January 1994: Americenterism

Being a fluent English speaker, and having lived among Americans for many years, you'd think that it would have been easy for me to settle into my new life in the Midwest. I know that I certainly expected to fit in quite quickly. However, once I arrived, I found the transition to be more difficult than I ever imagined. Not so much that I had trouble with life in America itself, but rather because the attitudes and approaches of the people that I met during my early years there put me off of the whole idea of living in America, and made me cling defensively onto the memories of the life that I'd left behind.

I bet you don't know what this is?

Among the things that put me off of living in America was that many of the people that I met there were had a very Americacentric view of the world: meaning that they knew about America and believed that it was the beginning and end of the world, and they had very big blind spot when it came to figuring out what people who were not from America.

On one hand people seemed to think that people outside of America existed inside some kind of time warping bubble that prevented them from having any contact with “civilization”. You have absolutely no idea how many times I was approached by somebody exclaiming "In America we call this a …" or "I bet that you don’t get these in Japan" and then showing me some common household item like a carton of French fries, door that swung instead of slide (contrary to what you may see on TV, we have a full understanding of hinges, and we've been eating Macdonald's since about the Mid 70s). It was particularly annoying that about a quarter of said household items were Japanese brand electronics. On the other hand, however, the very same people who didn't expect me to know about international staples automatically presumed that I would know all about uniquely American customs like the Sadie Hawkins dance, or even local legends that people across the state line probably wouldn't never have heard of. People were also overly forward, sometime even aggressively so, when it came proffering help that I neither asked for nor needed in this field. They would sometimes charge right in regardless and often turn something quite ordinary into something rather embarrassing. Such as the time that I had to fend off a well meaning canteen assistant who rushed up while I was eating, literally yanked the tableware out of my hands, and proceeded to switch them over stating, "Knife in left hand, fork in right hand" because I was holding them “the wrong way round”, despite the reality being that I am left handed (rarer in Japan than the US, but not unknown) and that I was using them the same way as almost every other left handed person in America.

Most of the time, people were well meaning and weren't trying to be offensive. They just didn't think logically about thing before trying to proffer advice or explanations. Fortunately for my sanity this situation gradually improved as people came around to the idea that I'd come from Japan in an airliner, rather than a time machine, and the constant unwanted interruptions and explanations dried up and eventually stopped. Though it took about 5-6 months to do so completely.

Unfortunately, while my first problem eventually solved itself, I also had a second one ran and ran and ran. Beginning as soon as I arrived in town, and not stopping stop until the day that I left.

Trading up

My other big annoyance, the one that really helped to set my mood against my new surroundings, was the way that so many people whom seemed to view me as being some kind of immigrant, or even a refuge, and whom believed that I'd come to America seeking a better life.

There was, it seemed, nothing that the townsfolk didn't think was better in America, and didn't think that I would think was better too. A view which they were not shy about vocalizing.

From the minute that I moved into town, the established populous took to pointing out anything and everything as being an example of how fortunate I supposedly was to be living in America, and how much better it was going to make my life. They also automatically presumed that I agreed with them before they spoke, and worked on the presumption that I must not have understood them if I voiced any disagreement after the fact. Honestly, I couldn't get a ride to a block party without being told that the car I was in was better because it was American, and that the meat on the grill was better because it was American, or how fortunate I was to be living in a country like America which “had block parties in the first place”.

As you might expect, they were particularly vocal when it came to anything that America in general prides itself on, or which it believes that it has a monopoly on. Democracy, for example. Every time that there was an election of some some kind, be it anything from the presidential election to filling a vacant seat on some town committee or other (particularly if it were for a town committee), I'd be told “how much more democratic America was than Japan”, or how glad I must be to live in America because I'd “never get a chance to do this in Japan”, and it would go one from there. Don't even get me started on what they used to say when it came to things like capitalism or the supposed wonder of civilian gun ownership because it was just plain unbelievable.

What made it worse though, was that everybody presumed that I would be both ignorant of, and fascinated by, their exhortations. Leading many of them to follow up what they said with some kind of lesson in being America. How to speak like an American, how to dress like an American or how to do, use, eat or otherwise appreciate whatever facet of American life they had just held up as an example of why America was supposed to be the greatest country on Earth. Sometime people even managed to engage their mouth but completely disengage their sense of tact at the same time, and the sheer thoughtlessness of what some of them came out with was often mind boggling. One time I was watching a video about earthquakes in geography class and it did a segment on the 1923 quake which killed almost 150,000 people in Japan. Right in the middle of it, the teacher actually paused the video, turned to face me, and proclaimed, “I bet you're glad to be out of that deathtrap country, aren't you?”.

Of course, for every couple of people who presumed that I was in awe of America, and thus wanted to be more like them, there was somebody who believed that the fact that I wasn't like them meant that there was something wrong with me and that I had to be “educated” for my own good, and for every couple of people who believed this, there was someone who also believed that I should be forced to change. Ironically, the two worst of these people were the two people whom should have been protecting me from the above. They were my school councilor and my own Mother.

Intervention

Between them, my Mother and the school councilor got together and orchestrated a campaign. Attempting to convince me that I would be better off if I gave in and became an America and to convince everybody around me that I needed to change “so that I could“fit in to normal society”.

For her part, my Mother tried to separate me from my heritage. She forbid me to speak Japanese, refused to acknowledge that I was not born and bread an American, and pretty much banned me from having anything Japanese in the house that didn't have a fiscal value; Which largely meant trying to strip me of everything but a few antiques that I'd inherited from my Grandfather (plus a few that she'd outright stolen from my father when she left him). She also took every opportunity to make out, to our new neighbors, that being Japanese was some kind of phase that I was going through. One which I needed help their help to growing out of.

For his part, the councilor point blank refused to accept that I saw some things differently because I'd been raised in a very different culture, or even that it was acceptable for me maintain any attachment to said culture now that I was no longer living in it. He also took spreading his doctrine by going around the school, and school functions, trying to get faculty members, students and parents alike, to treat my heritage as if it didn't exist. Going so far as to instruct them that, if I were to start talking about anything Japanese or my life in Japan, they were to change the subject rather than “indulge my fantasies” (Yes, he actually referred to the 14 years that I spent growing up in Japan as a fantasy).

Naturally, I didn't take well to this. Things were bad enough as they were. I'd been uprooted from the country that I called home and moved to a strange new environment. I missed my old home, my old school and my old friends, and I wanted to go home. Having people belittling and misunderstanding where I'd come form through a lack of understanding, or trying to strip me of my cultural sense of identity all together and pretend that it had never existed, only made me cling to the idea that I was Japanese all the harder.