Special Thanks to Mr. Dan Edward Venz for allowing this book to be viewed at no cost on the internet.
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- A "First of its kind" book about being a Gaijin in Japan!
- Finally! Someone tells it like it is!
- The most in depth book about foreigners living in Japan ever written!
- Take off your "Rose Tinted" glasses before you start reading this book!
Gaijin In Japan
Chapter 8
Situational Psychological Coping
It is evident that placating tactics involve a heightened awareness of the social identities of foreign people. "Gaijinness" can be minimized or maximized for placation effect. The former is more common. Ethnic identities, however, remain relatively dormant. For example, to assert a strong foreign "self" in a placation tactic that requires assimilative skills contradicts the objective of the strategy. Content security is its main purpose, and as a consequence, emotive security tends to take a battering. Foreigners experience the tension involved in placating as a sense of ambivalence and dilemma. In other words, a foreigner cannot successfully act Japanese and foreign at the same time.
If a foreigner challenges a joke or comment made about foreigners by a Japanese she runs the risk of being seen as an outsider. This occurs because inherent in the placating exercise is the maintenance of the egalitarian myth manifested through non-challenges to discriminatory incidents. To make a challenge is to draw attention to oneself and the falsity of the myth, which negates placating. That the joke is told in her presence is an indication of honorary "insider" membership. The foreigner is accepted if he/she laughs at other foreigners, but at the same time it involves an inherent nullification of self, or at least that part of her self that identifies with foreigners. Therefore, to placate is to deny an aspect of self. Because of the resulting feeling of ambivalence, informants often spoke of psychological coping strategies that were employed at the moment of a placation exercise. I briefly outline these strategies below under the headings of absorbing, forgiving and denying of self.
(1) Absorbing
Informants often spoke of absorbing racism. Absorbing essentially meant internalizing discrimination and accepting subordinate status as part of the price to be paid for being a foreigner in Japan. Foreigners in Japan often "rationalize...prejudice and discrimination by saying as 'guests' in a foreign land they have no choice but to tolerate prejudice and discrimination". Absorbing often occurred when informants chose to "just ignore" or "laugh off" discriminatory remarks. Furthermore, absorbing was often reinforced by parents, spouses, relatives, and friends. They are mindful of the consequences of posing a challenge to discrimination. One foreign child in Japan put it this way;
"The abuse on the way to school was mostly verbal. I remember coming home and crying about it, and my mother saying: 'There is nothing you can do about it.' She lined me up with that little quote: 'Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.' But I decided that that was a load of bullshit."
Another anonymous foreigner put it this way;
"At work I was informed that the company policy had changed. From that day on, I would be paid for actual teaching time instead of prep-time and teaching time. I calculated my hours and realized that I would be in the office for about 10 hours a day, but would only be paid for 5. I told my [Japanese] wife about it, but she just said I would have to put up with it, and that I was over reacting. It was not discrimination. Even when I told her that the policy was only for foreign teachers, she still rationalized it as not being discrimination."
Absorbing is seldom a successful tactic, for it identifies for non-Japanese their unenviable reality: that they are a subordinate minority with little or no power. More successful strategies explain away discrimination while maintaining the social myth of egalitarianism. These strategies allow foreigners to feel more comfortable about their minority status.
(2) Forgiving
One means of doing this is through forgiving, which was discussed as a different tactic earlier. Forgiving in this instance is the process by which the perpetrator is made incompetent in some way. He is cast in the role of a fool or deviant. Racist comments are seen as the products of the ignorant, uneducated, and intoxicated. The logic is that intelligent, educated and sober persons do not possess such discriminatory views. In response to a question on dealing with discriminatory incidents one informant had this to say:
Gary: "Most of them [Japanese who are rude or disrespectful to foreigners] are drunk so they don't know what they're saying anyway. But you can tell they know nothing. I just get disappointed. I mean, it's not simply that they are uneducated; half of them probably have never been on a plane. The furthest the other half has gone is probably Hawaii (laughs). Because honestly, they don't know anything about foreign culture or anything."
As an intellectual and worldly inferior, the perpetrator is made into an insignificant figure. As a self-protective mechanism this tactic serves a useful purpose, although, it is so easily falsified by negative examples. The foreigner in Japan is often left to absorb discrimination again when faced with these counter examples. Yet, there are constant attempts to uphold the egalitarian myth. "Forgiving" is a tactic filled with optimism, though this is constantly shattered by the consistency of discriminatory experiences.
Sarah: “A lot of Japanese people are really culturally naive. I just get really disappointed. You know, you think Japan is actually quite liberal, a relatively forward thinking country, but when you see people like that!"
(3) Denying of Self
In contrast to absorbing and forgiving, the most extreme strategy informants used was the denying of self [remember the foreign farmer earlier who had assimilated to the point of speaking only Japanese and even changing his name to a Japanese name]. Here, the foreigner denies his ethnic identity and plays a momentary mind game to escape the indignity of being stigmatized.
“When people...like friends hassle me for being a foreigner I just laugh at it, I don't really mind it because I don't think I am. I'm a Japanese person not a "halfu".”[used to describe a person who is not completely Japanese]
Discrimination, then, does not affect this non-Japanese Japanese because he does not identify with his imposed social identity. This extreme position is seldom workable for it is so easily contradicted. This is especially the case during "mirroring" experiences.
“I often find meeting other half-Japanese, who speak English, kind of odd. It's like looking in a mirror and not liking what you see."
The falsity of denying an inherent ethnic identity is realized at these moments. As a strategy then, the denying of self protects for an instance but soon fades in its usefulness.
To recount, to absorb, forgive and deny self are momentary coping strategies that are inherent in the placation process. They tend to be fleeting measures without lasting resolution. They occur because placating involves a heightened awareness of social identities, which demands minimization of "self".
So far, the analysis has outlined the strategies used in placating. It has been suggested that by showing commitment, blending in, distancing, role-play and by creating understanding foreigners can create an image of a compliant and non-threatening minority. It has also been suggested that placating demands psychological coping strategies that occur as self-justifications.
The impression one gets, however, is that placating is a haphazard exercise occurring with little awareness amongst foreigners. This is far from the case. Coordinating performance is also required for a more effective display. It is to this issue I now turn.
COORDINATING PERFORMANCE
As foreigners in Japan are often ethnically lumped, the public acting of one individual often reflects on all foreigners. Variations or non-conformance in the placating exercise, thus, can be seen to limit its overall effectiveness. In other words, placating works best when all foreigners placate. Although placating is generally learnt through trial and error, some aspects of the exercise are encouraged by the ethnic community (e.g., showing commitment and blending in). The community, then, acts as a coordinating mechanism to ensure a degree of uniformity occurs in placating performances.
The lack of a strong foreign community [other than Chinese, Korean and Brazilian communities] in Japan can therefore be seen as a main reason for the failure of foreigners to achieve assimilation into the Japanese society. In contrast to foreigners in other countries [such as the Chinese in America] who successfully created communities and then were successful in not only assimilating into the American society but eventually won powerful political seats, foreigners in Japan tend to rely heavily on distancing, which has been shown to have individual rewards for foreigners, but weakens the foreigner group as a whole.
So what are the effects of Placating on Long-Term Immersed Foreigners and Half-Japanese Children?
Placating is an ongoing tactic that immersed foreigners use throughout their lifetime in Japan. Many immersed foreigners made the decision to reside in Japan because they were married to a member of the Japanese population. These couples have reared children who are labels by members of the host population as "halfu." I theorize that the label itself comes with a stigma which could have been avoided had the Japanese population labeled these children as "double." These children of a foreign and a Japanese parent have had to placate their entire lives and the consequences and effects of long term placating of both immersed foreigners and half-Japanese are discussed in more detail in the following pages.
Placating is a solution to the problem of content insecurity. It is a means where powerless foreigners can influence to some degree the fickle nature of host tolerance. A positive consequence of placating is that when done well, tolerance increases and the foreign person gains content security. Negative outcomes are more evident, though. The continued use of placating is not unproblematic. An environment that demands placating is also an environment fraught with issues of emotive insecurity; that is, feelings of anxiety, paranoia and emotional trauma. Half-Japanese high school students indicated this in comments like:
"As soon as I came back to Japan there was like this change in being Japanese. Like when I went overseas you didn't feel so self-conscious at all. Whereas as soon as I came back to Japan it's like, oh, self-conscious again."
"When I go to the supermarket, I do feel quite paranoid, especially when I'm with a foreigner."
"I really think college was the most unhappy days of my life. I always felt left out. We felt we really had to step back and be invisible."
Foreign residents indicated this in comments like:
"I find myself in a one month cycle. This is where I am patient with the conditions surrounding my life here in Japan for about a month, then it gets too much for me so I go out with a bunch a foreign friends and we get drunk and talk shit about Japan. Then I go home and start the cycle all over again. It is starting to wear down my body, and I know I have to find a better way to cope, but for now, that is all I can do."
"I really look forward to my yearly trips home. I need the 3 weeks a year to be part of the majority so that I can withstand the rest of the year being part of the minority."
"I must have the largest collection of American videos in Japan. Once a week, I get drunk as hell, put in a good American movie and escape. I could not handle life here without my videos."
An environment that demands placating is also one that demands a high degree of social acting; for placating is exactly that - a false presentation of "self". To placate is to live in a state of "bad faith", to be something that one is not. The pressure not only comes from the surrounding society to conform to this fraudulent image, it also comes from the ethnic community who are aware of the consequences of not playing along. As well, many half-Japanese are pressured to become fully bicultural and the weight of trying to fit in as a true Japanese person [in public] while attempting to maintain a bicultural personality at home [in private] seems to create a great deal of emotional stress for half-Japanese.
Paul: "We don't have to set ourselves unnecessarily high targets because that price...I have seen in a lot of areas. For example, our children have a lot of pressure to become bilingual. Of course it's great that you achieve and have good results. But we also must understand that some may develop later, some may prefer to have a more balanced academic and sports pursuit. Some may want to pursue a non-professional degree. But the choices in [the]non-Japanese community tends to be 'hey, if you can, be an actor, singer, a T.V. personality. But we should have people of different fields. I mean, people should be able to pursue philosophy, arts, culture, law, medicine, and politics...because ultimately you can only be really good when you're interested in a subject."
Social acting, to the extent I have described, has led non-Japanese to question its benefits. As one foreigner stated, "People...expect too little from you, like you are not smart enough to pursue a real career because you are not Japanese so I hate being a foreigner sometimes." Self-hatred is not an uncommon state, all non-Japanese and half-Japanese I spoke to said they had this feeling at some time in their lives. For some, the pressure associated with being half-Japanese was so great that a total abandonment of one's ethnic self was common. One anonymous half-Japanese (1997) writes:
"The message I received from [experiences of discrimination] was clear. Being half-Japanese was a handicap. Since I was half-Japanese, I was inherently handicapped. I responded by over-compensating, by throwing off every vestige of my father's country (America) and fully embracing Japanese culture. I wanted people to know I was not really American because I did not want to be treated like a foreigner. For me, becoming Japanese was the path of least resistance in a life, which already had too much resistance. It was a way of surviving."
Under such circumstances, social acting becomes habitual. In order to portray a more convincing role as "model minority" deep immersion in the role is inevitable - "method acting" of sorts. This immersion makes the performance more realistic for audience and performer alike. Its consequence, however, is self-alienation. Ueda (1974:79) writes of the demand for social acting by stating:
This process is insidiously pathological for, as the act is repeated, the individual becomes less aware that he is only an actor. By repeated performance he arrives at a state where he cannot separate act from fact, and he loses consciousness of his self-alienation.
Self-alienation can, however, become revealed to the half-Japanese and foreigner at moments of reflection or extreme situations [such as after a major earthquake or being falsely detained by police]. I conceptualize these as discovery moments, where events, occurrences and circumstances can shake the individual into a heightened state of awareness about their true ethnic identity.
Dan: "Once, in Kyushu I got into a bit of trouble. My younger sister [my wife's sister] was staying with us and was working as a waitress owned by this "wanta be Yakuza" Japanese guy. Because I had promised my wife's father that I would take care of her while she stayed with us in Kyushu, I drove to pick her up from work every night. One night, I was sitting in the parking lot of the shop a lot longer than usual so I went in to see what was taking so long. The owner had my sister sitting in a chair in the middle of the bar and it appeared she had been drugged. He was fondling her. Needless to say, I got a bit upset."
"I pulled him off of her, and tried to get her out of the place, but he kept pulling her back in. Then he pushed me out and locked the door. I called my wife and she called the police. When the police arrived, the owner jumped out of his shop with a knife in his hand and started yelling that he was going to kill me. The police escorted me home, and then got my sister out of there. Later, the police came to my home and told me that I had made a mistake. That the owner was worried about my sister and I had miss-judged what he was doing. They told me I needed to learn more about the Japanese language and culture if I was going to stay in Japan and even recommended that I contemplate leaving Japan. To pour salt in my wound, I was also informed that I was to pay 30,000 yen for the owners shirt, which the owner claimed I had ruined when I pulled him off of my sister. It was at that point that I really understood what it meant to be a "foreigner" in Japan, and I did not like it."
The discovery moment was recurrent. It occurred over and over matching shifting tolerance levels. Ironically, self-alienation was most prevalent during periods of sustained host tolerance. This is because placating is somewhat unconscious during these periods. Negative shifts typically spark an awareness of placating and ethnic identity, which initiates foreigners on a path of solace seeking. I refer to this as affirming.
Go on to Chapter 9
Copyright (C)2005 Dan Edward Venz. All rights reserved.
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