The growing fiction of ‘National Culture'

Japan fits into Canada more than twenty-seven times. Indeed, it fits into the province of Ontario nearly two and half times. Yet more than one-hundred and twenty million people live in Japan—that’s nearly four times the total population of Canada. Two million foreigners— over six per cent of Canada’s population—live in this East Asian country. Japan, a country which almost completely closed off its borders to the outside world for more than two-hundred and twenty-nine years, which was on the other ‘side’ during World War Two, and which managed to generally reject all forms of western religion as a nation, is a perfect Petri dish to host a clash of cultures. Within this nation’s homogeneous way of life, Japan hosts a demographic of people which has no defined place in relation to its existing national culture. And it is here in this indefinable ‘in between of cultures’ where the life-long foreign resident—otherwise known as the ex-pat—is becoming the new trailblazing global citizen for future generations. It is here the ex-pat is challenging our predefined notions of what culture means—whether they realize it or not.

Unlike a child who grows up and learns a ‘nation’s culture’ unconsciously, the ex-pat is fully self-aware when they move abroad; they constantly judge and criticize their new country’s culture as a discriminating adult. They discover aspects of this new culture they love—perhaps the people’s definition of entertainment, the attitudes toward fashion, or how one portrays respect towards others—but they also find elements which annoy and frustrate them—perhaps the roles between the sexes, the way people do business, or attitudes towards the environment. All of these things, from the most minute to the most generally stereotyped, make up a nation’s culture, and therefore the ex-pat’s life. And so, all the while being cognisant of, the ex-pat learns how to operate within these new confines of culture.

And so, what does the ex-pat do? Well, they pick and choose what aspects of a culture they like best, like a child in a candy shop: they surround themselves with other foreigners, yet not completely. They don the suit at work and bow, using honorific and humble speech when conversing in the native tongue; they value Japan’s respect for the elderly, yet they shy away from the archaic housewife, working-husband role and value equality and following one’s dreams within the home. They enjoy Japan’s night life and rules of conduct, yet shun the hierarchical system. In essence, the ex-pat creates a hand-made, cultural comfort zone based on their own set of values combined with new ones claimed from the new country they live in. When they go to work, when they go out with their Japanese lover, when they go downtown shopping, go to the neighbourhood pub or enjoy a session of karaoke, they take on new roles, and behave with a new set of customs, ideals and outlooks on life. With this constant dipping in and out of cultures, a totally new kind of culture is being created: a culture simultaneously made up of two other national cultures, part of both but neither completely the same as one: in essence, a hybrid-culture defined by the individual, not the nation.

Over the years we have seen the rise of expressions like ‘cultural melting pot’, ‘assimilation’, ‘clash of cultures’–words coined with the advent of air travel and globalization. Yet, among all these phrases to describe the clash of cultures, our language fails when describing the result of it. It is here where the next generation of people are being born—global citizens embodying an individual versus a people identified by the boundaries on a map. We need to take a look at the children born into this hybrid culture, for it is here they are being raised within a culture undefined and without limitations. It is here, where the child—unlike their parents—unconsciously gain the values and way of life of a global citizen, affecting the child on a fundamental level. It is the emergence of this generation which has the potential to close the cultural gap even further in generations to come.