I laugh. Yes.
“You have a Japanese dictionary?” he asks.
Yes, of course.
I sleepily read another word, aman.
“Oh!” he says. “Oh, I love your voice. I love the way your voice sounds when you say this.”
The sound of my voice thrills him, but so too does the word. Aman is Japanese, stolen from the French, the word for lover.
Maybe I should explain a few things.
Changing Names Does Nothing For The Innocent
I call him My Mono (Spanish) or My Saru (Japanese), for monkey. I know that Monkey is sometimes an offensive term for a Japanese, but it’s not my idea to call him this. In fact it’s his idea. Of course, in the throes of an interracial relationship, I try to steer clear of racial remarks--unless I don’t.
One day I tease him about a photo he’s sent me. The photo was taken about twenty years ago, and when I ask, he struggles to remember the names of the other people in the photo.
“You don’t remember?” I ask. “Or you can’t tell because you all look alike?”
He laughs.
I call him My Saru because he sent me a picture with the note, “Can you see me? It is very small picture, you may not see my face, but it's me...not a monkey!”
A Childhood, Not Mine, In Pictures
I asked him for his baby pictures because I am keenly interested in his life. Part of my attraction to him is the incredible differences between us, not just in the lives we lead now, but the differences in our early lives.
He sent me a picture of himself as a baby, holding a black case for a music stand. The music stand was the detritus of his father’s career as a music teacher.
It’s always interesting to ask about anyone’s family dynamic. Both of My Mono’s parents were teachers and when I ask, he tells me they met when they were teaching at the same school. They had two children, a daughter and son (in that order), and, at some point along the trajectory of their shared lives, the marriage fell apart.
I say the marriage fell apart, but that is an entirely culturally- and temporally-biased observation, an outsider’s opinion. Of course his parents never divorced. Though the divorce rate in Japan has climbed to 30%, that is a modern statistic (and an interesting one to look at--but at another time). My Mono’s parents were together for perhaps the bulk of fifty years--until My Mono’s father died seven years ago--so what I mean is that marriage fell apart but they stayed married.
Welcome to Japan.
Japan lags about forty (or more) years behind the curve when it comes to gender issues and that, of course, affects families. Japan is not a place where feminism has any significant hold whatsoever (which is one reason why a certain class of Western male has a great affinity for the place), but what this means for the family is significant. The gender roles in Japan are still overwhelmingly what we’d call traditional. Women work in the home and men work out of the home. And lest we become all misty eyed over the pretty picture this paints of Japanese families, let’s think about the problems this little scenario once caused in America.
If this is the norm, it’s doesn’t necessarily mean that women want to work in the home or that men want to work outside the home. In Japan, a woman over a certain age (about thirty) trying to find a job is a woman fighting a losing battle. This means that a woman trapped in a marriage with an abusive man, a dismissive man, an adulterous man, or even just a man she doesn’t love, really is trapped. She won’t be able to get out in part because she won’t be able to support herself financially if she does leave. That trap? Well, that’s just part of what tradition can mean for women.
Family Values, A Snapshot
I ask more specific questions about My Mono’s parents, about the animus between them, and find it not-surprising to hear that his father was unfaithful, did, as My Mono explains,”buy women.” This was, of course, many years ago, but it so happens that not much has changed in modern Japan.
In modern Japan, adultery is not uncommon. (Remember, in this overwhelmingly non-Christian country, "Thou shall not commit adultery," has never been heard by more than 99% of the population.) In fact, 60% of Japanese men (and 30-40% of women) admit to cheating on their spouses. Prostitution is similarly rampant. In Tokyo alone, there are an estimated 1,200 businesses where one can--for between 10,000 and 60,000 yen (about $85 to $520)--buy sex. The number of businesses that sell sex has, of course, decreased since the Bubble Economy burst a few years ago, and competition among the remaining businesses has become fierce. In fact, it was not unusual for me to come home to my apartment in Higashi-Mukojima to find my mailbox stuffed with flyers offering the sexual services of young Japanese women. And this advertising reflected only the available services offered by legal, regulated places. It didn't include, of course, the mafia-controlled businesses--or freelance sex workers like the local schoolgirls.
Schoolgirls? That's right. About ten years ago a Tokyo Metropolitan Government survey of 110 schools revealed that 4% of high school girls admited to engaging in prostitution, as did 3.8% of middle school girls. Those percentages are believed to have risen in the past ten years. Until recent international pressure shamed the Japanese into changing the law, it was perfectly legal to buy sex from girls as young as fourteen years old. The price for sex with a girl in this age bracket? About 60,000 yen ($520).
But those are just the local girls.
Japan also imports prostitutes from poorer Asian countries. Some of these women come into Japan legally (on 3-month “entertainer” visas) but most enter Japan illegally, trafficked as sex slaves. An estimated 150,000 foreign (mainly Thai and Filipino) women work as prostitutes in Japan.
By all accounts, Japan constitutes the largest market for sex workers in Asia and most Japanese husbands consider it their right to to buy sex (both at home and abroad). My Mono and his father are no exceptions. It seems almost inconceivable that their wives have no inkling of these practices, nor would they endure them if they did know--but again, that is a culturally-biased opinion, the opinion of a woman who was lucky enough to have been raised in a feminist society. In fact, My Mono's mother did know about her husband's proclivities. She knew and, according to tradition, she stayed. What choice did she have?
Another Cultural Bias, Or, We Actually Do Have Something In Common
Here’s a man almost fourteen years older than me, raised in an entirely different culture. What do we have in common? Oddly, we have a similar sense of humor, a love of teasing and play, the tendency to wear our hearts on our sleeves, the desire to cross cultural boundaries.
What is his attraction to me? I can guess at some of it. Some of it is similar to my attraction to him. He enjoys my sense of humor, is happy for the attention. And like me, he is intrigued by the differences between us, between our lives. But I suspect there is more to it.
I’ve written before about how closed Japan is to outsiders. (In fact, it seems like I was never writing about anything else the whole time I was in Japan.) Because Japan is such a closed society, there is little chance to meet foreigners, especially Western women. At the same time that Western women are rare, the media is rife with images of Westerners and this has the effect of creating the same kind of desire in the Japanese that advertising creates in everyone everywhere, a kind of near-fetishistic desire for the product. In this case, the product is Westerners, but the rarity of Westerners in Japan means that there is little outlet for this desire.
One outlet for Tokyoites’ desire for Westerners is Roppongi, the neighborhood home to the famous meat market night clubs. But those clubs are for men and women in their teens and twenties. Where can older Japanese men and women go? Of course, many go to eikawas, English conversations schools, like The Kaisha. That’s where I met My Saru.
Eikawas like The Kaisha are businesses designed to sell products. One of those products is English. The other product is the native English-speaking teachers themselves. English lessons and the rare opportunity to connect with Westerners in a controlled, often businesslike, environment. What does that mean? It means that teachers like me are a kind of cultural artifact, a product.
It's not a one-sided arrangement. The ease with which Japanese students and many experienced native English-speaking teachers enter relationships is shocking to newly arrived teachers. But even the most naive teachers quickly learn the drill: Keep your hands off anyone younger than eighteen (the ago of consent) or, better yet, twenty (the age at which one is recognized as an adult in Japan) and don't do anything that would potentially cause the school to lose revenue. Otherwise, anything goes. Married students? Dating more than one student at a time? Casual sex with students? No problem. Just remember the rules.
Did I take advantage of this situation? Of course. After a time, immersed in big-city Japanese culture, it seemed perfectly acceptable. Would I ever engage in these behaviors in the US? I can say with absolute certainty that no I would never do these things in the US.
Never Say Never
I’m not suggesting that this thing, this thing akin to fetishism, is the primary reason for My Mono engaging in a relationship with me.
Of course there are other reasons.
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