Stupidly Good

Sometimes I feel very out of touch with the US.

Recently, I had an email exchange with Toshi about Hurricane Katrina. He compared New Orleans to Kobe (where there was a large earthquake several years ago) and suggested that Americans had a lot to learn from the Japanese because there was no looting or rioting or any violence following the damage done to the city. I was a little taken aback at this comparison and shot back an email suggesting that the comparison between Kobe and New Orleans was a bit more...complicated than he was suggesting. Yes, both areas had suffered natural disasters that left everyone scrambling to meet the basic needs of survival, and, yes, in Kobe there was no rioting, looting, or shootings, one really has to look a bit deeper into the situation. Perhaps the lack of violence in Kobe was a small good that came out of a greater wrong. That greater wrong was not the natural disaster, but the overwhelming lack of multiculturalism in Japan.

Wait. What?

Okay, let me explain:

Japan is a very closed society. Outsiders are not welcome here. Toshi may not know this because here, in Japan, he is an insider and, in America, he is more or less welcome. That's the difference. The Japanese seem to love Westerners so long as they are just passing through. If you have "Just Passing Through" Status, the people of Japan are all you could ever want of friendly and helpful. That's fine. Stay in Japan a week or ten days and you'll go away wondering what anyone could ever complain about in terms of the Japanese. However, if the people of Japan think you're staying? Well, let me tell you, the attitude changes. Friendly and helpful may still be the veneer, but beneath that is a healthy dose of suspicion and fear. There is no category for "Westerner Who Stays."

In fact, there is no category for "Non-Japanese Who Stays." This was my complaint to Toshi. There is a lack of multiculturalism in Japan, and that lack makes the Japanese seem overwhelmingly naive in relation to the rest of the world. That is not to say that the Japanese aren't interested in the West. In fact, there is a lot of interest in all things Western. That interest borders on fetish. There is a fetishistic fascination with all things Western here--just so long as they are things, not people. People are complicated, things are easy. You buy things, you consume them, they offer few problems. But people?

How does this relate to New Orleans and Kobe?

In America, we have somehow worked out how to embrace cultures that we are simultaneously terrified of. This is not an easy thing to have figured out and it lends a volatility to America that I, for one, am truly grateful for. Japan has not ever been able (or perhaps willing) to embrace--truly embrace--cultures that are not Japanese. It is safe here in Japan the way mother's milk is safe. If you've never had anything else, you may perhaps think that there is nothing else. But if you never get out and deal with problems, you end up with a culture that can't deal with problems. Oh, it's safe, but stupidly and not knowingly so.

In Milton's Paradise Lost, there is a scene where Satan sees Eve from behind as she is bending over a bed of flowers. The sight is awesome to him, and for a moment, he is struck stupidly good. Milton actually puts it that way: "stupidly good." Japan is stupidly safe. Japan is not safe because the Japanese are inherently good--Japan is safe because the Japanese are stupidly good. They don't know and--I think--could not navigate the strait between isolationism and multiculturalism.

That lack of multiculturalism, however, is a great evil and leaves this society stupidly good. People here never have to really figure out how to be good, they just never come into contact with the kind of conflict that allows them to grow as a culture. They absorb the West through the media and through consumable goods, but they are never tested by contact with the West.

Okay.

So: One of the ways that America manages to embrace those populations that it is frightened of is by continuously engaging in the same cold-heartedness that allows us to perpetrate violence on one another in the aftermath of tragedy. And too, ‘embrace’ is a relative and problematic term. Just as Japan absorbs the shock of foreigners, so does America absorb the shock of many, many immigrants from many, many different cultures. For both countries, there is much fear in the process of embracing foreign cultures. However, one difference between America and Japan is that assimilation into Japan for Westerners is impossible, whereas the assimilation of immigrants into America is all but inevitable. Both approaches lead to many problems.

I spoke with many people here about Katrina and mentioned the comparison between New Orleans and Kobe. Many were quick to point out that Japan is lacking in the kind of multicultural society that the US has and also that the distinction between the rich and the poor in Japan was less than it is in America. (And bear in mind that these are the students who pack Ginza and Yurakucho's Kaisha English schools).

Perhaps then, the violence seen in the South after the hurricane was the best possible response given the nature of American society. Yes, we are a violent lot, and America is often a dangerous place, but that is the price we have decided to pay in order to avoid the kind of stupid goodness that one finds in Japan.

This is an evolving opinion. Please feel free to comment...