Being Just Ordinary: My Impression of the Movie “Fight Club”

Ben Folds, one of my favorite rock singers, sang in his song “Rockin’ the Suburbs” as follows:

Let me tell y'all what it's likeBeing male, middle-class and whiteIt's a bitch, if you don't believeListen up to my new CD

I perfectly understand what he meant.

I grew up in an ordinary uptown in Tokyo in an ordinary middle-class family. I was almost happy, because my family wasn’t poor and I wasn’t discriminated. But nothing special ever happened in my childhood. I was a male, middle-class and Japanese child in Tokyo.

And now, I become a male, middle-class and Japanese "salaryman” in Tokyo. I don’t have any special complaints about my life, but sometimes I feel, “it’s a bitch, if you don’t believe.”

Last weekend, I watched the movie “Fight Club.”


The main character, who was played by Edward Norton, is young, single, male, middle-class, and white-color, enjoying his urban life. His life seems to be perfect, but he suffers from insomnia. He begins to dream another life.

This movie reminded me of the movie “American Beauty,” which I really love.


It is about a typical “happy” American family somewhere in an urban area. People in the family begin to do what they want in their heart, and the family is getting broken down.

I think that nobody can be just ordinary. At this time, I don’t get violent like “Fight Club” and quit my job like “American Beauty,” but I can’t be just an ordinary Japanese “salaryman.” When I “look closer” at my heart, I also would find something in it.

I write my weblog in English very eagerly. In order to be an ordinary Japanese “salaryman,” it is completely useless to do it, but I can’t stop it. My colleagues can’t understand why I keep doing such a thing. I don’t want to fight someone with bare knuckles in the Fight Club, but I also want to do something unordinary.

I might be lucky for me that what I want to do incidentally isn’t antisocial. It might be possible for me to fall down (rise up?) from my ordinary “salaryman’s” life to “the Fight Club,” someday.