Practicality vs. Principle -- Cultures Collide

Shoes.  I don’t claim to be an expert on Japanese culture/customs (far from it, in fact), but I did think I knew what was up with shoes over here.  Nope. 

Some things I’ve noticed concerning shoes:  You never wear them inside a house.  Ever.  All Japanese homes/apartments have a special room/area when you first enter the building called a “genkan” where you take your shoes and step up into the house.  In fact, the genkan is actually considered a public space, meaning you haven’t actually entered the house until you have left your shoes behind.  This also means you don’t necessarily need to knock to enter the genkan, you only need to knock after you get inside (although I think this practice is becoming more and more old fashioned; modern houses are smaller and the genkan is incorporated into a corner of a regular room).  In the genkan there are sometimes shelves here for you to leave your shoes, and sometimes there will be slippers to wear once you step inside. 

But it isn’t just homes that have the no shoe rule.  Schools, gyms, community centers (sometimes), bath houses, and many restaurants require you to take off your shoes prior to entrance.  The only places that really let you keep your shoes on are stores.  At school I keep a pair of “indoor” shoes to put on as soon as I get there.  These shoes, as the name implies, are never used outside (except in a fire drill).  I also use these indoor shoes at community centers or places like that where I can’t use outdoor shoes but being in socks or barefoot is unacceptable.  And when I am at a gym I need to make sure I use gym shoes that I don’t use outdoors.  One more important piece of footwear is the bathroom slipper.  These usually can be found in the bathrooms of places where you would normally be in socks or slippers. 

I made a couple simple rules for understanding shoe etiquette.  Shoes get dirty outside, you don’t want to bring the dirt inside.  But indoor shoes are clean, so it’s ok to wear them any place you can’t wear outdoor shoes.  The only exception is on tatami (rice straw mats) or in a kendo dojo where you never wear shoes.  But this rule doesn’t really always hold up (as I learned last week).  My problem is that I based it on a principle of practicality.  The problem is tracking dirt from outside in on your shoes.  The solution is to not wear dirty shoes inside.  Indoor shoes aren’t dirty, so it is ok to wear them inside.  Very practical solution. 

Last week we hosted the city-wide junior high/elementary kendo tournament in the gym of our school.  We raised the basketball hoops and taped out sparring areas on the floor.  The kids there in the tournament were all barefoot, as they should be – kendo is done without shoes.  During one of the breaks I was walking around the gym floor in my indoor shoes and talking with some of the students.  On a normal school day during the lunch break I would often shoot some hoops with kids in the gym wearing my indoor shoes.  I was on my turf, I knew it was ok.  But then one of the judges walked up to me and urgently pointed to my shoes, and then pointed to the genkan.  I tried to explain that it was cool, these were indoor shoes, but he still pointed to the genkan.  So I took off my shoes and didn’t put them back on until I left the gym.  I mean, I usually wear my shoes in the gym, it’s not like I was going to make it any more dirty than usual.  Then I tried to join some kids for lunch.  They had spread a blue tarp in the hallway to sit on and enjoy their boxed lunches.  But when I tried to sit down on it with them they told me to take off my shoes.  Again, I tried to tell them that they were indoor shoes, they weren’t dirty, but that didn’t matter to them. 

My rule of practicality wasn’t holding up.  These were both situations where wearing my “clean” indoor shoes should have been ok.  Here’s my guess as to why I got the shoes thing wrong:  Japanese culture is not focused on practicality/efficiency but rather on principle/purpose.  In the first encounter, my problem was that the gym had been transformed into a kendo dojo.  Even though it still looked and smelled like the school gym, because they were using it for a kendo tournament it effectively was transformed into a kendo dojo.  This means no shoes.  The same thing went for lunch.  It didn’t matter that I was wearing indoor shoes, the blue tarp on the floor had the same sacredness as a tatami mat in a restaurant.  It might not have been efficient, but it did hold to the purpose of the situation. 

(Sorry for posting this late!  Have a BONUS PARAGRAPH!)

This week at school I found another example of this idea in action.  The summer humidity finally hit last week.  Our school isn’t air conditioned, but all the classrooms are equipped with two fans to try and beat the heat.  Earlier this week I was assisting in the special education classroom and the fans were all turned off.  Before class began the teacher apologized to me that it would be very hot in class, and she couldn’t turn on the fans because of two of the students were wearing their long-sleeve track jackets.  I don’t know why the kids were wearing the jackets (the heat was oppressive), but apparently school rule says that if anyone is wearing a jacket, the fans stay off.  It didn’t matter that the majority of the class was suffering, the fans stayed off.  It wasn’t even ok to ask the kids to take off their jackets for the sake of the others.  We just had to deal with it and adapt to the situation.  The purpose of the fans is to cool people off, but if students are wearing jackets they obviously don't need help keeping cool.  And the value of this purpose outweighs the practical notion that when it is 90 degrees and humid one should turn on every fan one might find.