auschwitz (where she might have been sent). Seeing the camp through his eyes, there are weary and silent ghosts around every corner. At the end of every tour he has the ritual of sitting by the gate and ordering a shot of vodka. He salutes in the direction of the women’s quarters, and drinks to his mother’s memory.
In the past Jan used to invite one of the survivors of Lidice to his classes, until she died several years ago. When asked if the assassination of Heydrich should have taken place, she said “No, a thousand times no!” “But,” says Jan to us today, “but I think it was right.” Many people feel that without this display of Czech resistance, it is unlikely that the western powers would have recognized the Czechs as a nation unto itself. This was Beneš’s thought from the beginning, and whether the good outweighed the bad is a question no will ever be able to answer.
In September 1943 Jan escaped the Italian prison and was rescued by the Allied forces coming up from the south. He managed to join the Czech army in London and became a navigator for the R.A.F. He flew twenty-four bombing missions over France, Germany, and Holland, each of which was a life-and-death adventure in itself. In September 1945 he was finally able to return to Prague, though not to his life. Nothing and no one was left for him there, and at the age of 23 he had to build a new life from scratch. Before he could really make progress, however, his time spent in the West came to haunt him, as he was accused by the Communist government of “anti-state and anti-peoples’ attitudes,” and was sent to a labor camp in Kladno. But that’s another story.
Jan Weiner’s experience during the years of WWII is certainly not the typical holocaust survivor story. However, he experienced suicide, murder, prison, sickness, isolation, despair, and an environment of constant tension, and each one of these is an intrinsic elements in the Jewish experience of this time period. Even though he escaped Czechoslovakia and survived, no one can say that he got off easy.
So while for many it’s simply a statistic to hear that the holocaust killed 277,000 Czechoslovak Jews and 5,821,000 Jews total (Encyclopedia Judaica), for Jan it’s as personal as it can get. His father and mother are listed in that number, and he himself nearly lost his life many times.
In another 10 years there will be almost no WWII veterans left alive, and that is why it is so important to listen to them, to make a practice of telling their stories, so that their witness will remain among us in spirit. Only then will we be able to recognize the threat of history repeating itself and be prepared to block the way. “Could the holocaust happen again?” Jan answers a student’s question. “Yes, I believe it can happen again, but first we must forget.” Let us hope that we never forget.


Sources:
Books:
Jan G. Weiner, The Assassination of Heydrich, Grossman Publishing, New York, 1969.
Encyclopedia Judaica (http://www.rossel.net/Holocaust00.htm)
Film:
“The Fighter” directed by Amir Bar-Lev, 2000
Primary information:
Discussions with and lectures of Jan Weiner
Visits to:
Terezin
The Karel Boromaeus Greek Orthodox Church
Lidice

When Cultures Colide

This might be the best thing I've written so far, especially from an academic perspective. It's a paper I wrote as a final project for Anthropology in the Fall of 2006. It's a very long paper, so don't try to read it all unless you have some interest in cross-cultural interaction or the mechanism of historical change. But if you are interested in those things, this should be very interesting for you. As always I apologize for the formatting (if anyone knows how to post without losing paragraph indentations and extra spaces, please let me know). I'd appreciate any critical opinion of my conclusions. Enjoy!


When Cultures Collide
It happens every day at a thousand different locations across the globe. Two cultures, each formed under distinct circumstances and stresses, encounter each other and attempt to coexist. The manifold interactions between these two entities is more complex, and much less precise, than the most advanced chemical reaction, and the result is the enormously multi-cultural world we see today. No culture has ever been a complete island unto itself, able to escape all influence and outside penetration. In fact, while we are often led to see as nicely packaged and stand-alone cultural identities planted like trees in an orchard, the truth is more like a jungle canopy, a network of fluid give and take, in effect causing nearly imperceptible or drastic transference from and to every piece constantly.

THE KIKUYU OF KENYA:
A first-rate example of culture clash occurred in what is now Kenya, starting in the 1880s, with the meeting of two cultures with histories of substantial expansion success. One of these was colonial Britain, and upon its arrival in Kenya it quickly came into intense contact with the Bantu group known as the Kikuyu (also known as Gikuyu). The Kikuyu were (and still are) the dominant ethnic group in Kenya, both in population and politics. Their homeland in nestled around the slopes of Mt. Kenya and the surrounding area.
While the Kikuyu initially welcomed the Europeans into their home, possible as a result of previous prophesies that resistance would be disadvantageous (Kenyatta 1938a), they soon realized the dire threat they faced: the systematic eradication of the very foundations of their cultural identity.
The question which this paper will address is: how do cultures change each other? There are certainly a plethora of approaches one culture can take in changing another. In the case of the Kikuyu, it is possible to interpret four separate agents of change.

AGENTS OF CHANGE:
First of all, Force. This often involves using physical power to cause someone to do something different than they would otherwise. It needn’t be physical force; intense economic, social, even religious pressure might also fall under this category. In any case the consequences of noncompliance are extreme and sometimes fatal, and the recipient of this force will feel that he has no choice in the matter.
Second, Influence. This could be seen as “flexible force.” Such things as economic, social, religious, pressure might fit here also, the main difference being that with Force, the recipient changes to avoid prescribed punishment, while with Influence he changes to achieve a prescribed reward.
Third, Appeal. Here the unchanged culture doesn’t attempt to manipulate the recipient to change, the recipient simply finds some aspect of the other’s culture more appealing than his own, and therefore adopts it.
If these were the only agents of change it might be technically possible for cultures to intermingle without alteration. The fourth and final, however, is Environmental Modification. Here it is important to remember why “culture” exists, and that is to better equip its members to optimally overcome the pressure and problems presented by their specific environment, meaning physical environment as well as social, psychological, spiritual, etc. However, the introduction of a different culture into the same living space inevitably alters that environment. Therefore, the circumstances which formed and supported certain customs no longer have the same shape, and each culture must gradually or suddenly adjust to the new landscape.
While we trace the course of these various agents through modern Kikuyu history, it should be noted that rarely is a tangible change brought about by a single one of these. However, by viewing the unfolding events through these filters, it can be easier to draw some conclusions and dispel certain myths about cultural (specifically colonial culture) interaction. This paper will focus on the two primary foci of conflict between the British and the Kikuyu, Land rights and Initiation Ceremonies (Worthman 1987), and will conclude with several shorter but fitting examples of intercultural transference.

FORCE, THE NUCLEAR OPTION?:
A common assumption is that direct force is the most common and efficient tool used by an infiltrating culture to bring about change in another, especially in the case of colonialism. It is easy to see why this perspective exists. After all, colonial interests commonly involve an agenda to alter existing cultures and people according to the needs and preferences of the more powerful colonizer. What surer way to bring this about than by brute force? When all else fails, the threat of death ought to cleanly uproot even the most stubborn cultural element. Thus force is seen as the nuclear option in the realm of cultural manipulation.
In the case of the Kikuyu, however, this appears to be anything but accurate. Taken in comparison with the other observed agents of change it seems to be the rarest used in any pure form. As to its effectiveness in bringing about any lasting change, the following example ought to speak for itself.

KIKUYU AND THEIR LAND:
The attachment of the Kikuyu to their land cannot be over-stated. Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu anthropologist who eventually became the first president of independent Kenya, said in a speech shortly before independence that “Our greatest asset in Kenya is our land. This is the heritage we received from out forefathers. In land lies our salvation and survival” (Kenyatta 1964). Of course, as part of a long tradition of Bantu agriculturalists, arable land is a Kikuyu’s only significant source of food. But the connection goes deeper than this. Through a rather intricate system of land acquisition, homesteads were passed down from father to sons. There could often be a large number of sons, due to the active practice of polygamy, and land was usually granted to a son upon the son’s marriage. As long as the father was alive, he had final say on all decisions, and even regarding land already given to the sons and their families he could call it “his land.” Once he died, the family was allowed to split the area into separate homesteads (Kenyatta 1938a).
It’s clear that this process would cut a large quantity of land into insignificant pieces in a few generations, so an essential component was the development of new land, a task which was pivotal to the existence of the warriors caste. Every year, those initiated as warriors were expected to fulfill their duty to clear brush-land and cultivate new fields (Leakey 1977).
Not only was land the source of life-granting food, a milestone for the coming-of-age process, and a timeline through which the many divisions and branches of genealogies could be traced, but Kikuyu land also obtained a strong spiritual importance. A Kikuyu saying goes “this land is the mother of us all” (National Geographic 2001). A mother carried and nurtured a child for 9 months in the womb, but the land nourished the child for the rest of life. The land, therefore, was the most sacred and revered mother of all. According to Kenyatta, land was also the medium through which contact with the ancestors was maintained (Kenyatta 1938a). To lose the land was to lose one’s past, present, and future.
Enter the British. The conflict was quite simple: the Kikuyu had good land, and the colonizers wanted it. When the British first appeared in small number, the Kikuyu even “lent” the apparent wanderers land to build on and farm until they returned to their own home. It wasn’t until the Kenyan colony had a significant foothold that the Kikuyu realized that the newcomers had no intention of leaving. “The Gikuyu lost most of their lands through their magnanimity” (Kenyatta 1938a).
British settlers, misunderstanding the Kikuyu system of land usage and the structure of ownership, saw an empty country free for the taking. Believing that land belonged to an entire community, they saw no wrong in relieving a few African farmers of their land, confident that they would quickly find another place to farm. But in a society where every inch of cultivated land was under private ownership, and due to the rarity of the ownership of land passing out of immediate family, the families displaced by the British were effectively disinherited. While they could find land that they would be allowed to cultivate, they would not be able to pass it on to their children (Leakey 1952a). Despite the initially small number of landless Kikuyu, it is not difficult to appreciate the impact.
The practice of moving Kikuyu from their land increased for over 50 years. By 1952, when British government declared the Kenya Emergency due to seven years of increasing violence, “of the 20,000 square miles of land in Kenya with a rainfall of more than 20 inches, 5,900 square miles had been reserved for Europeans, who formed less than one percent of the country’s population” (Mboya 1963). Any thought to the effect for the dispossessed had quickly faded, and the Kikuyu “were made to know that ‘might is right’” (Kenyatta 1938a). This intrusion hit the Kikuyu hardest (Arnold 1981), and had the direct result of causing a violent, Kikuyu-led revolution, which is popularly known as the Mau Mau Revolt. But even in the face of severe resistance and aggression against British policy (or perhaps because of it), over 1000 Kikuyu were evicted during the war (Mboya 1963). To add insult to injury, because of the Kikuyu’s central role in the Revolt, their movement and expansion were severely restricted, unintentionally preventing the young warriors from “earning their stripes” by clearing new land. This caused further bewilderment and eventually a major crumbling of the culturally prescribed path to adulthood. The general atmosphere during the Revolt in Kikuyuland was one of barely controlled chaos, and the last 50+ years of land tenure upheaval only increased exponentially.
At this point it can be seen that the application of force did have the benefit for the British of achieving their short term desires. Not wanting to concern themselves with the complexities of a more mutual sharing of land, nor with understanding the Kikuyu’s dissimilar perspective, the colonizers simply took what they wanted and enjoyed the benefits with relative impunity until revolt struck. But what truly lasting effect did these events have on Kikuyu culture?

WILL THE REAL CHANGE PLEASE STEP FORWARD?
After independence, small areas of land vacated by Europeans were given to farmers who did not have farms of their own (Kenyaweb.com 2001). However, the political landscape had changed forever, and the new African leaders knew that Kenya could not survive as a single country with multiple sets of customary law dictating people’s behavior more than government regulations, especially on such critical issues like land ownership. Thus “official rhetoric in Kenya sees customary law as an obstacle to development, and to the creation of a strong united nation” (Coldham, 1979).
The government set up a system of land registration to track sub-divisions, sales, successions, and the inheritance of land. This program, while vital for the ability of the state to regulate entitled ownership and legal disputes, has been largely unsuccessful. First of all, citizens rarely report deaths to the Land Registrer, thus land can change hands multiple times without any official notice. “The reason why people fail to register their dispositions are not hard to find. The fact that a title is registered and that therefore the land ceases to be governed by customary law is unlikely in itself to affect the behavior of those concerned” (Coldham 1979). Among many other problems, this creates a legal nightmare whenever the state is asked to resolve ownership disputes.
The people of Kenya simply see no point in registering their land, as their customary laws still meet all their needs on the local level, and the complication and length of government mediation of disputes usually convinces them to find another solution. “Despite the attempts to bring customary land rights within a new statutory tenure system based on the registration of individual titles and therefore limiting the effectiveness of applying customary laws in land ownership and transfer, smallholder behaviour on the ground has not changed so as to incorporate the new statutory system” (Groppo 2001). In fact, in 2001, 80% of all land in Kenya comprised of Trust Land waiting for registration by a smallholder for cash crops or peasant farming. Only 6% of that land had been registered under individual titles (Republic of Kenya 2001). The Kikuyu still rely on their traditional system of land tenure to gain the land they need, and coming to the government for land doesn’t factor into their thinking.
It is remarkable to note that the customary laws regarding land tenure were subjected to the harshest treatment by the colonizing culture. Direct force was used to negate all resistance, the very foundation of the customs, the land itself, was taken away, and the authority and strength of related customs were aggressively undermined for over 50 years. And yet a cursory look at those farmers whose situation is now reasonably similar to pre-colonization indicates that “Customary contracts…among the Kikuyu will continue to exist; customary rules and procedures governing the transfer or inheritance of land will continue to be observed” (Coldham, 1979).

INITIATION CEREMONIES:
As in many African cultures, another cornerstone of Kikuyu society is the rites and ceremonies surrounding initiation into adulthood. The core of these annual ceremonies, which typically last several days and involve thousands of Kikuyu young people all across Kikuyuland (Kenyatta 1938a), was the act of circumcision of both the boys and girls. The boys had their foreskins cut (though not completely removed), and a clitoridectomy was performed on the girls (Leakey 1977). This operation officially indicated that the initiates were no longer children (though not considered full adults until marriage and parenthood), and granted a number of rights and privileges upon them.
Socially speaking, the most important product of the circumcision ceremonies was the solidification of age-groups. All initiates who were circumcised in the same year become members of one age group, regardless of family or clan. Each group was given a name (usually based on a key event that occurred that year, thus providing an outline of Kikuyu history), and many social rules and bonds revolve around these groups. “The fellowship and unity of these age-groups is rather a remarkable thing. It binds men from all parts of the country, and though they may have been circumcised at places hundreds of miles apart, it is of no consequence” (Kenyatta 1938a).

NGWEKO:
Another privilege that comes of being circumcised is the right to engage in ngweko. This practice is described by Kenyatta as “platonic love and fondling,” and is “considered right and proper and the very foundation stone upon which to build a race morally, physically and mentally sound” (Kenyatta 1938a). Both the male and female initiates are carefully instructed in the proper performance of ngweko by the older girls (Leakey 1977). The general tradition is for boys and girls to meet at a special hut (thingira) which is designated for this very purpose. There they socialize until one of the boys brings up the subject of ngweko. Then the girls are asked to choose their partners. It is not necessary for the girl to chose the boy she is most attached or attracted to. A girl who too often chooses her “boyfriend” will be thought of as selfish and self-serving. This way even the less attractive boys who are without girlfriends are not left out.
Once the partners are chosen they move to the bed(s). For the sake of peer surveillance to prevent violations, several pairs will often share a single bed (Leakey 1977). The boy then removes all his clothing, and the girl removes all except her skirt and a leather pubic apron. These she pulls forward between her legs and tucks into the front, providing protection for her private parts. They lie on their sides facing each other, with legs tightly interwoven to prevent movement of the hips, and “they then begin to fondle each other, rubbing their breasts together, whilst at the same time they engage in love-making conversation until they gradually fall asleep” (Kenyatta 1938a).
The freedom of this custom came with several strictly enforced taboos. It was absolutely forbidden for the couple to engage in full intercourse, or for the girl to ever remove her lower coverings, and indeed the boy was forbidden to even touch her garments with his hands. Any touching of either’s genitalia was banned. Those who violated these rules were severely fined, barred from further ngweko, and ostracized by their peers. A girl was expected to be a virgin upon her marriage, and otherwise would be subject to strict penalties. The choosing of partners was also carefully restricted along relational and age lines, preventing any relatives or members of too great an age difference (5-6 years) from engaging in ngweko together.
The social results stemming from this practice were many. First of all it functioned as the culture’s sex education, with carefully structured instruction and monitoring. Second it formed stronger social bonds between the members of society. Third, it cultivates a lack of jealousy which was essential in a highly polygamous society. After marriage it was even accepted for women to chose sexual partners from among the age-mates of their husbands, and as long as it was not done secretly this was not seen as any cause for marital conflict (Leakey 1977 ). This social openhandedness was believed to have its roots in the practice of ngweko. Fourth, provided an outlet for sexual expression while establishing a respect for the rules of society in the minds of members at a young age. If the seemingly unanimous consensus regarding this issue by anthropologists and members of the culture is accurate, “there was little conflict about premarital sex in traditional kikuyu society” (Worthman 1987).

THE BRITISH REACTION:
The reactions of British colonizers and missionaries against the Kikuyu practice of clitoridectomies and ngweko ought to be unsurprising. Unfamiliar with the culture and social functions, they saw “nothing more than a ’horrible’ and ’painful’ practice, suitable only to barbarians,” (Kenyatta 1938a) and blatant sexual debauchery among the youth. After several attacks on the practice of clitoridectomies, in 1929 the Church of Scotland Mission to Gikuyu decided that only children of parents who had denounced the initiation ceremony and female circumcision would be allowed to attend school. It should here be noted that European schools by this time already had a huge place in the Kikuyu lifestyle. In one example in the region of Ngeca, the school run by Scotland Missions went from a few students in 1910 to over 500 students in 1928 (Worthman 1987). The threat of their children being barred from a modern education was a serious matter indeed. After a great protest and petition to the government, missionary schools eventually had to compromise their restrictions, and so then only demanded that teachers be required to denounce the tradition (Kenyatta 1938a).
There were then petitions through several channels, including the British House of Commons, to stop clitoridectomies by law. In the end these were unsuccessful, in part due to brilliant oration by Kenyatta before British Parliament in which he equated clitoridectomy to the Jewish practice of male circumcision. He writes later that “general opinion was for education which would enable the people to choose what customs to keep and which ones they would like to get rid of” (Kenyatta 1938a). Ngweko, meanwhile, was totally denounced by the missionaries as sinful, and was generally perceived as involving full intercourse without restrictions. Polygamy, perplexingly for the Kikuyu, was preached as wholly unbiblical.

THE KIKUYU COUNTER-REACTION:
In face of the proclamation that “the elaborate initiation rites are pagan and godless, and, furthermore, that clitoridectomy is evil” (Whiting 1986), the Kikuyu, many of whom had converted to Christianity, expressed great surprise. Regarding circumcision, Kenyatta wrote that “it is important to note that the moral code of the tribe is bound up with this custom and that it symbolized the unification of the whole tribal organization… No Kikuyu would ever dream of marrying a girl who has not been circumcised, and vice versa. It is taboo…” (Kenyatta 1938a). Initiation was also the only official was of designating new age-groups, a social structure that was vital for discerning correct social behavior and for clear legal application. Most Kikuyu at this time believed that it was the secret purpose of the government and missions to corrode their social order.
The course of action chosen by many was to continue to perform clitoridectomies, but in secret and without the intricate public ceremonies (Worthman 1987). While this allowed the continuation of culturally accepted marriages, it signaled the collapse of age-group structures. The direct result was that there was no forum for the older girls to instruct the incoming initiates on the proper practice of ngweko (Whiting 1986), which meant sudden uncertainty among the youth regarding sexual expression and restrictions where no uncertainty existed before.
By the 1960s, scholastic progression had taken the place of initiation ceremonies as a marker of cultural age, and academic achievement replaced the traditional methods of evaluating a person’s appeal as a spouse (Worthman 1987). At the same time traditional marriage ceremonies had been almost completely replaced with Christian weddings in Christian churches (Robertson, 1997). The ancient customs were fading fast.

NGWEKO DRIFT:
There is a fascinating side story in the effects that colonialism had on the cultural boarders between ethnic groups after they were all arbitrarily designated as “Kenyans.” The ethnic group to the east of Kikuyuland, known as Meru, shared a large number of customs with the Kikuyu, including elaborate initiations into warrior status and the responsibility of the warriors to clear land. But rather than having the practice of ngweko open to them, the Meru warriors were not allowed to drink alcohol or have any sexual activity for the duration of their time in warriorhood, which could last up to 10 years. This was seen as a test of endurance and bravery and was much respected and anticipated among the youth (Fadiman 1993).
When the Meru fell under similar restrictions of movement and expansion as the Kikuyu, this similarly began the fissioning of the institution. Thus the warriors lost much of their practical meaning and had a great deal of unoccupied time. However, along with the confusion (shared by the Kikuyu) over uncertain progression to adulthood and marriage without having fulfilled their responsibility to clear land, this also eroded the discipline which the Meru typically adhered to. Heavy drinking began to fill much of their time.
Due to the softening of self-discipline rules and the increased contact with the Kikuyu due to colonialism, the custom of ngweko made its way into Meruland. However, disconnected from the cultural context and traditional restraints, the practice became in essence what the missionaries imagined it to be among the Kikuyu; unrestricted sex without code or purpose beyond pleasure-seeking. For the demoralized warriors of Meru, the “breakdown of sexual discipline had tragic results for both men and women” (Fadiman 1993). The frequency of premarital pregnancy, abortion, and child abandonment skyrocketed. Looking back at this time it is said that “real warriorhood died with the coming of England” (Fadiman 1993).

LONG TERM EFFECTS:
It seems that when the instruction involved with initiation rites skipped a single generation, it was enough to divert the entire relational structure of the Kikuyu. Schools now replaced thingira (ngweko huts) as the place to meet members of the opposite sex, and “sex education has not been in the curriculum…consequently, young people are not trained in the traditional mode of limited intercourse, nor in the appropriate, defined partners and contexts in which it is acceptable” (Worthman 1987). When students were asked in 1983 about their knowledge of ngweko, they were “aware that a traditional method of contracepted physical intimacy has existed, none had been instructed in it, and one reported it was thought to be ‘old-fashioned’ and therefore of negligible contemporary relevance” (Worthman 1987). This undefined context of socialization has had the result that premarital pregnancy “which was rare in the traditional system is now not unusual” (Whiting 1986).
Polygamy has taken a serious hit as well. Those over 60 years of age polled in 1987 expressed a 30% approval of polygamy (primarily stating economic reasons), while 7.1% of those in their 40s agreed (“more concerned about detrimental effects on their relationships“) (Robertson 1997).
In regards to the major structures involving sex, age, and marriage, all primary cultural traditions have been torn down. Initiation ceremonies, ngweko, and polygamy are gone or going fast, and in a cultural of formerly carefully defined guidelines and identities, “Today there is considerable ambivalence on the part of both adults and adolescents…” (Worthman 1987).

IDENTIFYING THE AGENT:
Despite attempts to the contrary, at no time did the British force the cessation of initiation rites and related customs, at least not in the way they British land policy was forced. Restrictive law were not passed and no know initiation was stopped at gun-point. The most direct influence on the Kikuyu culture came from the increasing pressure from the schools and churches to end the practice. The actual weakening of the customs was motivated by the Kikuyu’s desire to be accepted in these institutions. This shows how the agents of change here called Influence and Appeal can work together. One culture can influence another by enticing change with the promise of rewards, but for this to be effective the latter must find the offer appealing enough to change or adjust to the demands. Of course chronological either one could come first. It is possible that the Kikuyu were first touched by the pure appeal of Christianity and western-style education, and the British then used this appeal to influence them to change.
In any case there was nowhere near full compliance, only the minimal adaptation needed to achieve the rewards ( harmonious schooling and church membership). If the initiation ceremonies had simply been repressed without being replaced by another marker of age, it seems possible that the custom would have returned after independence. But by that time school had already replaced initiation in this function, and the traditional ceremonies were no longer needed. This is an example of the last agent, which in the Kikuyu context seems to be the most common and effective.
Looking through the theory of structural functionalism, initiation ceremonies served an express social need within the Kikuyu community, a need born of the specific environment. That need was, among other things, for a strong social solidarity and clear guidelines to prevent any social fissioning. The environment in which this was needed included individual reliance upon the community and family members to provide food and/or loans of land, regular threat of raid from outside groups, the importance of each person knowing his place in the ladder of authority, and the need to regulate careful division of labor (for example the warrior class clearing and protecting land). However, the arrival of the British on the scene changed this environment tremendously. The broader economic picture which was opened up to Kikuyu youth gradually freed them from full reliance on their community for survival, and the risk of raids was done away with. The most untouched need was probably the need for clear definition of social standing. This allowed a very different social custom (school graduation) to replace the more traditional (initiation) in fulfilling the radically altered needs.
A similar reading can be applied to the drift of ngweko. While the Meru might blame the British, this would be accurate only in a very indirect sense. After all, the colonizers did all they could to discourage the practice of ngweko, and were not guilty of using force or influence to bring this custom, and certainly cannot be blamed for carrying the custom in with them, which then appealed to the Meru. It could be said that the Kikuyu used appeal, since the demoralized Meru warriors were attracted to the notion (as they understood it) of free sex in that lonely and nerve-racking time. However, it is safe to say that had Britain never arrived in Kenya, this transference would never have taken place. England’s presence and activity in other realms so modified the social environment of the Meru that important aspects of their culture suddenly seemed obsolete. Under the intense new pressures of the world, change was rapid and radical. So far, they haven’t looked back.

OTHER EXAMPLES:
To wrap this study up, it seems worth while to look very briefly at three other aspects of the Kikuyu culture affected by the British culture besides land tenure and initiation. This will serve to give a more rounded view of how virtually no part of Kikuyu life was left untouched and how the agents of change operate in other cases. Each of these examples merits as much attention as the previous two, and hold just as much revelation regarding the nature of change in intercultural interactions, but they are not the focus of this particular paper. They are here simply to reinforce observations already made.

RELIGION:
One of the most thoroughly adjusted areas of Kikuyu life was the spiritual. From absolutely no contact with Christianity and in possession of their own sophisticated spirituality involving ancestral spirits, it is now believed that around 73% of Kikuyu are professing Christians (Wikipedia 2006). The missionaries had great success in early Kenya, bringing the nation to its altar in just one or two generations. This was not done by force, nor by influence (at least not until they were already well established in the native population), and it can be seen that the religious environment was not experiencing sufficient change to render the Kikuyu religion obsolete, witnessed by the fact that many Kikuyu continued to practice the traditional spirituality and simply added Christianity to their beliefs in communion with their ancestors. Part of this is probably due to the relative ease with which the religions could be melded. In Kikuyu tradition before colonial influence “there are three Gods, all called Ngai: one who sends riches, another children and the third misfortune; but these are best regarded as different aspects of the one Ngai (Middleton 1965).” This is remarkable similar to the Christian concept of God, and further explains the appeal of Christianity to the Kikuyu. In the end, it does seem to be just that, the agent of appeal, that brought about the widespread conversion of the Kikuyu to Christianity.

GOVERNMENT:
Comparing traditional Kikuyu government of 150 years ago to Kenyan government today is like comparing night and day, though night and day of the same planet. “The Gikuyu system of government prior to the advent of the Europeans was based on true democratic principles” (Kenyatta 1938a). While mixed with a good deal of magic and sacrifices, Kikuyu government revolved around elections, representation, and justice for the individual. “I can categorically state that my own Kikuyu community had a pre-colonial democratic governance which was better than any in the world today” (Maathai 1953).
The initial change to this government was a forceful overruling by the British. But in many respects the British government in Kenya would far outlive British possession of Kenya. After independence the many ethnic groups were technically free to return to their previous forms of government, but the environment had been too drastically changed to allow this. “Kenya” had fought together in the Revolution, and Kenya needed to be one united nation in the modern world. The formerly European government was taken over by African leaders, and consequently many ironies appeared. The African revolutionaries, those who fought the hardest to end the conflict between colonizer and native, became the instant heirs of the government quarrels with the African people. The clearest one is the friction between modern micromanaging government and the customary law of at least 25 different ethnic groups (Wikipedia 2006).
This came into sharp focus in a court case in 1987 that captivated the entire country. A prominent lawyer of Luo ethnicity named Silvano Melea Otieno (commonly known as SM) died unexpectedly. The ensuing conflict was sparked by his Kikuyu wife who wished to bury him near their homestead in Kikuyu land (according to Kikuyu customary law), and his brothers who insisted that a Luo must be buried near his birthplace (according to Luo customary law). To further complicate things, Kikuyu law gives funeral control to the adult sons of the deceased, Luo law to the brothers, and Kenyan national law grants it to the next-of-kin, in this case the wife. Thus the battle between customary and common law was on, staged in the highest national court, and scrutinize by the entire country who saw their future in the verdict. At one point the wife’s lawyer argued that “Kenyans were living in rapidly changing times and that the Luo, therefore, should not be encouraged to practice customs that were not conductive to this ‘modernity’” (Cohen, 1992). Luo lawyers argued that one cannot chose the laws that apply, and SM was born under Luo law, regardless of his choices to embrace Christianity, government, and a “foreign” wife.
Interesting, despite the fact that common law gives the final word to the disease’s wife, the court ruled in favor of the brothers, and SM was buried near his birthplace. This decision indicates that the period of adjustment to the Environmental Modification brought by the British nearly a century ago is far from finished. When SM’s wife dug her own grave near her home to make it perfectly clear where she would be buried, her Luo brother-in-law allegedly sent her a letter asking her to fill it in, as the wife of a Luo must be buried next to her husband (Cohen, 1992). Indeed, the adjustment is far from over.

SCHOOLING:
If there is any clear example of change by the agent of influence, it is schooling, meaning the change from traditional styles of education to European styles. Missionary school fees were high, often higher than the heavy taxes imposed by the government, but parents were willing to work much harder than usual to give their children an education (Worthman 1987). There are indications that initially the Kikuyu were so fascinated by the Europeans ability to transmit their words by writing them down and sending them long distances where others could pick them up that they thought it was a new form of powerful magic, and were eager to learn it. More practically, as their land expansion was cut off Kikuyu parents quickly realized the best help for their children’s futures was a European education. Examples have already been given showing how quickly the first missionary schools grew. When theological and cultural conflicts grew intense the Kikuyu actually fought for the right to start their own school, in the European style but apart from direct missionary or government influence. This right was granted. The focus on education has not lessened in independent Kenya. Waruhiu Itote, who was known as General China during his time leading the revolutionary fighters in the Mt. Kenya, and who was tutored in English by Jomo Kenyatta himself while they were in detention camp together, wrote that “education rather than guns would be the most important weapon in Kenya’s advancement” (Itote 1967).

CONCLUSION:
The interaction between two distinct cultures is a truly remarkable thing, full of twists and turns that cannot be predicted. However, for any culture attempting to affect a lasting change upon another, this case study of the Kikuyu holds some useful, though potentially disappointing, information. What might be the most appealing course of action, direct force, here proved to be the least effective in the long-term. This was seen in the examination of land tenure conflicts and somewhat in the government example. While both were forced upon the Kikuyu, the former was utterly unsuccessful in sticking, and the latter was perpetuated not because of the application of force, but because of more subtle by-products of the force. This continued European government still often butts heads with customary law, as seen in the SM example. Interestingly, these two cases, land and government, were practically the only causes of the bloody revolution (Itote 1967).
Influence seems to have functioned in a more balanced way, though, in the schooling example, as soon the Kikuyu learned how to produce the desired European education for themselves they cut the proverbial umbilical cord and did it themselves. Therefore the British could no longer use it as a lever, but they were successful in inserting their form of education into Kikuyu culture, which did persist and increase. But in trying to use it to influence the Kikuyu to change specific customs, such as the practice of clitoridectomies, it was basically fruitless.
Appeal went a little farther, though a culture has only limited control over what another culture will find attractive. The Kikuyu were drawn to literacy, Christianity, and European technology and weapons (not discussed here). These things have remained firmly ingrained up to the present day. Another example is the effects of ngweko’s appeal to the Meru warriors, a development utterly unintended by anyone involved, which worked enormous and lasting change upon that culture.
Finally, Environmental Modification was observed in the long-term cessation of initiation rituals (the short term cessation being due more to influence), adoption of European style government, and again in the Meru acceptance of ngweko. These happenings, intended and unintended, showed this agent to be a powerful force in the shaping of culture. As well it should be, since culture is primarily formed by the shape of environment, this agent is touching the fabric of culture in a way that the others can do only indirectly. For, as seen in the land example, no matter how much force, influence, and appeal are applied to a cultural trait, if the surrounding corresponding environment is not significantly altered, the trait will bounce back into place at the first alleviation of those forces.
The conclusion that this writer would like to express to those interested in altering other cultures is that in the examples examined here it seems that there is a direct correlation between the long-term effectiveness of an approach and the practical control with which it can be used. Force is easy to use in a practical way, but for the Kikuyu it proved to be the least effective. Environmental Modification, an agent much too complex for anyone to predict or use with any degree of accuracy, directly rewrites cultures. It would seem that for humans, culture has been set in a “read only” format. And with thousands of cultures colliding in different ways every moment, that ought to be the source of at least some hope for the perpetuation of a diverse and multi-cultural world.


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