Learning to Bow

by Bruce Feiler

  Next, a boy stood up and introduced himself. “Hello. My name is Hoshino, but my nickname is Yotch. I hear that discrimination is a problem in Alaska. Is that true?”

  One of the most challenging aspects of teaching in Japan was the questions I was called on to answer as a representative of my country, and, indeed, of the entire English-speaking world. These queries ranged from the linguistic (“Why is someone from the Netherlands called Dutch?”) to the curious (“What have you done for world peace lately?”) to the culinary (“I like hotcakes very much, but they are not very tasty. What advice can you give me to make hotcakes more delicious?”). The civil rights ambassador in one class became the itinerant gourmet in the next.

  Here I was in a seventh-grade classroom in rural Japan being asked by a twelve-year-old boy named Yotch to comment on the racial discrimination faced by Eskimos in Alaska. Although the thought crossed my mind, I could not tell him that it was as far from my home to Alaska as it was from his home to Tibet. I could not tell him that the problem was under advisement by civil rights commissions, political panels, and government agencies. Instead, I had to answer the question directly—and in “easy English” to boot—because this was the reason I had come to Japan.

  “Eskimos live in Alaska,” I said. “They have lived there for many years. Many of them speak a different language and have different customs from others who live nearby. When people do not talk to one another, sometimes they are afraid to trust. We must learn to talk with people who are different from us.”

  As I finished my sermon, which most of the students clearly did not understand, I walked over to Yotch to thank him for his question. I stuck out my hand; he grabbed it and squeezed hard. Finally dropping it from his grasp, he turned to the other students and raised his arms in the air like a prizefighter.

  “Kakko ii!” he shouted. “Pretty cool!”

  Everyone understood this.

  Sooner or later, almost every conversation I had on the differences between Japan and the rest of the world returned to a singular issue: race. Seemingly unrelated facets of life in Japan were explained as being the result of the country’s exclusive stock. Why do Japanese students wear uniforms? “Because Japan is one race,” a teacher told me. Why does Japan have no drug problem? “Because we are one people,” a doctor declared. While homogeneity has been a major factor in Japan’s development, surely it cannot explain all the eating, drinking, sleeping, shopping, schooling, mating, and dressing patterns of the country. This catchall has clearly caught too much.

  The notion of racial distinction has long been central to education in Japan. For as long as Japanese parents have been teaching their children about the rest of the world, they have been drawing comparisons between themselves and foreigners based on size, strength, and color. Early visitors to the country were labeled “red hairy barbarians.” Later foreigners were described as “smelling like butter” because of their association with beef and thus with cows. During the Second World War, while Americans dubbed the Japanese as yellow apes and buck-toothed beasts, the Japanese tagged Americans as evil demons and horse-tailed brutes. “Every war bond kills a Jap,” the Americans hailed; “Every savings account kills an Allied devil,” the Japanese rejoined.

  If forging racist slurs in wartime was simple, eliminating them in peacetime has proved more difficult. The United States and Japan stand as allies today approaching half a century of cooperation. Yet they are also competitors, and in times of increased tension the racist images of wartime are quick to resurface. Given this burden of history, teaching about race has become one of the fundamental challenges facing the Japanese school system. How they treat this issue, above all others, will determine the success of their efforts to internationalize. For teachers, this question shadowed all of their classes: how could they balance students’ age-old inclination to love their country with the modern imperative to live and work in harmony with the black devils, vile demons, and other gaijin across the sea?

  “Mr. Bruce,” Mrs. Negishi said to me as we were walking toward class that afternoon, “this year is almost over. Soon my students will take their entrance exams and move on to high school. This is their last chance to hear a handsome native English speaker like yourself. Today, they want you to tell them a story.”

  “What kind of story?” I asked.

  “A folk tale.”

  “Any particular one?”

  “Yes,” she said, “Paul Bunyan. That’s their favorite one.”

  The textbook series that teachers used in Sano made considerable effort to give students a well-rounded view of life in the English-speaking world. After the seventh-year book introduced the United States, subsequent books contained sections on hand gestures in America, seasons in Australia, and weather in Britain. For students, the most popular chapters described folk heroes in these countries. In January, at the same time the seventh graders took up race in America, the ninth graders began to read about that lovable, lumbering American folk hero, Paul Bunyan.

  I began my talk, as always, by sketching a cartoon map of the United States on the blackboard: five lakes drooping down from the north like an udder, a horn for Maine, an oversized lobe for Florida, and a sweep of the chalk along the bottom for Texas and California.

  “Mr. Tanaka,” I called, “what is this?”

  By now the students were becoming accustomed to these random outbursts of interrogation from the teacher. Early on I realized that my teaching style would be different from that of most of my Japanese colleagues—there would be more questions, more gesturing, more pressure on the students to participate in class. Although many of the students were originally shocked, in time they warmed to this “American” style.

  “America,” several students called out, without waiting to be identified.

  “Correct. The United States of America.”

  “Thheeee United States of America,” they said, mimicking my enunciation.

  I picked up some colored chalk from the blackboard trough and began shading different regions. “This is the East of the United States of America. New York is in the East.” I shaded this part yellow. “This is the West. Los Angeles is in the West.” I colored this part blue. “In between the East and the West is the area we call the Midwest.”

  I filled in this zone with green and explained how one hundred years ago many men moved from the East to the Midwest to cut down trees to build houses, boats, and even students’ desks. To illustrate this new phrase—“cut down”—I grabbed a tennis racket from a student’s locker in the back of the room and pulled a student to the front of the class.

  “He is a tree. I am a woodcutter. Now I am cutting down wood.” Within seconds the student had been felled to the floor and everyone had acquired a new phrase.

  “Many of the woodcutters in the Midwest lived in one big house,” I explained, “and every night they sat around a big table, drank beer, and told stories.

  “ ‘Today I cut down ten trees,’ the first woodcutter would say.

  “ ‘I cut down fifty trees,’ another would say.

  “ ‘I cut down one hundred trees,’ a third man would add.

  “Finally, to stop this game, they began to tell stories of the biggest and strongest woodcutter of all, who could cut down one thousand trees in a day. His name was Paul Bunyan.”

  The students cheered when they heard his name. “Cromartie, Cromartie,” two boys screamed, calling the name of a popular American baseball player in Japan who slugged home runs for the Tokyo Giants.

  When I had finished, Mrs. Negishi asked the class if there were any questions.

  At first no one spoke, but several students peered toward the back of the room, where a junior high school setup was clearly under way. Slowly a boy stood up with a vivid blush and asked, “Did Paul Bunyan have a girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “But he did have a giant blue ox named Babe. Mrs. Negishi laughed, but the students didn’t, and my joke got lost in a scramble to ascertain t
he Japanese word for ox.

  “We want to thank Mr. Bruce for explaining the story of the American folk hero Paul Bunyan,” Mrs. Negishi said, resuming her place at the head of the class. “Now it is our turn to explain to him the story of a Japanese folk hero. Is everybody ready?”

  Several girls jumped from their seats and scurried to the back of the class. Some boys began rummaging through knapsacks, pulling out pieces of paper and assorted props. Within seconds an entire cast of ninth-grade thespians appeared before the class, dressed in monkey masks and devil’s horns and bearing a collection of cartoon drawings.

  “Attention,” one of the girls said to quiet the group. “Now we will tell you the story of Japanese folk hero Momotar, the Peach Boy.

  “Once upon a time there were an old man and an old woman who lived in Japan.” From stage left a girl held up a pastel sketch of an old man and an old woman; from the right, two boys dressed in bathrobes and slippers stepped forward. One wore a cotton-ball beard and carried a cane, while the other showed off a lipstick smile. The class applauded.

  “One day the old lady was washing clothes in the river when she discovered a peach in the water. She picked up the fruit and took it home. Later, when she cut it open, she found a little boy inside. She named him the Peach Boy.”

  A small boy emerged in full peach panoply from behind the wall of actors and jumped into the waiting arms of the old woman. The audience squealed in delight. These boys had already mastered the exaggerated art of Japanese camp and would, no doubt, make fine kara-oke artists someday.

  “When the Peach Boy grew older, he became very strong. He decided to save his country from the evil devils across the sea who invaded Japan every year. Before his trip, the old lady gave the Peach Boy a bag of the most delicious dumplings in all of the land. Then he went away.”

  “On the road the Peach Boy met a dog. ‘What do you have in your bag?’ the dog asked. ‘Dumplings,’ the Peach Boy said. When the dog ate one of the dumplings, he thought it was very delicious, so he went with the Peach Boy to kill the devils.”

  This part of the play was acted out in front of the class, complete with actual dumplings from a plastic shopping bag. After winning over the dog, the Peach Boy recruited a monkey and a pheasant in the same way.

  “The Peach Boy and his three friends then traveled together across the sea to kill the evil devils. When they arrived at the island, the dog screamed, the monkey jumped, and the pheasant flew into the air. Together with Peach Boy they killed all the foreign devils.”

  The actors went racing through the rows of desks during this last part, hitting students on the head and screaming attack slogans in Japanese. By the end of the run, the students were in stitches, the teacher from the neighboring class had begun banging on the wall for silence, and the Peach Boy was proclaimed a hero. “The Peach Boy returned to Japan with a bag of treasures he had taken from the devils, and all the people gave him a parade. This is the end.”

  The actors bowed together as the final bell rang. Mrs. Negishi thanked the participants and brought the class to a close just as a swarm of neighboring students poured into the room. With all the commotion I had no chance to ask my question, “Did the Peach Boy have a girlfriend?”

  Not long after I heard this tale at school, I learned of the peculiar role this story played in recent Japanese history. During the Pacific War, the tale of Momotar became a key plank in the government’s propaganda strategy. With its heroic native son fending off fierce foreign devils “across the sea,” the story was the ideal paradigm for the Japanese war with the Americans. During the war, the story was included in the elementary school language textbooks, and Momotar appeared in a host of wartime publications, including cartoons, magazines, and animated films. The diminutive Peach Boy also starred in a war film entitled Momotar and the Sky, in which the boy-hero sacrificed himself to save a flock of imperiled penguins at the South Pole from invading eagles. In one film Momotar was transfigured into a stern military commander demanding the surrender of British troops at Singapore. His retainers—the dog, monkey, and pheasant—were loyal military officers promoting Japan’s Asian Co-Prosperity scheme.

  “The Japanese think they are small and vulnerable,” Denver said to me one night after I learned about Momotar. “This is the Japanese sense of history. We call it higaisha—one who receives pressure.” He ground his thumb into his hand to illustrate the feeling. “The Japanese feel as if they are always under pressure from the rest of the world. The opposite is kangaisha—one who applies pressure. That is the United States.”

  For much of its history, Japan has felt victimized by external forces. In the early seventeenth century the ruling Tokugawa clan banned Christianity from Japan, believing that it was corrupting the population. In 1636 the regime went so far as to prevent Japanese who had lived abroad from returning home, for fear that they had been tainted by foreign influence. For the next two hundred years Japan closed itself off almost entirely from the outside world. Ports were sealed; travel was banned. But with international trade growing more important, this isolation could not last forever. In 1853, in one of the most mythologized events in Japanese history, the American commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry sailed a small flotilla of ships into Uraga Bay outside the capital and demanded that the shogun open Japan’s markets to foreign countries. This expedition, nicknamed the “black ships invasion,” became a symbol of foreigners forcing their will on the hapless Japanese. Today, more than a century later, to raise the specter of “black ships” is to sound the higaisha call to arms.

  While politicians can use this call to arouse the people, teachers are in a much more sensitive position. Ideally, schools should present a more balanced and less inflammatory view of history. But in recent years an international controversy has sprung up over how Japanese textbooks depict the behavior of the Japanese during the Second World War. The Japanese have tried to present themselves as victims of the West. They point out that the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and its promise to “throw off the yoke of Imperialism” appealed to the peoples of Asia who had suffered under European colonial rule. Governments in South Korea and China have complained about such accounts; they claim that the oppression felt by Asians who lived under brutal Japanese domination has been left out.

  The history textbook used at Sano Junior High devoted five pages to the war in the Pacific. One page discussed the early years, including the attack on Pearl Harbor; one page talked about the middle years and the fighting on the Pacific islands; three pages reviewed the American fire-bombing of Tokyo and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By contrast, the account of the war dismissed the Japanese invasion of Nanking, including the alleged massacre of two hundred thousand people, in less than three lines. The Japanese invasions of Burma, Malaysia, and Indonesia were not mentioned at all.

  “Every Japanese junior high school student knows about Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Denver lamented, “but they don’t know about Nanking.”

  “Then how do you know it?” I asked.

  “I learned it at my university, but not everyone has this chance.”

  Not only did the history textbook dwell on the lessons of Hiroshima, but the English textbook took up the issue as well. The penultimate chapter of the ninth-grade book, the one directly preceding the account of Paul Bunyan, explored the subject of nuclear holocaust. The title of the chapter, “Two Visitors,” referred to the two bombs the United States dropped on Japan in the early days of August 1945.

  “Little Boy” came to Hiroshima on August 6th. “Fat Man” came to Nagasaki three days later. When “Little Boy” fell from the sky above Hiroshima, he blew up and gave out a strong light and great heat. The heat was so strong that it reached 7,000 degrees Centigrade. Thousands of people were killed. Can you guess how many? More than two hundred thousand.

  The story went on to discuss the danger of assigning pleasant names to harmful things.

  Some people called the bombs “Little
Boy” and “Fat Man.” They are charming names, aren’t they? They were the names for the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A name is a name. It is not a thing. I think it is important to remember this. A thing with a charming name can sometimes do a cruel thing, like “Little Boy” or “Fat Man.”

  The purpose of the chapter was not to discuss history but to teach the simple phrase “I think it is…,” as in “I think it is important to remember this.” But by choosing this story, the author seemed to be reinforcing the popular notion of Japan as victim.

  “The Japanese have a collective historical amnesia,” said a friend who teaches history at the University of Tokyo. He blamed the secondary school system. “Most students are not taught the history of Japan’s invasion into China and other nations. They are taught about the poor times after the war. They are taught that their parents worked hard to overcome these difficulties. We are fearful these difficult days will come back.”

  This background makes the Japanese move toward internationalization, or kokusaika, all the more difficult to attain. If kokusaika is to be achieved, students must learn to look beyond their fear of foreigners. They must make special efforts to embrace new cultures—American, European, African, and Asian—rather than retreat into the protective shell of their own tradition. Unfortunately, at the time when schools should be refocusing their gaze outward, the government seems to be encouraging students to train their eyes inward on their native past. Even as schools teach English to their students, politicians go on national television warning everyone not to grow “lazy” and “sloppy” like American workers. Even as schools tout “international” thinking, they insist that all students learn martial arts, the haven of the “Japanese spirit.” One school near Sano was part of a nationwide program that required every child to study kend, a traditional form of fencing with rigid mental training and discipline.