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As the all-Asian chorus line, bewigged to resemble standard Broadway hoofers, strut their stuff, we realise just how offensive it is when, as more often happens, occidental actors play oriental roles.

So is the “syndrome” all in the prejudiced occidental mind?

“They were my first introduction to occidental culture,” Chinese-born physicist Tsung Dao Lee recalled.

The idea of “Japanese” alludes, perhaps, to “otherness,” to an enduring occidental fascination with the obliqueness of the Far East, of words that look like pictures and ancient ceremonies with complex rules.

But long after Texaco is gone, the vision she’s granted him will endure: In the centre, an occidental urban logic, all lined up, ordered, strong like the French language.