Too tall for Tokyo: a reaction

This story was sent to me by my friend Mateo. Woman lives in Tokyo for 5 years with her husband on the expat package, leaves with bitter taste in her mouth. Her sentiments can be summed up rather well by the following passage:

When we left New York, I was a working mom dressed in power suits, having business lunches, serving on the board of directors of my kids’ school. When we arrived in Japan, everything I was, or thought I was, crumpled before one undeniable defining characteristic: I was different.

My heart goes out to Ms. Gandel and all those enduring the rude Japanese gawkers. I’ve gone through most of the experiences she describes. Especially, being ignored even when I know I was speaking good-enough Japanese was a constant source of frustration that I don’t miss in the slightest.

And any White American who has spent time in Japan has undoubtedly thought at one time or another that they can finally relate to the minority groups in America after their experiences with the Japanese, who insist on judging us — pigeon-holing us — just for being different.

But you have to admit, even though it’s rude and annoying to be singled out for being who you are, White People in Japan have it easy. In many Japanese minds, White People are actually racially superior thanks to the popular survival of Nazi-era racial hierarchies. The many non-Japanese Asians, South Asians, Africans, etc often face subhuman treatment. The cold rejection of Africans, for instance, comes when Japanese mothers warn their internationally-minded daughters: marrying a White Man is OK, but never ever bring home a black man.

But since we’re on the topic, Ms. Gandel has an eye-opening account of public bathing:

As I sat on the little plastic stool and turned on the wall tap to start the prewash cycle, I became aware of sidelong looks, gasps, muted giggles and a sudden exodus of the Japanese women and children. I must have resembled a gorilla in the mist, or the repulsive creature that was Sigourney Weaver’s nemesis in another of her movies. After all, that’s what I was to these women: an alien, a gaijin.

This is a reaction one might expect from a hermit kingdom such as North Korea, but not the second largest economy in the world, right? Sadly, this is all too common.

I haven’t had the experience of living in another so-called “homogeneous” society, but I expect that the experience would be largely the same as what she describes. Except in other countries, expats seem to accept being left out of the mainstream society as a matter of course. Why the complaining about Japan (and sometimes Korea)?

Americans, for their part, expect more from Japan, a developed nation. In other supposedly homogeneous developed countries, such as Germany, for instance, it is not a major ordeal when someone of another race enters the Turkish bath. And with all its multinationals, democracy, and high technology, Japan must have an enlightened understanding of race/gender issues, right?

Wrong.

The author of the article cites homogeneity as the main cause for this ignorance. The myth of homogeneity is indeed part of the problem, but that’s just one part of the big picture.

Intellectual isolation (a convenient euphemism for “ignorance”) is something that foreign businesspeople are told to expect when visiting Japan. There are a many contributing factors, most of which can be blamed on bad government policy (in no particular order): a military-style education system that discourages creative thinking, the denigration/bullying of Japanese people who are singled out as different, the constant propaganda about how dangerous the world outside Japan is, the astonishingly low rate of foreign direct investment to Japan (and therefore far fewer immigrants in the country starting businesses), the ass-backwards immigration policy despite an urgent need for foreign labor, the general lack of respect for creativity, the uncompetitiveness of Japan’s industries outside a few key sectors, the brain-drain of Japan’s best and brightest, and the “shikata ga nai” hopelessness of the average Japanese citizen.

These factors combine, mega-zord style, to make up a society that is insulated from most forms of progressive thinking, left to stew in its own unquestioned prejudices. The 60s just never happened in Japan. Hell, Teddy Roosevelt-style progressivism never even happened in Japan (though Koizumi may be a first). For obvious enough reasons, there was no struggle for civil rights or sexual revolution that had any lasting effect. Also, the minority issues that Japan has faced (Ainu in Hokkaido, buraku) were tackled with policies of complete assimilation, bypassing any debate that might have resulted in a multicultural outlook for Japan. Koreans left over from WW2, on the other hand, have been fighting like the dickens to maintain their cultural identities while sticking it out in Japan. Sadly, their fight is more or less left out of the mainstream and, tellingly enough, did not apparently catch the attention of Ms. Gandel.

But reading this story made me realize: the prospect of daily discrimination has never crossed my mind as a deal-breaker in terms of living in Japan in the long term. I can stick with my open-minded/gaijin-coddling friends while hoping that the lame comments on my chopstick skills will someday cease thanks to the efforts of dedicated activists.