Japan: Where even crowds are orderly, and pleasant smelling. Picture: Alice Williams.
THE first thing I notice when I got to Japan was how nice everyone on the peak hour Tokyo subway smelled. Like the delicate fragrance of clean hair and freshly washed linen.
The second thing I noticed was the carriage was so quiet I was afraid to blow my nose, and a third of the passengers wore face masks.
“It’s not because they’re afraid of catching your germs, it’s because they’re sick and don’t want anyone else to catch theirs,” my partner explained.
To an Australian used to riding with the great unwashed, negotiating junkies, violent ticket inspectors and clouds of teenage girls’ Impulse, the Japanese are unnervingly respectful of other people’s personal space.
Stand still and look confused, and within 30 seconds someone will have either offered you help, or else queued politely behind you (queuing is a phenomenon in Japan) for no apparent reason.
Alice Williams and her boyfriend take on Japan. Picture: Alice Williams.
As much as I loved the consideration and the neatness of Japan, the manners and orderliness were so surreal I felt like I was living in some kind of Japanese-themed Disney snow globe the entire time I was there. Here’s what to prepare for:
1. UNNERVING POLITENESS
You know how the staff at Uniqlo bellow ‘welcome to Uniqlooooo!’ when you walk in and it feels so weird? In Japan they do that in the 7/11s. Every single person in the department store will bow to welcome you, and cashiers apologise before asking for money.
It’s tempting to think “At last! I’m getting the respect I deserve!”, but it’s confusing. Are you meant to reciprocate? In Japan, shop staff and waiters even bow to customers’ retreating backs. Is this genuine respect or a nervous tick?
Genuine or not, the cumulative effect of these many tiny courtesies is that you become more respectful in return, and everyone floats through their day with a little more ease. Enjoy it, and pity the Japanese who visit our own fair shores — we must seem like barbarians in contrast.
Although their idea of dieting is a bit extreme. Picture: Alice Williams.
2. UNDERSTAND SHAME CULTURE VS GUILT CULTURE
In her seminal book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, anthropologist Ruth Benedict described Japan as a ‘shame culture’ whereas Western culture is a ‘guilt culture’. In ‘guilt culture’ we self-regulate based on a sense of personal responsibility and the fear of being punished (e.g. divine retribution).
In Japan, however, the wellbeing of the group is accorded far more importance than the wellbeing of the individual. So in a shame-based culture, social order is maintained through the fear of disapproval or being ostracised from the group.
This translates to an overwhelming sense of uniformity — in clothing, behaviour, and modes of self-expression. (Japan is also surprisingly monocultural — they have a very low immigrant population and in 2014 they accepted 11 asylum seekers. That’s ‘11’ with no zeros on the end.) Despite being a visitor, I became super conscious of not stepping out of line. (I wasn’t 100 per cent sure what ‘stepping out of line’ would look like, just that I didn’t want to do it.)
3. UNNERVING TRUST
Picture a street in one of the most populated cities on earth where bikes are stacked neatly outside of office buildings and houses with not a bike lock to be seen. A land where people make offerings of barrels of beer and sake at shrines and no young scamps turn up in the dead of night to roll them away.
A land ticket inspectors don’t body-slam you or put you in a choke hold for buying the wrong ticket, but rather abandon their post to help you, in your native language.
All this trust in strangers can wreak havoc on the average Australian’s peace of mind. Perhaps we’ve all become so accustomed to the fear of punishment, that if we see an opportunity to get away with something dodgy, we grab it (just honouring our convict stock).
More than once I stood outside a building staring at bikes murmuring ‘I could just take one. I could just reach out and take that nice lightweight racer. Right there, I could just reach out …’
Beer offerings at a Japanese Shrine. In Australia, they’d surely be pinched. Picture: Alice Williams.
4. DON’T ASK FOR WHAT THEY CAN’T GIVE
In Japan, saying ‘no’ is deemed impolite, whereas simply not replying, or being evasive is seen as a way of saving face. (We may find this frustrating, but hey — they probably find us rude.)
I once asked if I could borrow a couple of umbrellas from the staff at a hotel desk staff. They paused — so briefly I barely noticed it — and then smiled and produced two umbrellas from a back room. Walking through the rain, it clicked — I looked at my partner and at the same time we said ‘I think they gave us their umbrellas’. They preferred to sacrifice their own ability to take a cigarette break undercover rather than say ‘no’.
A very rare example of Japanese directness. Picture: Alice Williams.
Having people go out of their way to meet your needs is nice and there should be more of it, when you don’t trust them to tell you if something is impossible or just a bit difficult, you stop asking.
By the end of the trip I was hankering for some good Aussie hostility, nose-blowing, and public transport swearing. We may be boorish, rude, and mistake public transport for our own private bordello, but at least we know where we stand.
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