*SCENE*
-Immigrant worker wearing a hajib being harassed by her Japanese supervisor:
"You don't see anyone else wearing them, do you?!"
-Worker breaks down in tears.
I want to be careful here. This could easily turn into a discussion about immigrant's expectations of their new home-country, but I'm specifically not interested in that question. Instead, I'm curious about this supervisor's inability to be sensitive to her employee's feelings.
Japan is not a religious country. Sure historically speaking Japan is both Buddhist and Shintoist, and these two practices are the root of Japan's beautiful temples and shrines. Yes, people still visit temples and shrines for holidays and auspicious events in people's lives. Nevertheless, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who actually believes in either of these as a religion these days. In fact, many people speak quite openly and frankly about their lack of religion. Much like I love celebrating Christmas even though I'm firmly agnostic, for Japanese people visiting shrines and temples is about practicing their culture rather than practicing their faith.
It's also an important distinction that neither Shintoism nor Buddhism recognize a single all-powerful non-human authority, and this is likely the reason why the two systems coexisted in harmony in the lives of Japanese people for thousands of years.
Morality. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, morality is defined by God - a being external from the human race. Japanese people have no experience of an externally defined morality. Here, morality is defined by "normal behavior". This is the reason why, to Westerner's sometimes great amusement, Japanese people are so obsessive about what is normal and what is not. Unusual, uncommon, different - all of these words in Japanese stink of "immoral, dysfunctional, delinquent" and thus it can be a challenge to explain the vast variety of cultures and beliefs living together in California.
Let's look at the line spoken by the supervisor once again. "You don't see anyone else wearing them, do you?!" At once, this person has belied their complete inability to comprehend the power of a person's belief in an external morality, and simultaneously has tried to impose their own Japanese morality. If I've explained myself well, then hopefully you now see the true power and weight that this simple sentence carries in Japan.
Japanese people are well aware that people in other countries practice Christianity, etc. but behind closed doors they find it all pretty ridiculous. "Why would anyone believe something so silly?" If you live in a Christian country, even if your personal beliefs deviate from those of a major religion, you are still capable of recognizing the sheer power that faith has for believers.
Faith is, regardless of your personal beliefs, a common cultural experience for people living in the U.S. Japan has no equivalent to faith. This is why Fumiko and I sat at dinner last night trying in vain to come up with some similarly powerful experience in Japanese culture that could be used to illustrate for the supervisor just what she was demanding of her employee. "If you could meet with the supervisor," Fumiko proposed, "with a chance to give her some insight into just how powerful the employee's feelings were on this issue, what would you say?" If I were to say, "this woman fears burning in hell for all eternity," then the supervisor's reaction would be, "that's all silly nonsense." If I were to say, "in this woman's mind, this is normal behavior," then the supervisor's reaction would be, "but not in Japan."
Fumiko and I are still puzzling this one out. Usually we're pretty good at coming up with similar cultural experiences to illustrate differences, but this one really has us stumped.
8 comments:
I wonder what someone would have to say or do to you, Gavin, to give you the same feelings the hajibed woman had.
I'm not sure if I truly empathize with the woman. I'm from a place where there's so many weirdos (of every stripe) and no one ends up a weirdo. Its not that I empathize with the weirdos. I'm just used to not being affected by them and there's some sort of implicit agreement that if I don't freak out about them then they won't freak out about my weirdo-ism.
Coming to work naked?
Are there any behaviors or activities that differ in another part of Japan? If so, that behavior or activity could be used to illustrate the point.
Pushmedia1: I'm not really sure where you're going with your first comment. As for your second, it seems to fall short of the goal.
I'm not suggesting that Pushmedia1 and I have ever been women in an Islamic world. But we do have the common experience of being raised in a culture based on a wrathful God.
The challenge here is that there is no way to get on common ground when it comes to fear of repercussions even beyond death.
You're implying the woman is wearing the scarf because of her fear of god's wrath in the afterlife. I submit you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You (and I) have no idea what its like to be a Muslim woman in Japan. We have no idea why they feel compelled to wear scarves to work.
But we're not requiring the Japanese boss to empathize with the woman. That would be impossible. Instead, we want him to be ok with her feelings. To do that you were suggesting we try to give him an example that would make him feel similar to the way she feels when he tells her not to wear the scarf.
Yoko gave the example of some sort of scarf/shirt thing that monks wear.
Invoking hellfire/damnation for not wearing a head covering seems like a simplistic view of Islam. My take has been that more traditional Islamic women avoid showing their hair for the same kinds of reasons Western women avoid showing their breasts. There are a couple of steps on the line from "it just feels wrong" to "demons will scourge my soul for all eternity if I do that."
Most of you have been to traditional Japanese bath houses, I think. How did that work out?
these fun discussions is why I keep coming here. Wish I had time to type up a longer statement, but I just wanted to comment on the part about how they consider "normal, polite behavior" as the yardstick of goodness. I've talked to several Japanese people who have told me "I'm perfect" or "I'm without any sin," which in our Christian western culture is almost unspeakable, when in reality they are saying something more like "I haven't broken any laws or been a jerk" Interesting stuff.
I know I am too slow to comment on this topic. I must, though. It is simply irrelevant to treat the Asian Muslim worker as a Japanese person. She is not a Japanese! Has that supervisor never seen things like that on nuns in convents in Japan and shaved heads of Buddhist monks!? How about for lesser, yet more commonly, shaved heads of high school baseball teams and forehead bands (Hachimaki)! When people do something to their head, that just show their determination to whatever they are upto. I hope people quickly get used to applying real common sense to everyone. Truely embarrassing!
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