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October 7, 2001
"I spent one full year in Japan as a foreign exchange student. I was the first Native American to go to
Japan on AFS exchange from Washington state. I was only fifteen years old when I went there and attended a
private school. Let me tell you it was the best experience of my life. I never met such kind people. They
all went out of their way to accomodate me.
"I'll never forget my classmates taking my school uniform skirt. At the time I didn't quite understand why. But
when I got it back, I did. I had very skinny legs and they fell in love with them. When I got my skirt back, it
was so short I couldn't believe it. I could hardly bend over. I learned to be a young lady fast. When I had my
jacket on, it was probably only a couple of inches longer than my skirt.
"One time when the school newspaper contained short
essays about each student's accomplishments, the essay about me said that I had a nice sense of style in the clothes
that I wore, and that I possessed "beautiful skinny legs, with such small calf muscles." At first I was embarrassed, but
after being there a little while, I learned to enjoy it. Japanese boys were more aggressive towards me than the boys
back home.
"They had a school dance for my sixteenth birthday and announced it over the intercom system at the school. They even
had a long American flag dress for me to wear. The boys were everywhere. I felt like a princess over there.
"So my experience is nothing like the description in the story I read here. Quite the opposite. I got to bring my
boyfriend with me on a fieldtrip we had and we all slept in the same room, him and I, together. A lot of kissing,
but not much sleeping went on. I had one boyfriend. When I arrived in Japan, I was a virgin, and I left one too.
But some of the boys sure wanted to be the first. The tactics a couple of them used were quite impressive, but NO THANKS!
That's my story. I loved Japan and if I could afford to go back, I would. Anyway, I'm afraid to fly after the 9/11, World Trade
Center bombing. Thanks for bringing back some wonderful memories I almost had forgotten. Going to create a journal of
my memories of my stay in Japan in '71-'72.
-SHARON HAWK
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July 29, 2001
"Hello! My experience with a Japanese woman has been very fruitful. I was in Nagoya working as a
musician for three months and it was pretty cool. I
found that Japanese women are really shy until they get to know you. I
didn't notice any racism and I didn't get any unusual stares, which is the
first thing you look for when your dating outside of your race.
"The second
time I went, I was given the chance to travel to Osaka, Miyazaki, Nobeoka,
Fukukoa and Tokyo while playing bass for a major artist. I met my soon-to-be-wife inside the Osaka
airport, and I tell you it was love at first sight. It was completely unexpected. I will admit I
was a little more agressive torwards Japanese women than any other race of women I've ever met.
I'm not trying to say it was easy, but I can tell you this at 37 years
old I finally know what peace is about. No disrespect to my American sisters
but I'm happier with my Japanese girlfriend. There's shit about her that I'm still learning
about. Like trying not to forget what she told me, sometimes for us guys this kind
of shit seams so petty but it's so important that we listen to them.
"Anyway, we're moving to N.Y.
at the beginning of the year, and plan to get married. It's all good. I say to the American guys out
there: treat your woman right and be honest in your approach, if it's ass
that you only want be honest and tell her that's all you want and thats it,
don't waste her time because if you'll screw things up for the next guy in
line.
"Peace, I'm out."
-CHAMP HOLLAND
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February 10, 2000
"I had a great time living in Japan for two and a half years from 1975-78. I found some prejudices. Basically, the closer
you got to a U.S. military base, the more Japanese disliked Americans.
"I have kept in touch with many Japanese and find that within Japan,
there are many prejudices against Japanese women. For example, many Japanese women cannot work past the age of thirty whether or not they're
married. There seems to be a basic disrespect for women in Japan - maybe like USA in the late fifties. I like both Japanese men and women as people as well as their culture. While you just have to accept some general things
about their culture, you also have to understand that there are many different individuals who do not reflect the generalities.
"Japanese people are probably the most insular people when it comes to interracial marriage. However, dating and romance are different from marriage. I have lived in
Hawaii and California and find that most Japanese-Americans in these places don't want white or other colored boyfriends. Women
who were raised in Japan seem to be more daring, but don't want a marriage with a non-Japanese. I was happy to be one of their gaijin experiences."
-CLIFF KESSLER
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April 15, 1997
"I notice in an interview of a Japanese girl some places which I do not find accurate or maybe her misunderstanding. For instance, buraku people are thought to be untouchable. However, "tatami" is not a good example as their job. Their origin is still not clear. However, it is almost sure that discrimination against them appeared in the medieval times (Muromachi period) when the religious reform failed and the class of people who had helped perform funerary rites and other special religious duties were deemed impure. Until this period, they had worked as a sort of bridge between this world and the supernatural world of deities, spirits and hell.
"Thereafter, they worked as dirty people: slaughtering animals, processing animal skins and hides, funerary rites, disposing of bodies found in public places, and so on. The Tokugawa regime exploited the hatred and fear of the ordinary peasants against such people and often used these special people (the buraku people) to control the peasants. Thus the hatred of the ordinary people against buraku people was augmented.
"If you could see where these buraku people exist, you would realize that they live predominantly in certain areas like Kinki and Chugoku where their numbers are dense. I was born in Chiba, east of Tokyo, I thought that these people had long since vanished before I entered the University of Kyoto.
"Now, on the one hand there is a problem of discrimination against those people. However, on the other hand, one very uneasy fact is that the leaders or mock leader of the buraku people have become a sort of yakuza. Their violence is very much feared and this in turn increases the fear and hatred of the ordinary people against them. As you might know, there are very strong import restrictions in Japan on leather, leather products and shoes (for example sky shoes [Nikes?]) because these products are traditionally monopolized by buraku people. Whenever MITI officials consider relaxing these restrictions, buraku leaders visit them with swords and threaten them with death.
"Buraku areas are heavily subsidized as a result of the organized violence I just mentioned, and because of the voting power in national elections. Their villages have very good infrastructure...much better than ordinary villages. Their living standard is, on average, better than the neighboring, ordinary people as a result of governmental assistance.
"As a result division between buraku people and non-buraku people is being reinforced. What is need is equality with the ordinary people, not subsidies. However, the leaders of buraku people (we call their organization "dowa") can only profit from heavy government subsidy and so it is against their interests to work to end discrimination."
Regards,
-MASAKI OKADA, TOKYO URBAN LIFE
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January 8, 1997
"To Tim Duncan,[see letter below]
"I am very interested in the representation of Japan abroad in books and media and the question of ethnocentricity or otherwise in the representation of one culture by another. So I would welcome any dialogue/information etc. along those lines if you have any to offer.
"By the way, when I wrote Pink Samurai (1988-9) there were as-yet no meretricious little fly-leaves in London's phone boxes. Alas, six or seven years on, things are bound to fall out of date. I hasten to add at this juncture that I have no objection to such advertising whatsoever and that, generally, as I at least tried to make clear in my book, Japan's attitudes to sexuality are generally a lot healthier than in the guilt (sex-is-dirty) West. It occurred to me that, quite obviously, whatever the Japanese do to get their kicks is pretty much the same as everyone else - give or take certain cultural differences entailing social mores and the question of legislation.
"This said, different countries have different histories and cultures. We may all be basically the same, but culture is after all what in fact does stand us apart from other primates - and for better and worse from each other. Observations about societies other than our own, be it social comment, anthropology or travel writing can only refer to the writer's social and cultural context. Otherwise there is no comparison and no yardstick. In such circumstances, with all due respect (pardon my irony) to the politically correct, there is nothing to say and -- worse - nothing to learn either about Others and, by extension, about "Us" and "Me."
"In all this there are degrees: upon describing another country, the findings of a middle class liberal from a given nation will be markedly different from those of a religious fanatic or puritan from another.
"Generalisations work either according to prejudice or a law of averages: would you deny that the French, Italians, Chinese and Japanese have a more refined cuisine than the British, the Dutch or Mongolians? There are British gourmets, Dutch wine connoisseurs and, of course (much more commonly) Catholic whores. Books about other countries are not made of exceptions, they should, however, allow for them. Fact: Brits like football, read tabloids other countries would be ashamed to print; do you? Do I? Do your friends. Yes/No? What's the difference? The obsession with football and vindictive, class-spawned press phenomena are readily visible on any corner of the street, on TV, whatever: to the Frenchman, Japanese, Indian, etc., this can only constitute a FACT about Britain.
"When all's said, only the exceptions (and I don't mean some chinless hereditary elite) really matter. You can't write exclusively about those when you are dealing with an overview, a subject which concerns the mores, opinions, quirks and anxieties of the majority. If you are shy of writing about generalisations - don't write at all."
-NICHOLAS BORNOFF, author of the classic treatise on "love, marriage & sex in contemporary Japan," Pink Samurai, © 1991, from Pocket Books.
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"WILD OVER-GENERALIZING"
"You seem to have placed a lot of emphasis on certain aspects of Japanese society, often wildly over-generalizing. Instead of making a "cultural bridge" you are reinforcing the myths and stereotypes. It's a bit like focusing on a few aspects of American society, say LA street gangs, and the Militias, and giving the impression that all of America is like that.
"I'll mention a few points:
"Marrying gaijin: there may be some people who worry about keeping the blood pure(don't forget USA has its share of white-supremacists too), but not knowing how to handle a foreigner(e.g. what do you give him to eat, can he use Japanese style lavatory, etc.) is likely to be a more common concern.
"Koreans and burakumin: uh-huh, so racism isn't a problem in the US? Again, this is a vast over-generalization. Sure you can find evidence of prejudice, potential marriage partners' families being checked, etc., but this is not common, and for the vast majority of people it's just not important.
"Groping and flashing: this happens everywhere I'm afraid, try asking some American/European women.
"Sex advertisements: yup, same thing in London phoneboxes. You'll find sex for sale anywhere in the world, it's just the advertising is sometimes done differently(think Amsterdam).
"Nose blowing: I have read that too, but it's a myth. I've seen plenty of people blowing their noses, hawking and coughing, and spitting."
-TIM DUNCAN
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(CULTURAL BRIDGE PRODUCTIONS: Tim Duncan's comments should make you a bit more interested in checking out his informative links! Here are some readings on the subjects that
should certainly be read critically with an understanding of biases:
The Status Discrimination in Japan, by J. Suginohara. The Hyogo Institute of
Buraku Problem: 1982; Education for Social Change: The Case of Japan's Buraku Liberation
Movement by Lesley Clear. UCLA unpublished dissertation: 1991; Political Protest and
Social Control in Pre-War Japan by Ian Neary. Manchester University Press: 1989; For
the Sake of the Country, For the Sake of the Family: The Oppressive Impact of Family
Registration on Women and Minorities in Japan by Taimie L. Bryant. UCLA Law Review:
Vol. 39:109 1991; A Living Legacy of Discrimination by Takagi Masayuki. Japan
Quarterly: Vol. 38 N3, July-September, 1991; Nightwork by Anne Allison. The
University of Chicago Press: 1994 [an anthropological study of a Tokyo hostess club]; The Modern Madam Butterfly
by Karen Ma. Charles E. Tuttle Company: 1996 [a study of cross cultural relationships that focuses on the profoundly changing status of women in Japanese society from about 1985 through 1995];
Love, Marriage & Sex in Contemporary Japan by Nicholas Bornoff. Simon & Schuster: 1991; Behind the Mask by Ian Buruma. Meridian: 1984. These last two books are notably from foreigners "looking in" and all these books or articles are monographs which necessarily present their subject matter out of the context of the flotsam and jetsam of Japanese society so they should be read with an understanding that their subject may not be as important a part of Japanese society as the monograph form tends to intimate.)
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