An Incomplete Analysis

Any Analysis, In The Case Of Any Open System, Will Always Necessarily Be Incomplete

We are in the bar, Kaz, my handsome businessman, Hiro and me. We are talking about how one changes when one speaks a foreign language.

Hiro says he becomes more aggressive when he speaks English--all Japanese do. Hiro is fond of the phrase, “All Japanese...” He wants to convince me that Japanese all agree on everything--and he also wants me to know that they will say that they agree even when they don’t agree. He’s said at much in class. “No one will disagree with me,” he’s said smugly after making some simplistic and inane statement. When he says this, I pause, waiting for someone to disagree. But Hiro is right. No one ever does.

I say I think that in his case and about himself, Hiro is correct: He does become more aggressive when he speaks English. In fact, he is a downright pain in the ass sometimes, complaining about everything, the temperature of the room, the bad (free) coffee in the lobby, the too loud class next door, the quality of the CD players. I don’t think he’d complain as much in Japanese. That might draw attention to him, and that is not the Japanese way.

I say to him, yes, in your case, Hiro, you are more aggressive. But, I say. But. But I think that my handsome businessman and Kaz are less aggressive in English than in Japanese. Hiro asks if I have heard my handsome businessman and Kazu speaking Japanese and I reply that, yes, of course I have, around The Kaisha. Hiro says, “Maybe they were talking to girls.”

When he says this I think: There are no girls at The Kaisha. We don’t teach children at The Kaisha school where I work, so if you want girls, look elsewhere. There are no girls there. (But that is The Brain, my own American Feminist Brain talking. To me, every female over the age of fourteen is a woman. But here? The women really are often girls. So Hiro is right and I am wrong. I’m a big enough man to admit that.)

I laugh and say, “Maybe.”

Yes, of course I have heard my handsome businessman speaking Japanese. He often speaks relatively informal Japanese in The Kaisha lobby. And the night when he renewed his contract, I stuck around to see how things would play out and I heard him speak more formally. Because that night he was sitting in one of the open conference rooms, I had the opportunity to listen in on the conversation between him and one of the assistant managers (who, yes, is a twenty-something girl--but who is one of the few females that I’ve met in this big city who has a fighting chance at becoming a woman.) My handsome businessman and the manager were, of course, speaking relatively formal Japanese. And in addition to the formal Japanese, they were doing the Japanese gender roles to the hilt. She was doing eager-to-please to the extent that her voice had that strained, nearly broken tremor that women’s voices get when they play this role. My handsome businessman barked his replies and requests at her. She hopped to do his bidding. She agreed with everything he said with a dizzying rapidity and he took her agreement as his due. Eavesdropping on their conversation was better than anything I could’ve set down yen for at Kabuki-za, the drama was so stylized to my Western ear.

So, yes, I’ve heard my handsome businessman speaking Japanese.

I’ve also heard Kaz speaking Japanese to one of the Japanese teachers. Because Kaz will soon travel to another city, a port city where his family’s shipping business is based, he is a temporary student. On the night I met him, he was still being advised as to which classes would best suit him for the month that he would be taking lessons. I stood and observed as one of the Japanese teachers explained to him in Japanese what his options were. In my eyes, Kaz falls--by virtue of being a relatively inexperienced twenty-something--into the category of Not Quite A Man. I would treat him this way, but the Japanese teacher? She wouldn’t dare. When the teacher, a woman in her late forties, spoke to Kaz, who is half her age at least, she was absolutely deferential. She would not interrupt him, though he felt absolutely no qualms about interrupting her. She spoke very formally to him and he less formally replied. Listening to her voice climb into the upper registers and become more yielding was interesting to me. Me? When I am advising someone, I become more serious, my voice drops an octave so that I am taken seriously. This is how things are, is what the tone of my voice says. I am speaking to you seriously because I am taking you seriously. The conversation between Kaz and the teacher did not follow this model.

How does this relate to our discussion about how one’s personality changes when one speaks a different language?

Well, let me relate further relate it to a few gender differences (admittedly my bias). Here, the men are used to being on top of the heap. By that, I mean that they are more used to being more on top of the heap than are men in most Western countries. For example, there is no “ladies first” custom in Japan--and I have shocked Japanese women by telling them about this Western custom in which women are allowed to go first. Women don’t interrupt men and they don’t, in public anyway, speak to them about serious subjects unless it is in a very deferential manner. The men are accustomed to being treated this way.

But what about when it comes to Western women? When you mix Japanese males with Western females, things get complicated. See, Japanese men--some of them anyway--have a lot of interest in Western women. Part of that interest, I believe, has to do with the inherent desire to engage the dangerous, adventurous feelings inherent in crossing cultural and racial borders--or at least with the contemplation of crossing cultural and racial borders. That area, that borderland, is without the clearly defined rules that men here are accustomed to.

Wow. That got deep fast, didn’t it?

Well, let me back it up and toss in a bit of my own background: For me, borderland is familiar. Growing up poor, fat, and brown in a country dominated by a White culture meant that I got to spend a lot of time in a borderland area where the two cultures (let’s just call them Brown and White--mostly because that amuses me) meet. Anyway, I came to understand that people can get very mixed up there. You have to, if you are going to navigate the borderland successfully as a minority, be willing to battle demons that many people from the White culture can’t even name. First, you have to be able to face the fact that you are different. Then, you have to come to see how others perceive that difference and how their perceptions inform their treatment of you. You also have to be willing to face that others’ treatment has the potential to change you, and you have to be able to learn how to hold fast to yourself in the face of that. That is all confusing stuff, but I’m trying to give you the Cliff’s Notes version of my understanding here. I’m trying to say that I’ve done borderland. I know borderland (in the US anyway, though a lot of that knowledge translates, and some it requires no translation.) One of the thing that requires no translation is the sometimes almost fetishistic desire to engage members of the other culture in unscripted contact: On an equal one-on-one basis, for example, within the context of a friendship. Or, more commonly, as an extension of sexual desire. To have this kind of contact, one must enter the chaotic borderland and that entry requires either a small dose of stupidity or a slightly larger dose of courage. Maybe both. Anyway, so men like Kaz and my handsome businessman are willing, for whatever reason, to enter the fray, to embrace the chaos (to quote Ozomatli at you).

Hiro, I’ll explain, is different. He originally learned English because he went to an English-speaking country on business for five years and, having left Japan not knowing a word of English, told me that he “had no choice” about learning to speak English if he wanted to get things done. He studies now so that he can keep up his English.

Kaz, I’ll explain, is young and hip and international and has been steeped in Western culture from young age. I would also guess that he has a eye towards eventual globalization of what will someday be his company.

But what about my handsome businessman?

Well, first, let’s talk about the sense of adventure that one needs when one enters the fray: I’ll tell you that I’ve asked my handsome businessman twice what he wanted to be when he grew up. Once, he thought a moment and answered, “I wanted to be an explorer in the Antarctic.” Once he told me that, as a result of his having seen a cartoon as a child, he wanted to be a scientist, an inventor. But more than just his childhood ambitions, he has a somewhat unusual (for this place anyway) sense of adventure that he’s willing to indulge. For example, he’s ridden motorcycles. Tattoos are okay with him. He loves historical novels about samurai. He’s got some sense of adventure has, to some extent (to the extent generally allowed within the confines of such a conservative culture), followed it. Part of following that sense of adventure means studying English with a foreign teacher.

Huh?

Well, let me try to deepen the understanding by deepening the explanation. Let me peel back (or perhaps add) another layer.

My handsome businessman could could study with a Japanese teacher who is perfectly fluent in English. (Many students choose this option.) He could also study with any number of foreign teachers in this town. I mean, it’s not like Tokyo isn’t lousy with foreign teachers. And even if he were lazy and didn’t want to swing a dead cat to find another foreign teacher in Tokyo, he could cross The Kaisha lobby and enter Ben’s classroom. So why does he study with me?

First, let’s get the attraction factor out of the way. Yes, we are attracted to each other. He is a very handsome man and many, many women are attracted to him. I’m serious. Whenever and wherever he comes to rest in The Kaisha lobby, women flock around him like honeybees. They all but push each other out of the way to get near him. (To be fair, he is also a bit of a man’s man and men also flock around him.) My handsome businessman is one of those handsome men who was a handsome and popular boy who grew up into a handsome and popular man. What I mean is that he’s been attractive all his life and women have wanted to pet him and he is comfortable being pet and it is enjoyable to him. However, let me also say that, though he enjoys the attention, it could probably surprise him to hear that he is receiving it. I don’t think, in other words, that he even realizes that it’s happening. He charmingly can’t see his own handsome self, and even if I am a bit mistaken about that, I know that he certainly doesn’t suspect much that he’s the most handsome man in any given room. To him, the attention he gets, all the petting, is gravy. In his eyes, none of it is his due and that’s pretty charming. That’s pretty charming stuff to women.

How does that relate to the study of language? I’ll tell you that he is able to admit that he prefers studying with a female teacher. Why? My guess is that partly it’s from a sense of adventure. Studying English is something that almost everyone in Japan has done at some point in their lives. Some continue, but he chooses to continue and he consciously chooses a female teacher. Why?

First of all, yes, I pet him. I pet him the way other women do. It’s almost involuntary. (Seriously. It’s like the guy sent away for that hormone stuff that gets advertised in the back of the magazines--only the stuff he got actually works. I can’t help myself.) So, yes, he gets a lot of attention from me.

Second, let me try to relate a sense of adventure to yet more gender issues.

Let me ask you: How many media and advertising images of Western women do you think Japanese men see on a daily basis? None? Many? Well in a city like Tokyo, it happens to be a relatively large number. No, not as large a number as at home. No, I don’t know the exact number. What I do know is that it would be a shockingly high number. I mean, I am even shocked by the number of Western faces that I see in the media here in Japan. I’ll give you one example: In the summer, the big kimono sales campaigns start up. At one major Japanese department store, all the models in all the advertisements for kimono were Western women. So, yes, images of Western women surround Japanese men all day every day. But how many actual Western women do Japanese men have access to? On a daily basis the number is, for most men here, zero. Zero. Now, the media sells sells sells Western women as a status symbol, as something you want to have, but the culture doesn’t provide any actual outlet for the desire that the media implants in the minds of Japanese men.

Cue The Kaisha.

The Kaisha and other language schools are places (besides the Western hostess bars and strip clubs in Roppongi) where men can come to meet Western women face to face. That’s fine. (I’ve grown accustomed to the idea that if I were willing to light cigarettes and pour drinks and dodge passes all night, I could make about eight or ten times the money that I make teaching for The Kaisha.) But to come into face-to-face contact with actual living, breathing Western women, a lot of men have to face down a few demons of their own. They have to be willing to move into a cultural and racial borderland that, at the very least, requires a sense of adventure for them to enter.

[Here, the editor in me requires that I add a disclaimer: This is not an analysis that applies to all Japanese men.]

[And here, The Brain requires that I add: However, my Friday night class consists nearly exclusively of middle-aged Japanese businessmen for a reason.]

Let me also say that when my handsome businessman speaks English, he is at a disadvantage. When he speaks Japanese, he is very self-assured. He knows his role and the other participants know their roles and it is a comfortable situation. He is intelligent and he expresses himself well and he is able to be aggressive and forceful. That is his role and his right--in Japanese. But when he speaks English, those roles, those rights disappear. His vocabulary is cut by two-thirds at least. Though he is a relatively high-level student, it is still often a struggle for him to find the words to speak, and it is even more difficult for him (for almost any speaker, no matter what the level) to express complex thoughts in another language. The native speakers to whom he speaks--the women especially--don’t defer as much. That is a less comfortable situation for him because he is at a disadvantage then. He is vulnerable then.

Ahhh. So now let’s mix it up and you can begin to see some of the reason for my handsome businessman being less aggressive when he speaks English: He is an adventurer willing to enter the chaotic borderland between cultures. He has some desire (perhaps informed by the media) to come face to face with Western women. All women love to pet him and he is comfortable being pet by them. He would rather study with a woman teacher. Women are lesser creatures here. He is vulnerable when he speaks English and he unconsciously handles that feeling by studying with women teachers. When he speaks, he is less self-assured.

That’s some kind of clear analysis, ne? Ne. Clear as mud.

And probably entirely wrong.

So let me tell you about Kaz:

Kaz

I consider that, for me to be an effective teacher, I have to understand my students. Understanding my students means knowing what they expect of me.

When I asked Kaz what he thought my responsibilities to him as a teacher were, he replied, “You don’t have to worry about that.”