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.

[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...

[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.

[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...

[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...

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.

[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]

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.