Flirting with Danger

We are drinking with seven other people, but it might as well just be the two of us.

I will call him Kyuchi.

Tonight Kyuchi-san is dressed in his salaryman uniform, the ubiquitous dark suit, white shirt, pedestrian tie. On the weekends he wears a sports’ lovers uniform, a dark track suit and tennis shoes. He is thirty and shy but very athletic. He has, for this place, a terrific smile, large and friendly. We have talked before about his job and hobbies. He is a systems engineer for an international company. He loves heavy metal music, sports, and David Lynch movies.

I am close enough to Kyuchi-san that even in the dark bar, I can see the beginnings of tiny smile lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His eyes are warm and brown and in them is reflected a wariness that comes with the knowledge of the danger of getting too close, the danger of taking chances.

I look into his eyes and I think: We are predators.

I don’t mean that he and I are necessarily dangerous to each other in a violent way. I mean that all people everywhere are predators, hunters. Though we have been pressured by necessity into a kind of reluctant omnivorousness, predation is the fallback. It’s been hardwired into us over centuries and it has its benefits: We eat very well. It also has its drawbacks: Hunting is a dangerous pursuit and the closer and larger the prey, the more dangerous the situation. Hunting is an inherently evil gamble, and the closer we get to the prey and to the payoff, the more personal danger we face.

During Golden Week, I went drinking with a group of students who know Kyuchi-san. He was not with us, but he came up in the conversation. In the intense group dynamic that prevails in Japan, the only secrets are the secrets that everyone knows. The students I was drinking with during Golden Week know that Kyuchi-san is attracted to me and they know that he is either taking too long or not long enough to close the gap between us. They want to explain why, but the explanation for this is difficult. The language barrier only adds to the complications.

Dating in Japan is, just as in the US, all about social convention and Kyuchi is just one of those unfortunate souls (like myself) who has a poor command of those conventions. One of the Golden Week students says to me, “You know Kyuchi?” I say, “Of course. He has a very nice smile.” (I know this compliment will get back to him with the rapidity of cellphone e-mail.) The Golden Week student nods and says, “Kyuchi-san? Kyuchi...Kyuchi’s faults--wa--” Kyuchi’s faults are--

I think, wait a minute--why are you telling me Kyuchi’s faults?

But we both know why he is telling me Kyuchi’s faults.

He continues: “Everyone wa...Kyuchi...Nan da yo, ne?” He looks somewhat helplessly at the others in the group and one particularly outspoken woman comes to his aid. She says, “Kyuchi-san? At a drinking party, he is too fast.” I tilt my head, the universal I don’t understand. She continues, “At drinking parties, if you meet a woman you like, the man waits until after the party is finished to ask for her e-mail. But Kyuchi asks during the party. It’s too fast.” Everyone nods.

I nod. I try to explain that where I come from you don’t necessarily have to wait until the end of the party to ask for a phone number. It’s okay to ask during the party. It’s okay to ask for more than one woman’s phone number. It’s okay to see each other for the first time one-on-one. In fact, it’s preferable. I try to explain all this, not for the first time, but they clearly don’t believe in such things. This behavior is clearly wrong. It is clearly poor dating etiquette.

I am sitting next to Kyuchi and the bar is very dark, but there are certain things I don’t need light to see.

He is sitting very close. He is sitting very close but we are not quite touching. There is a gap of a few centimeters between us. His drink is empty and I lean toward him with the drink menu. The proximity alarms go off and then they become insistent. Under the guise of perusing the drink menu, Kyushi closes the gap between us.

We both pretend that we don’t know what is going on, that the touching is accidental.

New Guy stands up to leave and starts to say his goodbyes. The new teacher, a very young woman named Nori-chan, asks if we live near each other and I explain that we happen to live in the same building. One of the other men (I’ll call him Oshi and I’ll talk about him in a moment) asks, “Why don’t you go home with him?”

I say, “I have no reason to go home with him.”

They laugh.

“Maybe I’ll get a better offer!” I joke.

A bit later, Kyuchi has to catch his last train which is very early. “Is your watch broken?” one of the women jokes. He laughs, says his goodbyes, leaves the bar.

Oshi, who has been sitting on the other side of Kyuchi, slides over into the seat next to me. Oshi is thirty-eight, very confident, dismissive of those whom he finds beneath him. He, like Kyuchi, is in salaryman’s uniform, only his shirt is lavender. He has curly hair dyed a lighter shade of brown and he wears big round glasses. He is handsome, but not as handsome as he believes himself to be. You know the type. He works for an insurance company, perhaps selling insurance. He has that kind of personality. He makes a habit of self-deprecation, but it is only for show.

He slides into the chair next to mine and almost immediately I feel his leg press against mine. He reaches across me to shake hands with the person on my left and as he does so, he presses his side against mine. He reaches across me again to ring the bell for the waiter, and as he does so, he presses against me again. He orders a drink for me without asking.

I make no comment. This is me being Japanese.

Two of the teachers sitting with us are Japanese. One is married to a Canadian woman. One is dating an American who lives in Japan. They are asking about how I find Japan. Is it easy for me to find dates? In fact, it’s not, but I don’t want to say this in front of Oshi. I steer the conversation to their own experiences dating and marrying foreigners. The man says his Canadian wife gets angry that he won’t hold his hand in public. He asks, when I’ve dated Japanese men, if the man held my hand in public. No, I say. He asks if I got angry. No, I say, because it’s the culture. There is no point in getting angry at a Japanese man for being Japanese.

The woman says that, of course she and her American boyfriend hug and kiss in public. Then she tells us that in the small town where her boyfriend lives, people either stare at him or they ignore him.

The teachers ask if people stare at me. I say, yes, of course they do. They ask if it bothers me. No, I say, of course it doesn’t. I know that people are curious about foreigners.

Japanese are curious and something else too. A few months ago, a 30-ish woman in one of my high-level classes told me that when she was a child, she saw a foreigner on the train. She clung to her grandmother, crying, asking, “What is it? What is it?” This was twenty-five years ago.

Japanese are curious, afraid, isolated.

They are attracted to foreigners and they resent them too and they are drawn to them. Most Japanese don’t have any precedent for how to respond to people who don’t look Japanese. Not knowing what to do makes Japanese feel ashamed. The Japanese I have talked to admit that they don’t feel that they measure up. The women are jealous of Western women’s looks and Western women’s figures. They see that Western women have a higher status in their home countries and they want and resent it. The men are desirous of Western women and afraid too. Used by convention to being superior, they have no idea how to respond to women who don’t take that superiority for granted.

The man who is married to the Canadian women admits that he thinks that Japanese women are “nicer.” When pressed, he says that they seem nicer because “they do more for you.” He quickly admits that he is a feminist and he knows that this is a pre-feminist society. But where does desire end and logic begin?

We are predators with big logical brains and biological drives that aren’t controlled by logic.

Oshi presses me and in response, I stand, ready myself to go. The Canadian’s husband says, “I guess we should all go,” and the party begins to break up. Someone calls for the check and I contribute two-thousand and make for the elevators.

Outside it is raining and on the way home and later too, I think of Kyuchi.


Kyuchi--an old friend, a dilemma
Oshi--brazen faced, pushy, aggressive