One thing at a time I – Go Back to the Start.

Home is a concept with special meaning for us all. I say “concept” and not “reality” (though the two are not always so easily divided) because it is important to draw attention to the cognitive, imagined dimension. To focus on the imagined dimension of home is to foreground the fact that home is equally made in the spaces of the mind as it is in physical spaces. However, this narrowing must come with a qualification: even while the individual (whether alone or as a member of a family or other community unit) is responsible for an individual concept of home his/her acts of imagination are as within a matrix of social and cultural influences. The home ideas of others, especially those with the privileges of dominant representation overlap and resonate on each other and on our own. Our concepts, of home or otherwise, are rarely wholly original and free from the fragments of others. We make our homes in the shadows of ideas cast by others as they make theirs in ours.

Home has always felt like an act for me. Perhaps this is because I moved away from my original domicile at the relatively early age of sixteen. I metaphorically wandered for several years until I stumbled on an academic path that would equip me with the intellectual tools necessary for apprehending my immediate reality. I gained home making narratives of others, particularly those of local Bundjalung Aborigines. They taught me that the places on which social and cultural institutions had been placed had a longer history and the very soil itself possessed memories of a belonging based on something other than colonization and empire building. Another concept of significant resonance to me was a Koori sense of time in which the past persists into the present. Anglo-sphere colonial narratives, rooted in traditions of documented lineage, force time into a narrow, linear, consecutive idea giving primacy to the knowledges that came before. Thus allowing an inhabited land to be declared terra nullius.

Being in a space, performing life over time creates place. The rhythm and repetition of the familiar and the strange to the point that it becomes familiar are the actions of making home. Where we place ourselves is where we make home. A concept of self is performed constantly always becoming in the milieu of space, place and people. Rarely do we have the opportunity to properly reflect on this process and it is unusual for many to perform explicitly, with purpose and consciousness. Which is not to devalue unconscious participation, since to do so merely buys into the oppressive language of binaries established by others for specific colonizing purposes. Perhaps it is more accurate to say we all possess differing degrees to which we feel “at home” so that the experience for some appears entirely natural and unquestioned (although it is not, it has in fact become that way through performances executed without friction from institutions of authority.) For others, such as myself, being at home is a deliberate act based on calculation and analysis.

This latter type of becoming at home faces the criticism, usually in the form of anti-intellectual interjection, as a kind of cynical artifice. To be obstinate, one could rightly claim that “natural” belonging is equally calculated as a person in possession of such feeling has been created and creates him/herself in a context conducive to prosperity. This is a position arrived at in order to perpetuate certain types of social and cultural hegemony, again not inherently negative yet nevertheless real. For those not positioned within this center, belonging and home must be constructed along different lines and so we return to the explicit performativity mentioned above.

Relocating to Japan required a sacrifice of the home cache that I had created over time in Australia. On a molecular level, it is unquestionable that the space of my former home and I are interconnected. Yet distance, both temporal and spatial, combined with other resonances such as relationship, food and ceremony in a different space have changed the quality of that feeling to such an extent that the place to which I refer to above persists only as memory. Even as I reside within the same cartographical coordinates, time, people and the world have moved on. The place has changed as much as I have and I was not there to see it.

It took considerable time for me to send out tender shoots of belonging into the social and cultural of earth of my new home in Japan. Naturally, I experienced various symptoms of culture shock. More accurately, I experienced cultural dislocation. The key strategy for opening up a dialectics of becoming between personal identity and a new landscape was that of language acquisition. Each new word, inflection and exchange between me and the locals was a branching out, a fixing of me in this new place. As my proficiency increased so did my sense of belonging. What had simply been unfiltered linguistic noise was now a tapestry of words defining place, time and the flavour of the place I lived. I no longer required the cognitive constructs of gaijin that I had naively relied on in the past, since I possessed the power of language. I became able to deconstruct in real time, based on experiences in the every day present the internal construction of Japan based on foreign knowledges and compounded by those gaijin unable, unwilling and uninterested in learning how to belong.

This resulted in a profound life change. After all, as I daily became more of this place in terms of a feeling of belonging, so too was I in a sense, becoming Japanese. Before proceeding, a cautionary note. This is a complex topic and I speak only from my own personal experience. I want to make it explicit that I am originally of the post-Imperial Anglosphere, that is, I am originally a monolingual, white Australian. This is important and although I only touch on it here I will write about it in an upcoming piece on the problematics of “authenticity”. When I say, “becoming Japanese” I do not intend the phrase to mean that I deliberately adopt behaviours and practices in order to be perceived as authentically Japanese. Instead, I refer to an ongoing process in which daily life, lived with reflexivity and curiosity produces countless opportunities to apprehend and comprehend cultural complexities of a host nation as an immigrant. As I undo my preconceptions of the world and myself so too do I create a field of belonging, a Japanese version of myself.

In this regard, my Japanese-ness does not require legitimation or validation. It may be judged and evaluated but the aim is and was never to slide myself into a popular or accepted, local or foreign construct of being Japanese. It is an intimate, subtle and reflexive personal expression. It is not, however, free from moments of awkwardness, shame and misunderstanding. But then again, life was like that before I ever came to Japan.

One of my greatest disappointments in Japan is the way that the majority of voices have constructed the interstitial migrant-becoming-Japanese in such limited terms. There remains an undercurrent of transience and distrust relating to issues of authenticity. A linguistic divide functions as a cognitive divide. Within the parameters of this construct, Japan can only ever be negatively deconstructed. The irony being that the deconstructers frequently rely on fixed, romanticized constructs of distant, pseudo perfect homelands. In other words, they render the complexity of the original home to the same sort of fixed, fetishised knowledge that they possess on Japan and engage in a lopsided version of the glass bead game whereby the odds are stacked against the society they chose to be in and choose not to belong to.

Just Stop It – Yeah, you Debito!

In 2010-2011 a good friend of mine visited Japan and taught Australian Studies at Todai (Tokyo University). I was overjoyed because it had been some time since I had last seen him and also because in addition to being highly astute he is a great conversationalist. Finally, someone with whom I could share my own experiences of living in Japan (coming up on close to ten years altogether). What was so refreshing about the limited conversations we had was his total lack of bitterness prevalent among gaijin. As I have written elsewhere there is a general persistent malaise infecting Anglosphere gaijin in Japan, a malaise that might correctly be diagnosed as a failure to recognise the limits of their cultural universality and the resultant bitterness that manifests as they are trapped within a hyper-speed game of conceptual Pong in which they are always on the losing team.

An admission: I have had moments of bitterness. While I take full responsibility for them, I am also able to locate, on reflection their origins: the miasma of self-perpetuating “opinion” offered up as knowledge across what seems to be the entire English-language internet relating to Japan. In other words, going online for help resulted in self-fulfilling, paranoid and unreconstructed retreads of other people’s stories. What is worse, is that a number of supposedly authoritative online voices from high profile activists such as Arudo Debito seem to relish in and gleefully spread cynical screeds against issues that with a little more thought and a tad more contextual awareness would not be as difficult or terrible as they make out.

Debito is an odd bird. On emigrating to Japan he eventually attained naturalised Japanese citizenship, quite a rare feat for a Westerner. Indeed, his precedent, along with his civic-rights-oriented activist bent caused him to rise to some degree of fame. His fifteen minutes came when he won a lawsuit against a Hokkaido hot springs owner who had denied him and one of his daughters entry on grounds of race. But it seems that Debito’s hunger for fame or at least admiration as a vanguard activist eclipsed his capacity for considered reflection and contextual awareness. A casual read of his blog reveals a number of interesting and high profile stories to do with illegal discrimination and everyday life in Japan. The blog also seems regularly frequented by a number of people with similar interests. However, with sustained, continuous engagement it begins to be possible to locate an underlying bitterness and personal dissatisfaction that quite clearly colours his writings. What had started out as spotlighting and acting on injustice has turned into smug, chauvinistic critique.

In his latest Japan Times column “These are a few of my favourite things in Japan” in the semi-regular opinion series “Just Be Cause,” Debito employs a spot of silver tonguing in an attempt to both “be positive” and offer salient critique. Indeed, the former idea is a rather antiquated internet discussion rhetorical device frequently employed by those inclined to plead “but you never say anything good” or “If it’s so bad, just go home”. As for the latter, observation has always been Debito’s strong suit, critique, less so. Both combined make for a dire reading experience in which each compliment appears poisoned by an invisible yet omnipresent sarcastic smirk. One further issue is his flippant disregard of Japanese satire and the role of irony/sarcasm in Japanese society.

While correct in asserting a lack of emphasis on sarcasm as a legitimate means of communicating humour or social analysis, he fails to tell us just why it matters. After all, he points out how Anglosphere cultures have a rich tradition of sarcasm and stinging social critique, but fails to let us know that a lot of this critique has its origins in class politics as a way of shoring up class hierarchies and dismissing lower class cultural practice. In fact I would be more interested in his take on social critique from a Japanese perspective in relation to Anglosphere critique and ironic modes of humour. But then again, whenever Debito writes, it is always from the location of a particular kind of gaijin crystallised in time and place, a kind of outsider who knows more than his green-behind-the-ears fan base but seems incapable of getting inside a local, cultural perspective. While clearly proficient in Japanese to a certain level, Debito appears to be culturally illiterate when it comes to examining similar phenomena from different cultural perspectives.

Obviously, his latest column is supposed to be an exercise in humour and appeal to the gaijin readership of the Japan Times. In such a genre, he hardly has the time or space to address in detail any of the critiques I have raised here. It would be nice, however, to see writing from such a prominent gaijin who attained permanent residency in 1996 and citizenship in 2000. That is a long time to hold onto such limited outsider concepts at the expense of digging deep into the local mind beyond adversarial escapades in so-called activism. Why not start writing in Japanese? Why not start engaging with actual local community beyond the gaijin Anglosphere, in their own language. So in regards to the shots fired at Japan from an American distance away, I say, “Stop it, Debito, just stop it!” If you want to have any relevance at all in terms of Japan’s multicultural future, you may need to redraft your terms of war. In fact, leave the war behind and make peace. Dude.

Discombobulated Gaijin: Serial Extrapolatahs!

A recent encounter with immigration control at Narita Airport in Japan saw so-called journalist Chris Johnson lose his mind and his credibility in an online reputation feeding frenzy. Johnson’s claim was that Japanese immigration, staffed with foreigners improperly detained him, at gunpoint at one point, forced him to buy a ticket back home and impugned upon his human rights. What was fascinating about this whole affair was the degree to which he publicized his encounter with enough hyperbole, exaggeration and slippery almost-truths and somehow believed in this day in age that people would not notice. The usual suspects noticed, of course, the one time activist, now one sided crusader Debito did. So too did the Asian branch of The Economist online. They furthered his cause, consoled his burnt soul and cried against the injustice perpetrated against him. A circle of “gaijin” news watching friends and allies tightened around him and lent moral support. And then a few skeptics dared to chime in. Writers at Tepido and Fucked Gaijin and later again at Japan Probe noticed some inconsistencies, a number of the almost truths alluded to above and fatally, a number of outright lies that might at best be called distortions and obfuscations of the truth. Johnson did not help matters by creating multiple user handles at at least two different comment sections on different websites and exacerbated matters by embarking on a stunning self-censorship campaign: re-calibrating facts, removing claims and deleting tweets in order to smooth out a very lumpy, malodorous narrative.

As it stands, whatever the truth of his encounter at Narita, his multithreaded online exposition made very liberal use of a very broad definition of truth as what appears to be an exercise in self promotion. But I want to talk about something different.

Dipping back into the online “gaijin” world for the first time in years was a troubling experience. But first some context. There are numerous expatriate type support sites throughout the internet and each presents its own uniquely configured take on the reality of life in Japan for the foreigner. In the past this writer had daily frequented some of them and has cast an eye on many more. In addition to a wealth of information pertaining to daily life, these forums and blogs often have areas for venting, where expats have a chance to express their frustrations with cultural difference, linguistic isolation and in some cases, their first experience of being an ethnic/cultural/religious club member.

What has happened over the years is that some locations have come and gone, yet whether in presence or absence, the knowledge created within their boundaries has congealed into what I call “gaijin gospel”. Gaijin gospel refers to the body of knowledge created predominantly by non-Japanese speaking, most frequently Anglosphere, foreigners.

You will notice that I did not use the more formal or “correct” Japanese term for foreigner, gaikokujin. That is because the more informal, exclusive version gaijin, meaning “outsider” more accurately gels with the perspective that has been created over time. While not exactly on par with the word “nigger”Gaijin gospel is a peculiar phenomenon in that many of its proponents are transient, yet as a knowledge it continues to live on, quoted, ricocheted and tossed around the internet. Long after the gaijin gospeller has packed up and gone home his (usually male) perspective lives on and shapes future gaijin mindsets in the bodies of real, live, actual humans coming to Japan. Wave after wave of similarly inscribed or soon to be inscribed gaijin turn up every year to experience a particular version of Japanese culture which they then bring home with them. Rinse and repeat.

What I particularly want to touch on is the gaijin propensity for unproblematic transfer of uncritical universalism to a foreign cultural context. Put your knives away, modernists and post- haters, I’ll have none of that here, thank you. Accusations of relativism will not be permitted. You’re gonna need more than slogans around here.

What I mean is that there is a tendency for the gaijin to bring his (yes, him again) concepts of Law and Justice (admire those uppercase initials!) to Japan, as universal givens. That’s right, the West is best and to hell with the rest, right? No, wrong. You see, while elements of Japanese law and justice may well draw on Western tradition, the law and more importantly its application in the Japanese context could not be further from the truth. So when a gaijin finds himself on the wrong side of the law, for whatever reason, he (yeah, that guy) frequently appeals to the system/logic that he knows best: his own. The only problem is that his own, wherever it may be from and in spite of its protestations of universality, simply ain’t the law of the land. His usual range of responses, from bickering, violent confrontation, physical threats just do not work. Not only do they not work in a legal sense (try getting into a street/bar fight in Japan and just see who gets into the most trouble, regardless of “who started it”), they are also culturally inappropriate and serve only to land him in deeper trouble.

Distilled? You lose your cool, you lose.

Gaijin do not like to have their rights to liberty infringed. They can be very vocal (in English of course) in spite of remaining for the most part ignorant of the whole context. Remember when you were a child and in a dark room you could convince yourself of seeing a ghost if you tried hard enough? Just like that.

Occasionally you see signs like “Japanese Only” or “No Foreigners” in Japan. To the gaijin, these are red flags, a profound experience of segregation and discrimination on par with what happened in the lead up to the civil rights movement in the US and Aborigines being classified as human in Australia. He is outraged and emboldened to act, he steams, rants, boycotts and challenges the owner. Growl! Roar! But if he is sensitive enough, he might just notice context burbling up from a manhole nearby. Context is the history of action and actors in space and time. And context says that surely, there must be a reason for this sign. In fact, that reason can be most effectively summed up by a term found in the urban dictionary: gaijin smash.

Indulge me some cut and paste (edited for spelling).

Gaijin Smash

A technique used by foreigners, or gaijin, in Japan in order to impose their will on the Japanese.

"he upgraded himself to a first-class seat by using the Gaijin Smash"

The willful breaking of Japanese convention rules by one who is not Japanese (a foreigner cf. a gaijin)

I know its a red light, but I'm going to cross the road anyway, gaijin smash style.

I'm going to gaijin smash that red light.

To art of getting away with douchebaggery in Japan and being an ignorant obnoxious foreigner by simply pulling a gaijin smash on their Japanese asses when the shit hits the fan

"I was supposed to give up my priority seat on the train to that old bag but I totally gaijin smashed her ass and acted like I didn't know what the fuck she was bitching at me about"

The gaijin smash, coming to a bar, restaurant, convenience store, rented apartment, car dealership, school, workplace and even MacDonald’s near you. When you have one gaijin do his smash in a bar of twenty people once. That is an unpleasant evening. Then another one or even the same one does it again next week. Ninety-five percent or more of your paying customers are Japanese who have never once in your ten years of operation felt the need to do a “smash” of some sort, no matter how inebriated. They pay your bills, feed you, put the kids through school. That loud-ass gaijin on the other hand? Fuck ‘im. More trouble than he is worth. Let’s just ban them, then?

The sentiment is understandable. Unfair, but not impossible, even for the most ardent, pig-headed gaijin to accept. Now, if said smashing gaijin were to speak Japanese, return to the scene of the crime and sincerely apologise, the ban might well be lifted. After all, it was just a big misunderstanding. Who knows? But it is context that matters, not random events in a vacuum interpreted through a lens of universalism.

Indeed, it is this appreciation of context that endears me to living in Japan. So too the wiggle room in the law which places more emphasis on out of court reconciliation and less on minute encodings of acceptable practices into legal precedent. Japan might appear a very orderly society and that is because it is. But what the gaijin has failed to realize is that while social convention in Japan is overcoded, the law is not. This writer is not saying that Japan is problem free, or that it is some kind of utopia. This writer does, however, argue that a different concept of human rights and discrimination operates that differs from that created by the West for the rest.

So next time you get all red faced and angry, go home and study some kanji. Talk to the neighbour and take some knitting lessons at the community centre. You just might find that there is more to life in Japan than getting your rage on.

Here it is again, as an equation:

Engagement at a distance utilizing exclusive universalism demeans the recipient and diminishes the actor.