From the outset, I imagined Tokyo would mark the high point of my journey -and I was not disappointed.

When discovering a city or a country, it's natural to ask oneself how it ranks in importance or relative weight compared to the rest of the planet.

Despite her beauty and riches, Sydney does not carry much weight: if this city were suddenly transplanted to Mars, only wool traders and tennis fans would notice.

Cairo's relative importance stems from her influence over Muslim countries which, in turn, carry weight because of their control over oil. But if the rest of the world could do without this energy source, these countries would find themselves trapped in an impasse of their own creation, having relegated half their population-the women-to impotence and ignorance.

India could have exercised great moral authority (or at least, that's what I'd like to believe) if she had stayed true to Gandhi's dream of autarchic villages geared to agriculture and cottage industry. Such a society would have presented an alternative (or at least a counterweight) to our technological civilization. Unfortunately the only part of this dream which the Mahatma's successors retain is a hollow vocabulary: for all practical decisions, they have resigned themselves to the politics of compromise.

On the other hand, I realised-especially since my stop in Bangkok-that the Far East is becoming one of the centres of gravity of the planet along with Western Europe and North America. For the people I spoke to in Hong Kong, the centre of this centre is Peking. To my astonishment, many Japanese seem to share this view, even though their country is developing more rapidly than any other and their capital city is currently the biggest metropolis in the world. Maybe this can be explained by the peculiar combination of inferiority and superiority that the Japanese have always felt in connection with China.

During the flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo, I had asked myself if I was going to find big differences between the inhabitants of these cities. The first Japanese I recall seeing was a young baggage porter: tall, supple, with pink baby cheeks and as athletic as a tennis player.
He refused to accept my tip (I later learnt that the Japanese don't practise tipping) and his frank gaze certainly had nothing in common with the rather uncommunicative attitude of the people of Hong Kong. But he looked even less like the little Japanese businessmen I'd seen walking in groups down the Champs-Élysées or in the Opéra district.

Perhaps it was this first face that unleashed my passion: my four weeks in Tokyo were like a continual love story. In none of my other destinations did I take so many photos with so much enthusiasm-like the flush of faith that impels one to portray the woman one loves, sometimes neglecting her more obvious attractions to linger all the more on her secret charms, thinking one is alone in discovering them. Yet (as may also happen with one's beloved) I left Tokyo telling myself that my images were not up to what I had felt. The very need I have now to express my emotions in words proves that my photos only render them imperfectly.

The idea of Tokyo as the Ultimate West came to me as soon as I arrived. If our concept of what is Oriental corresponds to characteristics which become more accentuated as we proceed eastward from Turkey to Persia and India, and if this tendency were to be shown with an arrow, then the extension of the arrow wouldn't lead us to Japan. Rather, Tokyo would be at the end of the other arrow which, starting from Paris and London, passes through New York and California. (What place would China occupy in this global graphic? Doubtless the one the Chinese have already assigned themselves by calling their country "the Middle Kingdom".)

I am immediately struck by the proliferating technology. In my hotel room, the red and green buttons and warning lights bring to mind an airplane control panel. When I go near a taxi, and as soon as the driver notices me and stops his car, the door opens of its own accord. Seibu, one of the major stores, makes its deliveries by helicopter (if the customer lives far enough away and the volume of purchases justifies the ride). Another big store is served by two metro lines and a railway which all belong to the same company: the stations are to be found respectively on the first, second and third floors of the building. The country folk who visit the Imperial Palace come equipped with Nikon or Canon cameras and I've even seen a little old lady with a telephoto zoom. Masato, my assistant and interpreter, invited me to visit his father (who is just a grocer but with a head like a Buddha) to have me try a traditional dinner, served on tatami mats by the women of the family who kneel beside the male diners. When it came to dessert, the Buddha half-opened his kimono to get out a walkie-talkie with which he called his grocery and ordered extra fruit.

In Tokyo there are 11 television channels, of which three are in colour. They broadcast from a steel structure which is a replica of the Eiffel Tower, only a little taller. There are more neon insignia in Ginza, Shimbashi and Shinjuku than in New York. These districts remain jammed for much of the night with taxis plying their trade between the 8,000 nightclubs and 25,000 bars, located on every floor of the buildings.

Tokyo does not have many skyscrapers as the risk of earthquake renders their construction too costly. So the city extends horizontally, but with no apparent planning. Secondary roads have no names and building numbers don't follow any apparent logic (to find an address you must consult the small map printed on the back of every calling card). From the terrace of a high-rise cylinder made of glass and steel which overlooks the San-Ai stores, you have a view of Ginza: the cityscape before you could have been produced by the imagination of a three year-old child provided with unlimited funds and assisted by a few architects. On top of one building, a gigantic aluminium globe revolves day and night illuminated by intermittent neon lights; atop a second, you make out the shape of a rocket, on a third the latest model of a car. Further away, an amusement park flashes from another rooftop. The view is criss-crossed by rows of demolished houses which will soon be replaced by elevated expressways.

The Japanese are very much afraid of germs. When I first saw men and women wearing cotton masks, I thought of the Jains of India who fear they will commit murder if they inadvertently swallow an insect. This mental association gave rise to an extended misunderstanding with my interpreter as he could not grasp the drift of my questions. At length I gathered the masks are meant to guard against infections of the respiratory tract (or their spread where the wearer is himself afflicted).

I must say this explanation didn't quite convince me: flu is neither more prevalent nor more infectious in Japan than anywhere else. But I noticed that the Japanese (especially the women) tend to express modesty by covering their mouths with one hand: perhaps the cotton masks correspond with a similar defence mechanism, rather like those shy people who hide behind their sun-glasses.

This leads me to the long list of seemingly neurotic symptoms. I'm not sure there is such a science as ethnopsychology and, in any case, I'm not a specialist-but I can't help making a few obvious remarks.

First there is their fear of "losing face". To reduce this risk, Japanese begin with self-denigration. "Your very bad assistant," says Masato about himself, to which I am meant to respond with praise. His face lights up with each compliment as if I were restoring life to him. But one minute later, he is again seized by doubt and fishes for more.

The editor of the Asahi Shinbun, the daily with a print-run of nine million, was kind enough to receive me for a half hour. He understood my English perfectly, but he chose to answer only through his interpreter in order to avoid the risk of making a mistake.

Traditional hara-kiri has fallen into disuse but suicides are still numerous, especially amongst the young. A big, handsome young man aged 28 with an MD in philosophy and a command of four languages, told me he had never had sexual relations. This seems to be the case with many men, often because of some early fiasco: abstinence is preferable to the risk of failure. One wonders whether the sado-masochistic shows in their nightclubs, and even the traditional eroticism of their prints, represent a facade masking some deep insecurity. (This would also explain the "For Japanese only" signs at the entrances to some of their pick-up bars: one must avoid exposing oneself to unfavourable comparison.)

The fashion for cosmetic surgery is another symptom. Dr Fumio Umezawa, head of the Jujin Clinic (which, he says, is world-famous and even numbers Americans amongst its clients), assured me that half the young women of Tokyo had undergone operations: some-unlike their Western equivalents-want to enlarge their noses, others seek a "double eyelid" for less Oriental-looking eyes, still others have their cheeks altered to create dimples. (In this context, I should mention that, in Japan, all shop window mannequins have "Western" features.) Besides, Dr Umezawa tells me that more than one-third of his patients are men into whom he fits a particular kind of implant meant to increase confidence in sexual performance.

Interpersonal relations are subject to complex protocol determined by social hierarchy and the face-saving imperative. There are six different ways of saying "I" according to the sex of the speaker and his perception of his position (inferior, equal or superior). Conversation goes off on tangents where even the Japanese can get lost. I ask somebody, "Do you think the weather will be fine tomorrow?" My interpreter translates for five or six minutes, reinforcing his questions with eloquent gestures. His interlocutor's response takes a little longer, the interpreter replies, conversation heats up, I interrupt them to find out what it's all about, and the interpreter tells me in all earnestness, "The honourable san says that it may be fine, but it may also rain."

Yet it never occurred to me to attribute these communication difficulties to some "Oriental mystery": psychological complexes apart, the Japanese are closer to us than most other peoples of Asia. The phonetics of their language are not tonal like the Chinese and their grammar is like that of the Ural-Altaic languages to which Finnish and Hungarian also belong.

In fact, after a few days in Tokyo, I realised that I could communicate much more directly than with words: if you have a sense for the visual, Japan opens up to you. Japanese culture has always been dominated by a taste for composition, texture and colours (which include the whole range of greys). In the rites of Japan's different religions, form represents essence. In this civilization, the idea of surface does not have a pejorative connotation of superficiality, nor does it imply the ethical pre-eminence of the inner over the outer: on the contrary, the container determines the contents, like the crustaceans you encounter so often in Japanese painting and cuisine. Abstract art, which we discovered only 50 years ago, has existed in Japan for centuries. Their painting, their photography and their films touch us directly without need for explanations or intermediaries. I found it remarkable that, when I bought a painting by a contemporary Japanese artist, all the chamber maids in my hotel came to admire it.

A few marks scratched on a piece of paper allow me to straighten out many small everyday problems, thus avoiding the misunderstandings which, I begin to realise, don't arise so much from my interlocutors' ignorance of English as from the lack of English equivalents for the particularities of their thinking and their syntax. Everything becomes simpler as soon as I get out my ballpoint pen and draw objects or numbers, ringing them or linking them with arrows. I can make myself understood in the twinkling of an eye and the Japanese respond immediately using the same code. This pre-eminence of the visual strikes me as yet another reason for considering Japan as the Ultimate West.

For some reason, my kind of visual communication seemed to work better with women than with men. I soon realized that, though I was amused by their electronic toys, sympathetic to their psychological problems and at ease in their visual universe, my love for Tokyo could be explained in an even simpler way: I was irresistibly seduced by their women.

One might say that there are countries of men and countries of women, in the sense that in some, one finds men more interesting or brilliant than women-or vice versa. This could be an idea for a society game where each player expresses his opinions and shares his experiences… Mine tell me that Great Britain, the United States, Australia, Holland and Spain are amongst the "countries of men". I would find it difficult to make up my mind about Italy and France, but I would resolutely class Poland, India, Thailand and Brazil amongst the "countries of women".

In the case of Japan, women win by a long shot. Japanese men let themselves be moulded by the system and end up being cogs in some vast machine; they become identified with the uniform they wear and their eyes go dim behind their glasses. In the best cases, they rise up the social ladder to become those fat guffawing bosses with a toad-like appearance who are deposited every evening on the narrow streets of Ginza and Shinjuku by limousines with tinted windows, paid for by corporate expense accounts.

At club entrances they are greeted by smiling fragile-looking girls concealed behind a thick layer of powder and lacquer, who free them of their coats and their attaché-cases, wipe their hands and faces with warm towels, serve them with drinks and titbits. As they perform their duties, they whisper lewd jokes into their ears, all the more obscene for issuing from their delicate mouths and being accompanied by the fluttering gestures of their small hands, expert in flower arranging and tea ceremonies.

As the evening progresses and the alcohol washes down, the men's laughter becomes coarser and their movements slow down. The butterfly-girls prop them up on both sides, accompany them to the urinal and, when it's finally closing time and the limo's been called to take them back to their marital homes, they drop the customers onto the back seat like cockroaches borne by ants. Then, altogether, the girls intone sayonara and bow to the departing car. They've earned their evening, they'll go home on the metro and sleep alone on their tatami, dreaming of the day when they'll have one of these gentlemen for a husband and the leisure to wait in at home while he goes out of an evening.

In the interim they take courses in ikebana (flower arrangement), traditional singing and English. They don't need to learn their wifely role because their mothers have set the example: they know that when a man neglects, betrays or batters them, their duty is to remain silent and turn aside for just long enough to shed a few tears. The important thing is for this to pass quickly, after which they will again look him in the face, with rather moist but smiling eyes. And, as the years go by, they will lose the habit of crying.

Those who are fortunate enough to find a husband and bear him children will be able to go shopping at Toyoko or Seibu, carrying their chubby-cheeked baby on their backs. To balance the weight, they will thrust their necks forward to reveal the skin of their napes and maybe a few inches of back: these are the parts of the female body which the Japanese consider most attractive. With the passage of time, they will get old without becoming ugly.

But there are those who won't find a husband. The times are past when every Japanese woman ended up finding her place, even when it meant being sold to an unknown spouse or to a tea house. These days, Japanese women can't be sure of anything: as they wait for their opportunity, they seek out jobs as hostesses in the buildings humming with bars at every level, like ants' nests, or as sales assistants at Seibu or, at best, and only if they are reasonably tall, they will have their faces surgically enhanced in the hope of becoming models. They will go on dreaming of marriage and children but, as the years pass, they will have fewer and fewer opportunities of realising their dream.

In the discotheques of Shimbashi however, one meets girls of a new species whose attitudes have nothing butterfly-like about them. Their average age is 15 and their faces are somewhat spotty. They talk loudly, go to bowling alleys and practise judo. Some drug themselves with tranquillisers and end up asleep on a boy's arm or a café table. They haven't yet learnt the twist: at least one more generation is needed before they will overcome their fear of ridicule. But they have unlearnt the bowing. Will they prove to be the avant-garde of tomorrow's Japanese woman?

A Japanese friend told me about how the old Japan came to an end:

"During the last months of the War, our lives seemed to slide into unreality. Almost all the men were at the front, Tokyo was razed. In the schools, children glued bits of paper to make balloons to which incendiary bombs would later be attached. The military had no more planes and no more gasoline, so they thought of releasing these balloons into the Pacific breeze in the hope they would land in California and set the countryside on fire. Several thousand were actually let off, and it seems a few caused some damage to a Canadian forest."

"But it was impossible for us to imagine defeat because our islands had never been trampled by foreigners. Nevertheless, as they expected the worst, the authorities distributed grenades explaining to us how to use them for mass suicide: if we formed a circle around the device and held each other by the arm, one grenade would suffice for some 20 people. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our military wanted to go on fighting. But the Emperor decided to lay down arms and announced his decision on the radio. We waited for his message for hours, standing around the amplifiers which had been installed in public places. When he finally spoke, we weren't sure that the voice was really his because none of us had ever heard him. In any case we could barely grasp the meaning of the words, as they were pronounced in a form of ancient Japanese which many of us didn't know. We ended up understanding that the war was over and there would be an aftermath. But we could not imagine what this aftermath would be."