Stop having so much fun, you anime-watching, sashimi-gobbling, kanji-studying poseurs

[rachelmanija]

Um... interesting rant by a woman whose journal I've been reading because she's a good writer and she lives in Japan. On the basis of this post, she clearly would completely despise me. (I'm amused to see a comment or two on her journal by people who apparently completely missed her point.)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/yuki_onna/133593.html

I'm not going to go pick a fight with her on her journal because, unlike my most recent online fight, she's citing opinions as opinions rather than facts, which is her right; and it's certainly not uncommon for Westerners to move to Japan and absolutely hate it, especially if they never wanted to go there in the first place, and I've never lived there at all.

(It does slightly crack me up that she's going off on Americans who use Japanese when her journal is called Yuki Onna-- "Snow Woman.")

However, to get into a larger issue which she raises, what exactly is so bad about people from one culture being interested in another country's culture?

The usual arguments are that if another culture is appealing, the fan is by definition romanticising it, and would be terribly disillusioned if they ever took their blinkers off. There's no way to answer this charge: if you're having a good time in Japan or India or America, you can't possibly be seeing the country as it is, because if you did, you would hate it. Or at least not be so damned embarrassingly enthusiastic.

(I'm going to focus here on Japan, India, and America, since those are the only countries I know anything about, and since India-America and Japan-America both have two-way love-hate relationships going on between their citizens.)

There is no room in that argument for sincere enjoyment. If you're Japanese and you enjoy sashimi, that's OK; if you're American, you're only pretending you like it because of your fetishization of all things Japanese. If you're American and you like Elvis, that's only natural; if you're Japanese and you do, you're betraying your heritage in order to falsely suck up to the dominant culture.

Now, I was raised by an American woman who thought anything Indian was wonderful and anything Western was terrible, so I can see why people get frustrated with that sort of attitude. But that's going way beyond the kind of harmless fandom and cultural appreciation which is what's really being criticised, and which I have to defend.

It seems to me that America as a whole is far too insular-- a charge which could be applied to Japan and India as well. I think all three countries need more cross-cultural fans, not less; and if, like the Hiroshima math professor who earnestly informed me that he wanted to move to America because the academic infighting and vicious battles for tenure in Japan were getting him down, some of them are headed for painfully disillusioning experiences, anyone who thinks any country is perfect needs a little disillusionment anyway.

If you're female and want to have a normal career, you'd be best off in a big city in the US; but if you want to hold public office at a high level, you just might have a better shot in India. And it's probably better to be a career-minded Japanese woman in the US than in Japan, but the US is a pretty lousy place for any young black man who doesn't come in with a degree and a green card and a bucket full of cash.

I'm not trying to excuse any country's sins by saying that they all have problems, only saying that it's unfair to say, "How dare you be fond of this evil country?" I am well aware that all three countries I feel the most connected to are right-wing and prejudiced and have done terrible, inexcusable things to their own population and to other countries. But I'm just not into Danish TV or Finnish cuisine or the handicrafts of Tibet. My politics are my politics, and my enthusiasms are my enthusiasms. I reserve the right to have a blast at a nightclub in Berlin and make out with any cute German guys who might catch my eye, and not feel that I'm betraying my people.

What I like best about LA is that, at its best, it's an example of what I love best about America: that it's a place where a Jewish woman who grew up in India can go downtown to have dim sum with six friends, all of different nationalities, and there run into another couple we all know, an Iraqi man and his Okinawan wife and their adorable little son, and reflect that LA leads America in interracial marriages.

And when all their children grow up, I hope that whatever culture interests them, whether it's one of the ones they grew up with or something else entirely that intrigues them solely because it's so different from the Korean/German/American/Thai heritage they're familiar with, that they go ahead and buy its DVDs and study its language and save up their plane fare for a visit. And that if anyone tries to make them feel guilty about it, they shrug or write an essay, then load some CD in a language they barely understand. And dance.

Comments

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

What I found confusing in her entry is that she equates anime fans with Japanophiles. Ummm. . . . Except that there are lots of people who aren't anime fans, find hentai abhorrent, and would never cosplay, and are still fascinated by, say, medieval Japanese culture. Conversly, many anime fans have no fucking clue about Japan in general, only about what can be found in anime (journaller excepted, of course). They are not the same thing, although I suppose anime fandom might be considered a subset of Japanophilia.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

I believe that was the point I was trying to make. That most "japanophiles" and you must admit that anime is a huge subset of that, don't actually live here or have first-hand knowledge of the culture. The number of people interested in Japan because of the medieval culture (not derived from anime, which takes place within that culture, often) is much smaller than the hentai and pocky crowd. That's the way it always is, history is for geeks. I'm a geek. But I'm a classics geek, so this is very strange water for me.

My husband loves zen philosophy and medieval Japanese culture. That's why we're here. I certainly was not insulting that.

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

But by using the blanket term "Japanophile" in your criticism, you lump your husband in with the "hentai and pocky crowd" you so despise. And, by the by, I've met rather more people who are interested in Japanese culture, history, and/or religion than raving catgirls. Yes, I know people who like anime and pocky, but they're not raving idiots, and they don't romanticize Japan especially, either.
You make your point very poorly, and come off sounding like someone who met 3 annoying catgirls somewhere and that was your entire experience of Japanophiles.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I'm just guessing, but wonder if her dislike of people who adopt other cultures is partly a sort of self-dislike--maybe she's seeing some dishonesty in herself and projecting it onto other people? But it is complex. It seems that it's one thing to be open to and enjoy another culture, and another to pretend to yourself that you aren't really from your own culture. Maybe that's what she's seeing...

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Ok, since you have no idea who I am, please don't make assumptions.

This is not about people who adopt other cultures. I answered a question about whether or not I came to this country because I was a japanophile. The fascination with Japan in America right now does seem to stem from a lot of romanticizing, as orientalism always has. Adopt all the cultures you want--I respect it a little more if people actually make an effort to go to that country and experience it.

Parts of Japanese culture I have been able to love. If you'd like to know about that, ask me. But don't make assumptions about my person based on my answer to one question in one entry.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Thought I was writing to somebody else so I really don't know who you are. Apologies. I had in mind American people I knew when I was in China who became much more anti-American than the Chinese, and also whites I've known who became more black than the African-Americans, and in both cases it seemed to me that there was something not happy about their choices. But hey, if you like being Japanese, do so. I've certainly known many, many immigrants from other cultures who've become more American than the Americans, too--sad for their children who then wanted to return to the roots of the original culture (the case in my own family) but who's to judge.

Apologies again.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If she was living in a less popular country than Japan, I can damn near guarantee she would not have this reaction. Finnophiles, to take a non-random example, do not get to be that hostile to anyone who has even the most rudimentary knowledge of Finland. Like a rough idea of its location, for example. Nobody can afford to get snitty with each other on the finer points of Ilmarinen's role in folk songs and stories and how modern Finnish culture reproduces or changes it. Anybody who knows vaguely who Ilmarinen is, is good enough for us.

There are enough people interested in aspects of Japan that they can divide into the smaller "good" group (the group one is in oneself, naturally) and the larger "bad" group (the people who do not have one's good qualities for whatever reason). And if "I'm interested in Japanese culture" is to be a unique identifier, they almost have to divide it up somehow and differentiate themselves somehow. Whereas being that chick who's really into Finland is, so far as I have been able to tell, an entirely unique identifier in most social circles and even in most geeky social circles.

Luckily, most of my Nihonophile friends have had a strong enough sense of identity that they don't need to mark their territory like that. I'm glad it's not a universal group trait, because it's really not charming.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

You, then, would be the person I should ask to recommend a good translation of the Kalevala, as I have been unable to find anything beyond the extremely brief summary in my childhood mythology textbooks, and it's driving me nuts. Please?

Re: Rachel's entry-- frankly, that woman sounds like a garden variety pessimist to me in a lot of ways. Did she say *anything* positive in that entry? If so, I missed it, and I caught putdowns of America in general, graduate school, the South, and her husband's army base as well. The 'it's just another place and therefore is really boring and bleah' attitude is one I've run across a fair bit, and it tends to drive me nuts, because if everywhere is 'just another place', why does anyone care about where they live or what they do there? In addition, her equation of nihonophile with anime fan was really simplistic, in my opinion. Of course, she *did* express her opinions as being opinions, which I'm very glad about, as it seems to be pretty rare these days.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am desperately fond of my old Francis Peabody Magoun Jr. translation of the Kalevala, because it doesn't try to smooth the weirdnesses out. Characters say and do things that sound odd, but that's useful to me, not just as a fantasy writer but as a person trying to get a sense for what was actually said. For example, in the section where a young woman is being prepared for marriage and possible hostility from her in-laws, I think it's interesting to read, "The father-in-law will call you 'Fir-sprig Doormat,' the mother-in-law call you 'Clumsy Lappish Reindeer Sled,' the brother-in-law 'Threshold of the Outer Stairs,' the sister-in-law will call you 'Worst of Women.'" The contrast with home is this: "Your father called you 'Moonlight,' your mother 'Sunbeam,' your brother 'Gleam of Water,' your sister 'Blue Broadcloth.'" I believe the literal translation is much better there than if someone had sat around going, "Now, what's the equivalent of 'Clumsy Lappish Reindeer Sled' in English? What would a sister affectionately say instead of 'Blue Broadcloth?'" It shows what's valued and what's reviled.

That's just the example where my bookmark is. My beloved Magoun translates a section to say that a particular woman who was stubborn and would not ask for help got her milk from Hell rather than asking the neighbors to get it. Hell is a literal place in the Kalevala and is featured in various stories, but a friend of mine was reading a translation that claimed the woman got her milk from "a long ways off." Bah, I say! Bah! Hell, Hell, Hell!

I probably idealize the place I live, but since it's where my parents lived before me, I guess I'm allowed. Whew. If I'd fallen in love with some other city, it might have been some kind of forbidden appropriation.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

I have this reaction because I live here and I call them as I see them. I would have had an honest reaction to any culture I came into contact with, and I do not see what I said as marking territory, rather, I simply answered a question. My experience may not be your experience. But what has happened to me here is not affected by popularity.

[oyceter]

Interesting post, thanks!

I never quite know what to make of cultural appropriation, or whatever it should be called -- I was born in America, but my family moved to Taiwan when I was about eight or nine, and then I moved back to America for college. So there's always this strangeness in that I look Chinese, but in Taiwan, my accented Chinese gives me away as not-quite-Chinese, but having grown up there, I'm still more comfortable with some things there (i.e. strange food).

Then, of course, is the interest in Japan which lead to East Asian Studies and the whole kettle of fish that is cultural "authenticity" and appropriation and romanticizing the country being studied. Added to this was the popularity of Japanese pop culture in Taiwan when I was in high school, which I think alarmed some of the older generation there, who had grown up under a Japanese-occupied Taiwan.

Then I came here and met American anime fans, which was a different experience from watching anime in Taiwan... anime and manga in Taiwan is much more widespread and accepted (Miyazaki, Doraemon, etc. etc.) while anime and manga here, esp. four years ago, used to be much more cultish. It was really, really weird telling people in my college that I liked anime and immediately having that equated with liking extremely violent and pornographic cartoons, when I was thinking, "Shojo! Pretty boys and flowers!"

Sorry to ramble on in your LJ...

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't apologize for rambling, that's a great example of particulars instead of generalizations (well hell, it's not my LJ. But good point nevertheless).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Go ahead and ramble!

I have a somewhat similar experience that you and more and more people now have had, which is the personal embodiment of confusion over cultural identity. I'm ethnically Jewish, but I wasn't raised Jewish, I've never been to temple, and the only Yiddish or Hebrew I know consists of loan-words in English. I'm legally American, but I wasn't raised here. I was brought up in India, most of my childhood memories are of India, I can read Hindi at a little-kid level, and if you gave me a week to study and practice I could speak it or Marathi at a little kid level. And I have no connection to Japan whatsoever, except that after I started studying karate one of my classmates talked me into going there, and as a consequence I've been there twice and can read hiragana, katakana, and some kanji, and speak Japanese at a very beginning, stmbling level that's still better than my Hindi, Marathi, or Spanish.

So whose culture am I appropriating? Which culture do I have the right to like, or to study, or to write about? Which culture is mine?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Have you read Pico Iyer's The Global Soul? A travel book of essays and musings on globalization and how areas of the world are becomng alike and yet still remaining different. Er, not a very good description of the book. At any rate, I love the section on how all airports are the same airport, and every time I'm in one, I know what he means. He's Indian with an Italian name and as a child split his time between an English boarding school and his parents' house in California between terms, worked as an international correspondent for Time, and is married to a Japanese woman and lives half the time n Japan and half the time in California.

And on a different note, this sparked a thought about the sort of Japanophiles I see around who look down on fangirls, especially their use and misuse of Japanese words when speaking - I wonder what their opinions are on the Japanese incorporating English words into Japanese, which is the exact same function at work. Japanese and English both appear to be languages in which the users borrow words from other cultures as easily as breathing, so what makes it OK for the Japanese to do it, and not English speakers?

Which just sparked an idea for another Can't Sleep comic ... I need to go look up words the Japanese have borrowed...

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

It's the misuse part that gets me.
I used to hang out with a couple of guys who loved Japan (and either didn't care for or really disliked anime), and specifically Japanese as a language. One of them was even double majoring in it (and comp sci, I believe). SO they'd wander around and jabber at each other in as much Japanese as they knew.
And then they'd say it to me.
After a while, I started responding in Latin, just to make the point. (Er, the point being that people who don't know the language don't really want to be talked at in it.)
Since they both went out of their way to study the language and use it properly, I see nothing wrong with this one. On the other hand, there are an wful lot of fangirl twits running around who, I'm told, do grossly misuse the handful of words they think they know. That's offensive stupidity in my book.
Also, most of the English loan-words I know that made their way into Japanese are technical terms. I doubt anyone would have a problem with that.
Of course, there might be hoards of raving Japanese fan-schoolgirls running around saying "Cold!" when they mean "Cool!" That, too, would be offensive stupidity. But, of course, Japan tends to educate its children more effectively, and, as I understand it, many schoolkids actually get decent instruction in English, which ought to cut down on that a bit.

Um, I'm not sure I made any clear point there. Oh well.

And yes, PLEASE write more Can't Sleep.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Yes, Pico Iyer is a representative of the type of human representatives of cultural fandom, confusion, and mixing which I'm thinking of. (I love his essay on Iceland, by the way-- one of his best pieces of writing but I can't remember the title of the book it's in.)

really good points

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that America as a whole is far too insular-- a charge which could be applied to Japan and India as well. I think all three countries need more cross-cultural fans, not less

I think that's a really good point. My parents decided to Sell Everything and Move to Europe when I was ten, and we spent a year living in various cities in Portugal and Italy -- mainly small towns where we were the only Americans, although we did spend time in Lisbon and Rome. "Eye-opening" doesn't begin to describe that experience; it's one of the most precious in my life. That was in the early eighties, right around when NATO decided "Hey! European missile bases!" so it was also a big eye-opener when people decided to openly yell at you on the bus because you were American and hey, if you were American, you were a representative of America and totally agreed with America's foreign policies. But then again, I have parents who have never thought that America was the end-all and be-all and that it was shockingly small-minded to be concerned with only your own culture (my mother's half-Hungarian, second-generation American frex and so we've always been pretty aware of the immigrant experience).

I think any experience abroad is pretty much what you make of it. There's a great example by Margaret Atwood of American and Canadian military people living in India -- the Canadians lived off-base, had Indian friends, ate in local restaurants, and did their best to get along in the local culture. The Americans all lived on-base, which was basically a miniature American city, didn't speak any local languages, ate American food cooked by Americans, and in general didn't try to assimilate at all.

I also think Edward Said's Orientalism had a lot to do with the "if you like this other country's culture, you are an imperialist poseur" thing. Not that he didn't have a lot of really terrific points, but unfortunately that reaction is sort of a trickle-down effect from his book, I think (although he himself is an avowed humanist).

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

I moved from a whitebread suburb to a cosmopolitan university in New York, and I remember a street festival there where I came upon an all-male, all-black band led by a redheaded Hispanic woman playing "Hava Nagila" on the steel drums. (A heck of a performance, btw.) It personified everything I loved about my new home.

A lot of questions arise about "loving" a culture or aspects of a culture. I've been told I romanticize NYC, and certainly when I return there for a few days I luxuriate in all the things I love about it and ignore the things I don't. I'm not unaware of them, though.

If you fall in love with some aspect of a culture, and find it charming, or even "exotic" (though what is exotic, except "different, with shiny gloss") -- are you wrong? Yes, the people who grew up in a certain culture will not find its customs or foods exotic, and if you're trying to reproduce their mindset, you've missed. But are you wrong in your own feelings? Perhaps growing up inside a culture and taking its customs so much for granted that you're blind to them and how they compare to others -- perhaps that's the real lack of insight. Maybe the enthusiastic outsider is closer to the mark.

I'm conscious of the different "flavors" of other cultures, as I am their accents, but when it comes to standard American -- the sort of thing you hear from a newscaster -- it comes across to me as no accent, because I can't hear it as anything but normal. This just means that I can't judge how harsh or nasal or -- whatever -- an American accent sounds. Probably that would change if I spent long enough somewhere else. But if someone from another country can hear what I can't, and happens to like it -- well, it may seem funny to me because they're excited about something I take for granted, but why am I right and them wrong?

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Well... I read what she had to say, and it seemed to me that it was a way of decrying naivete. It wasn't so much that she hated anime or Japanophiles as that she was certain that none of the latter saw the country as it is. They've attached some mystical importance or sense of almost religious otherness to a culture that doesn't actually exist and probably never did. Which annoyed her.

I can understand why she would find this annoying, living there. I had a Japanese cousin live with me for a year, and it was a very interesting experience, given her English and my (almost nonexistant) Japanese, but it was interesting to talk about the cultural differences that she saw. She was very very mistrustful of our dishwasher, though, when she first came -- I think she thought it couldn't possibly really clean the dishes well enough. She did say, when she was leaving, that she would miss it <g>.

Oh, sorry, I got side-tracked. She thought I would hate to visit there. She thought my sister would sort of like it, but that I would loathe it utterly.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I was not actually trying to look down on anyone, just answer a question and address my experience in this country.

[kate_nepveu]

Can I admit to having a teeny sneaky bit of sympathy for the ranting woman? Because Chad lived in Japan for three months, had a blast, and would like to visit again sometime--and while I might be able to stomach a short visit, the thought of spending any longer period there makes my skin crawl, almost literally. If I thought he'd deliberately chosen to work there knowing this, I would probably say "bye!" and stay in the U.S. by myself.

On the broader cultural interest stuff, yeah, I agree with you (I could hardly not, considering my background). But she's got to be living with a serious level of crankiness now and so I discount the rant down a few notches.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

I wasn't really ranting at all. I could rant, if I felt like it, and it would have been a lot louder than what I said. Thank you for trying to understand that I wasn't attacking people.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Ok, well.

Yuki Onna is a goddess, the Shinto goddess of winter and death. Just because I'm not a japanophile doesn't mean I'm ignorant of the country I live in. I purposely chose the name to reflect the part of Japanese culture I can jive with, and to reflect where I am.

The question was whether I was a japanophile, not whether I had any passing interest in Japanese culture. Now, I associate this word with a certain kind of person, one whose interest in Japan goes way beyond sashimi. So yes, I used a whole bunch of stereotypes. It's kind of a joke, based on the assumption which is so often made: any American living here must be doing so because they are totally obsessed with the pop culture. Hell, I get screamed at for looking at the shrine in my own yard, I guarantee you most people here do not make the appropriate judgement about American visitors.

I talked about my experience. I know very few Westerners who have lived here who would not at least in part agree with what I said. I found that even the parts of Japan that I wanted to love were not available to me. That's tragic and I wish it were otherwise. But I'm not saying being interested in Japanese culture is bad. My husband was very much into zen and bushido, which is why he made the choice to come here. I'm simply not.

On the contrary, I find that Americans are accused of being close-minded assholes if they do not worship all aspects of a foreign culture and recognize them automatically as superior to our own. That goes double for Asian culture.

Anyway, just trying to defend myself a little.

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

And for the record, I don't despise you, and it wasn't a rant. Simply an answer to a question. I would really prefer it if you would discuss issues you have with my words in my journal, instead of backbiting about it elsewhere. You do not know what I have had to go through here, or what went into that post. The fact that you did not even see fit to ask really rubs me the wrong way. I was not trying to make anyone feel guilty about anything. You are more than free to love Japanese culture. Just as I am more than free to point out that those who have not lived here do not really understand it, and that my experience has not been positive, for the most part. I'm not sure why that upsets you so much.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I explained why I didn't post in your journal, which I've been reading for a while, at the top of my original post. Of course you're free to state your opinions! That's why I didn't post in your journal to argue. I also didn't think you'd appreciate yet another person who's only visited Japan rather than living there disagreeing with you on your own journal, when your whole point is that no one can possibly understand unless they have lived in a country. Well, I haven't lived in Japan, so I really can't argue that point.

Also, I've been reading your journal long enough that I have a pretty good idea of what went into the post, at least insofar as you've written about similar issues before. Your experience is perfectly valid, and I have no problem with it. I'm not disagreeing with your experience of Japan. I'm just disagreeing that what I would call cultural fandom is a bad thing. Obviously, you never started out as a fan to begin with.

(I'm not sure where you would classify me, as I had never thought about Japan one way or another until a friend convinced me to visit-- it was pretty much chance that the martial art I was studying, which was how I met him, was a Japanese style.)

However, being of mixed cultural identity myself, (details in a post somewhere above), I am somewhat sensitive to a more general attitude which your post did seem to be expressing, that unless you pass some kind of cultural purity test-- in your case, living in a country rather than just visiting, in other cases, being of blood descent, or being able to speak and read the language fluently, or what have you-- you're a fool or a poseur or at best naive to be interested in it, or worse yet, a fan of it.

Whereas I feel that while there may be excesses, fandom is on the whole a positive force. You bet I find it annoying when people gush to me about India in what I feel is an ignorant way. But at least they're interested, and if they keep being interested they'll learn more.

Oh, and that codfish sperm sac? I'd try it if someone assured me that it tasted good. After all, I think eel tastes good, and it took quite a lot of convincing before I first put a piece of that in my mouth. I can't guarantee that I'd like it or ever try it again if I didn't, but if not for someone's spirit of adventurous eating in the past, none of us now would have tasted lobster, mussels, cheese, eggs, coconuts, cashews, or the juice of fermented grapes.