Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I forget how this topic came to mind today, but I was pondering the notion of how I noticed that some Japanese people jealously guard something precious to them.  A friend of mine mentioned how he was invited to this goth show for Christmas, which featured Tim Burton and a few other associates.  It wasn't so much a show, but a club in Roppongi.  The owner was apparently a huge Tim Burton fan.  However, he doesn't normally like foreigners, so my friend getting in was done in part by his girlfriend's intense negotiations.  At first I thought that the owner was gay, but apparently that wasn't so.  But don't you think it's a bit strange (and hypocritical) that this guy would be so favoring of Tim Burton, yet unaccepting towards foreigners?

Then I remembered another guy I knew out here who is/was a huge fan of puroresu.  When the wrestlers would come around, he'd hang around and they'd know him.  Sometimes, he'd be able to go where other pro-wrestlers go as if one of their own.  But he was terribly proud and very tenuous when it came to sharing his "relationships" with other people.  It's as if he were protecting something profound.

Another incident was with my ex-girlfriend.  She never went outside of Japan before.  One time though, I took her and we went to LA and Las Vegas.  It was her first time to see another country.  When we went to this English conversation cafe one night, she was bragging about her travels as if she were special.

I've noticed this type of pattern in Japanese society and began to expound on a theory in my head for this type of behavior.   It's not an easy explanation, but I decided to blog it as a future reference.

The idea starts with the various traits that I see here.  Insecurity.  Pride.  Ostentation.  For some of my friends in the states, we'd never really make that much of a fuss about it.  I mean, we'd say how cool traveling, or having good relations with someone or something might be.  But we wouldn't attempt to protect it as if it were a part of our identity.

Perhaps, part of what's going on is the size of Japan.  Japan, as a tiny nation, lacks resources and many people here are short in stature.  Such physical dwarfism can lead to insecurity about oneself.  In fact, this insecurity might lend to other modes of insecurity that trickles into daily life.  So protecting something is natural, kinda like how a tribe might protect an oasis in the middle of a desert from intruders.  The other socio-psychological thing is that the Japanese, in feeling small, also have the sense of being insignificant in this world.  You often hear in the Japanese language various self-referential terms about Japan, Japanese language and Japanese people.  It's as if the core language itself is used as a political tool to provide a sense of identity to people here.  Yet, to distinguish oneself in this society, is quite difficult, especially when it is the norm to conform.

Naturally though, people want to become significant in some way.  It's human nature, pride and ego.  These things provide us with a sense of identity, a way to differentiate ourselves from our neighbors, even though paradoxically we are told to conform.  Think about how Japanese stars are created when they're sent overseas and return as major superstars.  Puroresu is like this big time.  It's like a marketing campaign to enhance the specialness of these wrestlers.

Another possible explanation for this desire to protect and signify small things in Japanese society is historical and cultural.  The Japanese have lived in a hierarchical society almost forever.  The various class structures denoted people's social station.  In the modern sense, it would be like seeing a Japanese girl with her Louis Vutton bag; the bag itself is meaningless, but the context is only given when she holds it amongst her peers.  Then the definition is provided through the value associated between what her peers believe of the bag.

In any case, watch how a Japanese person guards their "thing."  The important thing is to figure out what that "thing" is to get at the heart of a Japanese person.