Is Saying "I love You" in Japan a Problem?
More on "Love and Japan". This is a comment from a Gagaite with the mandatory Gaga sez that follows.
Useful? Enjoy!
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Hi Gaga!
"...When I taught in Japan, I asked the students if they ever saw their parents kiss. They said no. I asked them if they ever heard their parents say "I love you". They said no. I felt sad for them."
The roles of marriage and men and women aside, don't different cultures express emotions in different ways? In many western cultures, we are low-context communicators, ie. ignorant of the subtlies in the environment - everything has to be verbalised or written in a contract for communication to take place. In Japan, a very low-context culture, people do not have to talk all the time to communicate. Do people in such cultures do not need to say "I love you" to say I love you?
If romance is defined in the West as kissing, and saying "I love you" then wouldn't any culture that does not exhibit these behaviours be deemed "unromantic"?
I am English, but have never heard my parents say they love each other or kiss. Should I feel sad? I do know that they have been very much in love for the last 40 years, expressing it in many different ways.
A
Gaga Sez:
Point taken about the expression of love in its many manifestations. The shades and tints of this feeling definitely range from a deep red (passion) to a light pink (amenity), so I guess I was speaking of a certain shade somewhere towards the deep red (passionate) end.
Certainly you don't have to be physical nor all that emotive to love someone. Agreed. For example, the term "loving kindness" (or in Pali/Thai metta) describes a state of loving everyone and everything in the best possible way: for no personal gain, that you simply wish them no harm and to be well. Metta has no boundaries or conditions--it extends to all beings, living, non-living (deceased), in all forms (plant, animal, human, ghost, hell realms, heaven realms). It extends not only to those you are fond of, but to those you are NOT fond of, or downright dislike... but in the same way the sun shines on all alike, we can extend loving kindness to all, our own personal opinions/feelings in tow. So it is quite possible to dislike a person deeply and still love them.
I suppose a little background to my "sad" feelings when the Japanese said they never saw their parents kiss or heard them say, "I love you" is in order.
It was prompted by watching an American TV show (Bill Cosby) that one of the teachers designed a course around (the course was called "American Culture"). I had to sub for a sick teacher in this course and what they did was watch episodes of Bill Cosby and then discuss what they saw, based on a few prompt questions.
One of the questions was, "Is your father like Bill Cosby", and I felt this to be rather shallow and downright insulting. The fact the TV show depicted Bill Cosby as a wonderful father who took great interest in his family, and was the fount of wise advice and great problem-solving was entirely a fictitious dramatic script, and I thought the kids had better be told this reality. After watching the show, the kids were all depressed because in Japan, as I found out over seven years living there, the relationships they have with their parents was very different...cold, in fact... compared to, say, a North American concept of family structure, prompted by this TV show.
I did not think it wise to rub salt into their depressed states and say all American families have great dads just like Bill Cosby, so I went on to say that it was only a TV show, the depiction was unreal, and that, in fact, Bill Cosby as a real father was a hard-ass with his real kids.
But for some reason, the Japanese students and people I encountered... over an extended period living there... were extremely gullible and would believe almost anything given to them. It might have something to do with their stratified social groupings borrowed from Confucianism, i.e., a deep respect for elders and teachers, and what the elders or teachers said was true ...but that is another whole story in itself, quite humorous at times! Hmm. Perhaps they didn't believe things told to them deep down inside, but in Japan people are willing to sacrifice their own personal beliefs for the summum bonum, to ensure a harmonious grace (and even that wears you down!). But I digress.
Occasionally, and you must have had to act in this manner too as a teacher, you end up in a situation where all these kids want to express themselves. So, you have to take off the teacher hat and put on the good listener hat and deal with the outpourings of hurt people. And they really poured it out that day. All sorts of stories of sorrowful family relationships.
So my emotion, as patronizing as it seems now, was one of sadness. I can't change the feeling that occurred then; however, I think now my feeling of sadness has matured to one of compassion, as there is so much dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, incompleteness, not just "so", sorrow, suffering, etc) in life as a fundamental condition of being born-- there's nothing one can do about it-- but rather, you can hold a feeling in your heart, come to know it, and understand it. There are very subtle colorings to any emotion, and used unskillfully, just adds to the problem. Used skillfully and the problem can be understood. But I digress.
To segue into the second part of my point, which is my observation on how the deep red (passion) is played out in Japan, that is, alcohol and sex and love hotels as a garish, paltry form of the expression of love, might be inaccurate too. It might not envelope the entire experience of everyone in Japan. But it does exist, not so well hidden either (just go up the hill at Shibuya and you'll see the love hotels in full swing). This is something uniquely Japanese--at least in how it is played out. Certainly other cultures have this low-ball sex feature, but the Japanese way is very unique. They can readily compartmentalise their experiences and feelings. One emotion doesn't seem to interact with another. This was something noticeable and a feature I think people who have lived in Japan would be able to recognize. This makes them appear cold, particularly to Western folk. This inscrutability, the difficulty in getting a read on what goes on in their minds, is well known, almost a stereotype, and is what I referred to as being strange. It is something commented about by all my friends living in Japan, even now. Reading Japanese literature and seeing other forms of their expression and art, it is something even they notice, and even regale in as being an expression of their uniqueness.
Never for a moment think a Japanese doesn't view himself as a special breed of human! It's been bred into them from birth that they are somehow different than all other humans on the planet.
But that's another can of worms....
Gaga | 9:14 AM
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