When I first got interested in Japan, I spent a couple of years reading everything I could get my hands on about the country. I read literature and history and travel books and memoirs by people who'd lived there, from little Clara back in the 1870's to a couple who'd taught school in Kyuushuu in the 1970's. Then I went to Japan, and it wasn't like anything I'd read at all. It wasn't like anything I'd read. Very disconcerting, though perhaps not really surprising. Japanese society consists of boxes, and if you don't happen to find yourself living in the same box as a certain writer, your experiences will be different. Possibly it was just that no-one had written a book from the pov of a female English teacher in the post-Bubble economy. (And when, much later, someone did- Sujata Massey's mystery The Salaryman's Wife- I half-recognized the world she described. Half. No gaijin is as fluent as her heroine appears to be after a mere year or two in Japan, but that's the fault of the plot that requires Americans and Japanese to actually understand what the other is saying.)
I went on reading English books about Japan even when I was in Tokyo. These were generally written by people living in Japan and intended for other people currently in Japan, and as such were a little closer to what I was experiencing. Still with differences. One theme was the constant complaint about the police stopping foreigners and asking to see their gaijin registration cards, that no gaijin is supposed to leave home without. Maybe there was a police blitz on in the 80's or something, because no-one ever asked to see mine in five years. Same with all the personal questions: How old are you, are you married, do you have children? Obviously the Japanese had learned that westerners don't like personal questions some time before I arrived, because no-one ever asked me that. In either language. No-one stared or pointed at me except a little kid in a supermarket in northern Japan, and he was being funny. 'Gaijin da! Kowai! Kowai!' ('It's a gaijin! I'm scared! I'm scared!') while we both laughed. No-one was surprised that I spoke Japanese, only two people in five years tried to practise their English on me, and no-one groped me in the subway. (Mind you, I'm not blond.) It wasn't at all like what I'd read.
But there was one book that was spot on in explaining the reality I found myself in. Not the physical reality so much as the linguistic one. When I was going to school fulltime, during my first two years, I was speaking, reading and thinking Japanese for six or seven hours a day at least, with fairly minimal English input the rest of the time. I knew it was changing me- that I wasn't the same person in Japanese as I was in English- but I wasn't quite sure how. (I know how I'm different in French than in English, but that's a little nearer to home.) Then I found this book called Polite Fictions, and much became clear.
Written by a woman married to a Japanese (back in 1960, when there were very few westerners in Japan at all) the book is actually intended to explain to Japanese people the western cultural assumptions that cause them difficulty when they try to speak English. But of course it works both ways. Understand your own unconscious assumptions and you see more clearly the assumptions of the other culture. Sakamoto says "Every culture has its own polite fictions. Whenever we want to be polite, we must act out certain fictions, regardless of the facts. For example, when you meet someone, you may or may not like him, but either way, you must politely pretend to like him. In such a case, Americans and Japanese share the same polite fiction that 'you and I like each other.' But in many cases Americans and Japanese are acting according to very different polite fictions.'
She cites the case of a young Japanese who had disparaged his new wife's looks and cooking when inviting the author to dinner at their house. Sakamoto was offended at his doing so, and surprised to discover that the young woman was actually both beautiful and an excellent cook. 'He was acting according to the Japanese polite fiction that 'my wife is not good', while I was reacting according to the American polite fiction that 'my wife is wonderful.' Traditionally the Japanese disparage members of their family and in-group when talking to outsiders. They operate on the polite fiction 'I (and the people and things attached to me) are inferior.' Westerners operate on the polite fiction 'We are equal' with its corollary, 'I'm as good as you and you're as good as me.' Hence we would never run down something of our own simply because it's ours. Japanese on the other hand will actually lower the verb that describes an action if I or we are the ones doing it. Equally, if there's a status difference, it's polite for us to ignore it except in very minor ways. In Japan if there's a status difference (and there virtually always is, even if a gaijin doesn't know to what degree), the difference is always acknowledged. Hence the profusion of titles: all the sans and chans and kuns and job titles as form of address (buchou, kachou, o-mawari-san) that mark the other person's status vis a vis your own.
Again, because we're all equal, it's rude to act as if someone's age makes a difference in how you treat them. America has no Respect for the Aged day. America has damned few aged, period, and 'old' itself is a pejorative term. In Japan it's not rude to speak of someone as being either 'me-ue' (one's superior) or 'toshiue' (older than you), but just try translating those words in a 'we're all equal' culture, she says feelingly. Or 'buka'- the guys beneath you, your subordinates, your men. What do you do when your men are also your women? 'My staff' doesn't have the group feel of 'my buka.'
Other polite fictions Sakamoto comments on:
1) The American 'You and I are close friends' vs the Japanese 'I am in awe of you.' For us, intimate is good, and the sooner the better. We value being liked, no matter by whom; hence a friendly salesclerk is one who talks to us like a close friend. The Japanese value being respected; and a good salesclerk speaks good distancing keigo respect language. Oddly enough, to me these two polar opposite behaviours come out feeling exactly the same. They give a message 'you belong.' The westerner does the individualistic 'I accept you as a person', the Japanese does the societal 'I accept you as a customer.' I used to think in my early days that salesclerks should be told not to use keigo on the poor gaijin who can barely manage standard desu/masu form. Much later I got a salesclerk who used desu/masu on me, and I felt obscurely miffed. 'I know I'm a gaijin but you could at least speak to me properly.' But in general distance to us indicates dislike. It's not friendly. For the Japanese, enryo (reserve, holding back) is a virtue. Distance is comfortable. It's where most people belong. Intimacy is reserved for- well, intimates.
2) 'You and I are independent' vs 'I depend on you.' This in the context of translating the New Year's greeting 'Kotoshi mo douzo yoroshiku'- please be good to me this year too. Japanese students would ask how you say that in English, and the answer is, you don't. You wouldn't. 'In Japan you must politely emphasize the other person's superiority and power, and your own corresponding inferiority and weakness. Thus it is polite to imply that you are at all times helpless without the other person's continuing help. The Japanese 'douzo yoroshiku' asks for help, not only for a specific problem, but as a general condition.'
Actually, I'm not sure if I agree with Sakamoto's analysis here, but blame the cultural loading on those words 'inferior' 'weak' and 'powerless.' What it looks like to me is that the Japanese acknowledge, and acknowledge verbally, the fact that people always depend on each other for things, whether it's to have a letter of recommendation written or to have your clothes cleaned at the drycleaners or simply to have people not-dislike you. We take it for granted- it's a drycleaners, they'll clean my clothes, I don't have to say please, for god's sake. But there's a friendly feeling about saying and hearing 'douzo yoroshiku' that's absent from 'They'll be ready at five.' It means there's someone you can depend on, a human connection even with the clerk in the drycleaners'. Of course, one must never discount the fact that I learned my Japanese as a foreigner and a stranger in a country where I was semi-illiterate and spoke like a six year old. If you want an object lesson in the fact that you always depend on the kindness, not to say forebearance, of others, by god, you got it. As a gaijin friend said, 'Tokyo cures you of the western illusion that you can be in control of your life.'
The Japanese 'I depend on you' means that being seen as helpless and pitiable doesn't offend Japanese dignity as it does ours. Sakamoto illustrates: One day she took her kids to the park where some women and children were feeding the pigeons. One pigeon had only one leg, having lost the other some time ago obviously. "But now it was strong and healthy, and was vigorously hopping about and getting its full share of food. Yet all the women kept pointing it out to their children and saying 'Kawaisou, ne.' (Oh the poor thing.)
This shocked me, because my instinctive reaction, even in Japanese, was to say to my children, 'Shikkari shite iru ne!', which in English would be something like 'Look how well he's managing.' I didn't want them to pity the pigeon for its disability; I wanted them to respect it for its self-reliance. Even my attitude towards pigeons was determined by the American emphasis on respect for independence rather than pity for helplessness.'
This attitude may require us to do a little rethinking of the kleenex uke. We wonder why the guy can't get a life or at least a little backbone. But the Japanese are probably looking at him quite differently: 'Oh that poor boy.' Pity is a legitimate emotion in Japan, not automatically mixed with either shame or irritation as in the west. Indeed, for all we know, the hopeless copeless guy is just expressing the Japanese view of the human condition, while his cold fish of a seme is seen as somehow lacking in what makes a person real.