ATOMS

study of Totalitarianism in Japan

The acknowledged fact that the hiding of the eyes protects the privacy of the individual raises in us a suspicion that perhaps it is the eyes alone that are original and unique, that a person carries no other individual characteristics and is in truth not especially different from others.

The latest clothes, a hairstyle from a fashion magazine, the slender physique of a television star: though they appear so varied at first glance, there is little that is original among these forms save for nuanced variations in assemblage. It is an undeniable challenge to name these consumerist styles “individuality.v

Then, what exactly is it that they seek, those eyes which carry the proof of originality?

Perhaps it is the self itself, which aims for its own realization through a desire for the desire of others, imitating others and questing for those nuanced differences.

If so, what is there beyond me, a self who has reached the extremities of atomization as a passive consuming subject? Where is it that this society is heading, this aggregate of non- autonomous individuals who have come, as a result of mutual imitation, to resemble each other so closely?