Crossing Cultures in Japan
ABRAMS, ARNOLD
THE PROBLEMS OF MIXED MARRIAGES Crossing pultures in Japan BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Tokyo With the eager anticipation of young newly-weds Mikiro and Gail Takagi recently went on a weekend trip that his...
...Such outings are common in this country, and they afford a pleasant escape from urban pressures...
...On the contrary, everybody politely ignored us...
...THE PROBLEMS OF MIXED MARRIAGES Crossing pultures in Japan BY ARNOLD ABRAMS Tokyo With the eager anticipation of young newly-weds Mikiro and Gail Takagi recently went on a weekend trip that his Japanese company had arranged for its employes...
...They don't mean to be rude...
...bitter and lonely by all things Japanese...
...This can be frustrating, but it also has a positive side????it stops you from saying things you might not really mean...
...If a Japanese friend asked my advice about marrying a foreign woman," says Mitsunori Nakamura, a 31-year-old business consultant who took an American wife five years ago, "the first thing I would tell him is not to do it...
...In Japan, people don't think you can become Japanese...
...Few, if any, foreign wives here have intimate friendships with Japanese...
...Her reaction is philosophical: "If my husband were doing it in America, I would worry...
...What's more, I don't think Japanese society expects anything else of me...
...Japanese women seem to have more limited interests...
...Betty Jean Ogawa, 29, a former Seattle resident who met her husband at the University of Washington, points out the importance of remembering that "when we have disagreements, it's not two countries or two cultures clashing, it's just two people...
...Nobody was rude to us," recalls Mrs...
...With my wife, it takes more explanation...
...In the United States, everyone is expected to become Americanized, and if you aren't, people think there's something wrong with you...
...Also to be considered, Ogawa adds, are fundamental language problems: "When I want to tell another Japanese something, often I can express it in two words...
...they are just very curious, I guess...
...This is especially true when we have a disagreement...
...Despite the tongue-lashing he received, the outspoken author remained unbowed...
...Instead, we must slow down, think carefully about what we want to get across, then summarize...
...Whether we are walking in the street or sitting together in a moving car, they stare...
...And when we go into a local restaurant, for instance, it's often worse...
...I and my closest friends ????who are Americans????Are concerned with much more than food, babies and fish prices at the local market...
...The severest criticism of Alien Rice came from the Association of Foreign Wives, founded almost five years ago to help its members acclimate themselves to their new environment...
...Hiromitsu Ogawa, for one, is keenly aware of the discomfort his marital situation seems to cause his countrymen: "Wherever we go, people stare at us, and I cannot get used to it...
...Ogawa...
...This organization of 300 women, mainly Americans, accused Kawasaki of exaggerating the difficulties of mixed marriages in Japan and focusing solely on their negative aspects...
...Even after six years of marriage, he says, "I often must stop and ask myself, 'Now why did Betty say that, and what did she mean?' I have to try to consider things from the American point of view...
...And this has become a controversial subject here of late, following the publication of Alien Rice, a sardonic novel about a Japanese businessman's British wife who is made miserable...
...They don't know whom to serve first, me or my wife, and this causes them great trouble...
...People get very upset...
...That sense of apartness often extends to a general feeling of alienation shared by both partners in mixed marriages...
...How does a foreign wife feel, sitting home alone at night while her husband is out wining and dining with business associates????And other women...
...Although there are both American and Japanese couples connected with the firm, my husband and I were in the middle that weekend, neither here nor there...
...You can make this such a problem that it will break you apart, or you can accept it for what it is????just part of the system????And if you have confidence and trust in your husband, it need not become a major issue...
...There is a considerable difference between Japanese and American women," says Mrs...
...Similar experiences are common among expatriates throughout the world, but they are especially acute for foreign spouses of Japanese men because of the closed, rigidly structured nature of the society, which has retained its feudalistic code regarding women...
...Ogawa, too, has to do a lot of business entertaining...
...Takagi, a soft-spoken, 25-year-old Connecticut native still adjusting to the difficulties of everyday life for a foreign wife in Japan...
...We have to stop merely saying things, because that only leads to a breakdown in communication...
...The book's author is Ichiro Kawasaki, a 63-year-old veteran diplomat who was forced out of the foreign service in 1969 after writing Japan Unmasked, an iconoclastic collection of essays on the foibles of his countrymen...
...When he bravely accepted an invitation to appear before their group, the foreign women asserted that, far from being miserable and abused, they were relatively happy and reasonably liberated...
...In fact, while Kawasaki may have overstated the situation, a series of extensive interviews with mixed couples in Tokyo suggests that his observations are well-founded...
...Yet her husband, Hiromitsu, sales promotion manager for Coca-Cola in Japan, has a somewhat different view...
...I almost always have hostesses along," he says...
...The basic obstacles are of course communication barriers????cultural as well as linguistic????that most foreigners find it hard to penetrate...
...But for Takagi and his American bride of several months, it turned out to be two long, lonely days...
...Aside from such situations within the home, where partners in a mixed marriage at least speak a common tongue, the language barrier can be overwhelming outside, for familiarity with English????or any other foreign language????is minimal in this country...
...Nakamura's 27-year-old wife, Beverly, a native of South Bend, Indiana, who met him when she was a university exchange student, nods in agreement: "The problems are very real, but if you can overcome them, such a marriage can be particularly enriching...
...Without them it's no fun...
...It was no better with the Americans...
...No matter how well adjusted you are, this can be a real trial...
...People simply did not know how to behave with us...
...But if he clearly understood the difficulties involved, and said he was truly in love, then I would tell him to go ahead...
...Nakamura, mother of a three-year-old son, "and I think this holds for all women in Japan, not just foreigners...
...More serious is the practice of excluding wives from men's affairs in a society where after-hours entertainment????customarily in geisha houses or nightclubs????is an integral part of doing business...
...Mrs...
...If what you are saying is correct, he retorted, then why the need for your organization...
...Apparently you do what she and the members of the Association of Foreign Wives are doing: You learn to adjust to the ways of Japanese society, or you lead an unhappy life...
...I don't like it," says Mrs...
...If the Japanese came over, they would either try to speak English and feel uncomfortable, or they would speak Japanese and probably feel they were slighting me...
...Takagi, for example, cannot speak much Japanese, and she would lead a largely isolated existence were it not for the fact that her job with a publishing firm brings her into daily contact with other American women...
...A marriage is unlikely to founder, however, on so slight a shoal...
...Ogawa is happy living in Japanese society, but she has no illusions about becoming a part of it: "I'm American and I can't pretend otherwise...
...Arnold Abrams frequently reports in these pages on Asian affairs...
...But I tell my wife exactly what happens, and then I don't feel I have anything to hide...
...We felt apart from everyone...
...Even fluent speakers of Japanese, like Beverly Nakamura and Betty Jean Ogawa, who can function easily in the society and maintain surface relations with their Japanese counterparts, find that cultural blocks still remain...
...But here, what can you do...
Vol. 57 • June 1974 • No. 13
