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

[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.