Letting Go

Why do I find it so hard to cut my ties to Japan?  I’m Gaijin – an outsider, living in a very old village with locals who will never accept me - heck, they still consider Japanese who fled here during World War II as newcomers.  The real locals have lived here for at least 20 generations. And now it looks like the Japanese man who is buying my beautiful, traditional Japanese home will be shunned by these villagers, simply because his ancestors in the Edo Period (1600 – 1868) were butchers or undertakers.

How can Japan be so screwed up, so bent on hierarchy and yet so addictive? What do I love about this country? 

My husband and I recently moved to Australia after living in Japan for 27 years. Being back in a Western culture, it’s a bit easier to pin point why we stayed in Japan for so long and to see how Japan has molded us into people who no longer quite fit into Western culture either.

One friend summarised the difference as follows: In Japan, even if someone is having a bad day, we won’t know about it. In the West, people’s frustrations are much more public. An example of this is the contrast we saw between our furniture removalists in Japan and Australia. The Japanese workers took 3 days to carefully wrap each item and to maximise how much we could get into the 20-foot container. We had some difficult, heavy things to ship, such as our 200 kg dining table and a piano but, the Japanese workers worked hard, they had great systems in place and all went smoothly. 

Our Australian furniture removalists allowed one day to unpack and it began very well.  When I expressed my surprise that they did not have any braces or belts to carry heavy things, they bragged that with their muscles, it would be “easy as.”  Enthusiastically, they borrowed my scissors and ripped boxes open, unconcerned about damaging a few things in their haste. By lunch time, they were tiring and their enthusiasm was gone. The piano and table remained in the truck.

“You’re not getting your table or the piano,” the boss removalist told me matter-of-factly. “Workplace health and safety regulations won’t cover my men to carry heavy things upstairs.” I was stunned; both because our whole renovation revolved around our dining table, and more so by the removalist’s manner. I mentioned that Japanese removalists had moved our table and piano to 3 different houses in Japan and added that I have a photo of one man, alone, with our table base strapped to his body going up and down stairs. That seemed to sting their egos enough that three of them got the table up to our apartment on a blanket. I congratulated them and tried to encourage them to continue but it was nearing “beer o’clock” and the boss kept badgering me “is there anything else?” When I replied that there was still a lot to be done and that we had payed for everything to be unpacked, he countered that he had to ensure his boys would be fit for the job he had lined up the following day so he would not have them work more than 8 hours. In retrospect, maybe I should have acted in a more Australian way – shown him the contract to unpack everything, threatened to sue or raised my voice in anger but 27 years in Japan taught me that open aggression or confrontation is never appropriate. I remained calm and tried to resolve things but maybe that annoyed him even more than if I’d returned his abrasive ways. With the piano abandoned in the carpark below and an apartment full of unpacked boxes, they left. His parting words were “I don’t give a shit if you won’t sign off.”

So, one reason I’m struggling to cut my ties with Japan comes down to the relatively bad customer service one experiences outside Japan.

Another reason life in Japan can be so addictive is the low crime rate and freedom that brings.  If I leave my purse somewhere public, chances are I’ll get it back – with the money still in it.  As parents, we were not tied to driving our children to and from school or their various after-school activities – they walked or rode their bicycles. From six years old, it’s common for children to be home alone and this isn’t illegal or considered as neglectful. Rather, it’s seen as building a child’s independence. The Japanese education process focuses a lot on teamwork and thinking of others, rather than individualism. This helps build a society where people tend to be clean and quiet so as not to inconvenience others. As teenagers, our two daughters could stay out late and ride their bicycles or take a train home alone. Drug and alcohol usage amongst teenagers is much less common than in Australia so that made it less stressful for us as parents too.   

A third reason I’m probably reluctant to cut our ties with Japan is that we have led relatively luxurious lives there – not being bound by expectations thrust upon Japanese, and often given an easy ride, simply because we are white, and native speakers of English. For 27 years, I’ve relied on others to help me read and write Japanese, and no one is critical of my incompetence even after all these years.  I’m pretty sure that very few people would be so accommodating if my Korean and Chinese friends living in Japan asked for similar help.

A few years back, a neighbour was lamenting that house prices in our neighbourhood were going to drop because a Chinese man had bought the house opposite hers! When I replied that my foreign presence could, likewise, lead to a drop in house prices, she was quick to disagree. We were white, English speakers – definitely higher status in her mind and she did not see any political incorrectness in her remarks. 

My little village in Japan is dying, just like so many other villages in Japan. From outward appearances, the houses are run down and the farmers are increasingly frail. The young people are caught between a thousand years of family traditions and the more individualistic values of modern society. With some families going back over forty generations – literally living with the same neighbors for over a thousand years and farming the same soil – it can be stifling. One has to be very careful to keep relations sweet as moving out is not an option. The old, grumpy men who rule this little fiefdom would rather let it die than risk outsiders coming in and upsetting their ways. There’s also a lot of money at stake in opening up to newcomers. Having sold the mountainside that became Saito town, these families and their Jijikai (community group) became flush with money which they promptly hid. It seems that new members of the jijikai could be entitled to some of that money so, even though no new membership means certain death for the village, the entrance door to the jijikai centre is kept tightly bolted.