You’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham

Bright lights, big city.

I had a Jewish friend once. Well, more than one, and I still have some. Friends, that is. And Jews, of course. I don’t ‘have’ Jews, I mean. Jewish friends. Some of my best friends are Jews. No, christ, not like that. I didn’t mean it like that. And ‘christ’? Bollocks, that’s even worse. Err…

In the course of my life thus far I have had and continue to have many friends of assorted ethnicities and denominations, and the one of whom I shall presently be speaking is Jewish. The incident I shall now relate occurred several years ago, at which time she was employed as an ALT. In the intervening span of time we have, for a variety of reasons, lost touch somewhat. Clear?

It was about this time of year, as it happens. Start of December, which means that we’ve all just got the rancid, ash-cold taste of Halloween out of our mouths only to be asked to ‘do a christmas lesson.’

              “J-san,* can you prepare a christmas lesson for the students?”

              “Well, no. I’m Jewish, remember? I could do a hanukkah lesson if you like.”

              “Hanukkah? Is that what you call christmas?”

              “Not really…”

              “Can you sing any traditional christmas songs like Silent Night or Mariah

              Carey?”

              “I can sing the dreidel song.”

              “I don’t know it, are the words difficult?”

              “Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel….”

              “Oh. And you sing that at christmas?”

              “No. As I said, it’s not… Never mind. Mariah Carey, you say?”

God bless us, everyone.

“Fake tales of San Francisco echo through the room.

More point to a wedding disco without a bride or groom.”

So there are three aspects to this. The first is the way Japan lumps the rest of the world together as a single homogenous ‘other’. Depressingly I must point out, again, that this is hardly a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, but is just taken further here than in many other countries. I’ve seen various apologists excuse this as the legacy of the sakoku period - Japan’s two-century span of self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world.

It’s a workable enough explanation, but not an excuse given it’s been 160 years since Matthew Perry arrived and forced open Japan’s doors with a mixture of intimidating naval firepower, sarcastic quips, and floppy mid-nineties hairstyles. Japan has now been ‘open’ for nearly as long as it was ‘closed,’ but elements of that older thinking remain. In barely five generations it’s gone from being essentially medieval to one of the most economically and technologically advanced nations in the world, and frankly it’s not surprising that social change hasn’t kept up with that hectic pace. But still, for a society so obsessed with the minute gradations of difference within itself you’d expect a bit more awareness of the differences without.

A new drum, you say?
Why on earth would I want that?

“Fake tales of San Francisco echo through the air.

A few bored people at the back all wishing they weren’t there.”

The second aspect is how, having lumped together the rest of the world as ‘other,’ Japan has created institutionalized expectations for certain specific people to act as living embodiments of that ‘other’ in its entirety.

When I taught in JHS a few years back, one of the textbooks had a lesson on Rosa Parks, and I was asked to give my opinion. To a bunch of JHS second-years. Explaining weighty social issues to Japanese 14-year-olds in English simple enough for them to understand is like trying to draw the blueprints for a jet fighter using crayons. At best it’s going to involve some pretty ugly smudges and omissions and more than likely will end up giving a less than detailed view of the finer points (‘One day, a bomb fell on Hiroshima…’).

But someone, somewhere has decreed that English classes are the most suitable forums for these discussions. Because they’re ‘foreign’ issues? Because discussion and debate are ‘foreign’ modes of communication? I don’t know (though my suspicions on that score are probably pretty obvious), but what it means is that I was fairly regularly asked to provide a foreign viewpoint on heavy topics. Or maybe the foreign viewpoint on heavy topics. The lack of articles in Japanese is unhelpful in this regard.

And so it was that I, a young middle-class white man from racially homogeneous rural England, found myself expounding on the experience of a middle-aged black woman from the racial powder keg that was the American Deep South in the 1950s to a class of bored and restless Japanese teenagers. That sentence says something about globalization that is either exhilarating or depressing, depending on your outlook. And while I gave it a good go, I’m clearly not the best person to be speaking to those issues. When, however, the JTE finished by saying, “So thanks to Rosa there’s no more racism in America,” I realized that I’m perhaps not the worst, either.

It’s not just the deep and meaningful stuff. If anything it’s even worse with the light and fluffy. Witness my near-breakdown when asked to explain Halloween for the umpteenth (well, third) time. I have never been trick-or-treating in my life, and the only reason I have any idea why a jack-o'-lantern is called a jack-o'-lantern is because I looked it up on Wikipedia after becoming sick of other teachers asking and having to bullshit my way through the answer.

I still can't explain this, though.

“And yeah, I’d love to tell you all my problem…”

But bullshit I did, which is the third aspect. Having been hired to provide this experience of the ‘other’ I found myself all too willing to do exactly that, regardless of any relevant experience I may (or, more realistically, may not) have had. Part of it’s personal. A rather immature desire to ‘internationalize’ these people by exposing their ignorance of the wider world wherever possible, even if it meant glossing over mine as well. Plus I’ve always been ‘the clever one’ (my brother was ‘the sporty one’ and my sister was ‘good with people’ as my parents desperately tried to differentiate between us in the forlorn hope of mitigating our sibling rivalry). I hate not knowing, and I hate not knowing something other people expect me to. Especially if that’s part of the reason I’m getting paid.

Both of those desires are linked to age and confidence. I’m more secure in myself now, so saying ‘I don’t know’ doesn’t feel like the admission of failure that it once did. I’ve also realized that by viewing my colleagues and students as ‘these people’ I too was guilty of that homogenization of the other. Some of them are very smart indeed and could teach me a thing or two about the world if I don’t give it the Big I Am.

Coming to Japan, the land of conformity, as a representative of the bullishly individualistic West you do feel it’s your role to act up to that. All the while ignoring the howling irony of conforming exactly to the role expected of you: the role of the non-conformist. It would be more non-conformist to conform, as it were.

The other part isn’t so personal though. Basically, society – any society – exerts real pressures on people to fit themselves into expected manners and modes of behaviour. And time and time again people unconsciously find themselves doing just that, regardless of how they may really feel about things, or whatever objective ‘truth’ there may be to the issue. People expect a punchline to an anecdote, and so I do J a massive disservice by making it look like she caved in, whereas in reality she stuck to her guns and did a hanukkah lesson and everyone went home, if not happy, then better educated.

And that’s the key. Education, learning. Keeping people happy is only important in so much as it contributes to their education. Fulfilling people’s expectations keeps them happy, but doesn’t necessarily teach them anything.

By falling into this expected role as a single voice for the rest of the world I was perpetuating the problems, not fixing them. There are wrong answers, there are better and worse answers, but there’s rarely only one correct answer. However unconsciously I was doing it, however unconsciously I was being encouraged by others to do it, I was still laying claim to having that single correct answer for the rest of the world. When you break it down like that it’s obviously ludicrous, but it’s an easy trap to fall into. Sometimes the best answer is not to give one at all.

“So get off the bandwagon and put down the handbook.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

*Her name really does start with J. Honest.

Credit where it’s due.