Japan vs. the US: lifestyle

Japanese version posted on Mar. 22nd

11 days have passed since the first earthquake. Food, electricity, fuel, and consideration have suddenly disappeared from our convenience store-dependent city lives. People sway along with overwhelming amount of information, and dance against their will with records of magnitudes and micro-sieverts. In such crisis, the true characteristic of human beings becomes visible. People buying out stores, not considering about others, and is sad to see such self-centered, irresponsible and inhumane action among our people.

It has been 3 days since Sahe has left for Hawaii. Our stance towards this crisis was visibly different; her belief was “better to be safe than sorry”, where mine was “stay for my final weeks at work”. We were able to agree to go separate ways for a bit while, and that was ok for us. However, it was not necessarily viewed the same by others here. They saw her action as, “escaping the scene of fire when there are others still in the building”.

Upon hearing such comment, I started to think about the characteristic of us, the sun worshipping, goldfish tenders. Then, I noticed comments mentioned by international medias about us. Words such as “patient”, “cooperative”, “have high threshold for pain”, “accepting of situation” are commonly used for our description, and I started to wonder where these myths came from.

The first thing that came to mind was the phrase often used by civilians during WWII. People chanted, “won’t want anything until the victory”, and gave up metal-ware such as pans and buckets to make weapons and ammo. This mentality of being strong as a group was commonly practiced even back in the 1940’s, but this action, sometimes was merely a reflection of a fear of being the black sheep.

Being average. This is a naturally accepted concept to this far-east Asian community. The country calculates the standard, from the physical appearance like height, weight and cholesterol level, to income, allowance, and even one’s lifespan. The public reviews these numbers to make sure you are within the boundary of the ordinary; that you are not the nail that sticks out. The comfort zone is being the same as your neighbor, and who announces the information: no other than the televised media. People are easily controlled with fixed information provided by the government through media, and a good example was making people feel guilty about escaping the country, by announcing the controlled blackout. People felt the necessity of staying and taking care of homes, and so the majority stayed, instead of rushing the airport to create chaos and panic, just like the government wanted.

It became clear, due to this crisis, that Sahe and I are a family of multi-cultural background. We both knew that she is more American, and I Japanese, but never knew how much apart we are from each other, since we both share and understand the secondary culture of our teammate’s valued as the primary. What was far more important, was that we were able to value each other’s decision based on our instincts. Self-based individualism vs. community-based dependence. We will see how the next generation reacts to such lifestyle with backwards parents.