Iain Donnachaidh

It seems like at some time or another, almost everyone I know has asked me, some more than once, what it is I like so much about Japan.  Some then laugh at their own question as absurd – my mother once followed it with, “I guess that’s a silly question – why do I like the color blue?” but the majority hold out for some semblance of a solid answer. And I, though for the most part echoing the “who can explain their own prejudices” sentiment described above by my mother, generally feel obliged to at least attempt a response.

The response, needless to say, always ends up being hazy and various. More an exercise in gauging my inquisitor’s expectations and sympathies and attempting to formulate the response I think they would like to hear than an act of self-expression. And since I get the question in equal amounts from Americans and from Japanese, my response often hinges on that. It’s like explaining what you so loved about a book to someone who hasn’t read it, or else like explaining what is so great about the book to its author, or its author’s wife, or best friend. Sometimes it’s like explaining what’s so great about the book to the author’s best friend or wife who have themselves only read parts of it.

If I’m to get the question at all, I suppose I prefer being asked more specific, less open-ended versions of it: “Is it Japanese women?” Well, sure. Yes and no. But ultimately the answer is no, not because of any final preference against the Japanese female archetype, which I certainly do not have, but because in practice there has never been any manifestation of the a conclusive preference for it either. No now this is a real woman feeling of epiphany or relief. And having gone on with my second-home sense of mixed affection for Japan living here with my heart stuck firmly on the other side of the Pacific, it seems safe to say that a factor or not, Japanese women cannot said to be the it in the what is it you like so much about Japan? question.

“Is it the history? The culture?” Sure, as much as it’s the women. “The love affair with electronic technology?” And I’d say the same bout this. “The refinement? Such strong notions of honor and grace?” Certainly it’s hard not to appreciate the merits of these things. “Is it the hard-working, all-enduring selflessness of the Japanese?” And this also. “Is it the sound of the language?” As much as it’s the women, sure. “The feeling of being far away in some exotic land?” Actually, I think it takes some force of will for anyone who spends much time in a place to go on thinking of it as exotic, particularly a Californian in Japan, and I dispensed of that idea back in high school, half-voluntarily. “Is it because you feel like a giant there? Is it the freedom from intimidation?” This is from people who even when they’re in Japan are living in the version of it they’ve seen in movies. Even height-wise, the only difference I feel in my height walking around Japan versus the U.S. is that I have gone from average at home to slightly tall-ish average in Japan. It’s hardly Mr. Baseball, or Lost in Translation, or maybe I don’t have the animal instinct to constantly size up my interactions based on height – admittedly it’s not one of the first things I notice about anyone unless they’re tall or short in the extreme. “Is it the overall safety of the country?” This, like honor, refinement, work-ethic, is hard not to appreciate. It’s an amusing idea, though, that something like the simple absence of guns on the street, or some preference for a certain kind of woman, would be enough of a draw to swallow the rest of the entire contents of a national culture, way of thinking and lifestyle whole.

I have to feel it’s an unanswerable question. There is no it, there cannot be one. I will readily admit that this probably has a lot to do with my nebulous worldview and way of thinking. The idea of something like a national culture having an essence by which it can be definitively described has always seemed shallow and absurd to me. Are people defined by such superficial things as the ratio of beef to fish in their diet, the laws they live under, the arbitrary actions and allegiances of their ancestral lineage? The question what is it you like so much about Japan? can in essence be truncated both in its verbiage and in its general rhetorical thrust to what is Japan? although of course what the question seeks is an opinion, a personal definition of its essence – not an encyclopedia-style explanation that Japan is an archipelago nation (not an island nation, as it is frequently mistakenly referred to as) located just east of China, Korea, and Russia, with a population of 128 million, a Parliamentary constitutional monarchy, and a nominal GDP of roughly 400 trillion yen. But I think this manic and compulsive human tendency to seek and compile such exact data that ultimately has value only to bureaucracies, militaries, and primary school children forced to write reports is a sign of just what an exercise in futility it always ends up being trying to define just what exactly makes a given country that country and not another. A person’s feelings on this matter must always end up being moderate, though, because the issue is not just about nation-states or culture but more about the extent to which a given human psyche can tolerate accepting the very real chaos and utter absence of context or meaning inherent to existence without going insane.

Think about being asked to define concisely what it is you like about someone you know. Or change this to just defining in concise terms who a person is. First of all, it’s easier the more superficial a level you know them on. Secondly, if you can manage it with any serious clarity about someone you have known for a good stretch of time and relatively intimately, sincerity as opposed to actual honesty or accuracy is the best you can hope for. Now multiply this by the population of an entire country, adjust for social classes, regional variations, political and religious affiliations, account for intra-generational and inter-generational trends, personal experiences and interests, and you will soon realize that when you try to sum up what a country or culture is, no matter what your qualifications to do so may be, what you are really engaged in is the creation of a fictional narrative.

Culture itself is a fiction, as is the nation-state, as is race as anything more than an arbitrary set of aesthetic physical differences produced by random genetic drift and the fragmentation of historical populations into evolutionary demes. These things are emergent systems of fiction produced by the simple individual fiction of identity, one of the barriers we’ve erected through the use of a swollen frontal lobe against the encroaching chaos and meaninglessness of life in general, the desire to believe we exist as something more sublime than a stomach and a set of reproductive organs.

But the question can be answered. Sincerely, if with only incomplete truth. And maybe it is a little like asking a longtime friend or spouse why it is they like their other so much. It’s who life has stuck me with, we’ve found a way to get along and trust and look after each other, and they have never screwed me in a way I couldn’t find it in me to forgive is the truest cause-and-effect answer for anyone if enough time has passed for the initial charm of first impressions to wane, but in any case they might compose some fictional narrative about the person being reliable or honest or funny or sweet or smart or loyal, as if each person on the planet were actual the manifestation of some abstract ideal, God-come-unto-flesh. But even beyond the truth I’ve named, there’s another, simpler, truer, more sublime, and probably infinitely less interesting answer:
Because they appreciate in me what I appreciate in myself. Because they like me. Because they make me feel loved.