Polite Lies

by Kyoko Mori

  As soon as I was old enough to learn the names of colors in kindergarten, I became aware that there were old-woman colors and young-woman colors, as well as boy colors and girl colors. The differences between old-woman colors and young-woman colors seemed much more complicated than those between boy colors and girl colors. From the way my mother complained about her mother’s clothes, I could see that they didn’t agree about how strictly my grandmother should follow the rules.

  “Your grandmother dresses too much like an old woman,” my mother often said when we went shopping. “I would love to buy that dark green wool and knit her a sweater, but she’ll never wear it. She only likes clothes that are very jimi.”

  Jimi means, literally, “earth-taste,” though it does not refer to what Westerners think of as earth tones. The word is used to refer to colors that are subdued: dark gray, dark brown, navy blue. As far back as I can remember, Fuku wore these colors exclusively, in house dresses and blouse-skirt combinations that were large and shapeless. The only “good” clothes she had were the formal black kimonos with the family crest embroidered in white. She wore the kimonos only to weddings or funerals. My mother, who wanted her mother to look a little “more modern,” would send her dresses she had sewn herself. The dresses were by no means bright or flashy: modest cotton or wool A-lines in silver-gray, cobalt blue, or maybe maroon if my mother was feeling hopeful that Fuku would change.

  Maroon was as daring as an old woman could dress. My mother was careful not to send anything inappropriate; still, the new clothes stayed in Fuku’s dresser drawers. They were too beautiful to wear, Fuku insisted. Every time we visited, my mother was depressed to see the clothes neatly folded and stored, never worn.

  The old-woman colors looked and sounded depressing to me. In Japanese, even their names are dismal. Nezumi-iro (mouse color) for dark gray; cha-iro (tea color) for dark brown; hai-iro (ash color) for white-gray. The names reminded me of bleak farm kitchens. Sooner or later, everyone obeyed the rules and resigned themselves to these dismalsounding colors. Even my mother complied when it came to her turn. In her mid-thirties, she gave away several of her dresses and suits to her younger sister and sisters-in-law, saying they were now too hade (“stick-out” and “nashy”)—the opposite of jimi—for her. The clothes she gave away weren’t in colors I now think of as bright. By the time my mother was my mother, she no longer wore bright pinks, reds, or yellows, the colors of childhood and youth. When she became thirty-five, even light blue (which has a beautiful name in Japanese: mizu-iro, “water color”) and forest green (midori, another pretty-sounding name, sometimes used as a woman’s name) were too hade. She was supposed to move on to the browns and dark blues, and in ten years, she would have to give up even these colors and wear only the grays and the darkest blues.

  My mother was forty-one when she killed herself. She never completed her transition into the brown-and-dark-blue middle age. She was a woman who spent her weekends viewing the Impressionists, who stayed up past midnight embroidering pink flowers and delicate yellow butterflies on my blouses. In her dresser drawers, she left boxes of embroidery floss, in colors she could no longer wear. A month after her death, I began seventh grade at a private girls’ school—the only junior high school in the Kobe-Osaka area that didn’t require uniforms. For the first-day ceremony at the school, I wore a red dress my mother had made for me.

  The color rules in Japan have not changed. On trains or buses, I still see older women in shapeless navy blue or dark gray dresses, young working women in pastel-colored suits, and, most noticeable of all, school-age girls in their somberlooking uniforms.

  In Japan, colors signify not only age but also occasion and attitude. The dark colors—black, navy blue, gray, dark brown—are worn to funerals, Buddhist ceremonies, and other formal events. These colors signal solemn feelings and serious purposes in general, not just grief or mourning. For that reason, they are used in school uniforms to set a solemn tone and to encourage a serious attitude—with the result that, at school, junior and senior high school students wear the same colors as old women.

  All boys’ and girls’ school clothes are modeled after military uniforms: stiff and heavy fabrics, brass buttons, tight necks, squared shoulders. Both boys and girls must wear their uniforms to school and even on weekends if they go out alone or with other students. Boys’ uniforms are black, while girls’ uniforms are in the other “serious” colors such as navy blue, dark brown, dark gray. I don’t think this is simply coincidence. In Japanese color symbolism, black is the most formal color—the color of mourning, but also the color of authority and decorum. It is stark and important. In judo or karate, black connotes highest achievement. While boys wear this important color to express their seriousness about studying, girls—just like old women—wear the less-powerful darker colors that are subdued and humble. Boys are taught to pursue knowledge as aggressively as they would train to earn black belts; girls and old women are encouraged to be serious but not stick out or call attention to themselves.

  Subdued dark colors are not flattering to the young girls and the old women who must wear them. Stark colors like black and white set off some features, but muddy browns and ashy grays dull almost everyone’s looks. It is no coincidence that these are the colors of “grunge” fashion: they look good only on people who appear very striking and a little off-center—a young woman with an asymmetrical haircut, theatrical make-up, and nose or eyebrow rings. School-age girls whose features and personalities are still unformed and old women who have had years of practice at not “sticking out” are the last people to benefit from colors that are called mouse and tea.

  Riding the trains or buses in Japan, I also notice a peculiar reversal. While teenage girls are required to wear “sailor dresses” and thick blazers in somber colors, young women in their twenties who no longer have to wear uniforms—except when going to work in tailored suits—choose frilly, childlike fashions: ribbons, bows, laces, full skirts. These clothes resemble young girls’ party dresses in style if not in color. The ribboned and bowed style goes with the high squeaky voice a well-bred young woman is expected to use in public. A young Japanese woman is trained to look and sound like a child. That, too, is a symbol—a symbol of innocence and cuteness.

  The childish look of a twenty-eight-year-old Japanese woman is completely different from the MTV teenager mode some American women affect well into their twenties or thirties. One is a denial of sexuality, while the other is an attempt to communicate a youthful and daring eroticism. These styles are reflections of each culture’s fantasies about women. In Japan, an ideal woman is a quiet wife who serves her man with childlike obedience and innocence. American popular culture encourages women to be young temptresses, eager to satisfy men sexually but having no grown-up ideas or demands. In both fantasies, an attractive woman is a woman whose growth is stunted.

  In any culture women’s clothes and makeup are full of what my friend Diane calls “sexist baggage.” That baggage adds to the insecurity most of us feel about our appearance. I’ve often wondered why I feel insecure about looking good when I know that I am not and will never be beautiful. With everything else, insecurity goes hand in hand with the possibility of doing well. I feel insecure about giving a lecture, writing a book, or planning a party because these are things I can do well and not doing so will be a disappointment. I dread giving a newspaper interview or showing important guests around town, but I don’t feel insecure about these occasions: I don’t wonder how I sounded in the interview or if I was a good guide, since I already know that I sounded stupid and got lost while driving the guests around. I don’t expect to look good, any more than I expect to sound intelligent in interviews, and yet I often feel insecure: I worry if my sweater looks too “dorky,” if my ears are sticking out in a funny way, if I am making the wrong impression.

  Personal appearance causes anxiety and insecurity because even those of us who are not beautiful consider our clothes, makeup, or hair style to be expressions o
r symbols of who we are, and yet our choices are burdened by cultural, societal, and sexist expectations. Personal appearance is the four-way intersection where our personal symbolism clashes with the symbolism of the culture in which we must live. For some of us, it’s a head-on collision, a big highway catastrophe.

  The consolation of living in America is that if I am careful, I can navigate my way through this dangerous intersection, avoiding the cultural and sexist expectations that come barreling down like a semi. I can devise my own system of determining what is acceptable or unacceptable for my own standard of gender equality. I can avoid “fashion” items—like pantyhose or high heels—that seem designed to torture a woman’s body and have no counterpart in male attire. I don’t wear rouge, eye makeup, lipstick, or foundation, since my male colleagues are not required to improve their appearances in a similar fashion. But if I choose to wear batik shirts, beaded jewelry, or long hair, I can reason that I am not drawn to that style because I am a woman: were I a man, I would be a middle-aged hippie guy with a ponytail and a beaded necklace, as some of my male friends are. Even in a small town in the Midwest, it is possible for me to express my personality, avoid the stereotypes I abhor, and still present an appearance that does not label me as an offensive or eccentric person.

  In Japan, nobody can negotiate a similar peace. Every woman wears the same makeup unless she wants to be an outcast. The last time I stayed at my aunt’s and cousin’s house, I got up one morning to see Kazumi putting on her makeup at the kitchen table. She had already applied a thick, smooth foundation and was now painting her lips in dark red—first outlining the shape of her lips and then carefully filling in the rest. When she was done, she had the same face every “nice” Japanese woman wears: thick foundation and lipstick, but no rouge, eye shadow, or mascara. She reminded me of the young Japanese women I see at American airports—before they utter a word, I can tell that they are Japanese, not Chinese or Korean, because of this makeup.

  It was unsettling to see my own cousin in the makeup that makes every woman look the same. Nice-Japanese-woman makeup is so obviously a mask or a symbol of calm femininity. The foundation and the lipstick emphasize a smooth surface—a peaceful and flawless face, a tightly closed mouth. The more aggressive or expressive parts of a woman’s face—the eyes, the cheekbones—are hidden or almost erased. A Japanese woman is considered beautiful for having a pure, empty face.

  The difference between my cousin’s situation and mine is not that the makeup she is supposed to wear is worse than the one that is most available to me. The popular makeup of an American woman—wide-open eyes, red lips, sharply delineated cheekbones—gives her a constantly surprised and vulnerable appearance as though she were an old-fashioned heroine in need of rescue. But if I do not wear that makeup, I am not subjected to a harsh judgment. Most people I see day-to-day don’t even notice whether I am wearing makeup, much less care.

  In Japan, everyone notices—even on the rare occasion when they decide not to pass judgment. If I don’t wear the nice-woman makeup on my visits, people are not offended: I am almost a foreigner, so I am allowed to be different. But everyone comments on it all the same, using the word that means “not wearing makeup” (sugao or “original face”): “I notice you are always going about sugao, they say. My freedom may be a freedom from judgment, but not from interpretation. Now that I am a foreigner, a person who “rejected” Japan, everything I do is interpreted as a symbol of my nonconformist philosophy. “Oh, you don’t wear makeup and you are a vegetarian,” I am told. “That’s because you are a person who values the simple life. You despise false appearances, and you believe in not harming nature.” When I try to explain that my choices have more to do with personal preferences than big moral philosophies, people smile indulgently as though I were only trying to be polite or modest. “Oh, I understand,” they say. “A person like you, who likes the simple life and nature, never brags.”

  In Japan, there is no such thing as a purely personal choice. Everything you do (or decide not to do) is a symbolic message directed at the world, a manifesto of a philosophical cause you support. Even your rebellion, then, will be interpreted as a sign of your belonging to another group. You don’t have to worry about the clash of personal symbolism and larger, cultural symbolism. Either your personal symbolism is the same as everyone’s, or else you can ride in one of the few symbolic vehicles marked for outsiders and rejects.

  When I studied Japanese poetry as an adult, I realized that Japanese literature—just like Japanese life in general—is a complicated system of symbols that few outsiders can understand. In 1983, in one of my preliminary projects for my doctorate, I set out to translate the poems of eleven Japanese women—most of them born in the 1920s and 1930s. They were contemporaries of my mother and also of the American women poets I admire: Maxine Kumin, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. I was not familiar with the works of contemporary Japanese women, so I had high hopes of discovering some new favorites. But in the end, I was disappointed by the poems I tried to translate.

  Though many of the poems were very personal and perhaps even confessional in feeling—distraught with anger, loneliness, or frustrated ambition—they struck me as disturbingly abstract in expression. Some of the poems ended in clichés and slogans about how women must realize that working in a kitchen is a service to a higher art, or how nature can refresh the mind. The others—a majority—looked more interesting but baffled me because they belonged to the other extreme: the poets used disjointed and abstract images no one could possibly understand—spinning umbrellas falling from the sky, riderless carriages speeding down deserted streets at high noon, glass-encased rooms floating among clouds. Though these images evoked powerful anxiety and unhappiness, I could not understand how they were connected: how did those spinning umbrellas lead, two stanzas later, to the glass-encased rooms, and what does this all mean? The Japanese women were writing in the two extreme ways that I ask my students to avoid—spouting off predictable philosophy or using language as a code and constructing poems that are word puzzles no one can understand.

  The Japanese poets were writing in their native tradition, which has always relied on big themes and symbolism. I could see the similarity between their work and the traditional haiku that my friends and I studied in high school. Every haiku has a coded reference to one of the seasons: snow, brown leaves (winter); violets, cherries (spring); frogs, morning glories (summer); eggplant, chrysanthemums (autumn). A haiku can say so much in seventeen syllables because every Japanese reader is trained to understand these seasonal references, to know that every seemingly casual observation about frogs jumping into ponds is a symbolic comment about an elusive summer moment and, ultimately, the transient nature of life (which is the big theme of every haiku in one way or another).

  The difference between Basho—the best-known haiku poet—and the twentieth-century women poets is that the women could no longer rely on a ready-made and universally agreed-upon system of symbols. The women, who wanted to write about twentieth-century feelings of anxiety and frustration, were left to create a highly personalized and enigmatic system of symbols and dream visions instead of coming back to those frogs and violets. But, having rejected the universal symbolism, they could only create personal symbols that were so eccentric that no one else could understand them. The paradox of contemporary American literature is that the more specific and detailed the writing is, the more powerful and rich its potential impact: the genuinely individual voice can also be universally appealing. In Japan, where everyone expects to understand each other without trying hard and so much reverence is paid to shared truths, the universal emotions the women poets wanted to write about—anger, frustration, sorrow—somehow misfired in their personal expressions.

  The Japanese women poets seemed hurt more than helped by the tradition they had to draw on; the legacy of big ideas and nature symbols didn’t offer them anything to adapt to their advantage. Reading their work added to the frustration I always felt about t
he haiku. Haiku poems are deceptive. Many Americans consider them charmingly simple because they seem to evoke everyday events in the forms of nature-inspired observations. In truth, haiku are not about nature. The moment a haiku poet hears or sees an actual object of nature, that object is transformed into a symbol. Basho does not think of his frog as an actual and particular frog in the way Maxine Kumin begins her poem “The Retrieval System” with an actual and particular dog:

  It begins with my dog, now dead, who all his long life carried about in his head the brown eyes of my father, keen, loving, accepting, sorrowful, whatever; they were Daddy’s all right, handed on, except for their phosphorescent gleam tunneling the night which I have to concede was a separate gift.

  Basho’s frog is simply a switch that turns on the light of profound meaning. Although the dog causes Kumin to ponder the nature of loss and redemption and hope, the reader never forgets that this dog is a particular dog with particular brown eyes.

  As teenagers, my friends and I did not want to hear or write about the transitory nature of life in general. We wanted to talk about ourselves—our real lives with friends, dogs and cats, parents. Most of us kept diaries, and those of us who read were drawn to the poetry of American women. It’s hard to grow up in a place where nothing is allowed to be personal: in adolescence, everything is personal, even if you live in a culture that says otherwise.

  Now that I am an adult, I understand why many of my American friends are attracted to haiku and Zen meditation, why they love the Japanese culture of symbolism in which everything reflects big universal values. My American friends “found” Eastern philosophy, art, religion, and literature during college. By then, they were tired of their own and their friends’ personal anxieties, grievances, and high-strung neurotic behavior. Eastern culture gave my friends a chance to escape the personal, which they saw as petty obsession doomed to dead-end in some form of unhappiness. At twenty or twenty-one, my friends must have been disgusted with their peers’ lack of interest in the larger issues that affected the world. In America, tolerance for individual differences can degenerate into plain and lame indifference. Every time I hear my students dismiss people’s ideas as “Well, that’s just their personal opinion,” I understand how frustrated my friends must have been when they heard the same comments at twenty. My friends—most of them very serious and conscientious people—wanted to have universal ideas that weren’t dismissed as a personal whim or eccentricity. When they discovered Zen and haiku in college, they must have felt the same relief and joy I experienced the first time I read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and found out that it was possible for a woman to express her anger by comparing her father to a Nazi and a vampire or declaring that even God has let her down.