Polite Lies

by Kyoko Mori

  Universal agreement is the key to Japanese conversations as well as to haiku. Almost all platitudes mean the same thing in Japan: the need to talk about something else. It matters very little which platitude you choose, what its literal meaning is. Once, to end a particularly depressing discussion among my aunt, my brother, and me about what a bad father my father was, my cousin Kazumi said, “Well, everyone has faults. Faults and regrets—they are a big part of everyone’s life.” While making this pessimistic pronouncement, she smiled cheerfully and nodded to each one of us.

  “That’s true,” I had to reply, trying to come up with another platitude. “We all regret something in our lives.” That wasn’t at all what I felt. I had nothing to regret just then. It was my father who was a bad father, not me. I felt self-righteous, which is the opposite of regretful. I was really saying to Kazumi, Don’t worry. I’m not as depressed as you think I am, but sure, we can talk about something else now.

  There was no way I could say that to her directly; nor was there any need to. As soon as I uttered my symbolic platitude, everyone nodded and smiled at me. They knew exactly what I meant.

  Most of the time, though, the universal codes take on more complicated forms. When I called my brother after our father’s death, my stepmother answered, and we had a conversation in which everything we said was an abstract gesture of aggression even though we uttered not one word of direct anger. Michiko started the exchange by saying, apropos of nothing, “So I suppose you will be staying at Akiko’s house.”

  I knew right away that her comment was not a simple observation but a serious accusation. Even though Michiko did not want me to stay with her, I had insulted her by making my arrangements with my aunt without asking her first. My omission implied that her house was not good enough for me.

  Instead of giving her a symbolic apology, I replied with another insult. “Of course I will stay at Aunt Akiko’s. Listen, I called because I wanted to speak to my brother. When will he be home?” My remarks suggested that I had no intention of talking to Michiko, much less staying at her house.

  We hung up soon after, neither of us saying it would be nice to get together or making remarks about staying healthy in the meantime. Though we didn’t slam down our receivers or call each other names, our omission of these usual greetings added yet another insult.

  In our conversation, what we did not say was as important as what we said. The whole thing started because my choosing to stay at my aunt’s house was a symbol of my allegiance: Akiko was my family, Michiko was not.

  To neutralize this potent symbol, I was supposed to make a show of indecisiveness. I was supposed to say to Michiko, “I would love to stay at your house, but I hear it’s a relatively small apartment and Jumpei is already staying there. I don’t want to inconvenience you, so I’ll ask Aunt Akiko. Do you think she would mind?” Then Michiko could have said, “You know you are always welcome here, but you are right, maybe it would work out better if you went to Akiko’s. Why don’t you call and ask her? I can’t speak for her, to be sure, but I don’t think she would mind.”

  I had skipped over this whole process of pretending. It would have been nice to say that I had done so because that kind of empty ceremony is illogical and absurd, even hypocritical. But in talking to other relatives—especially my grandmother, Fuku, whom I loved—I used to say plenty of things that were illogical, absurd, and untrue, just to make them feel better. I chose not to engage in double-talk with Michiko because I didn’t want to make her feel better at all. If anything, I was pleased to make her feel slighted, so I used the omission as a symbolic gesture—no different from sticking out my tongue or pointing up my middle finger. Every move I made was calculated to offend her. It was one of the few times that I clearly understood what I was saying or not saying in Japanese.

  Symbols in Japan remind me of story problems in math and dates in history. They are the things I should have learned but didn’t; they seem disconcertingly familiar and puzzling at the same time. For me, the ultimate Japanese gesture/ symbol—one I have seen all my life and still don’t really “get”—is that of bowing.

  As children in Japan, my brother and I seldom had to bow. For children, the gesture was reserved for formal occasions like school ceremonies. We saw adults bowing to each other almost every day, on the street or at the store, and we laughed because the gesture looked funny and awkward. Quite often, people straightened up from the bowing position too soon, discovered that the other person was still bent down, and had to bow again. That floored us. It was better than a comedy routine.

  We were also amused to see adults—especially our mother—bowing on the phone.

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” she would say, holding the receiver tightly to her ear and lowering her head. “I didn’t mean to trouble you so much. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Look,” my brother and I would whisper to each other. “She’s bowing on the phone again. Doesn’t she realize that the other person can’t see?”

  The last time I saw my brother, we were at Michiko’s house, and someone called him on the phone. Since the phone was only a few steps from where the rest of us were having tea, I could hear his part of the conversation. It sounded like a business call, probably from one of the customers for his wholesale store.

  The caller did most of the talking, and my brother was simply agreeing. “Hai, hai,” he said, over and over: “Yes, yes.” Every ten or twenty seconds, he said, “Sumimasen,” which could mean “I’m sorry,” “Thank you very much for your trouble,” “I’m glad you are doing me a favor,” or all of the above. Every time he said Sumimasen or another standard phrase, Arigato gozaimasu—“Thank you”—he pressed the receiver to his ear and bowed. He was doing the same thing our mother used to do, and speaking in a high, smooth voice, using all the levels of honorifics I had forgotten or never learned.

  “One of the stores downtown,” he told us after he hung up. He rolled his eyes. “I hate these people. They always drive such a hard bargain. They’re dumb but aggressive. That guy who called is the worst of them all.”

  Jumpei had been forced to be polite to hold on to the caller’s business—not because he liked or respected him. He wasn’t embarrassed to criticize the caller behind his back, to admit that his own effusive gratitude and apologies had been insincere. If he was only pretending to be polite, I wondered, why did he make a physical gesture that the caller couldn’t see? He could have been rolling his eyes and grimacing the whole time he was delivering polite apologies, as I probably would have—but instead, he had not only sounded but looked deeply grateful. I wasn’t sure if the visual effect was strategic (his voice would not have sounded right without the physical gesture) or reflexive (he didn’t even know that he was bowing).

  I know that physical gestures are arbitrary codes and symbols in any culture. Handshakes and hugs are not the only expressions of good will. Still, some gestures and “body language” signals seem natural, instinctive, and universal. Even a dog will shake hands; my cats tap my face with their paws or jump up on my shoulder and rub their heads against my face when they want my attention. There is some universal urge—human and animal—to reach out and touch hands (or paws) and faces as expressions of affection and good will. Bowing seems a little more abstract, a little further removed from the physical or instinctual. You can train a dog to shake hands, to sit, to retrieve balls, even to sing on command; gorillas have been taught to use computer keyboards or to sign for words. Though perhaps it is possible, I cannot imagine Koko and Michael bowing to each other.

  Bowing confuses me because it looks like a gesture of submission—like a dog rolling over or hanging its head in front of the owner—and yet it isn’t. When two women meet on the street and bow to each other, it’s hard to say who’s submitting to whom: submission is usually one-sided, not mutual. Besides, gestures of submission and dominance come with a visceral feeling. They are not detached and ambiguous in the way bowing is.

  A few years ago, Chuck
went to visit an old high school friend, Mike, and the two of them ended up having a drink at a “motorcycle bar.” It was a bar where Mike had previously gotten into a few fights, all of which he had won. While Chuck and Mike were drinking beer at the counter, two young men in black leather jackets came up to them.

  “It was clear they wanted to pick a fight,” Chuck told me later. “They stood next to Mike, squared their shoulders, and grunted. Mike immediately stood up and asked them what they wanted. He was standing tall, looking like a muscleman. A few more words were exchanged, which I couldn’t hear. The music was pretty loud. But I could feel myself sitting up straighter and looking right at these guys. The four of us stared at one another, two against two. Nobody moved. After a few seconds, Mike sat down, the guys went away, and then all night those two guys kept coming back and wanting to shake our hands. Every half hour, they would come up to us and shake our hands. It was weird. All this time, because I hadn’t realized we were going to a motorcycle bar, I had on my Reebok aerobic shoes. Everyone else was wearing cowboy boots of course. I couldn’t stand up because I didn’t want these guys to see my shoes. When we left, Mike said, ‘Here we were about to get into a fight and you had on your ballerina shoes.’”

  Even though Chuck has never gotten into a barroom fight, he wasn’t at all confused by what happened at the bar. The two guys wanted to challenge Mike because he was like the lead dog or the top gorilla. Mike asserted his dominance by standing up right away, squaring his shoulders, and asking the men what they wanted. He was accepting their challenge and calling their bluff. Discouraged from repeating the challenge, the two guys had to make periodic gestures of peace, the way dogs roll over in front of their pack leader. But the whole thing would have been different if the two guys had seen what “sissy” shoes Chuck had on—they would not have conceded Mike’s dominance if his “buddy” was wearing “ballerina shoes.”

  The event Chuck told me about is completely bizarre and completely understandable; the behavior of the men in the bar is like something out of a bad TV show: theatrical, stereotypical, and so easy to interpret. When I think of my brother bowing on the phone, I feel the exact reverse. As he stood by the couch bowing and apologizing to a person he couldn’t see, he was like a character from the folk tales whose “moral” always eluded me when our mother read them to us—the Peach Boy, the Fisherman Who Rescued the Sea Tortoise, the Raccoon Who Fooled a Buddhist Priest by Pretending to Be a Kettle. I had known him all my life, and yet he was an enigma: he was like a literary symbol I could not understand.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SCHOOL

  During our senior year at college, some of my classmates said they could hardly wait to graduate, to join “the real world.” They couldn’t concentrate on classes, knowing that they would soon be out of school forever. I didn’t feel the same way at all. School seemed as “real” to me as “the outside world”—only more interesting.

  I still don’t trust the distinction often made between school and “the real world,” which implies that there is something insubstantial or artificial about school. The business meetings I attended in Milwaukee as an interpreter confirmed my suspicion that arcane and “academic” discussions don’t happen only at colleges. The directors of two small companies, one Japanese and the other American, once had a twenty-minute debate about whether the plastic cover of a particular camera lens should be “pumpkin yellow” or “the yellow of raincoats.” What each man meant by these terms was unclear to the other and had to be redefined many times over. This is the conversation I recall now when I attend academic conferences and cannot understand what is being said about a book I have read more than once.

  School and “the real world” both have their absurd moments, but school is where people go when they are not satisfied with their “real world” lives and want a change. Many Americans in their thirties and forties go back to college to get trained for a different line of work or to pursue a lifelong interest they couldn’t afford to study earlier. Until they are in need of such second chances, most Americans take colleges for granted because they are always there—almost any adult can get into some college at any age.

  Being able to go back to school is a particularly American opportunity. My Japanese friends will never be able to do the same. In Japan, school does not give anyone a second chance. Many of my Japanese friends are married women with money who already have college degrees. But none of them can go back to college to earn a second degree in art, education, or social work, as their American counterparts may do.

  Recently, a few Japanese colleges have started accepting applications from adults who have been out of school for years, but these colleges are exceptions. The only way most people can get into a college in Japan is to take and pass the entrance examination for that particular college immediately after graduating from high school. The number of exams a student can sit for in a given year is limited since many schools give their exams on the same day.

  A student who does not get into any college will have to wait a year, attending a cram school. There is a word for a student in this situation—ronin (floating person). In feudal times, the word referred to samurai whose clan had been dissolved. Feudal ronin had to roam around until they could find a new master to serve. To be a modern ronin is scarcely better: while their friends move on to colleges or jobs, ronin must float around for a year without any allegiance. In Japan, anyone who doesn’t belong to the right group at the right time feels like a failure. If a ronin can’t get into a college after a year at a cram school, he or she usually gives up and settles for a low-paying job rather than spending another year floating around.

  In the States, young people who don’t feel ready for college can work for a few years and then apply when they feel more motivated or mature. Young Japanese people don’t have the same chance. For older adults to go back to school to have a second chance—at a job or an artistic career or personal fulfillment—is practically impossible.

  The very accessibility of schools in America adds to the perception that they are not real or substantial enough. Many Americans who criticize their own school system for being “too easy” idealize the Japanese school system because they are drawn to its tough image. The details Americans cite as the merits of the Japanese system actually reflect their ideal of the mythical “real world” where people must work hard—long hours, the emphasis on discipline and basic skills, the tough competition among peers. These people admire the Japanese school system because they see it as a samurai version of their own fantasies about the American work ethic.

  My education at a traditional Japanese grade school was nothing so glorious. Day-to-day life at a Japanese public school was harsh but also boring. Until I transferred to a private school in seventh grade, I didn’t learn anything that I couldn’t have learned at home by reading and memorizing the same books with my mother’s help.

  Recently when I was in Japan, I was asked why I did not write my novels in Japanese, why I did not at least translate my own work. The question surprised me at first. The people who asked knew that for twelve years I have lived in a small Wisconsin town where I have few opportunities to speak Japanese. No one can write novels in a language she has not spoken every day for more than a decade. But there is another reason I could not possibly have written my novels or poems in Japanese: I was never taught to write in what was my native language. My public education in Japan prepared me to make the correct letters to spell out the correct sounds, but that is not the same as teaching me how to write.

  When I started the first grade at six, I had not been taught to read at home—at least not in a formal way. Because my mother read to me all the time, I had memorized my favorite books and could read along with her. Sometimes, when my mother and I were standing on the street corner waiting for a taxi, I noticed that I could read the license plates of the cars passing by. I would read the plates and she would nod and smile because I was right, but no big fuss was made about my being able to read
. Most of the other kids starting school with me were the same way: we sort of knew how to read because of our mothers, but we hadn’t been formally trained.

  In first grade, we were taught the fifty phonetic signs that make up the Japanese alphabet, a dozen simple pictorial characters, and the basic numbers. By the end of the year, everyone in our class could read our textbooks and write simple messages to our family and friends in our sprawling, uneven handwriting. People who admire the Japanese education system are partially right. Japanese schools are very good at teaching skills like basic writing—which can only be learned through memorization and repeated practice.