The world wide! Body Odor Network

DEODORANT STICK! WE CANNOT BUY IT!

   I have traveled to Los Angels.
   Though it was my first time traveling abroad, I dared to rent a car
and drive around the city from downtown to the freeway and so on.
   In supermarkets they sell a lot of deodorant sticks. I bought seven
different kinds of them for this work. None of them is sold in Japan. It
also made me realize the affluence of the American society.

  "May I help you?"
  "Yes. Would you please show me a perfume which doesn't smell?"

   In the summer of 1993 I watched a television news which reported about
men from a French perfume maker visiting Japan for developing the market
of cologne. I hear there are three types of perfume. If I remember right,
they are eau de Cologne, eau de toilette and eau de perfume in order of
the richness of fragrance. The fact is, what is sold as perfume in Japan
is eau de toilette and eau de perfume. Therefore, the French perfume-
maker came here to find a market for eau de Cologne, the richest one, the
news reported.

   The Japanese staff said that more Japanese have come to enjoy the
perfume with rich fragrance, while he did not show the evidence for it.
Nevertheless it seems to me that a person who wear too rich scent,
however expensive it is, is frowned on by the people around he or her
either on a street or in a train.
   I hear that a lot of youngsters in Japan have a very strict idea of
cleanliness and so-called sticklers for cleanliness (a morbid love of
cleanliness) have recently been increasing in number. Those fastidious
young people try to make every effort to make them without any body
smell. In fact we find various cosmetics at the store which especially
indicate "without perfume" or "with slight perfume". It does not seem to
mean that they are with no or slight perfume because people wear scent
after makeup with those cosmetics.

   "Diseases peculiar to an affluent society"
   Now Japan is said to be a abundant country in the world. Do people
worry about such trivialities because Japan has become affluent? Any
trifling diseases deserve to be pitied in the present Japan and therefore
various clinics are provided for every one of those diseases. Does it
mean that we have enough time and money to be anxious about those
superficial diseases? Or does it result from perfectionism which makes
any minor defect a shameful thing? I think the later is the case in
Japan. At least the modern urban life in Japan tend to make us feel
ashamed of any minor faults.
   On the other hand some sick persons are neglected and treated coldly
by the public. People give them no pity, no sympathy but only disregard,
saying "Don't stick at trifles. Some people are suffering from more
serious diseases." However I suppose such a trifle, distress people all
the more in the affluent Japan that has become the country of
perfectionism.

   According to the statistics by doctors specialized in the virus, there
is one carrier showing the symptoms in every ten Japanese. However,
nothing definite is known about when and where the statistics were taken,
and moreover, it does not mean that we can always find a person with the
symptoms among any ten Japanese. In fact we seldom meet a sufferer of a
person with the symptoms. Even when we are infected with it, we Japanese
would secretly undergo an operation and never reveal the truth.
   Ignorance of the disease is so wide-ranged and deep-rooted in Japan
that no Japanese will listen to whatever opinions I present about it.
Most of them will take me a troublemaker who disgrace the name of the
Japanese in foreign nations. When I happen to repeat this story to some
foreigner, what explanation will his Japanese friend make to him? He may
keep up appearances by explaining to the foreigner that I exaggerate the
situation. I bitterly resent such attempts to hush up something in spite
of his ignorance of the fact.

   Is appendicitis a hereditary disease? Of course it is not. I never
heard appendicitis runs in a family and the whole family had to, have to
and will have to undergo an operation.
   People with a hereditary disease feel uneasy about the future even
before they get married or have a baby. Some are forced to give up the
idea of getting married. We have to radically change the society itself
in order to ease them. In the case of a hereditary disease unknown to the
Japanese, even after the person himself is cured of it, his offspring
will have to suffer from it generation after generation.
   My father, whose childhood coincided with the development of Japan
after the War, was at a loss how to educate me. He was uncertain even
about a guideline principle in his own life.

   To be honest, I feel helpless to change the society in Japan by
appealing to the public opinion. My helplessness may result from the
unhappy realities that a sufferer in one hundred people in Japan will
have to suffer hardships as a rare victim throughout his life.

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