imomus | Being Japanese in Blankenfeld

Being Japanese in Blankenfeld

On Wednesday Yoshito, Naoko, Hisae and I took the train to Blankenfeld, a satellite suburb about 25 kilometers from central Berlin. Japanese friends had invited us to Workshop Japan, an afternoon presentation of the part-time work they'd been doing over the last three months, teaching German children about Japanese crafts, lifestyle, language and philosophy.

Coming from dense, Turkish Neukolln to Blankenfeld was like entering another world. After riding two trains and a bus we found ourselves skirting a poppy-dotted wheatfield in a thunderstorm. Boat-shaped suburban houses were surrounded by gnome-haunted gardens, many boasting ornamental fountains, statues of goats, and clumps of bamboo. Even in the heavy rain, we paused to marvel at flowers and plants we never see in the inner city.

At the school -- a clean, modern brick box -- ten-year-olds scurried about in Japanese headbands, guided by the friends who had invited us. Look, there's Ido-San, the performance artist! But today she's Ido-San, the judo instructor! Look, there's Saiko, the art student who works in the kitchen at Smart Deli! But today she's the kimono lady!

Like Superman, these friends of ours have secret powers. We thought they were artists, but after a quick change of clothes in a phone booth they become... ambassadors for Japan! Speculating idly as the slick Workshop Japan DVD played to the teeming assembly hall, I wondered if I too could earn money from the German government teaching "the Scottish Way" to kids? Is there even a Scottish Way worth learning? How do we arrange our gardens? How do we fight? How do we dress? Is it sufficiently different from the German way to warrant a three month course? Is it charismatic enough? Could this be what my Book of Scotlands leads to?

I suppose I was perceived as a parent at the Workshop Japan afternoon -- a parent nobody had ever seen before, not attached to any particular child. Like all the other "parents" I raised my Japanese digital camera and snapped dutifully during the kimono fashion show, as young German girls paraded past in unlikely kimonos featuring what looked like the double-headed eagle of the Hapsburg Empire.

In fact, if I was the "father" of anyone, it was the Japanese instructors themselves. It was with some kind of paternal pride that I told Saiko-San that the arrangement of hair at the back of her neck had achieved the pinnacle of iki beauty.

What I noticed, out at Blankenfeld, was that we all became different people there. In central Berlin the culture allows us to be somewhat ageless and cultureless. Out at Blankenfeld, we suddenly had ages and cultures. I was "old", the girls (in their mid to late 20s) were "responsible adults", and the kids were "kids". Your perceived age slotted you into this syntagmatic hierarchy, did away with equality, made you act a certain way. We also had more noticeable ethnicities. All the kids were white, and German. All the instructors were Japanese, and did stereotypically Japanese things, like paper-folding and flower-arranging. I passed, I guess, for a German.

Despite the emphasis on culture, there was less cultural mixing going on out at Blankenfeld than happens in central Berlin. Last week Ido-San did one of her multimedia performances in Neukolln -- an act that mixed Japanese and Western idioms. But out at Blankenfeld she was being 100% Japanese.

It was a relief to get back to dense, dirty Neukolln, where people are as various as flowers are in Blankenfeld. It seems to me that central Berlin is the exception and Blankenfeld the norm, in the sense that rather few places allow you to escape your age, your class, your race and your culture -- should you wish to! -- in the way that urban Berlin does. Here nobody ever says "Act your age!" or "Scots don't do that!" or "Be a man!"

But if it's a sort of freedom to escape your age, your gender, and your culture, it's also a sort of freedom to embody them gorgeously, generously, even stereotypically. Perhaps, out in blank Blankenfeld, my Japanese friends were suddenly free to express a repressed part of "themselves" -- the part, paradoxically, that we're not at liberty to change.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

whaurz ra burdz ?

Momus, do you ever regret not being a parent? Is it a point of contention at all with Hisae, who is still of an age where she could be a mother?

I personally don't regret it at all. Hisae says "Not regrets... yet!"

But if she wants a kid, she would like it to be 100% Japanese, not "western mixture". And I agree. So we talk about "scouting" -- getting some Japanese donor sperm. In fact, we already have a candidate, this guy:

We plan to obtain his sperm by all means necessary. Unfortunately he has a very possessive management agency.

'But if she wants a kid, she would like it to be 100% Japanese, not "western mixture". And I agree.'

Sounds vaguely racist . . . or something.

I can't tell whether or not you're being flippant. I don't want to overstep my boundaries as an anonymous commenter on an internet forum, but I'd genuinely be interested in hearing why both yourself and Hisae would prefer a '100%' Japanese child to a 'western mixture' (?). I'm really not trying to be contentious and awkward (and again, I have my suspicions that the comment was made slightly in jest, in which case I apologise for taking it too seriously), but this strikes so many nerves within me that I can't help but ask:

Why on earth would a '100%' Japanese child be more desirable to you both than a child of mixed racial origin? There's something about this I feel can surely only be tied to history, colonialism and politics, and it breaks my heart: at the risk of sounding dreadfully twee, why feel the need to deny your heritage/self when having a baby with the woman you love? Why does the Japanese side win out? Why is it a 'western mixture' and not a 'Japanese mixture'? Why can't a baby just be a baby?

Adam

We're half joking, half serious.

It's all about the nature of Japan, a society which tends to make you feel like an outsider if you aren't 100% Japanese. A mixed-race kid would have a hard time growing up there, feeling s/he didn't belong properly to any nationality.

Also, says Hisae, hafu kids -- part-Japanese, part-foreign -- are not trendy in Japan any more. The move, the mood in the last ten years has been away from multiculturalism. Giving birth to a hafu is creating a walking, talking nest of adjustment and identity problems. Sure, you can do it, but you need to be aware of this context.

Solution: raise your non-trendy, un-cool mongrel child in Berlin or some other catastrophically welcoming place.

Yes. But we want to live in Japan.

so it's alright for you to live in japan but not the child? and because you want to live in japan the child will not get to live at all?

WHAT CHILD?

"WHAT CHILD?"

The Japanese-Scottish child you've decided to have and raise in a suitably non-Japanese place, such as Berlin, Edinburgh, New Castle (Delaware), and so on.

But that's a not-child produced by a not-me!

Hafus are like chihuahuas...so 2005.

80s, 90s.

A while ago we looked at the freakonomics of inter-racial dating in the US (http://imomus.livejournal.com/451895.html) and put an actual dollar value on just how much more you have to earn per year to overcome the handicap of being an Asian male on the US dating scene (the figure is $247,000).

In the same way, we could look at just how beautiful or famous you have to be (or your parents have to be) in Japan for the Japanese to overlook the fact of your hafu status, or see it as an advantage. And maybe the answer is "Your parents need to be Lennon and Ono".

My cousin (white Scottish male) is having a baby with his Japanese wife in the next few months. They just moved to Scotland recently and I didn't understand why they would choose to be there instead of in Nagoya until right now.

Thank you for your answer. I appreciate your honesty that you're considering the practicalities, and that you seem to be basing your answer on your raising a child in Japan.

That said, as someone currently happily living in Japan for whom I suppose it's not entirely inconceivable that these questions might one day present themselves, I won't hide the fact that it upsets me that something so barren (so this-worldly!) as 'my kid will look slightly different' (plus ensuing ramifications) should have such profound significance that it might genuinely make one question their suitability to biologically parent a child.

Calculation is surely an inevitable part of any important decision. But the romanticist/the humaninist/the human being in me can't help but wonder whether a place that makes you calculate something so potentially amazing and beautiful and inspiring based upon something (surely!) so fundamentally bogus and reductionist and boring can be worth it?

Argh, I sound like everything I hate!

Adam

Reading that back, I'm already embarrassed. Consider that more 'inquisitive thinking aloud' than dogged heartfelt conviction.

Adam

Well, I think it would cruel to treat a kid as a sort of challenge to the culture s/he was going to grow up in, or have the sort of kid who'd fit into the kind of world you think ought to exist, rather than the sort that does exist.

But also I think there are different interpretations of what multiculturalism might mean, and I personally skew towards the one that says that it's a lot more fun if we keep our flavours.

The Japanese are "minor differences" racists -- in other words, they're not racist if you're clearly different, and they're not racist if you're clearly the same. It's when you're in between those that you risk getting bullied, especially in childhood. That has to be borne in mind.

"The Japanese are 'minor differences' racists -- in other words, they're not racist if you're clearly different, and they're not racist if you're clearly the same. It's when you're in between those that you risk getting bullied, especially in childhood. That has to be borne in mind."

That just isn't true. You are just as likely to be a target for bullying in a Japanese school if you are 100% foreign. You're projecting the acceptance you found in Japan as an adult onto how you think Japanese kids will treat a foreign kid. You've come to the wrong conclusion.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I think bullying happens in the "uncanny valley" because of "the narcissism of minor differences". If you're unambiguously foreign, you're not making a claim to Japaneseness and there's no point, for a bully, in bashing the foreignness out of you. Also, if you're unambiguously foreign, Japanese bullies can't lay the same claim on you that they can on their own kind. It's worse to be almost-Japanese than not-Japanese.

There's no reason to agree to disagree with you. That suggests it is just a matter of opinion when it is in fact a well-documented issue and the weight of evidence is firmly against you.

Why don't you make the effort to check with non-Japanese parents who have put their children through a Japanese school or teachers at the schools? You'll soon discover your theorizing won't find any support from their actual experience. Or, better still, contact an NPO called Multilingual Education Research Institute (多言語教育研究所) Their address is 744-2 Kamifukushima Tamamura-machi, Sawa-gun, Gunma-ken 370-1104 Japan. You can also call them on (+81) 0270-65-8795. They would soon put you right if you tried to tell them that it's worse to be almost-Japanese than not-Japanese when it comes to bullying.

Well, in reality, there's a big difference between what "should" work out and what actually will work out. To not even consider the ramifications of raising a mixed-race child in Japan would be foolish, to say the least.

In America, we are very accustomed, in the modern era, to being able to say "things should be such-and-such a way," and within a very reasonable period of time, for all intents and purposes, things become that way, i.e. with civil rights issues. One day miscedgination is banned; the next day, it's allowed; and soon after, it's finally widely accepted for the most part.

But I don't get the sense that, in Japan, a few interracial families are going to be able to yell "things should be different" and that this will adequately push back the tide of normalization and tradition. Things could change and become better regulated from a legal position, but getting the culture itself to shift, when there just aren't enough living examples in peoples' daily lives to prove the case for it, could prove a nearly insurmountable task.

To bring an initially "strange" child to life in America does not necessarily doom him/her to a life on the absolute margins, because it is quite possible that perceptions will change well within his/her lifetime. To do the same thing in Japan is a vastly different proposition altogether.

Things could change and become better regulated from a legal position

Even this isn't looking likely in today's Japan. Restrictions and checks on foreigners are increasing, not decreasing. And while Japanese-foreigner marriages are on the increase (from less than 1% of all marriages in Japan 25 years ago to almost 5% now), the divorce rate for Japanese women married to foreigners in Japan is 80%. These marriages do not last.

Yeah. I'm just making the point that, in ethnically homogenous places, there is often a huge discrepancy between official policy and how people think and feel in reality. In America, the process of society adopting official policy is pretty quick. Of course, there are pockets of the American population that will always lag behind, I don't doubt that. But in a place like Japan, it really is an uphill battle. People are far less likely to change their traditional values when they have very few opportunities to practice the transition.

i think the Harvey Milk idea, that "if they know one of us, they'll be on our side," can be said to apply here as well. Unfortunately, it's probably not too common for the most conservative, traditional Japanese to be on friendly terms with an interracial couple.

If Momus was to ever have a child, it would be an adopted third-world baby for sure.

Adopted African babies are so Spring-Summer 2008!

why didnt you appear in any of the photos today? Come on now, you must keep up appearances.

So what exactly were you trying to say in this post?
It sounded a bit mixed... but what I got was, you think young japanese female artists are hot, but you feel weird hanging out with them in a strict german enviroment because you begin to feel too old and sort of bad about being scottish...?

I think the main point I was trying to make is that just 26 kilometers away the conditions of cultural ferment that I take for granted in central Berlin no longer apply. Central Berlin -- and places like it, ie big cities -- are places where age, race and gender are bonds which can be slipped somewhat. But that this definition of freedom -- getting out of bonds, identities, obligations -- is not all it's cracked up to be. It's the "freedom of the no" (saying "no" to categories), but there's also a "freedom of the yes" ("yes, I'm from such-and-such a culture, country, class, and not trying to pretend otherwise!"), and it's not to be scoffed at. That's freedom too!

(This becomes complicated when you consider that, for Scottish protestants like me, the "freedom of the yes" is "the freedom of the no". Our culture is historically all about refusing things.)

ok... so thats why you didn't include any pictures of yourself? ;)

Thanks for expanding, I'm just joking around a bit (as usual) but I honestly didn't get all that you just expanded on.
I was just talking with a friend of mine today (in bushwick Brooklyn at the first real french cafe in the hood) about bands in NY vs. bands in other smaller cities ( I grew up in Milwaukee and Chicago)... smaller slower places.
smaller cities usually have less diversity, kind of what you're talking about I think... so band-wise they tend to produce actual specific culture sounds, styles... Things that they very seriously call their own. culture to smaller places is something not taken for granted. Also, the fact that it's most likely not about becoming 'famous' or making money... mostly about you are your friends making something...

in bigger cities with lots of diversity, there are so many different influences that it no longer is if there is culture but what you do with the cultures... so it very quickly becomes abstract... and less personal, musically simpler, quickly developing an idea... that references other cultures, but isnt anything in it's self...

something like that.

What you just expanded on...
yes, it is so important to say yes I am THIS... before you slip into a crowd...
but, hmmm, there is such a rigidity that comes with places not accustomed to 'the other' ... so unfortunately, often times, this "I am this" is seen as the only 'right' way...

"Is there even a Scottish Way worth learning? . . . Is it sufficiently different from the German way to warrant a three month course? Is it charismatic enough?"

Yes.

teach the kids how
to shoot up smack
smoke the blaw
have waynes at 14
go to the bookies
drink the the buckfast tonic wine
kick fuck out each other till there deed fir being a catholic
heathly positive shite like that
sunbeds too
whit else
be depressed
take jellies

Thing is you'll find that malarky everywhere from Portsmouth to Sunderland, Dublin to Cardiff (maybe not sectarianism - but racism in its place). It's about poverty, being landless and a disguarded cog in redundant work machines. Self-effacement. And not having a vision of yourself.

But it's also a sign of people who feel comfortable in a generally friendly country. I remember coming back from Dijon (where the police use water cannons to clear young people out of bars) to a bus shelter full of puke in the UK and feeling that I preferred the latter.

like what?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Being Japanese in Blankenfeld

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Chihuahuas? I Am The Walrus!

Re: Chihuahuas? I Am The Walrus!

Re: Chihuahuas? I Am The Walrus!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

whats missing?

Re: whats missing?

Re: whats missing?

Re: whats missing?

no subject

smack

no subject

Re: smack

no subject