Super Cize Meby
Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers
Have you ever stopped to wonder why you do some of the things you do? I’ll bet you think that the things you do are common sense, but if you stopped to consider some of them from a different point of view, you’d realize just how outrageously foolish they look.
I am reminded of a story that, long ago, I used to tell to Japanese people whenever I witnessed them doing something that I thought was strange. The story went like this: A man and woman married. The wife wanted to please her new husband, so she cooked roast beef for him one night using an old recipe she learned from her mother. When she was preparing the meat, she sliced off both ends of the joint. The husband asked her why she did that and she answered, "Because that’s how my mother taught me to do it." Being a good husband, he left it at that and told himself to ask his mother-in-law about it next time he saw her. That Christmas the family got together and had roast beef. The wife’s mother came for the dinner party and the husband remembered to ask her about cutting off both ends of the joint. She gave the same answer as her daughter: "It’s an old family recipe, and that’s how my mother taught me to do it." Once again the husband’s curiosity was piqued, and he told himself to ask his wife’s (still living) grandmother about it, if he ever got the chance. Soon after, husband and wife were blessed with a baby boy. The entire family was thrilled. Even grandmother made the cross-country trip to be with her granddaughter when baby and mom came home. For the occasion, the wife’s mother (now a grandmother) decided to roast a joint of beef for the dinner celebration. Now, with great-grandmother there, the husband had his chance. He asked the old lady why, in the old family recipe, the ends of the joint of beef were always cut off. She replied, "In the old days, ovens were very small. The roast wouldn’t fit inside of them if you didn’t cut the ends off." All those years, the ends were being cut off because that’s the way it had always been done. No one stopped to question why. In late 2003, my wife and I were blessed with a baby boy. He is my fourth child and my first son. In Asian countries, the first son holds a special place in the family and in the psyche of the people. Soon after his birth, I asked about circumcision. My wife’s doctor, who is one of the most famous gynecologists in Japan, told me that circumcisions are not performed in Japan. He didn’t know of any doctor in the country who performed this operation. I was surprised. "Why?" I thought. "No son of mine is going to be a freak!" Time passed and I decided that since the Japanese don’t do this operation, that I would let it go and not have it performed on my son. I began to wonder why it was that circumcisions were performed. What purpose did they serve? I had heard that when babies are born, the operation is simple and the boys (girls too) merely yelp and it’s over. But if you wait until later, it can be excruciatingly painful. Now, I find some information about circumcision that raises my eyebrows. I read an article that a friend sent to me. Some parts of it make really good sense. It says:
Well, I can’t really find any fault with the reasoning here. I continue reading:
This entire notion starts me thinking. Now, for the last few years, I’ve been wondering what is going on with Americans and American society. I’ve been wondering if there isn’t something in the water that’s making people back in the States go bonkers. It can’t be mass hypnosis, so what could it be? Then the friend who sent me the link to this article writes this to me:
The alarm bells go off. My retired doctor friend wrote the magic words that make the confetti fall from the ceiling and I win a bunch of cash. Let’s see here, he’s included all the red flags that I look for whenever I am hunting for medical scams: "unnecessary procedures" and "money-hungry physician" and "primitive racket" and "pediatrician’s boat payment." Come to think of it, why do people have their sons and daughters circumcised? What could the purpose possibly be? I don’t know. Perhaps for the same reason that the ends were sliced off the beef before it was put in the oven: That was the way it had always been done. Having a circumcision because "it" gets dirty makes no sense. I wash my two-year-old’s "it" – under the skin – every night in the bath. I am also teaching him to wash behind his ears and in his belly button. No big deal. The so-called benefits of circumcision come from areas of the world where hygiene is neglected. In northern Europe and Japan (places with ready access to water and whose people practice cleanliness) the racket never caught on, and they have none of the horror stories about uncircumcised males. Then the good doctor sends me this report from the British Journal of Surgery that says circumcisions should not be performed unless there is a medical reason for it:
What? Well, I don’t know about you, but this looks to me like people are endangering their children and getting ripped off for a medical procedure that they don’t need. You know, in the 1960s it was tonsillectomies. Seeing as how my two-year-old is doing just fine, and as I’m surrounded by tens of millions of Japanese guys who don’t seem to be having too many problems (and seem to be much calmer than the average American), I can see that I lucked out. My son will not be getting a circumcision – a surgery that I thought he needed, but that I never really asked myself about.
Could circumcisions cause medical as well as psychological problems? Is this all just psycho-babble from that Mike in Tokyo? You know, that schizo guy in Japan? Perhaps so. I have suspected many times that Mike in Tokyo is crazy. After all, he was circumcised as a baby. Edited by Jeremy Irwin March 3, 2006 Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers [send him mail] was born and raised in the USA and moved to Japan in 1984. He is the president of a mass-media production company and also runs a talent agency in Japan. His first book, Schizophrenic in Japan, is now on sale. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
It’s
a bit like what your parents used to ask you, "If everybody
jumped off a cliff, would you?"
Okay.
Now I begin to exhale and realize that this is beginning to sound
like crazy talk. Yeah, that’s it. Crazy talk. He sounds like those
nutty conspiracy theorists. So I send 
Could
circumcisions, as is reported in the above linked articles, be responsible
for cases of violent behavior and frustration? Could it lead to
depression, unhappiness, and all sorts of other problems? I don’t
know. I’m not a doctor. But I will say that I think now, after reading
this information, that it is an unnecessary procedure that can be
dangerous, costs money, and has no practical benefits in any society
that practices sanitation and has clean water. 