Japanese perceptions

How do we perceive the Japanese? My own image of the Japanese evolved over a long period. I guess my first awareness of their existence was from the pages of children’s’ comics in which they were depicted as buck toothed, bespectacled little runty soldiers who were very cunning, but ultimately foolish and easy to defeat as they were too small to stand up to our huge western blokes who were all built like brick privies. What a load of crap!

The next stage would be when we watched films like ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ and ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence’. These depicted the Japanese as brutal, unflinching, tough and also a bit human. We would still have been justified in distrusting them if this were the only knowledge of them that we had, however, as most of our stereotypes of the Japanese are present in these films.

My own more in-depth knowledge of the Japanese started when I began learning Aikido many years ago. Kanetsuka sensei was the representative of the Honbu Dojo in Britain and he was very human, affable and talented. He was also a consummate womanizer and liked a drink. It was because of Aikido and the large number of books and Japanese films I had experienced, that I first decided to come to Japan. So, has my perception of the Japanese changed much since I started living here? Yes, I guess it has.

To most westerners, the Japanese appear as highly inscrutable, wise Orientals who know secrets of Zen and the Way of Harmony that we can only guess at. We can never be like them as they are so otherworldly and different from our own mindset and culture. I think that this is merely what they want us to believe. Anyone from outside who wants to be accepted as a member of Japanese society and goes to a great deal of trouble to do so…. Is aff their heid! What possible advantage could their be to adopting a culture that tortures its own members to such a degree that record numbers of them commit suicide every year? At what point does the ordinary teenager on the street, raised on a diet of Playstation, pot noodles, crap TV programmes and baseball, become immured in the deep cultural identity that stretches back through the mists of time and culminated in the study of Zen and the way of the sword?…… Never! They never gain that deep insight into the universe that we assign to them as they are members of Japanese society. They may know certain things that we will never know, but that is more likely to do with the level of politeness required when speaking to a manure shoveller than anything esoteric and weird. Honestly, they are just people with many of the faults, failings and fine qualities that the rest of us have, added to which, they are spoiled, arrogant, xenophobic and childish, (not all of them, this is a generalization). Japan has been described as the only non-communist collective society on the planet, and I think that it is true. The group mind thing is very powerful and woe betide anyone who goes against the status quo. If you don’t know what to do in a given situation, don’t panic as their will be an announcement over the Tannoy to tell you when to leave the park or when to stop working in the fields and go and eat lunch. It is really amazing what the people here put up with when it comes to official interference in their everyday lives.