Biculturalism

Cultural Conundrums / What to say when it's all too much to stomach

Kate Elwood Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Being bicultural is a magnificent experience. It broadens an individual's perspective, exposes him or her to a much wider variety of ways of thinking and doing, enhances understanding and acceptance. Ah yes, biculturalism represents a doubling of life's ordinary pleasures and brilliant wonders.

On the good days, anyway. On frustrating, maddening days when nothing goes right, being bicultural can be reduced to a matter of darkly muttering, "This would never happen in..." followed by the name of that other marvelous country the bicultural person most unfortunately is not in at the moment--only to realize that on equally exasperating and provoking days in that other splendid nation, he or she has made the equivalent gripe. Ah yes, the downside of biculturalism can be a perennial tendency to find two cultures forever falling short of each other.

Brushes with this type of cross-cultural malaise need not be a totally wearisome waste of time, as picking away at the sources, features, elements, and effects of the dissatisfaction can once more hopefully, eventually, broaden the individual's perspective, expose him or her to a much wider variety of ways of thinking and doing, and so on and so forth, when the initial irritation has subsided a bit. Maybe. At least sometimes.

Several years ago I was back in the United States with tedious business to conduct. At the same time, worrywart that I am, the situation was fraught with tension for me as I did what fussbudgets throughout the world do, which is to imagine every plausible and implausible thing that might possibly go wrong and then become unduly preoccupied with the consequences of each anticipated failure. The upshot of all this fret and anxiety was that I asked the clerk in the United States a whole lot of questions. His patience ran out fairly quickly. "Good grief!" he burst out, "You're all set and there's nothing else to do!"

As I walked away, two thoughts were in my mind: 1) Interesting! People other than the character Charlie Brown in the cartoon "Peanuts" actually use "good grief" to express aggravation, and 2) How rude! This would never happen in Japan.

A few days later I returned to good old Japan where clerks are politely helpful despite my numerous inquiries. Later, I had a chance for some investigation. I asked my students what they did when they were fed up with the actions of somebody as in the case of my erstwhile clerk. They looked bemused so I told them of my own pet peeve, people suddenly coming to a standstill in the middle of a sidewalk oblivious to the other pedestrians trying to get by. If I had known the Japanese counterpart to "Good grief!" I might have resorted to it on more than one occasion. Hmm... They appeared less mystified, but still at a loss somehow.

After giving it some thought many students said they couldn't think of anything that typically happened that annoyed them enough to feel moved to say anything. One student rather shamefacedly admitted that it got on his nerves when people cut in ahead when people were waiting to get on a train, and that--and here he seemed to summon up his courage to confess to it--he sometimes clearly indicated his displeasure.

"What do you do?" I asked, imagining from his hesitant demeanor that I'd be hearing something a bit surprising in its forcefulness. He was an easygoing guy, but those aggressive commuters can be quite obnoxious at times in their quest for a seat so I could well believe he might get ticked off and say some appropriately hard-hitting words. I was curious to know what they were.

Once more he hesitated, then took the plunge. "I go like this," he explained, and made a tsk-ing sound with his tongue. Oh, my! That's telling them off good and proper! He obviously believed so, but to me it seemed a very mild rebuke to the pushers and shovers of public transportation and it made me wonder how many times I might have unthinkingly availed myself of a tsk here and a tsk there without realizing it might have more indignant weight in Japan than in the United States Apparently, tsk-ing can be ticklish.

When behavior is beyond the pale, there are various expressions in Japanese all centered around the same notion--faulty upbringing. At first I thought the popular criticism oya no kao ga mitai ("I want to see his/her parents' faces") meant that the parents would be distressed to know of their child's bad behavior, along the lines of "What would your mother say if she could see you now?" In fact, it means that the parents must be blamed for bringing up such an ill-mannered child. Similarly, osato ga shiremasu yo and sodachi ga wakaru both mean something like "your bad behavior reveals how badly you were brought up."

While mothers and fathers may sometimes be blamed in the United States for not taking proper care to teach their little ones how to act correctly, Americans who are irritated by another's actions tend to pay more attention to the offender's personal defects without referring to his or her developmental circumstances.

The direct rebuke "Were you born yesterday?" sarcastically assumes lack of experience as the reason for ignorance, not bad breeding. Other traditional remarks like "ain't got the sense that God gave a goose," "a day late and a dollar short," and "not the sharpest knife in the drawer" are all playfully disdainful ways to voice exasperation at foolishness, but which leave no blame at the parents' doorstep.

On the other hand, English pronouncements that disrespect a person's mother like the long-established "Your mother wears army boots" certainly are apt to cause anger to the target listener with the disparaged parent, yet the desire behind the insult is derision, plain and simple, without any added implication that the speaker can perceive in his or her object of ridicule the effects of being raised by such a mother.

Interestingly, a children's taunt in Japanese makes a claim that the listener's mother has a protruding belly button. Poor mothers! On the other hand, the English phrases "Like father, like son" or "The apple doesn't fall from the tree" appear only to be used when there is a plain pattern of bad behavior across the lines of descent. In the United States, in the absence of such evidence of generational misbehavior, we haven't really got a set phrase of condemnation like Oya no kao ga mitai. In that country, Americans are each free and independent in our stupid actions, evidently. Good grief!


Elwood is an associate professor of English and intercultural communication at Waseda University's School of Commerce. She is the author of "Getting Along with the Japanese." (Ask, 2001)

(May. 9, 2006)