Experiencing the Moment

I found Tagomi’s meditation with the silver trinket accurately represented a failure to live in the moment.  Throughout Man in the High Castle, the Japanese people are obsessed with historicity, and their obsession with American history exceeds even that of native Americans.  As people of the past, the Japanese tend to surround themselves with artifacts, such as a Colt .44.  But an interesting point of tension arises when Mr. Tagomi buys the silver piece of jewelry from Mr. Childan’s store.  Suddenly he has an object of no historical value, and he must somehow give it value.  Stuck with a perspective that focuses on the past, Tagomi helplessly uses frames of reference of others to give the piece of art value.  For example, he tries to parallel the little jewelry with the small “boxtop cereal trinket” or treats it like an object of science by analyzing his senses, touch, sight, smell, and even taste, on the object (228).  From all his analysis and focus, Mr. Tagomi expects truth, he demands, “Cough up arcane secret” (229).  Almost comically, however, his intense focus on the silver squiggle actually induces a state of hypnotism on himself.  He experiences the city in a half-dreamlike state experiencing only its “symbolic, archetypal aspect(s), ” and he can only break out by looking at the silver triangle again, counting to ten, and forcefully shouting.  When a person contemplates on what he should do next, he loses his ability to act spontaneously, and his actions are handicapped by a lack of complete perception.  Philip K. Dick shows how instead of thinking too much about a plan-of-action one should live-in-the-moment and just act.  Tagomi, by ignoring the rules of formality with the German consul, acts without excessive contemplation and lives in the moment, and thus he finds emotional relief even after he experiences a heart attack.