Gaijin Myths About Japan: The Salaryman

No one type in Japan earns as much discombobulated Gaijin ire as the Salaryman (sarariman). Salarymen are frequently referred to as uncreative, mindless, drones, grunts, alcoholic, misogynist and all that is wrong with Japan. Perhaps there is some measure of truth to these observations. But before we go there, let us shine a light on social-cultural context of the gaijin casting such aspersion in an attempt to understand the behind-the-scenes "how" and "why".

First though, let me be clear about my terminology. I use gaijin as a mildly offensive insult. As you likely know, gaijin is an abbreviation of gaikokujin, "foreigner". Most urban Japanese understand that the contracted version is somewhat abrasive but still use it. In every day conversation, the word is not quite a "nigger", "gringo" or "beaner" but nor is it completely inoffensive. In the right/wrong hands, however, it does become a derogatory term.

My usage is somewhat more specific. In my context, gaijin refers to a stereotypical, willfully ignorant, Anglo-colonial steeped in internet lore on Japan, lacking Japanese language skills, Japanese peers, friends or community and who feels a strong sense of "us versus them". The gaijin is a type of cultural chauvanist, primarily though not exclusively in his early to mid twenties, s/he is always right, Japan is always wrong, his/her country is the epitome of democracy, human rights and social justice and Japan is a racist hotbed of extremism, thought control and repression.

Sigh. This would not be so depressing if it were not so common.

So gaijin hate salarymen. But why? To me, the salaryman represents everything that the gaijin cannot and will not ever be. As an outsider, suddenly injected into Japanese society the gaijin lacks the educational and social context that his same age peers share. Certainly that is a disadvantage but it is not unique. While the sane viewpoint might be for one to work hard at integrating into the community, establishing friendships and other meaningful relationships, the gaijin scorns these connections as merely obligatory, lacking the organic roots of his/her own experience of community building... 

Which took place in another country and to which s/he is no longer a part...

Irony much?

But for what other reasons does the gaijin hate those besuited office workers? The gaijin, frequently resentful as a result of ongoing culture shock, a lack of language and social skills and limited employment prospects finds him/herself positioned in a field with little prestige or vertical movement. This is not inherently negative, everyone has to earn a living and not everyone is ambitious. Some people just want to pay the rent, have enough food and have something to do everyday. But for the gaijin the salaryman's world is so foreign, governed by obscure sempai/kouhai (senior/junior) rules, mandatory parties, inefficiency, subservience and... sometimes... good pay and twice yearly bonuses. Politics of envy, perhaps?

Next comes the gaijin assertion that salarymen are uniform drones, they all dress the same, have the same haircut and abide by corporate dress policies. There are two problems with this: first, have you ever seen how gaijin dress?

Yeah, that's right, fish out of water, often over-sized, no-currency foreign brand names two years, too late. Have you seen the shoulder pads, mis-matched shirts and ties... have you seen the "hilarious" gag ties, tank tops in late Autumn and sunglasses on subways? I have. And so have the salarymen. Be careful to notice that the object of laughter may well be capable of subjecthood, in spite of being Japanese...

The second problem is that gaijin aside from lack of linguistic proficiency also tend to be context blind. A black suited salaryman is a black suited salaryman, right? Look again. Did you notice the angle of the cuts, the fabric type, thickness, durability? Did you have a close look at the stitching on the shirt, the weave, the pattern? Did you notice that all check is not created equal. Can you distinguish between this and last year's check? See overstated the entry level brand name watch on that guy? New to money. See the well made, understated, subtle elegance of the smart phone cover that guy is using? He has been at this a while. 

But the gaijin sees none of this. Even within salarymen there is more diversity than the black suit. Many smaller companies or specific branches of larger companies encourage more creative dress styles as they try to create an image of desirability a means of attracting new recruits. Gaijin frequently do not know how to intperpret such data and assume such salarymen are freaks, hosts or something else other than what they are.

Foreigners in Japan don't have to be gaijin. The first step to giving up gaijin sensibility starts with questioning not only stereotypes but the propensity toward adopting them as valid knowledges. Stay tuned, more on the way.

Gaijin Myths About Japan: An Introduction

A long time ago, scholars and students in “the West” studied East Asia and the Orient. Large quantities of important knowledge were produced by dedicated researchers well before the existence of the internet. The greatest blow to this body of knowledge - ironic since it was steeped in liberal tradition - was its democratization. This occurred in two steps.

First, rising levels of wealth in the west resulted in greater numbers of people began to travel, for pleasure, for new experiences, for commerce and further research. Newly made travelers began to write new narratives freed from the constraints of academia and more in tune with the self discovery spirit of the age. Autobiographical accounts trickled into mainstream media and began to shape the West’s image of “the East” with a speed and reach far exceeding that of traditional academe.

Next came two phases of what we call the internet. The first phase - still relatively obscure, its content limited to those with the money, infrastructure and skills to produce and publish content – developed into a fusion of scholarly knowledge and autobiography as an increasing volume of information became available. These early internet pioneers had a profound impact on the not only the quality of real and useful information but also in developing pseudo-legitimate mythologies.

Without peers, without a community to immediately be challenged by and answer to, such early virtual locales were invested with a weight of authenticity at times somewhat disproportionate to their veracity.

This phase (the Geocities Daze) gave way a common experience of the internet built on social networking technologies and eventually liberated from the desktop by smartphones. This new phase distributed information at a rate and breadth completely outstripping its now rather archaic ancestor. In the first phase, the creation of knowledges, however (im)perfect required a significant investment of time. So too did their acquisition and utilization. However, in the second phase (the Smartphone Daze) as a result of converging technologies (improved search engines, twitter, facebook, aggregate readers etc) new information can be widely disseminated in moments.

Given the capacity for instant feedback/critique it is possible to assume that quality of information may be guaranteed through crowd control. Not unlike Wikipedia. However, as is repeatedly seen, in multiple locations on a daily basis, the sheer volume and variety of information, coupled with an increased tendency toward laziness has resulted in a form of critical blindness. In other words, because of information overload, because of homogenized social communities built on superficial connections, confirmation bias is an all too common feature of contemporary public knowledge production processes.

So what does this have to do with Asia? And what does it have to do with Japan?

I recently read an article in the trash known as Japan Today. A news re-publisher with an extremely toxic and immature comment feature. The article in question can be found here: JT Trash About Teaching English.

A location in which commentators with little to no local language ability or formal/trained educational education experience reheated dated arguments about why “they can’t learn English”.

So why do I care?

I have been living in Japan for over ten years. I have said, read, heard and seen the same trash stereotypes over and over. And the thing is, with so many foreigners orking and living in Japan, you might think that these out of date, at times verging on unbelievable knowledges would have been thoroughly disproved. But as I wrote above, confirmation bias, lack of depth and failure to engage with local communities has seen not only the continuation of these knowledges but their amplification through contemporary internet technologies.

This little feature series is an attempt to address some of them from a long term resident’s perspective. Brace yourself because it is not going to be nice, feelings might be hurt and fantasies popped. Part One: The Salaryman coming soon.

Guilty Gear Location Test: Nagoya

Until the other day, I hadn't been to Kanayama, properly that is, in a number of years. It was quite the nostalgia trip since after a quick stop with a snakey gaijin handler at a Freebell mansion for green gaijin and then a very spartan move in to my own tissue box sized apartment in Iwakura it was one of the first places I visited when I arrived in late March, 2002.

It was with great anticipation that I visited that hub of transport, art and debauchery for  the second round of location tests for Arc System Works' Guilty Gear Xrd (to be released  April 2014). The first thing I noticed on leaving Kanayama station was that although some  hardcore gentrification had occurred around the creation of the Asunal shopping precinct  (imagine one of those airport town shopping/outlet malls transplanted into the middle of an  actual metropolis), the grit, squalor and sleaze, though somewhat anemic compared to its  glory days, remained.

As I exited the station I was greeted with cold clouds, a very worn out homeless man and a  chilling October morning breeze. Further up the road I noticed the queue was already forming.  Sure, I made a few wrong turns in the station (it has been several years and many renovations) but I was still scheduled to arrive at 9:45. Within moments of taking my place  in the line the number of people had doubled. Inside Kanayama Sega, lights, machines, recorded voices  kicked into life and the snaking stream of previously murmuring otaku started to shuffle.



The doors opened at exactly two minutes after ten which suggests one of two things: either the tencho's watch is running late or he just wanted to create a sense of building tension in  a distinctly understated yet polite Japanese fashion.

We poured inside in a mostly orderly fashion, game nerds such as myself split off and headed  up to the 4th floor where the unveiling was to take place. The rest of the crowd (public  holiday, lots of middle and high school kids) flooded into the rhythm games, purikura and UFO catcher prize machines.

Let me take you aside for a moment. Location tests in themselves are special events. They are  a demonstration of a work in progress, usually by top or close-to-top-tier companies. They are exclusive previews of up and coming products a means to a marketing and bug-testing end.  What made this event particularly special to me was that it was being held in Nagoya. These  events usually pass over my humble city, after all, though not small and certainly a  prosperous, rather large city, Nagoya has never had the executive prestige of Tokyo nor the  rough and ready eccentricity of Osaka. Nagoya is a town built on textiles and automobiles,  that's right this is the playground of Toyota.

Nevertheless, a loke-test in my town. Better believe I'd be there (family commitments, work  notwithstanding).

As we snaked up the staircase we soon (this "we" is the crowd I was in) arrived at... well  almost the entrance to where the test was happening. Three or four dudes deep, by stretching  and straining (as in hurting) my neck it was possible to get a glimpse of the screen. Little  by little, I got closer and then was instructed (along with the thirty or so people behind  me) by the tencho to line up "over there". Sigh, right next to an explosively loud  demo/commercial for online Virtua Fighter customisation...

The line moved far more quickly than I thought it would. It seemed that protocol had been  decided. You lose, you go to the end of the line. Winner stays on, head-to-head action only. Talk about doki doki. Let's be honest here. Street Fighter has always been my main game. And I suck at it. The next closest title I am almost proficient at is Persona 4 Arena. Guilty  Gear itself? It's just embarrassing. Nevertheless, I managed to learn a lot during my one  win, one loss and long waiting period.

Let's get it right from the start, in this day of HD remakes (from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure  to Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter III Third Strike), imperfection and "that'll do"  seem to be the overriding sentiments. So-called HD remixes can only do so much with existing  code. Sprites and frames of animation can be re-drawn, semi-funcitonal netcode bolted on and  menus redesigned but a proper fully functioning contemporary remake of an existing FG has yet  to be fully realised. One look at Xrd and you will feel the same as I did: "Wow, someone  finally did this right!"

At first glimpse this is clearly the new standard for anime/air dash fighters. It combines  the (controversial to some players) prestige system of Guilty Gear with (not quite) the  latest technology to produce a highly refined, immersive fighting game experience.



While these days anime/air dash (and similarly inspired) fighters are perhaps exceedingly  common (from Aquapazza to Chaos Code, melty blood etc), none of them is as fully realised as  Xrd.

The newest iteration of Guilty Gear will be a standard to which all others will have to equal  or better as next generation technological standards developed for the new age. Using the Unreal 3D environment engine as its core, it features richly detailed anime style mapping in  a style consistent with the series. The first thing you notice, whether playing or watching  is the just how crisply, fluidly and prettily it runs.

What seals the deal though is actually playing the game. You are in control of protagonists  in a game in which the barrier between anime as a genre of television and its execution  within a playable environment has been removed. Character introduction, winning animations,  special moves and over the top actions extend out of the action on screen and explode into  Japanese anime fluidity, then return seamlessly to the action. The integration between media elements is superb. But this is not the whole story.

While P4U and Blazblue (especially the most recent version of the latter, Chronophantasma)  have moved toward increased visual fluidity as it relates to control inputs, Xrd is clearly  the result they have been aiming for over the last decade or more. When looking back at some  of the earlier 60 fps games such as Third Strike or the older versions it is easy to see  moments of jerkiness when the animated frames and system engine collide, causing cancellation  in visual information in order to accurately execute player inputs. In the past aesthetics  have almost always lost to pragmatics.

In order to have a certain move fully "active" by a certain time and the frames of animation  required to accurately represent this action to the player, concessions must be made. This  results in jerkiness and choppiness. While merely visual it does have the effect of  distancing the player from the visual heart of the game.

But now, with the GG franchise license back in their hands and considerably more processing  power under their belts, ArcSys are working hard on matching, balancing visual information  with play information in ways previously impossible. The results are stunning.

Cannot wait for the next loke test in my backyard.