In Defense of “Funny” Cultures

Tim Rogers’ take on contemporary Japan over at Kotaku is a great example of how people should not write about foreign cultures: with near-total subjectivity.

The piece is a laundry list of things Rogers, having lived in Japan for several years, dislikes about the place. A sampling:

Once, shortly after getting a new job, a coworker announced he was getting up to smoke a cigarette. He asked if I wanted to join him. I said I didn’t smoke. He was surprised. “I thought you said you were in a band?” Just like that: You’re in a band. You must smoke. Well. My excuse that I was just the vocalist, so I needed to keep my throat pure. He mentioned how Kurt Cobain apparently smoked five packs a day. Well. A couple years later, another person learned I didn’t smoke, and acted surprised. “I figured you must smoke because, you know; you play video games.” That’s a real stereotype, man. It exists. In Japan, gamers are smokers. Maybe this impression is born from the fact that breathing in Japanese arcades is pretty much exactly like dunking your head in a bucket of hot water and dead cigarettes. Don’t let the hype fool you: Japanese arcades are great because, you know, video games, though man, there is a hell of a lot of smoking going on in those places, man. Maybe the arcades only exist because people need some excuse to get away from their smoke-averse significant other and puff away.

Later, we read:

Chances are, if you’ve only spent a short time in Japan, you might have found it endearing. You really came to feel like you were in Asia, what with people screaming everywhere, like they would in an epic Chinese marketplace scene in an adventure film. This atmosphere is completely manufactured. Like, the biggest electronics stores actually keep ladders on hand so that certain employees can climb the ladders and scream indecipherable words down at the customers, through megaphones.

I do not use the word “indecipherable” lightly. Very seldom are the words actual words. A friend let me in on this secret. “You know, aside from ‘irasshaimase’, they’re not using actual words, most of the time.” He had prior job experience, see. Apparently, some stores actually demand that employees enlisted as barkers absolutely refrain from using actual words. That’s a little weird. I don’t like knowing things like that.

Look. There are a lot of legitimate cultural complaints one can have about Japan (or any other foreign culture)—specifically ones regarding negative social practices. And Rogers does touch lightly on a few of these, including the destructive drinking habits of salarymen, the social dysfunctions of the young hikikomori, and the domestic subordination of Japanese women. In all these areas and more, Japan has a lot of work to do.

But on the other hand, tradition is tradition. “That’s just how they do things” may sound like a cop-out, but its also a justification for bits of rituals that have slowly materialized over the course of years, decades, or centuries. And these bits, when brought together, make up a unique culture that is objectively different from other cultures. Yes, your cube-mates may chafe when you don’t say “Hello” in the morning. Yes, customer service may seem overly aggressive. And yes, people may smoke more in Tokyo than on Telegraph Hill.

But listen, that’s their culture. It’s different. It’s not “creepy” or “idiotic”, and certainly not “terrifying”. Please. Cannibalism is terrifying. Making a scene in public for the sake of office solidarity is, at least, jarring, and at most…Japanese. “I don’t like pachinko” is not legitimate cultural criticism.

Other parts of this article aren’t even remotely unique to Japan. You’re going to find tons of people who “agree to do things that they obviously hate doing” all over the world. American popular music is arguably equally as repetitive—and its subject matter much more offensive—than J-pop. And copy-cats, imitators, and up-givers are a dime a dozen in our contemporary society.

One advantage of a globalized world is the opportunity to celebrate different cultures while working to improve our own. This article, on the whole, simply denigrates one culture while imagining others’, including our own, as unquestionably superior. Which, as the world grows closer, is exactly the wrong way to look at things.