A Beginner's Guide to Japan

by Pico Iyer

  And the absence of irony, the unembarrassed sincerity with which kids there speak of “selfless service,” the way that being part of a well-drilled team can liberate the self in certain ways: each time I returned to that serious, playful campus, I learned a little more about how to function, how not to feel foreign, in my home in Nara.

  “I realized,” Lipsky concluded, “that nobody at West Point was worried about sounding original or being entertaining…and I understood the immense freedom this gave them.” Though competition is tough at the academy, he also registered how, on a forced march, cadets lift each other up or hang back if teammates are flagging. Communal identity—like responsibility—is one of the main things they have to master. “There’s all these pressures we don’t have to worry about,” one member of the thin gray line told Lipsky. “In a sense, life here is easy….Everything is very structured for you.”

  I was tickled to note that the book in which Lipsky delivered a note-perfect description of so much that surrounds me in Japan was called, in honor of a comment about West Point from Teddy Roosevelt, Absolutely American.

  LOOKING FOR A “YES”

  In Japan, manners are seen as a way to be self-possessed and other-possessed at the same time.

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  ·

  Iago in Japan is simply ego, the readiness to throw a whole exquisitely designed mechanism into chaos by focusing on one small part of it.

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  ·

  “I’ve heard it said,” says a Zen abbess (from San Francisco), minutes after we meet, “that Japan is a land of twins.” A perfect way, I thought, of catching the Japanese habit of thinking of other as self, and trying to minimize all differences (so long as you’re part of the same circle).

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  ·

  The smiles we see in Japan are, again, less an attempt to get something from us than an attempt to give something. Yet, if you come from a different kind of society, you assume that elegant design hides designs of a deeper kind, projecting your own complexity upon Japan’s blank screen.

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  ·

  “She’s friendly without ever suggesting she wants or ought to be your friend,” a member of her staff says of Queen Elizabeth II. The sign outside her door, as outside all of Japan, could read, “Foreign Objects May Be Less Close Than They Appear.”

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  ·

  In a Confucian world, human relations are the closest thing people have to God. So manners become a kind of sacrament. They are the way you pray before the common altar.

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  ·

  In the realm of business, or of diplomacy, Japan’s refusal to be confrontational leads to what many see as “impassive aggressiveness.” It’s impossible to tell how much distance lies between a yes and an unwillingness to say no.

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  ·

  In the gap between obedience and acquiescence, in fact—“Hai!” means “I’ll do it,” not “I agree with it”—lies much of the bewildering brutality of the Japanese in war, and the never-ending question of how much, for example, the wartime emperor was complicit in his country’s aggression, how much just unable to say no.

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  ·

  Japan remains a hierarchy dressed in the clothes of a democracy. For a foreigner, treated like a VIP and someone generic all at once, it’s hard to tell whether you’re outside the system or beyond the pale.

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  ·

  My neighbors, however, have the satisfaction of being part of a choir that can deliver perfect and uplifting harmonies. No single contribution is heard, but if any one of them were absent, it would be missed.

  THE APPLE IN THE GARDEN

  We come to Japan expecting a beautifully designed motherboard in which every part of the circuit works flawlessly. And after half a lifetime in Japan, I count on such precise procedure as if I were Japanese myself. Yet the system operates to perfection only so long as everybody knows the rules. Once the smallest malfunction (or outsider) shows up, the effect is like a concertina crash on a freeway, in which each car smashes into the one in front of it and the collateral damage spreads, unsettlingly. Japan has trained all of us to deal with everything except exceptions.

  One bright November morning, the sky as punctually blue as the leaves all around are gold and scarlet and brilliantly yellow, I’m writing an e-mail to my daughter, living in Spain, when an “n” flies off my keyboard.

  I dig up the number for the local Apple Service Center and dial it, to be greeted promptly by an automated voice that announces, in a language I can speak, “For English-language instructions, please press 5.”

  I press 5, delighted at this extra courtesy—would there be Japanese-language instructions if I called a Toyota Service Center in California?—and am greeted by a slightly less automated voice that sounds, in fact, as if it belongs to someone caught up in a typhoon. This is the role of customer service, I presume: to assure the customer of the urgency of service.

  I explain a little, and the poor soul at the other end grasps the problem and locates the item I need: an English-language keyboard, made for an American-produced iBook, that can be shipped almost instantly.

  “You have to install it yourself,” she says, just before we finalize details.

  This is not good news for someone who can barely place a cassette inside a cassette recorder—yes, I’m still using 1970s technology—without setting fire to the apartment.

  “Is it easy?”

  “I think so.” Her voice sounds less than convinced.

  “Maybe I’ll think about it?” I say, putting down the phone and sending her a Japanese return of serve.

  I ponder the effects of being unable to work, unable to communicate and unable to support my loved ones for the next who knows how long. Then I think of the many local friends who might be up to placing a cassette inside a cassette recorder without setting off a conflagration.

  I pick up the phone again. I push 5. The same voice responds.

  “I think I was just talking to you? I’d be happy to order the new keyboard.”

  “I’ll take down some details,” the angel of compassion says, “and then we’ll ship it. It’ll be there in three days.”

  * * *

  —

  Next morning, at three minutes past nine, as I try to sleep off the effects of Neil Young and his enigmatic “rock opera” Greendale in Osaka the previous night, the phone rings.

  “Hello.”

  A stream of Japanese pours out, to which I answer, in a kind of Japanese, “I’m sorry. I can’t understand a word.”

  “Apple Service Center,” comes back the voice, in English. “Address?”

  I give it to him; the people around me are expert and scrupulous about delivering every last purchase, but this isn’t always easy in a country where addresses bear only incidental relation to the places they describe.

  Seconds later, as I’m trying to shake “Cortez the Killer” from my head, the buzzer rings and I open up to see a fresh-faced delivery boy in a yellow Apple windbreaker, handing me a box.

  “I’ll just make sure everything’s okay,” I say, taking the package to my dining-room table. He shrugs off his shoes and follows me in.

  “Thank you,” I go on. He looks as if he’d be very happy to be done with such niceties. “Shall I just sign here?”

  “Thank you,” he says with evident relief. “Please give back old keyboard.”

  Now it’s my turn to look alarmed. “I don’t think I can take out the old keyboard.”

  He stares at me, aghast.

  “No give old keyboard?”

  He stands there, bereft.

  “I’m getting a friend to come and change it for me.”

  “When?”

  “Friday, perhaps. Maybe Saturday.”

 
The prospect of waiting six more days does not exhilarate. The keyboard has been delivered three days ahead of schedule, and the transaction should have been completed five minutes ago.

  He pulls out a cell phone and calls a supervisor. There’s a rapid-fire exchange, and then he dials another number. He’s told, I gather, to leave a message.

  I invite him to sit down at the dinner table, and the two of us confront each other unhappily.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, in Japanese that is not gaining in translation. “I’m very clumsy about these things.”

  “I’m sorry,” he offers. “I’m only a delivery boy.”

  “I’m more sorry. To keep you here on a busy day.”

  “I’m deeply sorry,” he says, even to be alive.

  We sit around in silence, waiting for the phone to ring.

  “I’ll go outside,” he says.

  I’m sorry I ever took this job, he’s surely thinking; as for me, I’m sorry I ever tried to replace my defective keyboard.

  I’m also sorry I don’t speak Japanese perfectly, but even if I did, I’d be unable to change the keyboard.

  I’m sorry he doesn’t speak English perfectly, all the more so because company rules apparently forbid him to perform the action himself.

  Yes, someone has enclosed instructions in Japanese—so my friends can help me—but when I show these to the delivery boy, he looks more unhappy than ever and says, in English, “No. Only baggage.”

  Now he returns to the room; his boss has offered no help at all.

  He places another call.

  “Is it a problem if I call the Apple Service Center from here?” I try.

  “No,” he says, which is a problem, since “No” in this situation could mean “It’s not okay,” or “No, it’s no problem at all!”

  I take the safer option and sit there in silence as he completes his call. Then we pick up our shared silence. Another call comes and he cries, “Hai! Hai! Hai!!!” and looks more distraught.

  If he doesn’t return with a keyboard, I gather, Apple will assume he’s made off with it himself.

  “Is it okay for me to call the Apple Service Center now?”

  “Yes,” he says, which I take to be not a no.

  My previous redeemer is now rewiring the destiny of another caller, so I get an even more gracious high voice, eager to be of service.

  I explain the situation slowly, with polite reference to the fact that I’d never have ordered the thing if I thought I’d have to replace it myself.

  Then I use the dread word “cancel.”

  When I’d shared this term with the delivery boy, he’d looked as devastated as if I’d announced that a nuclear bomb was on its way from Pyongyang.

  “I’ll look into it,” comes the smiling response. “Can you hold for a moment?”

  Music tinkles down the line as the delivery boy puts his hand in his back pocket and then extracts it again.

  “Mr. Pico,” says the voice on the far end, “I’m sorry, but unfortunately it’s impossible to cancel.”

  “Okay. Then maybe I’ll just give back the new keyboard.”

  “Excuse me, please. I need to ask my boss.”

  Music chirps and tinkles down the line.

  “Mr. Pico?” I know already from the timbre of her voice that things are not getting better. “When do you think you could send back the keyboard?”

  “I’m going to America in December, and I hope I can replace it then. I have a friend there who’s very good with machines. Perhaps I could send it back to you when I return here in January?”

  “In January?”

  “I’d be more than happy to do that. I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Excuse me, please. I need to ask my boss. Could you hold for a moment?”

  The music again, back where it was five minutes ago; the plaintive exchange of pregnant glances with my new friend at the dinner table, as he puts his hands in his pockets and takes them out again.

  Now, as I wait, his phone begins to shrill, perhaps making my call redundant.

  “Mr. Pico,” says my sweet interlocutor, “why don’t you cancel the order?”

  “Cancel it?”

  “Yes. That is all right. Since we didn’t tell you about the instructions.”

  “Thank you. Could you please relay that to the delivery boy? He’s standing right here.”

  I hand the phone over to my luckless new friend, whose other deliveries are growing tardier by the minute. He nods happily as he receives official dispensation to take the new machine back to his store and return to his other duties.

  “Hai, hai,” he says, more exuberant than I’ve seen him hitherto. “It’s understood.”

  “He hasn’t opened the new one, has he?” I hear the girl saying over the phone.

  My guest looks stricken. “Opened it? Yes, he has.”

  “He’s opened it?”

  “Yes. To make sure it’s the right one.”

  Now the music is tinkling into his ear. The poor boss is being consulted again. Then something happens, and the boy brightens visibly.

  “Yes, yes, of course! Yes. Oh yes!”

  He hands the phone back to me, in a state fairly close to delirium.

  The sweet girl on the other end now sounds less sweet than at any time since we started exchanging sweet nothings. As so often, the encounter has left the man relieved, and the woman ever more frustrated.

  “Mr. Pico, unfortunately, because you have opened the new keyboard, we cannot cancel the transaction. We will let you keep the old keyboard.”

  “Keep it?”

  “Yes. Please keep the old keyboard.”

  “I could send it to you in January.”

  “Please keep it.”

  “Thank you. Could you explain this to the delivery boy?”

  “He’s still there?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  He’s now, in fact—this being Japan—one of the most longtime visitors I’ve ever hosted.

  I hand the phone back to him, and he is confirmed in the magical blessing he’s surely already been given. You can never get good news too often, I think.

  “Thank you,” I tell the woman.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Thank you,” the delivery boy says, if only for releasing him to his other, even more impatient customers.

  “Thank you,” I tell him.

  “Sorry,” he says, moving towards the door as fast as his apology allows.

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could speak better Japanese.”

  “Sorry,” he says, eager to close the door behind him.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Thank you.”

  I may not be Japanese, but I’ve been here long enough to know how to play the game.

  I’m glad I never mentioned that one reason I’d been so ready to cancel the transaction is that, in the few hours between ordering the new keyboard and having it delivered, I’ve found an English-speaking Japanese technical expert only ninety minutes away who will fix the fugitive “n” on my keyboard for a mere twenty dollars.

  IN THE TEMPLE

  THE EMPTY ROOM

  In answer to a poll conducted in 2005 by the country’s largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, barely one in four Japanese answered “Yes” to the question “Do you believe in any religion?” More than 96 percent, however, admitted to participating in religious rites of some kind.

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  ·

  Shinto has no texts or doctrines; Buddhism in Japan is so much a matter of rites and recitations that for centuries no one even bothered to translate many of its canonical texts into Japanese.

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  ·

  “She told Herzog that she was not sure she believed in God,” Saul Bellow writes of Sono Oguki, the Japa
nese lover of his eponymous character, “but that if he did she would also try to have faith. If on the other hand he was a Communist she was prepared to become one, too. Because ‘Les Japonaises sont très fidèles.’ ”

  * * *

  ·

  When he gives lectures in the West, I heard the Dalai Lama say in Japan, the audience tunes out the minute he starts speaking about ritual and comes to life as soon as he speaks about philosophy; in Japan, the formula is reversed.

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  ·

  The Japanese tea-ceremony—with its formal raising of the cup, the handing round of the sacramental vessel, the wiping clean with a white cloth—seems to have been inspired by the Catholic mass, which European missionaries brought into the country just as Sen no Rikyu was codifying the rites of tea. But what in the Catholic church is centered on an altar, in Japan takes place in a social circle, within a largely empty room.

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  ·

  “When one tries to discuss with [the Japanese] the problems of higher philosophy or religion, in the real sense of the term,” the great-grandfather of my first cousin complained in a book he published in 1933, after visiting Japan from his home in Bombay, “one feels that their religion begins and ends in ringing the bells, twice clapping their hands and then bowing with joined hands.”

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  ·

  Intelligence in Japan is emotional and social, someone should have told him; analysis is as inappropriate here as eating noodles with a knife and fork.

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