The Room Without A Country

Osutein-Sensei Uses His Imagination (And Guns)

My International Relations textbooks defined nation-states as "imaginary entities," in the sense that they exist only because we all agree that they exist. This makes me sad. I have been left out of these planet-wide meetings for my entire life. I've always wanted to sit around with billions of other people and then, at the prompting of some mysterious voice, agree that "Yes, we would still like to have Canada around. It will be big, and snowy, and a little too obsessed with hockey. And their bacon will be different."

Those meetings sound like a lot of fun.

Of course, imagination has its drawbacks. The British and French were a little too creative with the Middle East in the early twentieth century, inventing countries that they probably shouldn't have, like Iraq. The Iraqis seem to think they were three countries, but the British had the guns, and sadly, guns beat imagination. It's like rock-paper-scissors, but with atrocities. And nothing beats guns.

A country is seen differently by different groups of people. Tsushima, the island I lived on in Japan, is a place where cultures meld and nationalities overlap. Closer to Korea than to Japan, Tsushima is definitely Japanese in culture and persuasion, but there are little traces of the Korean influence here and there. You’ll find a scattering of words in the local dialect and the ruins of a 1,400-year-old Korean castle deep in the woods.

Embassies and consulates also complicate the otherwise tidy imagination, since they are technically little pieces of one nation-state in another nation-state's imaginary territory. I work for the Japanese consulate here in Chicago, which means that every morning I wake up in the United States, then commute to Japan. So, don't talk to me about your commute time. I don't wanna hear it.

Oddly enough, the consulate's sovereign Japanese soil is not restricted to its two floors in the Olympia Center, but extends to the three cars it owns. According to international law, the interiors of those cars are part of Japan. With all the consulate and embassy cars around the world, if you were to look at a political map of the earth you would see thousands of tiny foreign countries moving around inside each other's borders. Since the cars enjoy diplomatic immunity, most of these tiny countries are probably moving at excessive speeds or parked in front of fire hydrants.

Yet, even the most vivid national imagination can't account for the inevitable spaces in-between—hence the endless squabbling over international waters. But not all of these gaps are wide as oceans. Some are about the size of closets—like “the airlock.”

To get to my office I have to swipe my card to unlock two doors. Between the doors is a small space we jokingly call "the airlock." It's completely empty except for the keypad for the second door. The question is: If what lies behind the first door is America and what’s beyond the second door is the consulate (and thus sovereign Japanese territory), then what is the airlock? It lies outside of all national territories and jurisdictions, a 5' x 6' No Man's Land.

It's a limbo inside of which anything is legally possible, because for those brief moments when both doors are closed, a person in the airlock is untouchable. The most heinous of crimes could be committed in the airlock with impunity: murder, drug trafficking, cutting the tags off mattresses.

Until recently, that is. As of last week, the airlock is no longer a space between countries. It is a country. After taping my flag up on one of its walls, the airlock has become the Empire of Osutein, a sovereign territory populated and ruled with an iron fist by yours truly.

Before you protest or declare war, remember that it's only fair. After all those years of not being invited to the official nation-state imagination meetings, I decided that I'll have to do it on my own. You see—anything is possible if you just use your imagination... and guns.

Really, really big guns.