I recently viewed this appropriation of the Jay-Z
song title over at Japologism (formerly Tepido). The context of this rather
pithy one liner is an ongoing discussion around issues of belonging and
exclusion in Japan for
predominantly Anglosphere immigrants in Japan. At the heart of this
discussion is a tension arising from a growing critical counter voice to
popular/widespread/dominant Anglosphere knowledge on Japan.
This polyvocal position consists of mostly Anglosphere
immigrants who have resided in Japan
for significant periods of time, who frequently possess Japanese language
literacy and often have made the commitment to call Japan “home”. It is a position criticized
by the “old guard” gatekeepers of English knowledge on Japan whose positions,
like their oppositional counterparts are complex, are frequently of a Western
universalist position in which Western institutions of politics, law and human
rights are posited as original and uniquely correct articulations. The result
is that local articulations are accorded an inferior position and can only ever
have inferior truth value and legitimacy. Any position falling outside of this
framework is dogmatically posited as being “apologist”.
In my mind the tension between these two positions
can be distilled as follows:
Expat versus Immigrant
The economic and military of the Anglosphere West
created a global context in which the expat laborer was created. S/he jets out
to a foreign land, frequently outside of the Anglosphere and arrangements such
as housing, transportation and amenities are made by the company for a seamless
transition of the worker from “here” to “there”. In many cases the expat worker
is able to live in a strictly delimited community of peers with similar
interests and aims while performing their work on foreign soil. S/he is able to
return home at the end of a contract with minimal impact on the host culture,
some pleasant (and often not so pleasant). The expat is a longer term tourist
who frequently refuses local linguistic capability and has little opportunity
for preconceptions and stereotypes to be unpicked by discourse with locals.
The immigrant on the other hand is a traveler who has
decided to make the new local, a new home. S/he may start out as an expat or a
tourist but for various reasons finds her/himself in a position where returning
“home” is no longer relevant. Naturally, the type of home created and the path
taken to permanent residency and naturalisation is dependent on the type of immigrant,
the experience of Anglosphere immigrants is starkly different to that of
Eastern European women, Chinese factory workers, Nikkei Brazilians and long
term Zainichi Koreans and Chinese to name a few. Nevertheless this type of
immigrant identity is characterized by a sense of becoming, a movement away
from foreigner and toward resident and citizen.
To summarize: belonging is a complex and difficult
issue for both expat and immigrant, however, the process of belonging and the
commencement of an authentic local identity appears to be largely dependent on the
concept, location and prospect of home. For the expat, belonging is neither a
priority nor a necessity. For the immigrant it is an inevitability. Belonging
is always a process, it is never complete. It is a constant negotiation.
Linguistic Capability
The extent to which an immigrant (of either type
mentioned above) attains local linguistic capability is a primary determinant
of her/his ability to integrate into a community and find home. The dominant
Anglosphere knowledges on Japan
(which is invariably portrayed as weird, wacky, high tech and kinky) tend to
draw on the same pool of translated information. As is the case in the present
age, it takes only moments for information to gain currency and veracity
through frequency and density of representation. Tracking down original sources
can be quite difficult and for the dominant Anglosphere knowledge maker a brick
wall of linguistic incompetence further frustrates the situation.
This linguistic incompetence is further compounded on
a daily basis as her/his various interactions are mediated and translated.
Glimpses of complex truths are viewed through lenses of incomplete
comprehension and further interpreted by individuals within a matrix of exclusion,
exceptionalism and hierarchy. The failure to integrate with community outside
of the expat demarcations allows half-truths and interpretations to be
perpetuated through un-reflexive repetition. This in turn is played out on a
larger scale within the informational world of the internet where negativity as
an outcome of culture shock, dislocation and exclusion is the primary mode.
The linguistically competent immigrant on the other
hand, has her/his identity shaped by daily interactions in the language of the
local. S/he is able to grasp first hand, without mediation local knowledges and
issues. S/he frequently inhabits a context in which various issues, behaviours
and events can be discussed and analysed from multiple view points. And while
life may not be inherently any more/less sweet for the linguistically capable
(after all, most of us could do with more money, more time, more peace, less
stress and more love) it is easier to go about developing a rich and authentic,
complex local identity.
Authenticity
This is one of the most contested areas of the
expat/immigrant debate. Anglosphere immigrants (especially when of the
ethnically white variety) tend to be monolingual and have enjoyed the benefits
of cultural superiority find adopting local culture and customs difficult if
not impossible. They see local behavior as beneath them, uncivilized and
improper. They frown upon those immigrants who do make attempts to participate
in their new culture.
Perhaps the pain of participation results from a
primal human condition of shame. Adopting the unfamiliar requires an act of
vulnerability, a giving up of the individual’s long held position in order to
enter into the unknown. This type of shame and anger is frequently seen by the
outbursts and red faces of white men as they loudly disapprove of their peers’
participation in distinctly Japanese cultural spaces from sports, to dress and
traditional arts. After all, the Anglosphere has a long tradition of expressing
disapproval of those who have “gone local” and thus “diluting/polluting” their
original culture.
The other issue at stake is fixation. In the mind of
the expat, the other is a fixed, known quantity it is defined against the known
self, hybridity is not only considered undesirable but impossible. For many who
have inhabited the heart of colonial empires, hybridity is akin to pollution,
it is inauthentic and morally improper. They are them and we are us, superior.
Yet what many of these old men (though there are
women and younger people caught up in this logic too, physical age is not
always the best indicator of mental age) forget or are ignorant of is the speed
and flexibility of the children of immigrants in regards to hybridity and
becoming one, becoming other, both and neither. Youth the world over assimilate
novelty and subject it to repetitive and rigorous, playful interpretation and
reconstruction. The father and son live on the same planet but their life
worlds are distinctly different. If only the Anglosphere universalist was
capable of such intellectual and psychological reflexivity, perhaps (mostly)
his passage through the place that is not home would be smoother, happier and
more integrated.
The results.
Currently Anglosphere universalists are engaged in a
dogmatic dismissal of complex becoming other immigrant positions. They reject
the possibility of becoming other and see social change only if it can be
imposed from above. The Anglosphere universalist further isolates himself from
both mainstream immigrant experience as well as vanguard thought as he wraps
himself in second hand knowledge and unbalanced despair at the hands of
cultural chauvinism. The conclusion here is exclusion and the perpetuation of a
gaijin identity apparently worthy of protection and promotion. But time is not
on his side.
As China’s
economic, social and political relevance continue to expand and influence
Japanese affairs and former Anglosphere knowledge exclusivity about Japan is flattened
by mass availability on the internet, we can see a changing landscape for Anglosphere
immigrant. The old monolithic expert voice is being reduced to relic status and
myriad, polyglossal, integrated, hybrid identities take his place.
