Japanese language education and the persistent stereotype

As an early student of Japanese, you'll learn that there are some clear-cut grammatical rules of formality. You'll learn that, for example, there are three variations of any given verb that you need to carefully choose to suit your conversation partner and conjugate much as you would a past or present tense. In the most honorific case, there are sometimes entirely different words (the verb "to eat" is one example).

It's a concept that can be very frustrating for Western students. Not only is it more words and conjugations to memorize, it can also be awkward at first to carry on a conversation worrying all the while that you might trip up and say taberu instead of tabemasu—or worse yet, kuu. It can also be trying to come to acceptance of your place in the world of katchos and buchos and kakarichos, and I've seen more than one student reject the role handed down on them and wonder out loud why everyone can't just talk regular.

But for how tedious the memorization and how embarrassing a slip up can be, it's one of those concepts that Western students can accept pretty quickly—unlike verb tenses and the lack of pronouns. It just makes sense. We all know that Japan is a ridgedly hierarchical society in which all members consciously act according to their understanding of their place, right? Stereotypes and cultural anthropologists drill it into our skulls that to understand the Japanese hierarchy is to understand the Japanese.

At a bar in Hokkaido one night with a group of Japanese and non-Japanese friends, one Japanese woman spoke to a new member of the group (an older doctor) in a very informal tone. An American woman in the group, who had just started learning Japanese and was herself experimenting with the levels of polite grammar, immediately picked up on it and jokingly called the woman out for not using the proper formalities of speech. The Japanese woman looked at the American completely bewildered: she spoke naturally to the older doctor, and no one in the group was offended or even surprised by her tone.

I was immediately struck by what should be one of the most obvious lessons: the grammatical rules of formality are well known to the Japanese, indeed they're even named, but they're almost entirely subconscious. The formality level that Japanese people speak with is partially based on social status and partially based on their own personality, which explains why someone older than me might speak formally to me while another guy might mix the rough ore ("I") with a desu/masu-kei verb.

It was an important point where I stopped thinking of Japanese as a foreign language with daunting cultural and grammatical mountains to climb. I realized that Japan's hierarchy can be as fluid and flexible as it is in the West (even though we Westerners often don't like to think that such a hierarchy exists in our society), and our speech is allowed liberties. It's more important for us to find a mode of speech that's comfortable, fitting for our personality, and suitable for the situation—exactly what we do in our own languages.

In Japan, speaking out risks public humiliation, so many don't.

Right, and in the US, we can stand on a busy street corner shouting about how we think that Bush should be thrown out of office, and no one would think us strange. And we can use our workplace as a platform for spreading our religious beliefs without fear of punishment.

It was the biggest bicycle a Japanese department store carried and it's still too small for me.

I imagine that scene in Lost in Translation where Bill Murray struggles to deal with the low shower head. Although we can clearly see that the head can be raised to a height comfortable even to Bill Murray, the joke still works cause we all know that the Japanese are shorter than us, right?

I'm of average height in the West. I never had problems with low shower heads, and I comfortably rode my bike around Tokyo—experiences that contradict the Japanese-are-short stereotype much like the LA Times' author's experience with the stolen bike contradict the Tokyo-is-perfectly-safe stereotype. Maybe the author is just innocently looking to profit from the popularity of that movie with those three or so short comments, or maybe he's so nauseatingly tall that he's never experienced a situation where his height was not an issue.

Since nobody behind this operation seems to have any idea to bring Japanese bands with some semblance of appeal to American indie rock audiences and instead let big labels throw them some bands, we got a weird mix of newcomers, old-timers, and garage bands on holiday.

Although these bands probably are without an expected level of popularity for a band playing at SXSW, I'm sure they still earned fans solely for being Japanese.

The Japanese have only started eating sushi since World War II. Koreans and Chinese have been making sushi and sashimi for thousands of years.

Part of me is surprised that none of the Japanese bands I know and have played with are at SXSW this year, but frankly, it's a small part.

I'm always curious to see what Japanese bands get attention in America. By and large, they tend not to have the same popularity in Japan. I think that Envy is the only band of their social circle and genre that has reached a somewhat proportional level of popularity in the States. This is thanks in part to Steve Aoki, but Steve's also introduced some other incredible Japanese bands into the American scene without as much success. (Full disclosure: Although, I did play bass in a band with the guitarist from There Is A Light That Never Goes Out/Z, I was a There Is A Light fan long before.)

I really like these. Very timely.

Despite the fact that all faithful New York Times readers know that the Japanese are, to a fault, unrelenting in their national collectivism and patriotism, I was glad to see that the AP didn't turn a drop in a Japanese stock market into "a blow to the nation's pride".

Muji in New York. Once a staple in our life in Tokyo, now a project for New York. Damn, why didn't they open when we were living there?

Actually, their PR department told my wife that they didn't have plans of opening in the US for fear of the competition. Muji has much better design than most of the reasonably priced stores here in the US, but they fear that they won't be able to sell to American consumers who are used to the big, bright products of Ikea and Target. True, Muji has a more quiet aesthetic, but I think that it will appeal to many people here. And if that doesn't work, they can just remind people that they're Japanese. That never fails to garner attention with American kids these days.

One thing we probably won't be seeing at Muji NY is their glasses department. I picked up a pair at their store in Yurakucho last December that I'm totally digging. The only hard part was deciding which design to get.

"The Japanese government is setting up another task force to tackle the difficult issue of work-life balance. Experts will come together to figure out how working hours can be effectively curbed."

It would be interesting, though, if the government set an example by modeling its own work policies on the findings of this report. Maybe then my Mombusho friend won't have to work until 5 AM, take a taxi home, ask the driver to wait while he runs inside for a shower and change, then hop back in the cab and head back to the office.

But here's the real talking stick from the article:

Work-life balance, however, is a completely loaded Western liberal concept because it creates a dichotomy between work and life - as if they are antagonizing forces.