Monday to Friday

Part One went up on Friday, for those of you who missed it. Up to speed now? Right then, on with part two…

In my first month at uni I found myself talking to a girl* at a house party. Freshers’ week was over, so I was actually having to put in a bit of effort in my attempts to get her into bed. Small talk and the like, you know the drill. I asked her what she was studying (oh yes, I had all the moves).

“Medicine.” She responds.

“Cool,” says I, “So you’re going to be a nurse?”

She gives me a look which, I’m not ashamed to say, actually makes my balls retreat back into my body cavity, spits out the word “Doctor,” in a way which somehow manages to make it rhyme with “You Cunt,” and turns to find another conversational partner.

Now, I like to consider that I’m nicely brought up middle-class boy, with my fair share of white liberal guilt and right-on opinions about equality and tolerance. Once I’d coaxed my bollocks back into my scrotal sac (and if I’m being honest, gotten over my disappointment at not getting laid) I was justifiably appalled at how casually my prejudices had been exposed.

Not even that, because it’s not like I was making a concerted effort to keep my galloping misogyny under wraps. I genuinely thought I was completely fair and open minded about all things. To have that illusion shattered, and in such nut-crunchingly humiliating circumstances to boot, was something of a reality check.

Because we all have prejudices. Whether they’re learned or innate is pretty much moot, frankly. They’re there inside everyone and as we all know, the first step to fixing a problem is to admit that there is one. And this is why reading about monkeyfighting is such a disheartening, spirit-freezing experience. The same accusations and denials being kicked around again and again. It’s cold out there today. It’s cold out there every day.

I’ve previously talked about the Japanese penchant for binary viewpoints, the division of the world into distinct sections, regardless of the mush of grey in between. As usual, this just the Japanese extension of a common global idea. When I referenced Descartes on Friday I wasn’t doing it to make myself sound smart.

OK. I was. But I was also doing it to make the point that these artificial dualities have a firm hold on people’s perceptions the world over. My man René got himself hung up on the whole Body/Soul question, and I’ve already mentioned Nature/Nurture, but the list is endless: Masculine/Feminine; Physics/Metaphysics; Science/Nature; Right/Left; East/West; Jacob/Edward; Spit/Swallow. The best of times, the worst of times. And as Dickens understood, often these opposing views are nothing of the sort, and are purposefully exaggerated for less than noble reasons.  

There’s a reason I presented a continuum on Friday. Attitudes exist on a sliding scale and parcelling them up into discrete little quanta of perception does nobody any favours, yet it happens all the time. In the little bunfight concerning monkey- fighting that we’re currently discussing, the false dichotomy principally concerns assimilation/accommodation. Is the onus on foreigners in Japan to assimilate, or on the Japanese to accommodate?

The correct answer is C, a bit of both. It’s always fucking C. What’s the point of moving to another country if you don’t expect to learn new things about yourself or for people to do things differently? You can’t seriously plan to move halfway round the world and expect everything to be exactly the same, if so you might as well have stayed at home.

While we’re at it, what’s the point of inviting foreign workers if you don’t expect them to provide anything new to your country? You can’t hire people expecting them to provide something different and then be surprised when they do exactly that, if so you might as well have hired at home.

Clearly the middle ground is the place to be, and while we all might think that’s where we are, we’re not. We’re constantly exposing our prejudices and crashing and burning amidst many others who are also performing knee-jerk auto-cock-blocks. We divide ourselves up into opposing little camps, primarily because that’s what we think is expected of us, and then we hide behind our barricades and throw rocks at the other side because we’re all so very angry about chopsticks.

No. We are angry about the chopsticks. Not...
Never mind.

I’ve noted this tendency before. Wasn’t I prescient? Well no, obviously not. Noting the chopsticks thing is like observing that the water is wet and fire is hot, and I think this is the reason it all kicks off. The more serious, undeniable acts of racism in Japan are mercifully uncommon. The refusal of admission or service, the price gouging, the straight-up abuse from strangers in the street. It certainly happens, but not that often and not to everyone. I could easily believe that a pretty blonde girl could spend a year in a major city and not witness or directly hear of anything like this.

But we’ve all been complimented on our skill with chopsticks. We’ve all been asked if we can eat sushi or natto. We’ve all been partnered by the empty seat on on our work-day commutes, Monday to Friday**. And because monkeyfighting is something every foreigner in Japan has experienced, it’s that much more tempting for everyone to say something about it, however ill-considered that something might be.

For my own part, I feel that questions born of genuine curiosity, or even genuine ignorance, are fine. Hell, I’m constantly trying to encourage my students to ask questions if they don’t understand, so I can hardly object when it actually happens. Actions born of a genuine desire to help are also tolerable; the unasked for English menu, for example. It’s when these questions, comments, and actions occur not to provide new information but to confirm existing prejudices that problems start. That's where the line is crossed from curiosity or stupidity to monkeyfighting. But as ever, there's often a degree of overlap and no clear divide.

You got your fancy diagrams last week. Don't get greedy

A Chinese-American friend visited a couple of years back. We went to a restaurant and of course I get the English menu and he gets the Japanese one. We laugh and swap. Then for the rest of the meal the waiters continue to address him whenever they come to our table. My Japanese is far from fluent, but his is non-existent. A point we - I - made several times, yet still they talked to him and not me.

OK, yeah, that one’s pretty clear. How about the guy I talked about in the chopsticks post? Remember him? In the same conversation he went on to talk about a trip he took to Kyoto and the fantastic Japanese restaurant he went to there. He advised me against wasting my money on it though, because the flavours were very subtle and foreigners like strong flavours. As I sit there eating exactly the same bento as him with no obvious displeasure. I have no doubt he genuinely thought he was being friendly, but I’m not sure how that squares with telling someone you barely know what they should be thinking.

In that vein, at this point some of you may be thinking something like, “But Japanese food is pretty bland,” or, “Natto is disgusting. It doesn’t bother me if I’m told I won’t like it.” If that’s you then you’re missing the point completely.

I can’t stand onsen. They make me feel, by turns, both faint and bored off my tits. But just because I have no need for them doesn’t mean I’m fine with other people being denied entry because they’re not Japanese. ‘Not Japanese’ is a pretty big, pretty diverse group, comprising as it does almost everyone in the world. If you see fit to say treating foreigners in a certain way is OK because you specifically are OK with it, then you’re unilaterally electing yourself proxy for seven billion people. I’m pretty full of myself on occasion, but even I wouldn’t go that far.

And if you're thinking, "Well, that chopsticks guy was probably just a bit insensitive. It doesn't mean all Japanese people are. Now you're electing this one guy proxy for all of them. Hypocrite." Then you're both partially right and still missing the point. He was insensitive, but it's not just 'one guy,' it's many, many monkeyfighting incidents over a period of time. I'm using this guy as an exemplar, but he's part of a far larger picture.

A larger picture

The fight-path of an individual starling might seem random in isolation, but seen in the context of an entire flock definite patterns clearly emerge. The distinction between anecdotes and data is one of the central ontological concerns of the social sciences, and of course it's very, very fuzzy and has taxed far better minds than mine or yours. Our individual attitudes are inevitably shaped by our societies, and it's a dangerous game to play them off against each other as excuses for poor behaviour. The answer, as ever, is C.

And so I keep revisiting this discussion. That’s why I’ve devoted a few thousand words, and hours of my time, to writing this. Almost everyone involved in this discussion would benefit from having their real, personal, attitudes exposed to their own view, as I experienced at that house party. These microagressions (there, I said it) serve to expose prejudices at the cultural level, if only people are willing to recognize their own as individuals. Many won’t be, but for those few that are it’s an incredibly important discovery. I have to believe that at least some people will be able to get it eventually, even if many won't. That’s why I keep coming back, despite the seemingly endless repetition and aggravation it causes.

*/strong, independent female adult
** Yeah, I know it's tenuous, but that clip was too absurd not to use.

Credit where it's due.