Japanese American blogger Lisa Shoreland of Go college provides fascinating insight into Japanese culture in the following guest post where she explores the common misconceptions that Westerners have about Japanese people. Born and raised in Hiroshima to an American father and Japanese mother, Lisa shares with us her top 10 list of mistaken beliefs about Japanese people based upon her own personal encounter.
My life is full of contradictions. My dad’s a US Marine and my mom’s a Hiroshima survivor. I was raised in Japan and went to college in America, and both times hated where I was. The following are 10 more contradictions in response to questions most commonly and carelessly thrown at in my direction by westerners.
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Everyone watches anime. Maybe as little kids everyone watches anime, the way American kids grow up watching SpongeBob. Usually, kids stop watching anime and start reading manga, which is socially accepted even among adults in Japan. Like some American comic books, Japanese manga can deal with serious and realistic issues as well as get pretty violent (and sexy). Still, not everyone reads manga. Fanatics of anime or manga are treated in Japan much like they are in other countries—with neglect. In English speaking countries, they’re called nerds or losers; in Japan, they’re called otaku.
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Japanese people are still angry about WWII and would plot the next Pearl Harbor in a heartbeat. Most Japanese I’ve known love western culture or at least show more interest in and respect for it than I’ve seen Americans show for Japanese culture (except for yuppies in Whole Foods). When I first got to America at age 19, speaking fluent English, a store clerk asked me where in Japan I was from. When I replied without thinking twice, “Hiroshima,” she went dead silent and all but ducked under her desk after bagging my merchandise. She must have read this article and feared retribution.
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Everyone eats whales and dolphins. Thanks to the film, The Cove, everyone not in Japan thinks Japanese people either willingly or unknowingly eat whale and dolphin meat. In my 19 years of living in Japan, never once did I even encounter either types of meat in stores or restaurants. My mother ate whale meat after WWII because it was the cheapest meat available in post-nuke Hiroshima (thanks, Truman). For those of you bleeding hearts saying, “That’s because you didn’t know it was dolphin meat because it’s not labeled that way,” here’s a statistic: according to Greenpeace research, only one of five major supermarket operators said it continues to sell whale meat. The others don’t because there’s no demand. The only people who eat whales and dolphins are people who recognize that a cow is just as cute as Flipper and hold no prejudice for or against animals. These same people are usually uninformed about the sustainability argument, just like most Americans are unaware that 7 kg of grain goes into producing 1 kg of beef, and corn is killing the U.S. food industry, its people, and uses half a gallon of fossil fuels for just one bushel.
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