Polite fictions part 2

3) 'We are all individuals' vs 'We all belong in groups.' Sakamoto says, 'Japanese see a person's basic identity in terms of his group membership and status. The American polite fiction assumes that the most important thing about a person is not his group status but his individuality.' Thus the Japanese have no problem saying 'wareware Nihonjin' - we Japanese- and can't understand why the phrase infuriates westerners almost as much as 'you Americans.' This also means that when you get into a Japanese group, your life is not your own any more. Your group members are entitled to the lion's share of your time. This segues into the corollary Japanese assumption that people want to be in groups. Together is good, alone is bad. My American roommates in Tokyo used to have fits at the Japanese notion of camping- 'Thirty or forty people with their tents all pitched together all facing the same way!' For them, the essence of camping is 'We were all alone in the wilderness, and there wasn't a single person for miles. It was heaven.' City-child that I am, the latter sounds nightmarish to me ('What if something happened?'), but I'll admit I get a cold chill occasionally when some yaoi character says to another yaoi character 'You'll never be alone again.' 'I'll never leave you alone.' Oh my god. You mean you'll always be around yapping at me? That's where my Sartrean 'hell is other people' reflex kicks in big time, but to Japanese ears it must sound exactly like 'I'll love you forever.'

4) 'We are all original' vs 'We all think alike.' Ahh yes. Originality. A western virtue, a Japanese peculiarity. Again Sakamoto has an enlightening incident. In a popular tv drama, one of the main characters fell ill in the story and the country waited breathlessly to learn what would happen to her. One day at breakfast Sakamoto's husband told her that Michiko-san was going to die. He'd read it in the morning newspaper. 'To give away the plot like this would be unthinkable in American newspapers. Their message would be, 'Tune in to find out what happens to Michiko (or who shot JR.)' But the message in the Japanese newspapers was 'Tune in to see how Michiko dies.' The American audience would watch the program for content, to find out what happened. But the Japanese would watch the program for form, to see how everyone acted when it happened.' When you already know what's going to happen- or what someone is going to say, as happens in Japanese conversations a lot- you can spend more time looking at how it's done: the camera angles, the acting, the art style, the whatever.

The applicability of this to classic By The Numbers needn't be commented on. It's not that West End's Tonami weeps, it's how he weeps that should interest us. Unfortunately, being for the most part westerners, we're more likely to be looking for something that makes his weeping different from Sirius' weeping or Izumi's weeping or the guy in Love Mode's weeping. We're likely to give West End marks for being a science fiction story with a couple of unsolved mysteries happening in it than we are to prize it for having a classically weepy uke. But we still find enjoyment in tried and true stuff, and can still get annoyed by contrived novelty. This approach, if nothing else, can help us cope with yet another anime character in sailor fuku oh god.

I don't know if this book is still in print, but if it is, it's invaluable. And I don't know if Sakamoto's observations will seem accurate to the Japanese themselves. Inside one's culture looks quite different from outside it. But it made sense to this gaijin, at least.

Polite Fictions- Why Japanese and Americans Seem Rude to Each Other by Nancy Sakamoto and Reiko Naotsuka; Kinseido, Tokyo, 1982; ISBN4-7647-0396-3

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