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Special Thanks to Mr. Dan Edward Venz for allowing this book to be viewed at no cost on the internet.
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- A "First of its kind" book about being a Gaijin in Japan!
- Finally! Someone tells it like it is!
- The most in depth book about foreigners living in Japan ever written!
- Take off your "Rose Tinted" glasses before you start reading this book!
Gaijin In Japan
Chapter 9
Affirming and Challenging
Affirmation processes are esteem-building strategies that counter-balance the minimization of self-required through placating. In fact, the more alienated a person realizes that they are, the more intense the affirmation process tends to be.
The immediate psychological strategies of absorbing, forgiving and denying self were only temporary measures. They allowed placating to proceed without too much damage to the ego. Once the effectiveness of these fleeting measures faded, however, more stable strategies were required to cope with the daily bombardment of discriminatory events.
In affirming, foreigners and half-Japanese maximize their ethnic identity and, in doing so, release the pent up frustration accrued from feigned social performance. Affirming processes are private, meaning that foreigners and half-Japanese can escape their imposed social identity and be "true to them self". Privacy, after all, is "one of 'the little ways in which we resist the pull' of group commitments and reinforce our selfhood.' This aspect of privacy aligns with the concept of "back region", where foreigners and half-Japanese can engage in activities that are inconsistent with public presentations of self. The back region is a person's comfort zone; it is free of the restrictions and the interaction rules that govern public life. Affirming can thus be seen as the means by which foreigners and half-Japanese counteract the emotive insecurity experienced in everyday life. To affirm is to achieve balance to life.
There are three types of affirming that are considered relevant by informants. These are, (a) association affirmation, (b) cultural affirmation, and (c) intellectual affirmation. Each is detailed in the following pages.
(1) Association Affirmation
Association affirmation occurs when foreigners and half-Japanese seek comfort amongst those who understand their plight as ethnic minorities. This does not only mean they seek the company of other foreigners or half-Japanese, but they can seek the company of other minorities who may have comparable experiences. Thus, some informants sought the company of any foreign nationals. It was amongst these like-minded people that foreigners and half-Japanese could share their experiences without fear of retribution. Sharing, in fact, is the fundamental component of association affirmation.
Greg: "Yeah, they (Japanese) are friends but they are not close. You are friendly with them but you never share anything deeper with them...there's no bond. Like I tell people, the only Japanese friend I have isn't really Japanese. Her mom is Japanese, her dad is Swedish. She was born in Sweden and lived there for 11 years so she understands who I am."
This silent but shared understanding constitutes the symbolic estate "inherited" by the in-group. It can neither be communicated to nor adopted by the outsider. A recent but by no means unique example is the current emphasis on "Soul" among blacks in America. "Soul" can be experienced by blacks, but not by whites. At best, a fellow traveler of the black community can, after long and intimate association, develop an emphatic understanding, while never sharing fully in the communion which "soul" provides for those who "have" it. "Soul" constitutes an invisible cement binding blacks together and separating them and their unique experience from other groups.
The sharing amongst "in-group" members provides an atmosphere where ethnic foreigners can confide in others without necessarily having to verbalize their experiences. That a vocabulary has yet to emerge to easily capture feelings of exclusion and difference is perhaps indicative of how language reflects the concerns of the powerful and not the subordinate. Regardless, such inherent understanding is the product of subtle and consistent exclusionary experiences faced on a daily basis, while within ethnic groups it is the subtle ways a specific culture is conveyed.
Ken: "My best friend and I get together about 3 times a year. He is the only person I can really talk to about my real feelings about being a foreigner in Japan. It has gotten to the point where I cannot even bring the subject up with my [Japanese] wife."
In these "shared" relationships informants were given a private space to affirm themselves. Association affirmation became a respite from the daily pressure of role-play and performance demanded in placating strategies.
(2) Cultural Affirmation
Most significantly, association affirmation was often accompanied by a desire to incorporate varying aspects of ethnic culture into one's lives, for within this culture lay the secrets to who they really "were".
Cultural affirmation concerns the adoption of imagery and/or ideologies that affirm a personal ethnic identity. It is the bolstering of perceptions of self. Thus, although sharing provides a starting point from which to counteract feelings of exclusion, it can become hollow on its own. Ethnic identity is a more or less fixed state, and escape from this identity is but fleeting (e.g., denying of self).
When this is combined with a public world that bombards foreigners and half-Japanese with antagonistic images and ideologies that can deny positive perceptions of self, they are left with a need to acknowledge cultural elements associated with their ethnic identity as a means of psychological comfort. In real terms, half-Japanese and foreigners reported moments where they hated being foreigners, hated looking foreign and wanted to have black hair, olive skin and just look "normal".
Mike: "I would love, just for one day, to be able to walk down the street in Tokyo being Japanese. To be able to disappear into the masses. To know what it is like to be free. To not be a foreigner."
While placating strategies such as "blending in" were employed publicly to deal with these issues, privately, cultural affirming was the main counter-measure to add balance and produce more positive perceptions of self. Ethnic culture in this sense becomes a therapy. This understanding of culture as therapy has been captured in many descriptive works investigating minority groups (see, Wetherell and Potter, 1992; Parker, 1995; Song, 1997). It is nothing new. Though it has seldom been identified as but one of several types of affirming.
Cultural affirmation consists of two important components. The first of these is defining one's self culture and ethnic background. Definitions of culture are reflections of "self", in order to culturally affirm one must know what things are to be considered "their culture and ethnic background". The second aspect of cultural affirmation is the adoption of symbolic affirming agents. It is these agents that are tethers to identity, culture and self.
(a) Defining
Above, I discussed an important instance where half-Japanese and foreigners become suddenly aware of their self-alienation. I called this the "discovery moment". Inherent in the discovery moment was a feeling of conflict about "self". Questions such as "who am I?E"what does it mean to be foreign, Japanese?" and "what is a Japanese or foreign person?" arose. Attempts are made to resolve the conflict through clarification of foreignness. Often, clarification came through sharing with friends, family and confidantes.
A definition of self was considered important for informants, for it allowed an assessment to be made about how to culturally affirm and with what cultural elements. Definitions of being foreign or half-Japanese ranged from the highly inclusive through to the highly exclusive. Exclusive forms were expressed by informants who saw being foreign in terms of language, appearance, culture and traditions. Indicators of this type of definition are captured in comments like:
"I do feel with my daughter, I want to put in a lot of effort to make her learn the English language...I feel that it's important for her development an understanding of who she is, to be able to have that language ability, to understand her culture. Because there's a lot of things that lie behind [language]...if she grows up knowing only the Japanese language she is going to miss out on the American part of her heritage which you can't get unless you have a good grasp of the English language."
[Open forms of identity] de-center the subject, [have] a hybrid view of culture and see identities as continually connected through open forms of narrative. In relation to foreign identity the stress would be on mobile and multifaceted identifications, with the foreign identity only a part of a broader set of connections.
It was this latter form most informants chose. Defining being a foreigner as open, dynamic and thus inclusive empowered and affirmed those who did not possess much cultural understanding or language skills. It was their means of resolving the dilemma and coming to terms with being a foreigner in a Japanese society. Multi-generation foreigners preferred this definition, as the following establishes:
Defining techniques was found to be different for adults then for foreign and half Japanese children. It was not uncommon for many half-Japanese children to have definitions enforced upon them. These enforced understandings of being foreign typically came during childhood and often led to a rejection of all things foreign and rejection of those cultural elements that represented it. "It was like, 'I'm not American so don't speak English to me."
Achieving a point of self-definition requires a degree of maturity, experience, and indeed, a heightened awareness of ethnic difference as well as similarity with the dominant group (in other words, in order for half-Japanese children to be able to identify with their multicultural heritage, they needed to be exposed to both cultures at a young age). This could explain why this study found that half-Japanese children that spent the first 7 ~ 10 years of their life in a country other than Japan had a better grasp of their multicultural identity than those half-Japanese children who spent the first 7 to 10 years of their life in Japan. The latter tended to have a tendency to reject their foreignness while the former had a tendency to accept both their Japanese culture as well as their other ethnic identity. Where this will lead these half-Japanese children remains to be seen as they mature and become adults in Japan.
Self-definitions of "foreigner" can be seen as reflected images of "self". That is, definitions of "foreigner" were consistent with renditions of "self". For example, informants who saw themselves as "just foreign" defined "foreigner" in highly exclusive terms; those who saw themselves as "Japanese/foreign" combined inclusive and exclusive definitions; while those who saw themselves as "just Japanese" adopted the most open and inclusive definitions. These definitions and images of self are important for they can predict how cultural affirming will take place, and herein lies the crux of cultural affirmation: cultural affirmation simply refers to the ability to obtain pride from some aspect(s) of being a foreigner however it may be defined. It is a connecting experience. It identifies for the foreigner the point of difference between what it is to be foreign and what it is not.
(b) Symbolic Agents of Cultural Affirmation
Foreigners and half-Japanese use various forms of cultural symbolism as affirming agents. The most basic form is assimilated-superficial symbolism. These are cultural forms that do not challenge existing social imagery or ideologies and can often be easily incorporated into the host culture with little or no fuss. An example of this type of cultural symbolism can be seen in the informant who was highly assimilated and went no further than to watch American movies with friends as a means of affirming. One can easily see how an individual who chose to identify himself as "just a Japanese" would use this type of symbolism.
Another type of cultural affirming comes through the use of behavioral symbolism. Here, informants adopt typifications of foreigners conduct. Many saw speaking and learning to speak English as important, while others ate American food and played poker or other American games with friends. Through these endeavors foreigners and half-Japanese connected with their culture. This type of symbolism is generally acceptable as public behavior.
The final type of symbolism I discuss here is emergent-cultural symbolism. This type of affirming agent reflects the current and emergent experiences of foreign people in other countries. It is an understanding of culture that may acknowledge the past but places greater emphasis on the present. Novels such as Amy Tan's (1989) "The Joy Luck Club" capture the essence of these experiences, as do the life histories of Manying Ip (1990 and 1996).
It is the experience of foreigners as sojourners and gold-miners later becoming settlers, the forging of community, the experience of the small business setting, of becoming a "model minority", of facing overt and covert discrimination, and ultimately the emergence of new identities. It is a pride in being associated with these experiences. It allows the foreigner to feel that if pursuant long enough, the foreigner will be accepted as part of the host culture and society.
To conclude this section on cultural affirming some additional comments are necessary. First of all, although affirming agents have been presented separately, it was common for foreigners and half-Japanese to combine different types of cultural symbolism for affirming purposes. Also, it is obvious that certain types of symbolism lend themselves more to exclusive definitions of "being a foreigner" and others to more inclusive forms. Shifting definitions also led to adopting different symbols for affirmation, while different symbolisms typically introduced individuals to networks of like-minded people where sharing could occur to bolster the affirming exercise.
(3) Intellectual Affirmation
The final type of affirmation to be discussed is intellectual affirmation. Unlike association or cultural affirming, which most foreigners engage in to some degree, intellectual affirmation is seldom used. It involves a theoretical understanding of foreigner's experiences as a minority. In this sense, such affirming allows it adherents to connect all foreign experiences to that of other minority groups. Intellectual affirmation therefore often lends itself to sharing in the broadest sense. It is one step beyond emergent-cultural symbolism as an affirming agent. It is affirmation through abstraction. It is the transcending quality of intellectual affirming that makes it a powerful measure.
Some concluding comments: up to this point the analysis has suggested that the problem of content insecurity is resolved by placating. It has also been suggested that placating is not an unproblematic resolution, for inherent within it are feelings of emotive insecurity. At its worst, placating leads to self-alienation. It is here that affirming becomes necessary as a counter measure to restore the ethnic self. Affirming is the resolution to emotive insecurity (those feelings of anxiety, paranoia, emotional trauma, and self-alienation).
So content and emotive insecurity are resolved by public and private strategies respectively. The problem with this set of resolutions is that the subordination of foreigners and half-Japanese and the adherence to the unspoken contract is never questioned - these are merely catered for. Foreigners have, however, devised other more radical strategies that seek to resolve content and emotive insecurity. It is this type of strategy I turn to next. I call it the challenging strategy.
Challenging
The challenging response is common and evident amongst many foreigners. Essentially, challenging involves confronting the discrimination context in some way.
It is always a public act. By public I mean something conducted outside the confines of the ethnic community and interacting with dominant members of the host society. To challenge is to attempt to resolve both content and emotive insecurity concerns at the same time. Challenging can be seen as the antithesis of placating. Yet they are not entirely incompatible. A challenging stance combined with a placating disposition is often referred to as being diplomatic. Challenging, when done well, can convince a fickle public that non-Japanese are indeed valid citizens and should be seen as part of the society, with the same rights. Unsuccessful challenging, however, can lead to a perception of threat by the host population. To challenge is to debunk the unspoken contract in no uncertain terms. Unsuccessful challenges, therefore, can lead to decreasing tolerance. These are the potential risks.
Challenging responses are highly varied. They range from physical fights, to reciprocating verbal insults, to more congenial debates, to political campaigns. They can be individual or collective. The former is more common. A collective response was only identified with political campaigns. Whatever the type of challenging response, it is clear that a change in mental state has occurred: whereas placating involves a passive acceptance of discrimination, and affirming its resolution, with challenging, discrimination is openly confronted and affirming occurs within the challenging act. Challenging responses make three distinctive statements.
(1) Equality
First, to challenge is to make a demand for equality and this involves a rejection of the status quo. "We can no longer afford to stand back. It's up to us to say we deserve better."
Dan: "Every once in a while I get enough of being treated differently and decide to do something about it. I try, but it just does not work. I end up losing a Japanese friend or contact because it scares them to see me complain. It makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes I think that deep down, Japanese know that foreigners are treated like crap, but it would be too much trouble for them to try to change it. Japanese hate change. I am resolved to not stop trying to educate the Japanese population, even if I have to do it one by one. I do this so that my children, and others like them, will have a better life with more opportunities than I did."
Anonymous: (From a website about Japan) "Foreigners are going about trying to change Japanese the wrong way. You [foreigners] cannot force the Japanese to see it your [foreigner] way. You have to learn the Japanese way. If you are denied entry into a Japanese onsen (hot-spring) because you are a foreigner, don't yell discrimination. Instead, go out and by the owner of the onsen a box of cookies or something and present them to him [the owner]. He will then let you [the foreigner] in."
The response to this post was quick and to the point. In summary, most foreign guests on the website challenged this Japanese guest and his belief that buying the owner a box of cookies would correct the problem. The Japanese guest left the site calling the foreigners racists. The foreign guests could challenge the Japanese more openly because it was a website, with their identities not made public. If foreigners had the same collective energy in their everyday problems in Japan, they [foreigners] would overcome and live more stress free lives in a short amount of time. There is, however, a big difference in challenging when your identity is hidden compared to publicly challenging.
(2) Belonging
The second statement which challenging makes is a claim for belonging. Inequality is often justified on the basis that foreigners are not "real" Japanese and therefore are not entitled to full citizenship rights. The claim for belonging was a clear rebuttal of the perpetual foreigner belief. One informant recalled an incident where,
Anonymous: In Tokyo, I was in a bar...and then this guy said, 'oh, go home, these are our bars, go home you fucking "gaijin", and I was like, 'hello, I have lived here for 12 years, go back to Mongolia!"
The "go back to Mongolia" comment served an equalizing function making the statement, "in a way, we are all foreigners to this land", while the claim for belonging ("I have lived here for 12 years") was a clear challenge to the general belief of perpetual foreignness.
(3) Identity
The third statement challenging makes is the assertion of the foreign ethnic identity as a valid public identity. Whereas placating involves the nullification of self, challenging involves the assertion of self. Incorporated into the challenging logic was the reversal of discriminatory reasoning. Racism was no longer to be considered a problem for foreigners but rather was interpreted as a problem for the host society. Comments like, "it's not my problem, it's their problem", were common. Change, therefore, was seen as the responsibility of the host society not of the foreigner.
Most informants accepted that new foreigners should change to some degree to accept aspects of the host culture. But informants also noted that after several decades of settlement, it becomes the host society's role to change and accept them as valid citizens without the unspoken contract as a condition of acceptance. Thus, the false presentation of self was no longer seen as an acceptable compromise.
Paul: "I have learned the language. I have learned the culture. I obey the law. I pay my taxes. I put up with the discrimination and other crap. I do not feel obliged to conform any further into the Japanese way of life. I know who I am and I like myself. If someone wants to be my friend, fine. If not, just as fine. I earn a lot of money and have bought a house. It is mine and my family's. By God, in this house, you will treat me with respect or I will throw your ass right through the window. My house, for the moment, is the only place where I have total control over my life. Hopefully, my children will have more control over their lives outside of their home [in public] as well."
(4) Conditions
As suggested above, there are two types of challenging responses, the individual response and the collective response. The former being most common. I will briefly outline the conditions that lead to both respectively.
(a) Individual
Challenging tends to occur most when tolerance is perceived to be declining and the effectiveness of placating becomes ineffectual. There is a shift in mental state from one of accepting discrimination and dealing with it through passive means towards a rejection of discrimination and a confrontation with perpetrators.
Keith: "I used to ignore people who stared at me or my family. Now, after about 20 years in Japan, I find it works to my benefit to confront them instead of ignore them. I do this in a polite way, by walking up to them at straring back at them for however long it takes for them to drop their eyes and walk away. Since I started doing this, I have felt more pride in myself and who I am than I ever did before in Japan."
Challenging also tends to occur most amongst certain social types. Firstly, challenging is often the response of those who do not know of the unspoken contract. Thus, very young children often challenge discrimination, knowing little of the need to placate.
Dan: "My 7 year old son has no problem shouting "stop staring at me" to Japanese people in Japanese. For him, it is not discrimination or anything bad. It is just annoying and he does what any 7 year old would do. He screams. I think I am going to start learning from him how to deal with the Japanese population."
Secondly, challenging is associated with those who stand outside of the community web of influence. This is particularly the case in regards to the half-Japanese population in Japan, which makes a stand on the need to placate. Thirdly, those in more powerful positions in wider society are more likely to challenge than those less powerful. And finally, Foreigners who immigrated to Japan in a positive shift period and cross the threshold into a negative shift are also more likely to challenge, especially if they fall under the second and third conditions stated above.
(b) Collective
The collective challenge is most likely to occur when leadership takes on the individualistic qualities identified above. It is also most likely to occur where ethnic concentration in a geographical region is relatively high, tolerance is perceived as low or declining and ethnic group unity is strong. Such is the case in Tokyo at the moment. Where the number of foreigners has increased to a point where they have become a force to be reckoned with.
This collective challenge can be compared to those in the US, where such challenges have been successful. The Asian-American movement in the 1970s was a largely intellectual, middle class, collective that united previously antagonistic groups together in order to fight discrimination, assert a self-selected public identity, and stake a claim for belonging (hence the Asian "American" label) in American society. To date, one of the only collective challenge by foreigners that has been successful has been the foreign community coming together in order to pressure the government to change the law requiring all foreigners to be fingerprinted and the fingerprint placed on their foreign registration card.
From these conditions, it can be seen that affirming may well contribute to the emergence of challenging; for association affirmation groups like-minded minorities together, thus forming a collective that shares the bond of social exclusion. In "sharing" their experiences, they may become "wise" to the hidden forces that maintain their subordinate status. This possibility is increased when combined with intellectual affirmation. The "unspoken contract", thus, may be revealed and be seen as unacceptable. Furthermore, intellectual affirmation offers the opportunity to alter the powerless position many foreigners find themselves in. As placating leads to affirming, affirming may well lead to an alteration of "mediating conditions" that determine whether foreigners will placate in the future. In a very real sense, once foreigners discover they are self-alienated, this could be the catalyst for major social change: a shift from a predominantly placating response to a predominantly challenging one.
Another option is also possible, however - affirming could reinforce placating. This may occur where affirmation is sought by increasing immersion within a placative ethnic community. Given ethnic communities often engage in identity maintenance programs, these may be seen by young ethnic foreigners as opportunities to affirm. The annual summer obon festival in Japan, for example, offers elements for cultural affirming and also the opportunity for association affirmation. But these are also opportunities for a placatory leadership to enforce a placative strategy.
Summary
In summary, in order for foreign residents to become effectively integrated into the host [Japanese] society, it is essential that foreigners in Japan be given the opportunities to obtain both content (material) and emotive (emotional) security. Until such time as those opportunities are provided to foreigners in Japan, they [foreigners in Japan] are doomed to a status of perpetual foreigner. As the number of foreign residents in Japan increases, the inability of foreign residents to become fully integrated into the Japanese society will lead to a change in foreigners attitudes and attempts in assimilating from "placating" the host population [Japanese] to "challenging" the host population. Historically (in other countries), this change in foreigners attitudes takes place once the percentage of foreigners who have immersed themselves into the host countries language and culture reaches 15% to 20% of the entire population.
This book has detailed the means by which foreigners and half-Japanese enhance security. I began by identifying two types of insecurity - content and emotive. I followed by introducing two types of identity: social identity, which is a public identity, and ethnic identity, which is mainly private. Placating tactics were then presented, and these were grouped according to the degree of interaction involved between host and foreigner. It was then suggested that placating requires psychological coping strategies. These, however, were fleeting resolutions that occur at the moment of a placating strategy.
Following this, it was suggested that as placating was the solution to content insecurity, the environment that encouraged such a strategy was one that resulted in emotive insecurity for foreigners - the worst form of which was self-alienation. As a counter-measure, Foreigners employed affirming strategies as a means of restoring "self" - acknowledging one's ethnic identity. Finally, the challenging response was presented. This response transcended placating and affirming while connecting content and emotive security resolution in one type of responsive strategy. It was also suggested that affirming may lead to conditions that determine increased challenging or maintained placating.
Although this book has presented the actions of foreigners and half-Japanese in Japan as strategic in the management of insecurity, it must be noted that not all behaviors identified are enacted with this intent all of the time. For example, it is quite possible that a foreigner is simply associating with Japanese friends rather than purposefully engaging in "association distancing". Similarly, it may be the case that foreigners choose to live in a neighborhood or apartment building with no other foreign residents because they like the area, not because they are trying to maintain "geographical spread" from other foreigners. What is presented in this research are purposeful strategies for coping as a foreigner in an insecure environment. The presentation of foreigners as manipulative and overly strategic in everyday life is a falsity. They are only strategic when it comes to conscious behaviors that attempt to manage insecurity.
"I wish I had all the answers which would allow foreigners to be accepted officially into the Japanese society, but I do not. Every conclusion I established throughout my research brought with it more questions that need to be researched. What was apparent throughout my research is how little the Japanese population knows about the living conditions of foreigners in Japan. I do know that if and when it becomes possible for foreigners in Japan to stand with dignity and respect, many of the problems that Japanese have regarding foreigners will simply dissapear, for one can only truly expect to be treated with dignity and respect when one treats others with the same dignity and respect. For the time being, I see no real changes going on in either the way that foreigners are dealing with living in Japan nor the way that Japanese tend to think about and treat foreigners."
 Go Back To Introduction
Copyright (C)2005 Dan Edward Venz. All rights reserved.
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