The Seidensticker in All of Us
"They call it the Seidensticker Complex, after the American scholar and translator, and it describes the ambivalent feelings that torment long-term foreign residents in Japan, a pendulum of emotion, alternating between attraction and repulsion, affection and anger--back and forth. But the image is false. These feelings do not alternate. They are inseparable. As inseparable as the scent of urine and incense on the same wind. The same festival that beguiles you, also excludes you. One does not love and then hate and then love Japan like a metronome. One lovehates it, one wants to draw nearfar to it, to gostay.
-- Will Ferguson, Hokkaido Highway Blues.
It's coming up on the two year mark for me here in Japan. Two years, not including nearly eight months back home, grinding my teeth, racking my brain, sitting on time as my mind decompressed from the initial reverse culture shock. So many things had changed, or had I changed? Well of course it was a little bit of both, perhaps more of one than the other, but after deliberating, meandering, ranting and idealizing, I came back. And here I am, walking a very vague path that draws the middle line--never certain, never permanent. But it is a path that has been walked thousands of times before already, by the likes of true Japanophiles and long-timers like Seidensticker but as well as the JET Program Alt teacher who has practically single-handedly attached the verb "to bitch" onto every action taken by foreigners in Japan (a couple--and I mean two--rare ALT cases and gems of people I know excluded from that sentence).
But perhaps, this need to bitch, to pound one's head against the wall in frustration, to gather friends around you and develop the bond of common things that you can't understand and detest about Japan stems from something deeper, from, as Ferguson puts it--the Western's person relationship with Japan that is lovehate, nearfar, gostay. I had a conversation with some friends the other day about whether the JET Program breeds this sort of person, or if it simply manages to find people who minge, bitch, and moan on a massive scale, then imports them to their country, gives them an insanely good salary for (usually) doing next to nothing, subsidized living costs, an all-English pillow of support, as well as giving them with huge banquets where the ALTs can meet by the dozens/hundreds to, yet again, bitch.
Now, anyone who has ever lived in Japan finds, early on, the addictive nature to picking everything apart, creating an entire life of comparisons--"If I was vegetarian in my home country," "Well, our banks close at...", "it costs how much to do what?," "where does this piece of garbage go?" "There should be more lighting at night in my neighborhood!" All of these I've heard before, and that just scrapes the surface. But these are the light ones, the ones that you can joke about and leave at that. It can get deeper, more philosophical, the critique and analysis going into the psyche of the Japanese people, the make-up of the government, the public-works system, you name it. And, for me, I'm curious if this happens everywhere in the world to anyone who is slowly becoming an ex-patriot. Compare, contrast. It reminds me of all my English Literature essays I had to write throughout my degree. This sort of logic, this black and white breakdown of the world was burned into my mind. So, I have to admit that I can get caught up in this comparison thing as if I was writing paragraph eight of my essay that had to be handed in tomorrow. I literally need to run away, plug my ears and surround myself with no one or just get out there and do my own thing away from the bubble of caucasian civilization, or I can feel myself being sucked in by this relentless rhetoric of differences that seems to plague the minds of Westerners in this country. It's like some syndrome, or air-born virus. Improvement. Change. Reform. Democracy. I wonder if this is the colonizer in us? Is it a human trait--to seek out "negative" aspects of the running of a country, or a society, of a group of people, then compare it with your own?
But after the banquet hall-sized bitch sessions, the frustration at one thing or another, between all the sentences that yell "I can't understand this place!" lies a simple fact: the foreigner is still here. He/she is still building a life here, is still engaging in society one way or another, and hasn't fled home to revel in all the familiarity and "right way to do things" that it has. lovehate. nearfar. gostay.
Among the thousands of other foreigners living here, the oddities and frustrations (as indeed, I do feel them as well), something over here has me wrapped around its finger. I find that it's so hard to think about leaving--partly due to all the sweat, time, adventures and self-discovery that has happened to me in this country. I've told friends and loved ones that it is not necessarily the lure of Nippon that has seduced something within me, but the lure of going through the same ropes that you did as a new-born child all over again; but this time as an adult and in a new country, within the constraints of a place with different ways of thinking, rationality, views and outlooks; when you first live in a different country, you go through all the loops (depending if you are bouncing on that pillowy English bubble akin to the one that the JET Program lays out for you or not) of learning how to communicate, to verbalize yourself, to understand the proper conduct of interactivity, the social quirks that transcend language--from the the way you play, the way you flirt, all the way to what you value. One of the most intriguing things about this interesting process of linguistics, behaviours, codes of conduct, is sussing out where you fit in it--how does one thing sit with you, how does this or that filter through your set of ethics, passions, priorities that you have received from your family/environment/culture.
My first Japanese boss, a 50 year-old Japanese woman who was borderline empirialist, racist, but simultaneously one of the best teachers I've ever had, used to tell me the story about an American man who lived in this really small village in Northern Japan. He would be out sweeping the front steps of his house bright and early like the his neighbours. He bought and lived in a Japanese style home, never stepping on the toes of anyone around him, buying from his local supermarket, hanging his futons out his window and fluent in Japanese; but he also left his culture and people behind, rejecting one for the other. She said that he was so "Japanese" you'd have to look twice to notice that he was indeed gai-jin (besides the fact that he was probably nearly twice the size of a Japanese male, blonde haired, etc, my boss was obviously making a point--one of the many she would also make). Yuko-san, my boss, would tell me this story and say "some people have the mentality. Some people have the common sense." It was what she didn't say which was the point she was making--I didn't/don't have it. But it made me wonder. It made me look back on the people here that represented my country and The West. It also made me ponder my boss, as she would say, on a much more frequent (almost daily level) that it was simply impossible for anybody who is raised in a Western Culture to share the Japanese mindset. Where did this American guy fit in, I wonder? Can a foreigner in Japan spend fifty years of their life here, sweep their steps on time, bow the proper depth, speak in a flawless accent, engage in relationships with the same outlook and set of values, work with the proper ethic, and ever lose the title "gai-jin" (foreigner)? Does one need to abandond one culture for another? Is the foreigner faced with a decision to make? Is there some sort of born-with-trait or gene that lets a foreigner feel accepted, and in turn puts his or her mind at rest? Or is the entire fact that Westerners even think about "being accepted" that prevents that exact thing from supposedly happening?
As Will Ferguson puts it, "for most Westerners, one urge or the other eventually wins, and instead of inseperable feelings you have only to go or to stay. But there are some who are caught in the middle, suspended by opposing desires. They are lost and not sure if they want to be found. They try to run in two directions at once and fail. Like deer on a highway."
-- Will Ferguson, Hokkaido Highway Blues.
It's coming up on the two year mark for me here in Japan. Two years, not including nearly eight months back home, grinding my teeth, racking my brain, sitting on time as my mind decompressed from the initial reverse culture shock. So many things had changed, or had I changed? Well of course it was a little bit of both, perhaps more of one than the other, but after deliberating, meandering, ranting and idealizing, I came back. And here I am, walking a very vague path that draws the middle line--never certain, never permanent. But it is a path that has been walked thousands of times before already, by the likes of true Japanophiles and long-timers like Seidensticker but as well as the JET Program Alt teacher who has practically single-handedly attached the verb "to bitch" onto every action taken by foreigners in Japan (a couple--and I mean two--rare ALT cases and gems of people I know excluded from that sentence).
But perhaps, this need to bitch, to pound one's head against the wall in frustration, to gather friends around you and develop the bond of common things that you can't understand and detest about Japan stems from something deeper, from, as Ferguson puts it--the Western's person relationship with Japan that is lovehate, nearfar, gostay. I had a conversation with some friends the other day about whether the JET Program breeds this sort of person, or if it simply manages to find people who minge, bitch, and moan on a massive scale, then imports them to their country, gives them an insanely good salary for (usually) doing next to nothing, subsidized living costs, an all-English pillow of support, as well as giving them with huge banquets where the ALTs can meet by the dozens/hundreds to, yet again, bitch.
Now, anyone who has ever lived in Japan finds, early on, the addictive nature to picking everything apart, creating an entire life of comparisons--"If I was vegetarian in my home country," "Well, our banks close at...", "it costs how much to do what?," "where does this piece of garbage go?" "There should be more lighting at night in my neighborhood!" All of these I've heard before, and that just scrapes the surface. But these are the light ones, the ones that you can joke about and leave at that. It can get deeper, more philosophical, the critique and analysis going into the psyche of the Japanese people, the make-up of the government, the public-works system, you name it. And, for me, I'm curious if this happens everywhere in the world to anyone who is slowly becoming an ex-patriot. Compare, contrast. It reminds me of all my English Literature essays I had to write throughout my degree. This sort of logic, this black and white breakdown of the world was burned into my mind. So, I have to admit that I can get caught up in this comparison thing as if I was writing paragraph eight of my essay that had to be handed in tomorrow. I literally need to run away, plug my ears and surround myself with no one or just get out there and do my own thing away from the bubble of caucasian civilization, or I can feel myself being sucked in by this relentless rhetoric of differences that seems to plague the minds of Westerners in this country. It's like some syndrome, or air-born virus. Improvement. Change. Reform. Democracy. I wonder if this is the colonizer in us? Is it a human trait--to seek out "negative" aspects of the running of a country, or a society, of a group of people, then compare it with your own?
But after the banquet hall-sized bitch sessions, the frustration at one thing or another, between all the sentences that yell "I can't understand this place!" lies a simple fact: the foreigner is still here. He/she is still building a life here, is still engaging in society one way or another, and hasn't fled home to revel in all the familiarity and "right way to do things" that it has. lovehate. nearfar. gostay.
Among the thousands of other foreigners living here, the oddities and frustrations (as indeed, I do feel them as well), something over here has me wrapped around its finger. I find that it's so hard to think about leaving--partly due to all the sweat, time, adventures and self-discovery that has happened to me in this country. I've told friends and loved ones that it is not necessarily the lure of Nippon that has seduced something within me, but the lure of going through the same ropes that you did as a new-born child all over again; but this time as an adult and in a new country, within the constraints of a place with different ways of thinking, rationality, views and outlooks; when you first live in a different country, you go through all the loops (depending if you are bouncing on that pillowy English bubble akin to the one that the JET Program lays out for you or not) of learning how to communicate, to verbalize yourself, to understand the proper conduct of interactivity, the social quirks that transcend language--from the the way you play, the way you flirt, all the way to what you value. One of the most intriguing things about this interesting process of linguistics, behaviours, codes of conduct, is sussing out where you fit in it--how does one thing sit with you, how does this or that filter through your set of ethics, passions, priorities that you have received from your family/environment/culture.
My first Japanese boss, a 50 year-old Japanese woman who was borderline empirialist, racist, but simultaneously one of the best teachers I've ever had, used to tell me the story about an American man who lived in this really small village in Northern Japan. He would be out sweeping the front steps of his house bright and early like the his neighbours. He bought and lived in a Japanese style home, never stepping on the toes of anyone around him, buying from his local supermarket, hanging his futons out his window and fluent in Japanese; but he also left his culture and people behind, rejecting one for the other. She said that he was so "Japanese" you'd have to look twice to notice that he was indeed gai-jin (besides the fact that he was probably nearly twice the size of a Japanese male, blonde haired, etc, my boss was obviously making a point--one of the many she would also make). Yuko-san, my boss, would tell me this story and say "some people have the mentality. Some people have the common sense." It was what she didn't say which was the point she was making--I didn't/don't have it. But it made me wonder. It made me look back on the people here that represented my country and The West. It also made me ponder my boss, as she would say, on a much more frequent (almost daily level) that it was simply impossible for anybody who is raised in a Western Culture to share the Japanese mindset. Where did this American guy fit in, I wonder? Can a foreigner in Japan spend fifty years of their life here, sweep their steps on time, bow the proper depth, speak in a flawless accent, engage in relationships with the same outlook and set of values, work with the proper ethic, and ever lose the title "gai-jin" (foreigner)? Does one need to abandond one culture for another? Is the foreigner faced with a decision to make? Is there some sort of born-with-trait or gene that lets a foreigner feel accepted, and in turn puts his or her mind at rest? Or is the entire fact that Westerners even think about "being accepted" that prevents that exact thing from supposedly happening?
As Will Ferguson puts it, "for most Westerners, one urge or the other eventually wins, and instead of inseperable feelings you have only to go or to stay. But there are some who are caught in the middle, suspended by opposing desires. They are lost and not sure if they want to be found. They try to run in two directions at once and fail. Like deer on a highway."
posted by Jamiesan at 10:45 AM
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