“Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”

–G. B. Shaw

As one who believes geographical allegiances should be local rather than national and who has only the dilettante’s interest in competitive sports, I find the fanatical devotion characterizing the World Cup as amusing as the tournament itself. The World Cup produces intense feelings, which manifest themselves in a variety of aspects, including facial paint, lucky charms, bizarre costumes, wild inebriation and customized cheering. For most followers of the competition, the World Cup is an opportunity to feel a uniquely communal agony or levity, dependent on the outcome of a match to which the fan has had no part in, but who undergoes the winning or losing as if it were one’s own experience.

In Japan, this loyalty involved some ungodly match times due the time difference East Asia enjoys in relation to South Africa. When Japan advanced to the Round of 16 after defeating Denmark, 3 – 1, thousands of fans erupted into the streets to celebrate the victory. It was just after 5:00 AM on a muggy Friday morning and Hachiko Crossing, the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world, erupted in such pandemonium that the casual non-fan would be forgiven for believing that Japan defeated Brazil to win the tournament itself, rather than just the first of five rounds, a feat accomplished by fifteen other teams. Were such celebrations a spontaneous outburst born from low expectations? Was it a fit of pride, anomalous good news for a nation suffering through two decades of slow growth that has seen their economic cachet dwindling against China and other emerging East Asian markets? Or was it simply inevitable that thousands of young fans staying up all night drinking beer would want to get down and party when their team won?

To say the least, witnessing such an outburst in Japan is highly unusual for a culture famed for its social reticence. The Japanese may open themselves to others, but rarely do they thrust their joys so deliriously upon strangers. The peculiarly Japanese cartoon types— exuberant in blue superhero suits, Yukio Hatoyama gag masks, and bright blue afro wigs (blue being the team color)— worked the fans like deft cheerleaders, gathering crowds and stirring them into a frenzy. Thousands of people streaming from Shibuya’s teeming bars towards the central train station threw off their exhaustion to improvise a jig with strangers, actions they would view with bewilderment in more sober circumstances.

The atmosphere had that rare whiff of danger, as one might expect in an environment compounded by sleeplessness, alcohol, and a sports victory. Yet this danger did not seem so much physical as it did psychological. You could hear it being screamed and sung in wild cacophonous eruptions, “Nippon! Nippon! Nippon!”— a cry as aggressive as any outburst of “USA! USA! USA!” to those not given to national self-mythologizing. They say one man’s meat is another man’s poison; thus the peril, which sometimes requires the competitive energy of a sporting event to make evident, is nationalism.

Like nearly all countries, Japan has its share of right-wingers, nativists, and xenophobes. Though they are ostensibly a minority, their soapboxes and bullhorns, ubiquitous at train stations and embassies, mean they are politically loud. However, they seem to be a dying bunch, grumpy old men with long memories of losing a great war.

I was thus surprised then to witness Japan’s Imperial Flag brandished by a heap of twentysomething soccer fanatics. There it was billowing in the morning wind with all the suggestiveness of history dyed in the bright red rays emanating from a rising sun. You might call it beautiful if you didn’t know better but for those who do, it symbolizes Japan’s catastrophic attempt at empire: colonies in Manchuria and Korea, gory battles in Iwo Jima and Okinawa and of course, the apocalypses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki— the fluttering cloth becoming an object of collective pride for hundreds of young, intoxicated, impressionable young men.

But soccer teams, like governments, do not always succeed in what they set out to do. Promises cannot always be kept. Despite a plucky performance the Japanese team was eliminated from the tournament in a tense, hard-fought finish against Paraguay. Those fans screaming the loudest will have to process the humility in losing with their convictions of national pride. This synthesis can only bring them into the greater fold of humanity, which may be the point of the World Cup after all.

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“I’m an artist. When you tell people that they usually say, what’s your medium? I always say, ‘Extra large.’”

-Jean Michel Basquiat

Nobody as far as I know has written about the cultural significance of walls and too bad, for though their subject may be pedestrian at first glance, their prominence within history and art is undeniable. Jerusalem has a Wailing Wall where wishes are wedged into the stone by faithful worshippers. Israel has another wall built recently, used as a border to filter Palestinian people through security checkpoints in and out of Gaza and the West Bank. Berlin once had a wall utilized for similar reasons and Pink Floyd has a depressing album about one. China’s wall you can see from the moon and Jean-Paul Sartre’s most readable short story is called The Wall.

Walls have been with us ever since man has sought shelter from his environment. They have various necessary and symbolic functions, the most obvious of which is providing structural support for homes and business. While accommodating privacy they also separate us, shutting people away from each other. Walls are boundaries; they suggest limits, establishing private property, telling us where we can and cannot go. They can be white, padded, and locked if one is deemed insane. Should they be covered with squiggly marks done in aerosol paint, they jeopardize real estate values. Walls are intended to protect us yet too often in these terrified times they are adorned with barbed wire, their symbolism taking a ghastly, violent poise. We forget this, but walls are also potential canvases. Huge, inspiring, storytelling space.

While the kingdom of Morocco may be famous for its deserts, bazaars, and couscous, it may be the vividness of color that strikes the visitor on a level that might be described as ecstatic. Psychologists have long pointed out the connection between mood and color and that melancholy can be a consequence of grayness. Throughout the large cities and small towns of Morocco, windows, gates, and doors are gilded with reds, pinks, and orange. Although it can feel slapdash and improvised, if not whimsical, the effect of urban color on the spirit is deliberate and powerful.

Asilah, a small Atlantic seaside town just south of Tangier, annually commissions international artists to create large, painted murals. Some are representational while others are abstract: visible are elements of cave paintings, cubism, and Cy Twombly. Like most inner-city medinas in Morocco, Asilah’s central layout is a complex maze of plazas, streets, and alleys that takes some time to orient oneself. Throughout the medina these huge murals can be found, though the best ones are located by the main elementary school, which hopefully, is an inspiration to the passing children.

This is a wonderful thing. To keep art in museums– as opposed to the streets– is to suggest that art is ‘historical’, and thus has little relevance to contemporary culture. Worse, secluding its appreciation to privileged circles within the museum complex, society withholds art’s everyday effect from the ordinary citizen. To do this in Morocco, a country with double-digit unemployment, would be spiteful and absurd. The streets of Moroccan towns are never silent. In cafes men smoke and talk. Women converge to gossip on doorways and park benches. Home for many is a cramped dark place, so it makes sense the street would be a viable contrast in brightness.

Chefchaouen is another city remarkable for its color. Most of the town center has been painted a rich knockout blue since the 15th century. This bold use of a uniform color has a tremendous effect. It gives the city a visible personality. Moreover, it welcomes the visitor into its space effortlessly, so that old men in djellaba cloaks, children playing with water guns, cats lazy from the sun and you, yourself, have all become characters within this rich and beautiful canvas.

If one walks long enough (and in such surroundings one is inclined to walk all day), a person will eventually witness cracks in the walls, exposed brick and wood, childishly scrawled graffiti. Rather than imperfections, these marks seem to define character and age: not all dilapidation is bad, just as not all shiny surfaces are beautiful. In fact, the flaws insinuate the aura of collaboration between time, nature and human creativity as on evidence is the work of the stonemason, the carpenter, the journeyman laborer, and the eleven-year-old boy.

As the world moves closer in globalized sameness it becomes imperative that we adopt the flair for color so appreciable within the towns of Asilah and Chefchaouen. Doing so would bring people out of their techno-cocoons and into the street for games, talk, and friendship. There is no excuse. After all, we have plenty of wall space to fill.

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