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.

Why are you yelling?

June has officially begun, and I am constantly seeing updates from my teacher friends back in the states on how the school year is over and everyone is ready for summer.  If only I were so lucky.  The school year in Japan runs a little differently.  Classes start in April and go till March the next year.  We do get a summer break, but it’s only about three weeks in August.  But I’m not here to complain. 

When school started in April this year all the new seventh graders had to choose clubs.  It’s a big deal, because when you choose a club you are also choosing how you will be spending your time afterschool and on weekends for the next three years of junior high.  So at the beginning of the year there is a lot of advertising done by the clubs, trying to get new kids to join.  We even have an assembly where all 18 clubs get to put on a five minute presentation to try and get the newbies to sign up (not the most thrilling afternoon for the teachers). 

At a kendo tournament.

During this time the clubs will invite seventh graders to watch practices to get an idea of what it looks like.  Some kids were heading out to practices one of these days, and one of my students invited me to join him at kendo practice.  (In case you aren’t familiar with the martial art, it is essentially Japanese fencing.  The pictures I'm putting in dont necessarily reflect what I'm writing about, but if you've never seen kendo before it will give you an idea what it looks like.)  I followed him to the kakugi-jo (kendo/judo practice building), joined the seventh graders sitting at the back of the room, and watched the upper-classmen start practice.  Eventually they handed bamboo swords (called shinai) to the seventh graders and got them started on some basic exercises.  I watched my new friends awkwardly swing their new tools, but after a few minutes a student came over to me and motioned that I should grab a shinai and join them.  To make a long story short, I eagerly took advantage of the offer and have been going to kendo practice ever since.  Later this month I will be taking a test to get a sort of pre-certification called i-kyuu (pronounced “ee-kyoo”).  If I am successful, I can take another test in September to get the first level of official certification, 1-dan. 

So that’s where I am right now with kendo, but how did I get there?  I could write a ton on all I’ve learned so far, but I want to try and explain why I got into it in the first place.

It comes down to the yelling.  You almost never hear a Japanese kid with a raised voice.  Kids here seem to be mellow most of the time.  Sure they get happy, but not really super-excited.   Yes, they get frustrated, but I’ve never seen a kid visibly mad (maybe they are angry or ecstatic on the inside, they are just good at controlling what they show you).  Japan is just a quieter place – no cars blasting stereos, no cop sirens at all hours of the day, and here in the country the sidewalks roll up around 6 (except for the kids going to their cram schools).  It is hard for me to see passion in the kids here for what they do, at least you don’t see it the way you might in the states.  For the most part, personal expression and individuality takes back seat to fitting into what the culture expects of you.  I’m used to kids being crazy, running around, screaming at the top of their lungs from time to time, getting mad from time to time, maybe even getting in a fight.  In the states, that’s part of what it means to be a kid.  Not here though.  Except at kendo.

Last year I watched the city-wide kendo tournament in the fall.  I had never seen kendo before, didn’t know what it was really.  I knew my dad did it when he was a kid growing up in Japan, so I wanted to see what it was all about.  So I watched the tournament all day, trying to figure out the rules (with only mild success).  The thing that really got my attention was all the screaming.  I didn’t know Japanese kids had it in them.  Let me try to explain what I saw:  kids wearing tricked out catcher’s uniforms, stomping their feet, screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to whack each other on the head with bamboo sticks.  I didn’t really understand the rules.  But I did know that I was seeing a very different side of my students.  I was really happy to see the screaming side of students, but I wanted to learn more.  Why were they screaming anyway?  What was it about kendo, a culturally traditional activity, that got kids acting in a way that seemed contrary to everything else I’ve observed in the culture here?  I wanted to find out.

Learning kendo has been on my mind ever since I went to the tournament last year, but I didn’t really know how I could get started.  I mean, I’m in Japan, what better place to learn kendo?  But my Japanese isn’t too good, my schedule can be unreliable, and other such excuses crowded out the idea of actually any sort of class.  When school ended in March, I made a sort of new year’s resolution to find out how to learn kendo in the next year.  So you can imagine how happy I was to accept the invitation to attend kendo practice after school.  Yay!  I did it!

So what’s up with the yelling anyways?  Well, I’m still very much a beginner at kendo and have a ton to learn, but here’s what I’ve noticed so far.  In kendo there is the idea that the sword, body, and spirit are all supposed to be acting together as one entity.  When you make an attack against an opponent, you are not just trying to attack with your sword, you are attacking with your body and your spirit too.  So when you attack, the moment your sword touches your opponent, your foot should be pounding the floor as though you were trying to put a hole in it and you should be screaming like a banshee.  Kendo is a wholistic martial art.  It isn’t just about trying to improve your skills with a wooden sword to level up or do well at tournaments; it is about becoming a stronger, unified person, being able to put your all into whatever you are doing and without holding anything back.  I love seeing kids learning how to do this, and now I get to learn with them.

We Are Weird

Three months in Japan; routines are becoming established; some of the initial surprise and shock at new things has become dampened; I’m starting to get used to life here.  Cars on the left side of the street?  Of course!  Chopsticks and rice at every meal?  Naturally.  Being unable to communicate with most of the world around me?  Has it ever been otherwise?

But new things do still happen here from time to time, I guess.  Thanksgiving was last week.  Although I’m fairly familiar with the traditions surrounding this holiday, this was the first year I’ve had to celebrate Turkey Day away from my family.

As my alarm buzzed me awake Thursday morning all I could think about was how horrible it was to have to work on Thanksgiving.  But I managed.  At school I was wishing every kid I saw “Happy Thanksgiving!”  Most just passed by with a confused smile on their face, but a few stopped and asked for an explanation.  As I struggled to express the traditions in simple English I was brought back to an experience I had in high school Spanish class.  Each year we would study cultural traditions particular to certain Spanish-speaking countries – Los Dias de Los Muertos (The Days of the Dead) stood out in particular.  Their traditions seemed so strange to me, but at the same time I could see how important they were to the people celebrating them.  I knew in class that I would learn plenty about what their traditions were, but getting an understanding of the feelings accompanying the traditions or why they were so important . . . that was impossible.  And however much I could acknowledge that the traditions had profound importance for someone, somewhere, they could never be more than cultural oddities to me. 

So when I started explaining Thanksgiving to students I strongly identified with the opposite side of my situation in high school.  Sure, I could tell students about turkey and football and family and being thankful, but I couldn’t tell them about sitting around a table in Enon, OH, reuniting with family, joking about Erin making an extra green bean casserole sans mushrooms just to accommodate my preferences, falling asleep halfway through the Cowboys game, waking up to pie . . . .  No matter how much I told them about our traditions, there’s no way I could communicate all that to them.

But I guess this all goes along with being a foreigner.  Most of my time here I’ve been stuck noticing all sorts of weird things Japanese people do that are nonetheless essential to their way of life.  This Thanksgiving made me pause and consider some of the weird things that Americans do that are essential to our way of life.   Why do we do the things we do?  Why do we relate and communicate with people in a particular way?  It sure isn’t because one way is more effective or efficient than the other.  At times I’m confused by the Japanese way of doing things because there seems to be a much more efficient way of getting the job done, but sometimes efficiency isn’t the goal.  Maybe that’s some of my American-ness coming through; we tend to place value on brevity and directness, while the Japanese way often seems to prefer indirectness and patience.  But even Americans do not always do things the most efficient way.  I can’t help but paraphrase the words of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, “How did we start doing the things we do?  I don’t know.  But it's a traditions, and it's our traditions that tell us who we are.”  (This part in the video starts at 2:10)
 

 Yes, we are all weird, we do things that don’t seem to make sense or have a reason, but that is what makes us, us.