Cultural Musings Part I (of many)

I’ve been doing more reading in the culture book (see an older post) I checked out from the library here. The book analyzes culture biologically and psychologically as a whole but I surprisingly came across a chapter that specifically compares certain aspects of American and Japanese culture. It resonates with the feedback I’ve gotten from two Japanese males about their society. I want to quote it all because it’s such a good story and there is no way I can possibly remember every detail when telling it to everyone back home.

“I can think of few countries Americans are likely to visit and work in in significant numbers where it is more difficult to control one’s inputs and where life is more filled with surprises than Japan. Clearly, the above observation does not apply to short visits and the like, because all over the world suitable environments have been created for tourists that shield them from the reality of the life of the people. Tourists seldom stick around for long, and they are happier insulated from the full impact of the foreign culture. Businessmen, educators, government officials, and Foreign Service personnel are something else again. It is to this group that my thoughts are directed, because they stand to gain the most from understanding cultural processes in living contexts. Understanding the reality of covert culture and accepting it on a gut level comes neither easily nor quickly, and it must be lived rather than read or reasoned…For no matter how well prepared one is for immersion in another culture, there is the inevitability of surprises.

A few years ago, I became involved in a sequence of events in Japan that completely mystified me, and only later did I learn how an overt act seen from the vantage point of one’s own culture can have an entirely different meaning when looked at in the context of the foreign culture. I had been staying at a hotel in downtown Tokyo for 10 days and returned to my room in the middle of an afternoon. Entering the room, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. Out of place. Different. I was in the wrong room! Someone else’s things were distributed around the room. I checked the key again. Yes, it was really mine. Where were my belongings? Baffled and mystified, I took the elevator to the lobby. At the desk I was told that indeed they had moved me. I was given the key to my new room and discovered that all my personal effects were distributed around the room as almost I had done it myself. This produced a strange feeling that maybe I wasn’t myself. How could somebody else do all those hundred and one little things just the way I did? Three days later, I was moved again, but this time I was prepared.

I then traveled to Kyoto and stayed in a wonderful little country inn on the side of a hill overlooking the town. After we had been there for about a week and had thoroughly settled into our new Japanese surroundings, we returned one night to be met at the door by an apologetic manager who was stammering something. Our interpreter explained as we started to go through the door that we weren’t in that hotel any longer but had been moved to another hotel. What a blow! Again, without warning. The taxi took off into a part of the city we hadn’t seen before. No Europeans here! The streets got narrower and narrower until we turned into a side street that could barely accommodate the tiny Japanese taxi into which we squeezed. Clearly this was a hotel of another class. I found that by then, I was getting a little paranoid, which is easy to do living in a foreign land. As it turned out, the neighborhood, in fact the whole district, showed us an entirely different side of life from what we had seen before, much more interesting and authentic.

It was my preoccupation with my own cultural mold that explained why I was puzzled for years about the significance of being moved around in Japanese hotels. The answer finally came after further experiences in Japan and many discussions with Japanese friends. In Japan, one has to “belong” or he has no identity. When a man joins a company, he does just that - joins himself to the corporate body - and there is even a ceremony marking the occasion. Normally, he is hired for life, and the company plays a much more paternalistic role than in the United States. There are company songs and the whole company meets frequently (usually once a week) for purposes of maintaining corporate identity and morale.

It was my lack of understanding of the full impact of what it means to belong to a high-context culture that caused me to misread hotel behavior. The answer to my puzzle was revealed when a Japanese friend explained what it means to be a guest in a hotel. As soon as you register at the desk, you are no longer an outsider; instead, for the duration of your stay you are a member of a large, mobile family. You belong. The fact that I was moved was tangible evidence that I was being treated as a family member - a relationship in which one can afford to be “relaxed and informal and not stand on ceremony.” This is a very highly prized state in Japan, which offsets the official properness that is so common in public. Americans don’t like to be moved around; it makes them anxious. Therefore, the Japanese in these establishments have learned not to treat them as family members.

In the United States, the concern of the large middle class is to move ahead with the system, whichever part of it we happen to be in. With perhaps the exception of the younger generation just now entering the job market, we are very tied to our jobs. We are only peripherally tied to the lives of others. It takes a long, long time for us to become deeply involved with others, and for some this never happens.

In Japan, life is a very different story, one that is puzzling in the extreme to Americans who interact regularly with the Japanese. Their culture seems to be full of paradoxes. When they communicate, particularly about important things, it is often in a roundabout way. All of this points to a very high-context approach to life; yet, on the other hand, there are times when they swing in the opposite direction and move to the lower end of the context scale, where nothing can be taken for granted - “Be sure to put brown polish on the shoes.” This was discovered by American GI’s during the occupation.

The Japanese are pulled in two directions. The first is a very high-context, deeply involved, enveloping intimacy that begins at home in childhood but is extended far beyond the home. There is a deep need to be close, and it is only when they are close that they are comfortable. The other pole is as far away as one can get. In public and during ceremonies, there is great emphasis on self-control, distance, and hiding inner feelings. Like most of Japanese behavior, attitudes toward showing emotion are deeply rooted in a long past. At the time of the samurai knights and nobles, there was a survival value in being able to control one’s demeanor, because a samurai could legally execute anyone who displeased him or who wasn’t properly respectful. This standing on ceremony extended to all levels; not only was the servant expected to be respectful, but the samurai’s wife was to show no emotion when she received the news that her husband or son had been killed in battle.

Through all these experiences, I was eventually able to discern the common thread that connected everything, which began to put Japanese behavior in context. In Japan there are the two sides to everyone- his warm, close, friendly, involved, high-context side that does not stand on ceremony, and the public, official, status-conscious, ceremonial side, which is what most foreigners see. From what I understand of Japanese culture, most Japanese feel quite uncomfortable (deep down inside) about the ceremonial, low-context, institutionalized side of life.”

My Japanese friend, Hirofima, feels exactly as the author describes. “Hiro” attended school in Otaru and studied abroad in Vancouver for a year to work on his English. He had an amazing experience and looks at his native culture much differently. He’s now graduated and works in Japanese sports marketing (I think I heard him say) but hangs out with the international kids all the time. He says there are some days where he doesn’t feel Japanese at all. He really dislikes how holding your significant other’s hand in public is frowned upon. Indeed, he is a really friendly guy. I first met him at midnight, the time I finally made it to my dorm my first night here. He brought me cookies and juice so I wouldn’t be both hungry and jetlagged in the morning and even let me use his phone and international calling card to call home and tell my stepdad that I made it okay. He’s driven me to the grocery store and around town so I wouldn’t have to walk 5 kilometers in the snow with groceries and even bought me a donut once because I said they looked amazing. Hiro is truly a nice guy that has done so much to help the international students here.

(Picture of my city!)

This is so long I’m almost embarrassed to post this. I wanted to share this story with as many people as possible so the time it took to type this is actually probably much less than me orally telling 20 people.

I’ve got lots more to write about but I’ll save it for another day. I will give you a little blurb about a future post by saying that I have a job interview for a part-time tutor position. I’ll explain what it is later. Can’t wait for tomorrow’s surprise post!!!