Confusing Ideas about Japan: Nihonjinron

One concept you eventually bump into when studying about Japan is nihonjinron (nee-HONE-JEEN-rone), a word which literally means "theories on Japan." A collection of ideas that grew out of the Meiji Period, the nihonjinron concepts generally have to do with describing Japan as a completely unique country, unlike the nations of Asia or the West, with a linguistic and developmental history unlike that of any other nation. Part of this is the belief, held by almost all Japanese, that their language is one of the most difficult in the world, with its mixture of Japanese words and grammar overlaid by Chinese characters with readings that shift by context and region, all complicated by heavy borrowing of foreign loan words. Another part of the reason Japanese is so hard, supposedly, is that it's so subtle, with so many shades of grey and information that's implied rather than being specifically stated, which no one but a Japanese could ever really comprehend. Although some of the nihonjinron ideas can be interesting to contemplate, there's a high amount of voodoo in them. Besides, Japanese ESL student know that English is the hardest language in the world to learn...

Trick Your Mind into Learning Japanese

Part of mastering a foreign language involves coming up with strategies that help you trick your brain into learning. In my own case, I figured out early on that I learned better if I made word associations, allowing me to tie a word like kurai (dark) to the similar-sounding English word "cry" using the sentence "cry in the dark," or combining shinu (to die) with the English words "she knew," creating "she knew he was going to die." These word associations can get quite silly, but when you make a connection this way you'll probably have it forever, so they can be useful tools. My kids are preparing for the Eiken test this weekend, which is the primary test of English in Japan, and to help out we've tried to come up with innovative ways for them to learn. My daughter has trouble sitting still for a long time, so we do short lessons with lots of breaks in between. Also, when reading through word problems, she's allowed to change the subject of any sentence so that it talks about one of her family members, making it more fun for her to get through, like Mad Libs. In the case of my son, I help him memorize vocabulary words by coming up with lines from the Star Wars films, when I can. For example, one word he wasn't getting was "contamination," so I turned on my C-3P0 voice and spat out the Episode IV line, "I've got such a bad case of dust contamination I can barely move." It was just the mental hook he needed.

"It's Me!" Scam Update

Japan continues to have problems with a type of fraud known as furikome sagi (translatable as "Transfer the Money Now!" Fraud) in which someone of dubious character calls an elderly person up and pretends to be their grandson, suddenly in need of money to pay back a loan to a yakuza gangster, or tells them that a family member has committed some wrongdoing and will get into trouble unless money is transferred to the following account immediately. One enterprising fraudster even posed as an agent for the National Tax Agency on the phone, carefully walking an elderly victim through the steps needed to transfer her life savings to them under the guise of helping her pay her taxes. The National Police Agency has declared October to be "Elimination of Bank Fraud Month" and has assigned 60,000 officers to stand guard at banks and talk to elderly customers that come in to make sure they're not being swindled. Japanese "cash corners" (as ATMs are sometimes called) have been updated to display messages warning against the dangers of bank fraud, too. The new measures seem to be helping somewhat, although 16 of the 94 reported bank fraud cases so far this month happened right under the noses of police officers standing guard, including a poor elderly woman who was fooled into transferring $28,000 to an unknown bank account. Japan is a very conservative society when it comes to saving, and seniors on average have $200,000 in cash, twice the $100,000 the average household has saved, which is still a huge amount.

On Accents and Fake Mexican Food

You've been in Japan too long when you get a nihongo ga jozu and feel really insulted. It's an odd fact of life in Japan, but foreigners who are learning Japanese strive for that magic moment when people will stop complimenting them on how good their Japanese is. Being told "your Japanese is very good" (nihongo ga jozu) is a sign that your language ability is good, but not "there" yet -- if it were really good, the person you're conversing with would just shut up and talk to you like a normal person. After studying Japanese for four years at SDSU and living in Japan since 1991, I am hopefully as fluent as I will ever need to be, although there are still occasional difficulties like discussing specific subject areas. Once I went to KFC to order a Twister (if you put taco sauce on them it's almost like you're eating Mexican food), but for some reason, I couldn't make myself understood by the girl taking my order. It turned out that she was a foreigner herself, a university student from China, and hadn't understood my American Japanese accent.

Career Women vs Office Ladies

I talked last time about how some work-related terms like "office lady" (OL) and "career woman" are used to differentiate certain full-time workers based on their status in the company, and how this seemed odd to me. This is part of a system created in the 1990s as Japan realized it wasn't very good at that whole male-female equality thing. The way it works is this: when an employee joins a (largeish) company, they usually have the option of choosing which career path they want to be on, either doing general but important tasks in the company, or opting for more challenging work that offers increased responsibility and possibility for advancement. For example, at the bank we use at J-List, there are two types of staff: ippan or "general" employees who work as tellers and wear these cute little bank teller uniforms, and sogo or "regular" employees (yes, I know general and regular sound like the same thing), who do more important jobs like manage other workers, handle currency exchanges and go out and find new business for the bank. Since both male and female employees are free to opt for either type of work without discrimination, it seems like a good system, although in practice I'm not sure how much real effect it has promoting equality when both sexes are pretty happy with things the way they are. When my wife started working for a Japanese company back in the late 80s she was eager to acquire new skills, but all she was called upon to do was memorize which green tea cup belonged to which male employee and how they liked their tea, which she hated. She wishes they had the current system in place back then.

National Mythology of Japan

A nation is defined by several factors, including language, geography and politics, but also by its shared mythology. In America we grow up with stories of George Washington telling his father "I cannot tell a lie" when asked about the cherry tree, or Paul Revere famously shouting, "The British are coming!" which give us a warm and fuzzy patriotic feeling. We (hopefully) realize later in life that a lot of these events didn't actually take place, but are embellishments after the fact that have nevertheless become part of our culture. I've always enjoyed observing the Japanese version of this mechanism and see how its national folk heroes are made. In 1594 a ninja known as Goemon Ishikawa tried to assassinate Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the Japanese ruler who's interesting because he started out as a peasant yet became the most powerful man in the country. The attack failed, and when Goemon was publicly executed by being boiled alive in a pot he became a kind of national hero to the country. (Goemon from Lupin III is his descendant.) The feudal lord of the Mito region during the early Edo Period became an unlikely folk hero when a book called The Record of the Wanderings of Mito Komon was published, making the fictional adventures of the kindly old samurai who flashed the official mark of the Tokugawa clan to shame evil-doers as famous as Buffalo Bill and Billy the Kid. And then there's one of the most respected names in Japanese history, Ryoma Sakamoto, who almost single-handedly came up with a plan to force the Tokugawa Shogunate to surrender power after an nearly bloodless conflict, which led to the establishment of Japan as a modern nation. His adventures have been written about and embellished so much that many apocryphal stories are believed to be real.

Strange English in Japan

The Japanese use a lot of English, but it's not always easy for gaijin to figure out what's being said. "Punk" doesn't mean a tough-looking guy, but a flat tire (it comes from the word puncture). If someone is "cunning" in Japan, it means they're cheating on a test. For some reason, the English word "glamor" has come to mean women who are well-endowed, so you might want to use the Japanese word for grammar (bunpo) to avoid chuckles in your classroom. If you buy a "bike" for your child you might get looked at funny since the word always refers to a motorcycle and never to a bicycle. If you have a business proposal to make to a Japanese woman, there's a slight chance she'll start blushing on you, since the English word "propose" is only used for marriage proposals in Japan, not for other kinds of formal business suggestions. If you "rinse" your hair, you're applying cream rinse, and if you live in a "mansion" it means you live in a nice townhouse that you own yourself. Living in Japan can be wacky!

This is a mansion by the way. Lots of people live there.

Wither the Salaryman?

The word "salaryman" is a wasei-eigo (lit. "made-in-Japan English") term referring to a salaried male employee of a company. The word came into use in the Taisho Period (1912-1926) to describe the new professional class of company employees doing jobs we'd think of as "white collar," and during Japan's period of rapid economic growth in the postwar years these salarymen were responsible for Japan's economic miracle. The trademark of the salaryman is his conservative dark suit, called a sebiro in Japanese, which probably came from the English word "civil" since they are civilian clothes, i.e. not a military uniform. Although the salaryman is still the basis on which Japan's modern economic society is built, there are an increasing number of people turning on their backs on working full-time in a monolithic company, whether it's young people who choose to live as freeters, never tying themselves to one job for long, or men who escape their status as salarymen (known as datsu-sara), quitting their jobs to open a restaurant or a Japanese inn or go into business for themselves. The word salaryman describes male employees; female employees would likely be called "office ladies" (OLs) if they're doing standard clerical work, or "career woman" if they've made a choice to pursue their careers, which puts them in a different career track than normal OLs. Personally, I can't get past the fact that labels are used in such an overt way in Japan, the ultimate land of subtlety, where in the "always say exactly what you're thinking" U.S. it would be much more common for a more general term to be used for all employees.

Gaijin and Real Ramen

One thing foreigners visiting Japan should be sure and try is "real" ramen. Thanks to its cheapness, virtually everyone in the world is familiar with instant ramen noodles like Cup Noodle, and I sure ate my share during my days as a poor college student. The difference between instant noodles and the real stuff found in Japanese ramen restaurants, though, is like night and day. Although you might think of ramen is being a Japanese dish, it originated in China around the start of the 20th century, and within Japan ramen is considered Chinese food, on par with gyoza dumplings and spring rolls. (They even write the name for it in katakana, as it's a foreign loan word.) Ramen comes in one of several basic soup flavors, with the most common being shoyu (soy sauce), followed by miso (my own favorite), shio ("salt" flavor), and so on. I love ramen now, but it took me a few months to work up the courage to try many different kinds of the noodles when I first got here -- I was bowled over by the naked variety of ingredients, many of which I couldn't identify, that it took time for me to take it all in. Although you can probably find a ramen shop within twenty meters of you at all times in Japan, I recommend you try a yatai, or outdoor ramen stand, which is a wonderful icon of Tokyo; it's fun to talk with the Master while you eat. If you fancy yourself a ramen fan, plan on visiting the Yokohama Ramen Museum next time you're in town. Besides various displays on the history of the noodles, you can wander a perfect recreation of a 1958 Tokyo street and dig your chopsticks into the noodles of a bygone era.

Would you like pickled bamboo shoots with that?

Cuteness in the Bath, and Everywhere!

While most people in the U.S. probably opt for a shower to get clean, in Japan hopping in the furo (bath) is the norm, a nice custom that gives you time to relax after a hard day, although it does mean you need to wash your bathtub every other day or so. (Japanese baths come with heating units to allow water to be re-heated and used the next day, which is possible because you always wash yourself outside of the bath, keeping the water ostensibly clean.) This unpleasant task usually falls to me, since my kids are masters at disappearing the moment I go to ask them to do it. The other day I went shopping for various things for the home, including a new bath sponge, and I was surprised to see that the universal concept of kawaii (cute) was alive and well even in such mundane industries as cleaning supplies. Looking at the sponges the store offered for sale, I saw one that had a cute happy face that smiled back at me, so of course that was the one I reached for. Incidentally, J-List has many cute things in stock for you, including cute items for your bath, in our Wacky Things from Japan section.

My Wife's Uncle, the World War II Survivor

Yesterday we went to visit my wife's uncle in the hospital. Making a hospital visit to a sick friend or family member is quite an involved custom, called omimai (oh-me-my!), not to be confused with omiai (oh-me-eye!) which is formal meeting with a prospective marriage partner usually arranged by your parents. This is the guy who fought in World War II, and he just loves me since I'm the only one who listens attentively to his recollections of the war. I don't mind at all: it's great to be able to talk with someone who lived through such vibrant history during a time when our two countries were bitter enemies, and I gladly listened for an hour as he talked about his years manning the large guns on the Battleship Ise, a mammoth vessel that was retrofitted after Midway so that the back end could serve as a carrier. (Being an anime fan, I had to convert the scenes he described into proper Yamato vs Galimas space battles.) During the war, he escaped death no less than three times. The first was when an American bullet grazed his face, leaving a long scar. Then, his ship was to have been sent out with the Yamato on her final one-way mission, but there was no fuel so they got to stay at the shipyards at Kure. Finally, after the atomic bombing of nearby Hiroshima, the captain picked eight crew members out of a line to go to the city and see what had happened, and all eight men ended up dying of radiation poisoning. My wife's uncle had been the tenth man in that line.

Interesting Observations by Children and Linguistic Children

One thing that's fun about having kids is all the creative observations they make. Like the time my daughter saw a toy German airplane from World War II I had at home and proclaimed, "This airplane looks angry," because the Luftwaffe insignia looked like the "anger mark" seen so often in anime and manga. Or the time my family went to stay with a friend in Malaysia, and my daughter wondered why the (normal) maids that worked at our friend's house weren't wearing extremely kawaii uniforms like the ones she'd seen on Japanese TV. Then there was the time my son made a mistake in English, so he shrugged and said, "My name is stupid English," making a joke on that most elementary of ESL phrases. But you don't need to be a kid to be creative: just start learning a foreign language like Japanese. The natural period of exploration you'll go through as you engage in silly wordplay games in order to discover the boundaries of the language will have you coming up with the most expressive and inspired observations in no time, just like children do. This "linguistic childhood" effect also can also serve as a defense when your wife wants to know you're still geeking out over episodes of Mobile Suit Gundam at your age. Since I started learning Japanese in college in 1987, linguistically I'm only 21 years old!

The 1000th Anniversary of The Tale of Genji

2008 marks a special event: the 1000th anniversary of the completion of The Tale of Genji, the famous story penned by a woman known as Murasaki Shikubu, who was born in the year 973. Often called the world's first novel, the book was written in installments which were delivered to the ladies of the Imperial Court, with each chapter developing the 400+ characters in new ways, essentially making it the first Japanese soap opera. It's the tale of a fictional Japanese Emperor named Hikaru Genji ("Shining Genji") who was quite the playboy, and the first part of the story is largely concerned with the many noble women who loved him or who were loved by him. Just as students in English classes must schlep through Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespere, which they usually hate at the time but hopefully come to appreciate later, all students here have to tackle Genji, although it's difficult because the Old Japanese the story was written in is so different from the modern language. The novel was written at the height of the Heian Period (794-1192), a kind of Golden Age when cultural influences from China and Korea enabled a level of peace and civilization hitherto unknown, before Japan came to be dominated by samurai warriors who warred for control of the country. To commemorate the millennium anniversary of the Tale of Genji, there are special museum displays going on throughout the country including one in Yokohama this month. The Japanese Post Office has gotten into the game, too, issuing a set of commemorative stamps for collectors.

Do Foreigners Freak Out Japanese People?

I was recently asked "Are Japanese afraid of gaijin?" It was an interesting question which I had to think on a bit before responding. Certainly the answer is no -- although Westerners are sometimes viewed as mysterious and confusing creatures by the locals, I wouldn't say anyone feels actual fear, except possibly for small children who might hide in their mother's skirts when a big foreigner comes lumbering up to say hello. Of course, foreigners here do perplex the Japanese around them on a regular basis with some of the strange things they do, whether it's leaving a box of laserdiscs out in the rain then taking them back to the store the next day as defective (as a friend of mine did once), using a mimikaki ear cleaner as a coffee stir, or squealing with delight at the most mundane sights and sounds of the country, like my unending fascination with Japanese railroad crossings. Of course, there are times when Japanese are freaked out by foreigners for good reason, like when a British tourist from Spain decided it would be a good idea to take his clothes off and go for a swim in the moat around the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, after he'd accidentally dropped a bag he was carrying in the water. It took the Japanese two hours to finally corner and arrest him.
Here are some pics. Hope you're not eating now ^_^ Who thinks this guy deserves to be made into an Internet meme?

Tama the Feline Stationmaster

You never know what's going to become popular in Japan next. It could be a new variation on the Maid Cafe concept like the Code Geass Cafe in Akihabara, where all the employees dress as characters from the anime series, or the "Morning Banana Diet" craze that supposedly has people buying up all the bananas in Japanese supermarkets right now. In Okayama Prefecture, a cat named Tama has been made honorary stationmaster of Kishi Station, which has created a huge spike in popularity for the region as tourists flock to see the cat of the hour and buy his official cat photobook. Kishi Station is located in an area so rural that it's been reconfigured as an unmanned station, with no permanent staff working there. Tama is owned by a man who runs a kiosk outside the station, and the cat became such a local icon that the train line decided to name him official stationmaster and buy him a little hat to wear. The popularity of the cat has been credited with bringing millions of yen to the entire prefecture in the form of increased tourist revenue, and the rail company has offered Tama all the cat food he can eat to show their thanks. I can has lifetime employment?

Japan Universities vs. U.S.: Which are Better?

Japan is a great place with a lot to offer many people, whether you're interested in learning the language, making good friends or just surfing the weirdness (of which there is plenty). One area where I feel America beats Japan handily its university system, which provides an incredibly rich array of options for anyone wanting to broaden their horizons. I've got a friend who worked for a major computer company doing a job that was not terribly fulfilling for him (I believe "soul crushing" were his exact words). When he was laid off a couple of years ago, he decided to make a big change by going back to school and getting an art degree. Although Japan's competitive university system does do some good by helping students set goals for themselves early on, one downside is that almost no one has a hope of getting into a major university unless they're near the age of 18 and are very focused on their studies -- going back to school in your thirties or forties is almost unthinkable. Japanese universities are inflexible in other ways, for example each major is generally walled off from the others, with little ability for students to experience a broad range of subjects. If you're a poly sci major and decided you want to switch to education, you're going to have to start your entire college career over from scratch, rather than being able to change majors and keep most of your units. Back during my time at SDSU (affectionately called "Suds University" by students because of all the beer we drank), students deciding they wanted to change majors was a regular occurrence, and even encouraged by the school, since the whole point of a university is to help students find their way.

Narrow Roads and Japan

You've been in Japan to long when, while driving on a two-lane road, you know the lane nearest the curb is going to be used as a parking lot. Since Japan has a lot less land area than the U.S., cramming four times the population of California into a space that's slightly smaller, allowances for the lack of space have to be made, and on most streets you can expect to see cars pulling over along the side of the road so people can run into the conbini (convenience store) and buy milk. There are always two or three cars in front of my parents' liquor shop on Sundays, too, since that the day Shonen Jump comes out. In all my years of driving in the U.S. I've never been on a road that was so narrow that two cars couldn't pass side-by-side, but it's not difficult to find roads like that in the more rural parts of Japan, and one of the skills you need when driving on such roads is the ability to back up until you can find a wider spot for the oncoming car to pass. Since there are many blind corners on narrower Japanese streets, there are curved mirrors posted to help you see oncoming cars or pedestrians, although learning to drive while being aware of these mirrors is quite a challenge -- they just don't enter my vision at all.

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea is the latest film by Hayao Miyazaki, and it's been quite an event here in Japan. It's the story of a curious fish named Brunhilde who decides to sneak away from her father and sisters and see what's on the surface. There she's befriended by a human boy named Sosuke who names her Ponyo, and the two become fast friends. Because Ponyo licked a cut Sosuke had, she acquired the magical ability to assume human form, and she makes up her mind to leave the sea and live with her friend forever. It's a simpler film than Miyazaki-sensei has made in the past, closer to My Neighbor Totoro or Kiki's Delivery Service than to more plot-driven action films like Laputa. Just as his famous character Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was based on a character from Homer's Odyssey and a Japanese folk story of a princess who loved insects, Ponyo is a fusion of multiple sources, namely The Little Mermaid with its core elements rearranged; the local version of mermaids, as drawn in a famous woodblock printing from the Edo Period; a reverse version of Urashima Taro, the tale of a Japanese fisherman who visits a magical undersea palace; Little One-Inch, the story of a tiny child who goes to live with a Japanese couple, eventually attaining full size after many adventures; and The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, about a child who emerges from a bamboo stump who turns out to be the Moon Princess. (This last tale is, I am certain, the basis for E.T. as well,) As is usually the case with Miyazaki's films, there's always one song that you can't get out of your head, and the Ponyo theme (iTunes link) has been the most popular song in Japan for months. Ponyo, Ponyo, Ponyo...sakana no ko...

My Family the Anime Family

Sometimes I think my family would make the basis for an interesting anime series, along the lines of Darling wa Gaikokujin, a comic about a Japanese woman who thinks she's found the "perfect" American husband but is surprised when things don't always go as she expects. In the tradition of Sailor Moon and Magical DoReMi, my daughter would be the main character since she's quite occhokochoi (oh-cho-ko-choi), translatable as "clumsy in a cute way," always needing help from everyone else. Her brother would be a glasses-wearing egghead, constantly pointing out her faults, which is what he does already; you could make a lot of good tsukkomi and boke jokes based on his over-analytical nature when it comes to English, compared with her tendency to use English words freely without actually knowing what they mean. I think I'd make a pretty cool "Pops" type father character, a good-hearted but sometimes bumbling American who is an otaku for Japanese hot springs and who sometimes knows things that Japanese have no idea about. Having my wife as the president of their company (since my wife is president of J-List) would create some humorous situations, too -- the wife could try to pull rank on her husband at home -- while providing an updated vision of women for Japanese children to see. So if you have any contacts at a major animation studio in Japan, please send them my way!

Fires and Firemen in Old Edo

When you think of traditional images from the Edo Period, firemen probably don't immediately spring to mind. And yet for centuries, the brigades of hikeshi, lit. "those who put out fires," have been extremely important in keeping Japan's cities from going up in flames on a regular basis. Although we might think of Japan as being a backward nation during its 250-year period of sakoku ("chained country"), when it was death for any Japanese to leave Japan or for any foreigner to visit, the sprawling metropolis of Edo (now Tokyo) was actually the largest city in the world, with as many as 1.25 million residents at the time of the national census of 1720, compared with 860,000 in London. With so many people living in buildings made of wood, bamboo and paper, fires were a constant danger, and so teams of firemen wearing thick, multi-layered kimonos of cotton and special sandals were organized to keep them under control. Since there were no water pumps back then, the main way they accomplished this was by tearing down houses that weren't burning yet in order to isolate fires to a single part of the city. These heroic men were celebrated with a special genre of the ukiyoe art, which you can see by viewing the 2009 calendar we've posted to the site today.

There's a famous story related to fires in the Edo period, the tale of a girl named Oshichi, who became the most famous arsonist in Japanese history. She was born in the year 1666 in present-day Chiba Prefecture, and was adopted by a family who sold vegetables in Edo. When she was 16, a fire burned through much of the city, and she was forced to evacuate with her adopted family. While fleeing the flames, she met a page from a Buddhist temple named Shonosuke and they fell madly in love with each other. After she returned home, she found herself thinking of the young man endlessly, and her obsession became so great that she decided to start another fire in they city, so that she might be able to see her lover again. She was caught and executed, but her story became a legend in a Guy Fawkes sort of way, and has been used as the basis for traditional Kabuki plays for centuries. Oshichi was the first Hinoeuma (hi-no-EU-ma) or "Fire Horse," the beginning of the superstition that girls born in the Year of the Horse every 60 years will grow up to be headstrong and will cause sadness for their family. The last Hinoeuma year was 1966, and so many women avoided having children that year that it caused a noticeable drop in Japanese population numbers.

A manga version of Oshichi, and her grave, quite a tourist spot today