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rachelmanija Aug. 22nd, 2004 12:00 pm)
rachelmanija Aug. 22nd, 2004 12:00 pm)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.
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.
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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.
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And just because I'm not a cultural fan of Japan doesn't mean I don't have my own obsessions--I'm a classicist. Going to Italy and Greece was like going to Mecca for me. I understand the impulse, I know it well. But there are a lot of japanophiles who take it too far--you have to at least admit that--and that's who I was talking about. There are also a lot of Westerners here who only want to /consume/ the culture, not experience it. This also bothers me, not in the least because, no matter what my opinion of it, living in a place for so long makes you feel a little proprietary about it.
There is a very weird and negative side to fandom. There is a positive side. The negative side makes a lot of noise--and that's true in any group. I get beaten down pretty much everytime I don't refer to Japan as the Greatest Place on Earth, so I'm very aware that everyone else thinks it's fabulous and I'm the sore thumb. Thus I can be a little sensitive, because this culture everyone adores has actually heaped a great deal of abuse on me.
As for the sperm sac--I'm actually a very adventurous eater. I ate eel without a second thought, and I've tried a lot of weird stuff since moving here, not to mention the Greek food I happily munched on. But since I'm not fond of the taste of human sperm, I can't imagine fish sperm would suddenly me a taste sensation. ;)
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Regarding the backbiting/linking issue, I don't think there's a generally agreed-upon set of rules for that. Some people see their journals as a private space and don't want other people popping in to argue or go off on tangents, especially if they're lurkers and hence strangers. Others prefer to keep all the discussions in the same room. Still yet others are using LJ solely because it's user-friendly, and have the policy, common in many blogging circles, that no notification is necessary to comment upon someone else's post as long as you link and credit properly.
But now that I know how you feel, if I am ever again prompted to riff at length on one of your posts, I will post in your journal to tell you so and provide a link. (If my comment had been short and a direct response to your original post, rather than lengthy musings on a related theme, I'd have posted it in your comments in the first place.)
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