Why I don't speak Japanese
Jun. 24th, 2004 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
From mid-July until the beginning of October I'll be in Japan. It's shameful that, although I pass for some sort of 'expert' on, or ambassador for, Japanese culture, and although I consider the country in some way my adopted heartland or home from home, I still don't have any real command of the Japanese language. Sure, it's become second nature for me to shout 'itai!' if I drop something heavy on my foot, or 'kawai' if I see something cute, or 'hidoi!' if I'm annoyed. But these are just phrases I've parroted from the Japanese people I've lived with over the years. I've never made any systematic attempt to learn verbs and declensions and adjectives, or take lessons.
Being me -- someone who's always put a lot of work into justifying my laziness -- I've adopted some rather self-conscious postures on this. For instance, I've quoted Paul Bowles on the joys of remaining a foreigner. Bowles was preoccupied with the theme of 'the expatriate coming up against the incommensurable otherness of the host culture' (in the words of Douglas Shields Dix, who adds 'usually disastrously'). Bowles claimed never to have learned Arabic despite living in Tangier for decades -- in fact he spoke more than he admitted, conversing with his friend Mohamed M'rabet in a mixture of Arabic, French and English.
'Remaining a foreigner' and 'preserving the incommensurable otherness of the host culture' obviously relate to my love of ostranenie -- they are estrangement devices, verfremdungseffekt. The counter-argument, of course, is that understanding might well be a route into a whole new level of strangeness, and that not-understanding one culture is pretty much the same as not-understanding another, and finally rather boring.
This is where my second argument might kick in. It goes something like this. 'Where the housewife is lazy, the cat is industrious'. When the left brain is blocked, stumped or impaired, the right brain takes over. To the non-Japanese speaker, Japan becomes a succession of scents, textures, sounds, colours, lights, experiences, tastes, shapes, emotions. And in fact this is very much the way I experience Japan: as a rush of nonsensical impressions, a delicious regression into the primitive and the sensual, the lower cortex, the right brain, the pre-lingual, and pseudo-babyhood. In Japan I'm a homunculus, a cute and happy sensual monster in need of a mother, preferably with gigantic breasts filled with Calpis milk. Add a bit of jetlag and some de-contextualisation and you get the best psychedelic drug experience there is, a sort of bio-cultural high.
Despite these arguments about 'respect for the otherness of the other' and 'creative disorientation' and the joys of being a 'cute monster', I probably will speak passable Japanese one day. Especially if I can find a language learning system like the Flash cards used by Meguro Language Center.. Some of their course materials are free for download on their website. They're kind of trippy in themselves.
well, yes but...
Date: 2004-06-28 10:46 pm (UTC)i agree though that a mastery of the language will reveal that yes, japanese popular culture is essentially daft. trying to talk about it without having gone into the original sources, however, is like talking about jane austen by just reading trilling. one cannot discuss japanese fashion without having actually read how japanese fashion magazines work. the japanese youth-oriented mass media is horrible inauthentic - they make up things out of thin air and no one will or can or cares to correct it. it's one thing for a Westerner to say, "they wear a lot of limited-edition street brands" in japan, to report, but once you cross that line into "explanation," it's almost criminal to attempt without having delved into the language. momus has always been a reporter and a theorizer, but not so much an objective explainer, and so, his lack of japanese skills should not be held in contempt.
the most important thing in this dialogue, however, is that the japanese are generally inept at english. sure, there are some bilinguals (mostly kikoku shijo), but we must all deal with the truth that there is 7 years of compulsitory english education and a huge english language industry, and still - because of linguistic and sociocultural barriers - the average japanese person's english is not really good enough to translate cultural concepts OUT of japanese. (compare the Japanese with almost every country in the world, and they are lagging in the world's new langua franca) and with the media controlled in Japan by people who want to re-iterate myths about japan to the japanese themselves, those with power to spread the word overseas often don't. while interest in japan has escalated over the last decade, has understanding about Japan? i doubt it. compare Japan to China where english language ability is much greater. what will this mean in the next 25 years?
it is highly rewarding to learn japanese. sure there are barriers, but don't let them get in your way. really knowing japanese (especially being able to freely read anything) will open up a japan that is generally hidden from the average foreigner. and sometimes that's much more magical than just stumbling around and adding the dialogue yourself.
Re: well, yes but...
Date: 2004-06-29 09:57 am (UTC)It's said that students may not know any more than people who haven't been to university, but they do know where to look if they need information, or who to ask. I think 'human-assisted intelligence' is the key. I've often been surrounded by unusually able, articulate and intelligent Japanese people who can explain, not just the literal meanings of things, but the surrounding context. I just need to ask. I bounce my theories off these people. (And yes, they're mostly women.) My second choice would be westerners living in Japan, friends like Robert and Jean, although I'm slightly more wary there because I'm aware that they may be projecting just as I do.
And my other point is, given the choice between me learning Japanese and seeing the Japanese learning English to the level of, say, Hong Kong or Singapore people, I'd certainly choose the former. I would rather let my own identity get lost in some sort of hinterland between Scotland and Japan than see the Japanese identity getting lost somewhere between Japan and America. So I am in a way throwing my lot in with those 'people who want to re-iterate myths about Japan to the Japanese themselves'; 'Nihono Tatsujin', 'human-assisted intelligence' tells me they're called.
Re: well, yes but...
Date: 2004-06-30 09:25 am (UTC)I agree that projecting is a problem, but there has to be some kind of happy medium between keeping "native Japaneseness" alive and having a variety of Japanese people from all sorts of backgrounds export their own experiences out of the Japanese code. Of those that can speak English, there are elitists (who want to keep the Japanese under wraps for personal gain), kikoku shijo (who aren't considered to be real japanese because they went away as kids and therefore do not have full access or full understanding to the central nerve of the culture), and outsiders (who have embraced English as a way to vent frustration OR those who learned to think a different way because of learning English.) Either way, anyone who you talk to in English is generally a skewed sample. I think you would find it interesting to be able to really talk to a real kogyaru circa 1995 or a ex-Bosozoku.
For your sake, it doesn't look like the Japanese are learning to speak English anytime soon. In the long run, this means they will be seriously detatched from the rest of this new internet global community. How many of the people who commented on your blog are Japanese? If a lot of your fans are in Japan, why are they not proportionally high on your blog? It's disappointing to me that I am reading 15 comments from people learning Japanese,but not one from a Japanese person.