*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.
