My Japanese

Throughout my life, whenever I watch Japanese films or television dramas, I have the feeling that the characters either say too little or too much. I think of the office workers in Ikiru, who, despite the daily hell of their existence over decades of monotony and conformity in a stifling, overcrowded room, never say how they feel except in one scene, the drunken wake for their departed co-worker, the only one of them who, at the very end of his life, did as he pleased. In this moment, every detail of their frustration and anger release in a torrent of trauma against their boss and, even more, life itself.

Okay, so this film is over 50 years old, but I still see it in today’s TV melodramas. Different music, different hair, same sense of propriety, obligation, shame. And it’s not just actors. I also feel this way about real people. I think of my own grandmother, who, throughout her 80 years, never developed the habit of asking for what she wanted from life. I think of the countless individuals that I’ve met in Japan who ask the most limited and cursory questions upon meeting me as the polite way to make my acquaintance. (I’m not, of course, speaking of those many I meet there who are quite open and forthright in their feelings. Some artists, priests, farmers, etc. Is it somehow an urban, bourgeois thing at this point?)

There’s also that sense of structure, of order, that runs throughout everything in Japanese society. Everything, including every person and their every behavioral and visual detail, has its place. In fact, I’m finding it almost impossible to write these words without feeling like I’m falling prey to this tendency in this very text. I’m telling you exactly what I think and why. Probably because I’m reading a series of essays by Japanese photographers right now. Even when they studiously avoid explaining their artwork and in fact state that it’s impossible, they still explain exactly why this is true, which in my mind undermines the power of their statement.  Moreover, there’s also yet a sense of what shouldn’t (isn’t supposed to) be said, so that I experience these texts as constant frustration, alternating between knowing too much or too little, between the weight of didacticism and outright confusion.

I know this is coming from my biased perspective as an American, someone who neither worries about giving my opinion or stating my feelings and thus rarely feels a need to either hold back or tell the whole story.

There is that “Japanese” part of me, though.

It ebbs and flows throughout my daily consciousness, half-shaping my habit of processing information as both acceptance and refusal. I want to know everything, but I don’t need to. I want to act naturally, but I want to do what’s necessary to be a part of everything around me. I don’t care what others think of me, and I want everyone to like me. I accept everything and want to make sure it all comes out right. I’m a benevolent, dialogic, actively desiring, control freak.

Go figure.