The critic Edward Said has pointed out the ironies of placing Eastern and Western voices in such rigid opposition, and has unravelled them in such a way as to show that this strategy is a kind of philosophical imperialism -- an imposition of Western images about the East onto the East. America constructs the mysticism that it desires, creates the differences it then wishes it could transcend. Japanese otherness -- all full of Eastern promise -- thus becomes an identity to be consumed, acquired, an essential accessory for any self-respecting Dharma Bum. [...]