The Japanese are just like other people. They work hard
to support their--but no. They are not like everyone else.
They are infinitely more clannish, insular, parochial, and
one owes it to one's self-respect to preserve a certain
outrage at the insularity. To have the sense of outrage
go dull is to lose the will to communicate; and that I
think is death.
---Edward Seidensticker, This Country Japan (Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1984), p. 332 [my emphasis].
One thing about us foreigners is we can become friends overnight,
become really close," [Konishiki] explains. "The Japanese people
are more like, 'up front we are good friends,' but at the back they're
not too sure, they don't show that side, it takes time for them, but
they won't show it. [Us] foreigners, we tend to be very open when
we meet Japanese people," he adds, "which is OK, but make sure
not to get too deep, thinking that they are 100 percent with you-
it won't work with the Japanese.
---Konishiki, former Sumo star, in interview with The Japan Times
[my emphasis].
A slow lunch with a group of dear friends yesterday has once again set me thinking on the issue. That is, on how long it has taken me to realise this simple - and, to me, painful - truth that so many Westerners living here for any considerable length of time seem to take for granted: to enjoy and make the best of life in Japan you absolutely need to shield yourself from any close contact with most Japanese, with their stiff mental categories and regimented behaviours, and move within a selected circle of (mostly) Western friends. For the sake of sanity.
Yet nothing is more contrary to my beliefs in intercultural dialogue, to my cherished faith in people's capacity to overcome even the most difficult cultural and psychological barriers. Not in Japan though, alas. Slow learner as I am, I've had to reach my wits' end and accumulate an almost unbearable amount of professional and, above all, personal disappointments to realise this truth and restore my faith in the rest of humankind. And the sad truth is what Edward Seidensticker, one of the most eminent and perceptive scholars of modern Japan, describes in the above-cited passage: that the Japanese are not, to their own detriment, like everyone else, and that, despite the 'all-smiles' facade, the barriers they erect to the successful personal and professional integration of non-Japanese are far higher than anywhere else.
It's all well and good as long as you're a passing presence, a linguistic and cultural ingenue who sticks to the surface of Japanese life and lavishes praise on the exoticism of the culture. But once you become fluent in Japanese and begin to perceive the murkiness that lies underneath the glossy, hyper-polite surface of the national psyche, then you step into dangerous territory and will soon be seen as a threatening, inconvenient, intrusive presence. As our dear wise man Konishiki (a Japanese national of Hawaiian origin who, symptomatically, still considers himself a 'foreigner') advises, make sure not to get too deep with the Japanese - that is to say, never, but never let your guard down and make the naive mistake of assuming you're part of their uchi. They will always keep you at arm's length.
It's all well and good as long as you're a passing presence, a linguistic and cultural ingenue who sticks to the surface of Japanese life and lavishes praise on the exoticism of the culture. But once you become fluent in Japanese and begin to perceive the murkiness that lies underneath the glossy, hyper-polite surface of the national psyche, then you step into dangerous territory and will soon be seen as a threatening, inconvenient, intrusive presence. As our dear wise man Konishiki (a Japanese national of Hawaiian origin who, symptomatically, still considers himself a 'foreigner') advises, make sure not to get too deep with the Japanese - that is to say, never, but never let your guard down and make the naive mistake of assuming you're part of their uchi. They will always keep you at arm's length.
In a soberer tone, Seidensticker's note touches on the crux of the Westerner's experience in Japan. Their manifold differences and idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, most Westerners, and particularly those who pursue intellectual/scholarly interests, were educated within cultural traditions that generally value individuality and encourage reasoning, debate, inquiry, critique, dissent, and friction as healthy, essential aspects of the life of the mind.
And yet criticise is precisely what you're not allowed to do in Japan - or, if you're willing to, you can be sure you'll pay a high price. And yet... criticise is precisely what any observant and discerning Westerner must perforce do to keep one's self-respect and sense of justice (or of outrage, as Seidensticker puts it) in Japan. Unless, of course, you're one of those calculating long-residing chaps who readily sell out in order to achieve their petty ambitions, and have no qualms about cynically surrendering to the prevailing tatemae mindset. Since I have little respect for the latter though, I shall waste no time with them.
And yet criticise is precisely what you're not allowed to do in Japan - or, if you're willing to, you can be sure you'll pay a high price. And yet... criticise is precisely what any observant and discerning Westerner must perforce do to keep one's self-respect and sense of justice (or of outrage, as Seidensticker puts it) in Japan. Unless, of course, you're one of those calculating long-residing chaps who readily sell out in order to achieve their petty ambitions, and have no qualms about cynically surrendering to the prevailing tatemae mindset. Since I have little respect for the latter though, I shall waste no time with them.
But why is then the very lifeblood of intellectual and civic existence in the West - the ability to criticise and oppose existing conditions in order to change them for the better - so widely disliked and feared in Japan? And an even more baffling question: how come people who are supposed to be highly educated display such an ingrained inability to deal with criticism, and thus recurrently censor, snub, bully, and condemn to all sorts of mura hachibu - the colourful native word for ostracism - those who dare to express some form of dissent from their envisaged sense of wa (和), the Japanese concept of a group-oriented harmony or consensus?
A partial answer to the enigma lies in a key distinction that the Western mind takes for granted: that between society and self, between group and individual. Due to the blurring of this distinction, criticism of Japan tends to be taken personally by the Japanese, and more often than not seriously threatens, or destroys altogether, basic loyalties and friendships. Hence I couldn't agree more with a remark cited in Ivan P. Hall's devastating portrait of the Japanese intelligentsia and its cartel mentality, Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop:
'If you're a foreigner who is too critical about Japan, your sources of information or friends dry up'. [...] Access in Japan depends excessively on a warm personal rapport, for the sake of which too many [Western] scholars, cultural diplomats, and other intellectuals with a stake in Japan have trimmed their critical sails. [...] For those foreigners willing to bear a certain personal cost, however, I must stress the importance and feasibility of speaking out. (pp. 177-78)
And what a cost you often bear, what a cost. Most disheartening of all is how these forms of censorship and snubbing can manifest themselves not only in the domain of work relationships but also in the private sphere. I've recently learned a painful lesson when a native chap I had (naively) taken for a friend bluntly warned me that I'd soon lose all my Japanese friends, one by one, if I continued criticising Japan the way I do. As the saying goes, with friends like these who the hell needs enemies?!
Not all Japanese are as undiscerning and infantile as this and other chaps I've met here are, thank goodness, but the way such thoughtless, bigoted behaviours recur even among seemingly intelligent and cultured people who should know better is quite alarming. However I try, I can't imagine being cold-shouldered by a Western friend just because I've criticised some aspect of her/his culture. While s/he might disagree with the remark(s), we'll certainly remain friends as before. You expect people to be sensible or, well, sane (!) enough to make some basic distinctions.
Not in Japan though, apparently. A small-minded, kokoro no semai, ki ga mijikai Japanese will bitterly resent you, and your outspokenness will forever cast a shadow on your... er... 'friendship'. It's only a question of time until you pay the price and have the door slammed in your face. These fellas will make sure you do: they simply know no other way, so deeply is the pattern of surveillance & punishment engraved in their psyche (since, say, the Edo period?).
On the other hand, a Western assertive mind can't help wondering that one must be really at a low ebb - or in a state of utter denial - and have a very, very fragile sense of identity to display such a chronic inability to gracefully deal with criticism, to make some basic distinctions like those mentioned above as well as to see or judge the flaws in the bubble inside of which one lives.
Not in Japan though, apparently. A small-minded, kokoro no semai, ki ga mijikai Japanese will bitterly resent you, and your outspokenness will forever cast a shadow on your... er... 'friendship'. It's only a question of time until you pay the price and have the door slammed in your face. These fellas will make sure you do: they simply know no other way, so deeply is the pattern of surveillance & punishment engraved in their psyche (since, say, the Edo period?).
On the other hand, a Western assertive mind can't help wondering that one must be really at a low ebb - or in a state of utter denial - and have a very, very fragile sense of identity to display such a chronic inability to gracefully deal with criticism, to make some basic distinctions like those mentioned above as well as to see or judge the flaws in the bubble inside of which one lives.
Now, reverting to my very open circle of Western friends in Tokyo and our recent slow lunch. As we were discussing these and other matters concerning cultural-national allegiances and their pitfalls, one of them wittily remarked that the reason why most Westerners find it so hard to cope with this straightjacket society is that we are creatures of exuberance, passion, who thrive on individuality, idiosyncrasy, iconoclasm, dissent, conflict, risk-taking. The fragile, diffident, self-censored Japanese ego, by contrast, feels gravely threatened and easily freaks out and crumbles when faced with all these things that unsettle its overneat uchi/soto mental categories and challenge thereby its spurious sense of wa.
In view of all these crucial differences, what forms of understanding and dialogue with such hopeless people can one possibly envisage? I'm at my wits' end indeed, I must confess. After all these years.
6 comments:
I feel that you are talking about society of lack of individuality, individual responsibility, and freedom, when you talk about “infinitely more clannish, insular, parochial” mentality of Japanese. I think the lack of openness is in unconscious part of us, as it is created historically and transmitted through covert education.
I know well that stirring group mentality is still the method often used in Japanese school education, with school uniforms, home room activities, hierarchy of club members (= “senpai-kouhai” relationships) as it was often done during world wars. In school, students have less personal choices, and so less individual responsibility. Not only young kids but adults do not have much responsibility here. For example, parents do not have responsibility to choose the movies that they think appropriate for their kids, but “society” decides in what age what movie you can see and you can’t. “Society” tries to control how to sit on the train, and how not to do list of things. “Society” can be a small group of people in train companies, movie companies, shopping mall, etc. They are basically “infinitely more clannish, insular, parochial” village people (“mura-bito”). Rules are created by them.
On the other hand, Japanese parents today may take their babies or small kids to game centers or “pachinko-shops” filled with noise and smoke. In Europe or in other places, babies are not allowed to enter casinos. There is no cultural barrier to protect kids. All the adult books are sold in convenience stores where small kids buy their candies.
One day, I saw a small fat kid of 10 years old or so insulting the staff of shushi bar about small noise that the machine made. His mother was just letting a boy do that. I have never seen this kind of total lack of respect of elders in other places. In a place where individual has no rights but “society” order everything to them, “society” is responsible for everything. A fat boy was ‘client’, so he thought that he could claim everything. There is an idea that employers can order whatever to employees, or clients can say anything to shop owners, or parents can claim whatever to teachers. Those who regard themselves in higher hierarchy can order everything to those are in lower hierarchy. These little emperors are everywhere. So this kid did what he did.
When a war criminal, Hirohito, was not responsible for his wars, and no one seemed to take any responsibility for atomic bombs, I think the value system started to collapse in Japan. You talked about “wa,” “uchi-soto” mentality, but I felt more “totalitarianism” in our lack of openness. As you said, Japanese tend to be offended when Japanese “society” is criticized. This is probably because they feel themselves emperors. Japanese have never experienced individual rights to decide things themselves. Parents can’t even decide what movie their kids should see. We have no rights. Yet, at the same time, they mix themselves with “society” and feel responsible for the things that they can’t be responsible, or they may feel that they should control others since they were “society” themselves. It was exactly the mentality of “ichioku sou zange.”(100 million Japanese felt sorry for wars). I don’t know exactly how we can cure them. This mixture of the things that they shouldn’t mix is a common mentality, like Hitler and his followers’ too. You didn’t say this. But, I think the total lack of individuality that is predominant in Japanese society is rooted in totalitarianism.
Por parte da geração mais nova não notas diferenças relativamente a gerações mais velhas?
Infelizmente, PJ, tudo indica que as gerac,oes mais novas estao a tornar-se cada vez mais fechadas, avessas ao risco e 'a internacionalizac,ao. Sofrem do que agora se chama de "Galapagos syndrome" (v. por ex. este artigo recente no THES: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=414933).
O Japao continua a ter, decididamente, uma dificuldade extrema em relacionar-se com o que lhe e' externo, ao contrario das imagens estereotipadas que nos querem fazer crer de que se trata de uma cultura que assimila influencias facilmente. A globalizac,ao so' veio complicar ainda mais o problema - e nao resolve-lo.
Curiosamente, as pessoas das gerac,oes mais velhas, esp. as que viveram a Segunda Guerra, sao muitas vezes aquelas que se mostram mais desinibidas e abertas em relac,ao aos estrangeiros. E' muito mais facil comunicar com elas do que com a maior parte dos jovens - uma percepc,ao que ja me foi confirmada por varios colegas que aqui vivem ou viveram.
Enfim, perplexidades...
PJ, para um retrato impiedoso do que o Japao representa hoje para tantos dos seus jovens, so posso recomendar a leitura do livro de Michael Zielenzieger, Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its Lost Generation.
Arrepiante e deprimente, mas "na mouche"...
http://www.shuttingoutthesun.com/
Dear Samurai,
Many thanks for your comment. There are certainly many factors that account for Japan's current malaise and difficult relationship with the outside world -those you list are certainly important.
There is, however, one aspect you don't mention and which I feel is responsible, in part, for the stagnation and inhumanity of Japanese society in so many respects: the inability to develop TRUST outside one's narrow, hierarchical networks and to help and show SOLIDARITY towards other people outside one's own kin.
I'll try to write more about this soon.
thank you for this wonderful article. it hit the nail on the head, not only for japanese culture, but also the culture here in taiwan.
i think this is a thing in asia,japan being the most extreme example of course, but it exists in chinese culture as well.
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