Black ships

Judging by many people's comments, in blogs or in person, many Japanese are still unsure how to interract with 'foreigners'. Some friends and blog-friends report being followed round supermarkets, cornered for English lessons - in my case I was once cornered for a boyfriend - or laughed and pointed at. While the last two on the list are unpleasant, I'm happy to say if it ever did happen to me, I didn't notice.

Far more common was being viewed as a silly foreigner, verbally stumbling from pillar to post with my crap Japanese. Although in actual fact, I was usually praised for my crap Japanese. When I asked a lady in the lift to press the button for the 9th floor in a department store, she went into raptures. Ohhh, nihongo wa jozu desu - your Japanese is good! Or an occasional performing seal, part of my job anyway. But the vast majority of times people I spoke to were simply interested in meeting me and were perfectly pleasant, if sometimes awkward about it.

You'd think in that case, Japanese people who ask questions beyond the how-old-are-yous and do-you-have-a-boyfriends would be applauded. Someone, say, like an old lady sitting next to you on the bus who starts a natural conversation with you. But it appears such a person needs to be reined-in to a greater extent than the offending gaijin, and by none other than a kitten-heeled Tokyoite young enough to be her grand-daughter.

Part of our job at The Company was to go to local universities and hand out flyers. The foreign teachers, i.e., the Ferret and I, though thankfully not together, would be accompanied by the assistant manager who would set up a tressel table for the FT to sit behind while she handed out leaflets and beseeched students to come and talk to the 'foreign teacher'. I would sit there bored while students sailed by, too scared to chat to the performing gaijin seal, although I did have a nice chat with a handsome young man who was an AC/DC fan one time (who else?). The idea was that young people would sign up to come to our eikawa, meaning more money for the school, of course, and we'd have a list of questions that it was kosher to ask prospective students as well as leaflets to give their parents extolling the benefit of regular English lessons. After an hour we'd pack up the tables with prospective sign-ups under our belts and return to the school.

The journey to the college or univesity was either by monorail or bus. And it was on such a trip that I had one of the few by-chance conversations with a Japanese person; that is, someone who was clearly aware that I was a foreigner, but didn't treat me like a freak. New boy Jay, my replacement - who quit after two months because the atmosphere at work sucked - was accompanying me as was the new assistant manager, a mousy type who, despite being excellent at English, has rarely left Japan. I was sitting in front of the two of them and was showing Jay some photos, which included some children from my family. As they were handed back to me an old lady sitting beside me leant over, and this is where our conversation started. In Japanese, of course:

OL Are those your children? They're sweet!
Me No, that's my sister's little boy and those are my dad's children.
OL looks surprised when I mentioned my dad's children.
Me My dad has a young wife.
OL Oh, I see. Interesting.

By now I'd handed her the photos as she was clearly interested in the kids.

OL Do they live in Japan?
Me Oh no, they live in London.
OL And are you from London?
Me Yes, but I've been in Japan for 18 months.
OL Do you live here?
Me Yes, but I'm going home next week. Sorry, I don't speak Japanese very well.
OL No, you speak very well.
Me Thank you very much.

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turning round I saw AM, bright red, grimacing and nearly in tears. What are you doing? she demanded. Well, chatting to this lady, I replied. But you're showing her your photos! Why are you doing that? Did you just start talking to her? AM went ito a spasm, apologising to the poor old lady who simply fancied a chat. Explaining to the annoying and controlling young woman that she was making a fool out of all three of us fell on deaf, but still very embarrassed, ears.

Why did she do that? And is this normal behaviour? I wonder how much of the national psyche is still bound up with sakoku and sees foreigners as evil black ships. For those who don't know, Japan closed itself to the outside world for three hundred years from the sixteenth century until the 1850's. This period was known as sakoku. This period, though isolating, was long enough to allow Japan to develop a completely unique culture and, admirably, it managed to hold off foreign invasion, physical and spiritual. In 1854 when the Americans sailed into Tokyo Bay in four black ships, the kuro fune, and demanded that the country open up as a stepping stone to China, it must've been a scary day. Of course, the great majority of Japanese people think this was a great thing in retrospect and are keen to travel abroad and meet foreigners. Though I can't help but think that some of the attitudes prevalent during sakoku are still lurking, if not the methods of punishment meted out to unexpected foreigners who strayed onto their shore, taught the Japanese language or fraternised with foreigners (death!). This old lady and I certainly felt the crack of the whip for striking up an acquaintance.

While I wasn't happy about the way AM treated me in this instance, I was far angrier with the way that she dealt with this sweet old lady who may never have met a foreigner before, and was patronised by someone who should've been showing her respect.