Description


This article is from the American misconceptions about Japan FAQ, by Tanaka Tomoyuki ez074520@dilbert.ucdavis.edu with numerous contributions by others.

US media coverage of Japan is a major obstacle to... non-Japanese's understanding of Japan (American misconceptions about Japan)

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Date: Wed, 26 Oct 94 14:52:21 -0400
From: < mr_x@phantom.com> 
To: tanaka@indiana.edu
Subject: US-Japan imagined differences

Thank you for your posts about portrayals that seek to
"pigeonhole" US and Japanese characteristics of culture.

For five years, I lived in northern Japan near the JASDF "Misawakichi" and I realized that what I had been taught about Japanese was very wrong. There are many elements of human behavior that are the same around the world, for example, the attention given to children, or wage labor practices.

Nothing was "inscrutable" about the Japanese. Behavior, opinions, and feelings might be expressed differently, but it was just as easy to gauge these in Japanese people as in US people. [...]

(this above and other Usenet materials (those that
require permission to quote) are quoted by permission.)

C. Douglas Lummis (professor of political philosophy at Tsuda
College in Tokyo) writes in a book published in 1981.
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(C. dagurasu ramisu. "nai-naru gaikoku: KIKU TO KATANA saikou".
jiji-tuusin-sha. 1981. Pages 43--65.
back-translated into English by Tanaka ---
I believe the original English manuscript is lost.)

From time to time people ask me, "What were your first
impressions of Japan?" I remember them very well. In 1960 I
came to Japan aboard a personnel carrier ship of the U.S.
Marines heading for Okinawa. [...]

When I first came to Japan, I was completely ignorant about
the country --- at least at the time I thought I was. I had not
read a single book on Japan, and going to Japan was not by my
choice; it was by the orders of the U.S. Government. [...]

I was indeed ignorant, but my ignorance had a definite structure
and content. In reality I "knew" a variety of of things about
Japan --- not from studying about Japan, but from simply living
in the USA for 23 years. Numerous images and concepts about
Japan exist in the American culture, and form a part of that
culture, which people who grow up in the USA automatically
absorb. 20 years later, it is an interesting exercise to
remember what kind of preconceptions I had at the time. By
remembering them I can perhaps give the reader some impressions of the nature of education the USA has given to its citizens about Japan during 1936--1960. [...]

Inside the Americans' heads there existed several images of
"Japan" simultaneously:
--- the diminishing wartime image of "Yellow Peril"
--- the image of occupied Japan, "bright and diligent student of
Douglas MacArthur's"
--- the "Made in Japan" image (cheap and often faulty products)
--- for a few people the image of "Exotic Orient", going back to
Lafcadio Hearn.
In the mid-50s there appeared a new image: that of Japan as the country of Zen. [...]
GIs' heaven (occupied Japan) [...]

I can go on, but I hope the reader already sees that when I
came to Japan in 1960, I was "completely ignorant" about the
country, and that state of "complete ignorance" is totally
different from that of a blank paper (tabula rasa) you can
write anything on. My mind was filled with stereotypes and
images about a country somewhat like Japan, a country which is called "Japan" in the USA, but which exists not in Asia but
only as an artifact of American culture --- my mind was full of
attitudes and prejudices toward that country. Many of these
images were closely linked to my own culture and to myself. To
actually set foot in Japan was the beginning of a long battle
between those preconceptions and my real experiences.
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because US media is so powerful and influential, these negative images are also exported to the rest of the world. I have met people from India with these same American stereotypes for Japanese: sly and sneaky.