Lost in Translation

These are tobacco packaging warning signs. I am a smoker, but frankly speaking, these sincere, kind, and severe messages don’t touch my heart at all. Or, honestly, I even doubt that other smokers smoke paying attention to these signs.

I have smoked since my high school friend gave me the first cigarette when I was 16. In Japan, an ID card that prove the age is not necessary to buy a cigarette. When I was a child, my father used to ask me to go buy a cigarette. I always looked forward to it because he gave me some extra money to buy an ice cream bar. I used to rush into a local grocery store like his loyal pet dog as soon as he put money on my hand.

But at that time I had truly no idea what part of a smoking action was fun because nothing goes to the stomach. One day I asked my father, who was smoking lying on his favorite couch, “Is the smoke delicious?” He slowly puffed out a large amount smoke out of his mouth and answered after a little with a satisfactory smile, “Yes, it is.” I had never thought that I myself would get tobacco addiction.

I, or every smokers, know well that “Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate Pregnancy,” “Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health,”and “Smoking Kills” without being told.

So why don’t I give up smoking? The answer is simple. I just can’t give up.

Moreover, tobacco costs much in the U.S. My favorite Marlboro Lights Menthol costs $4.76 a pack in Michigan while it costs $2.85 in Japan. Thanks to the wonderful price I reduced smoking. Now I puff around 15 pieces a day while I used to do 30 in Japan, yet still I suffer from an economic damage by this. Some international students say they buy duty-free tobacco on the Internet. But I don’t want to take such a petty way even if I don’t have much money and always say, “I want to contribute to the State of Michigan paying tax!”

So why don’t I give up smoking? Sorry, but I still can’t give up…

Of course I know well how much non-smokers hate smoking. A long time ago, many international airlines used to have smoking seats. An Alitalia Airline between Rome to Tel Aviv was my worst ever flight (I don’t mean the Alitalia itself is to be blamed). I unwisely took a smoking seat.

Smoky… As soon as smoking sign lamps turned on in the plane, smoking section became clouded with thick haze. The onboard air ventilators didn’t help at all. I regret for my seat choice, but watching the others’ smoking, I felt like trying a Marlboro Medium which I just had bought at a duty free shop in the Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome. The Marlboro Medium was not available in Japan at that time.

Then, I took out one piece from the pack, lighted it, inhaled the smoke slowly, and puffed out of my mouth and nose. Hmm…, not bad, even good. But the pleasure didn’t last long.

A young Israeli woman next to me (she was reading a Hebrew book) said that my smoke annoyed her. For my smoke hit her face directly because of the airflow in the plane. I stopped smoking soon saying I was sorry, but after a while, she started puffing her own Marlboro Lights as if nothing had happened! The plane was frequently shaken due to the bad weather. Under such circumstances, it was impossible to enjoy an airplane meal. I wondered why other passengers could eat the meal with relish. Gazing at their chomping, I got sick seriously and couldn’t touch the meal at all though I was actually hungry.

Even worse, many passengers who were sitting on non-smoking seats came into our holy ground after they finished eating and started smoking standing up. The air in this section became almost white. Alitalia staffs asked them to go back to their seats, but their voices didn’t reach the smokers’ ears. I knew why. For a smoker, an after-dinner pipe is a moment of heaven.

Although I didn’t know whether it is an Italian or Israeli tradition, all the passengers except for me clapped and cheered when the aircraft made a safe landing on the Ben Gurion Airport of Israel. What an amazing and heartwarming scene, but I rather cheered for the end of the terrible air than the safe flight.

After this bad experience I came to avoid smoking seats in every flight and railroad as much as possible. I pitifully understood how much non-smokers hate smoking. When I was a company worker in Osaka, I often made a business trip to Tokyo with my boss by a bullet train. Because my boss was also a smoker he always wanted to have a seat in a smoking car. But I wanted to avoid it. Of course I hated the bad air in the car, but I also didn’t like getting the smoke smell on my business suits for which I paid a lot.

So, before the trip date I used to tell the boss voluntarily that I would book a train ticket for him as well as mine and I booked non-smoking seats and told him a lie; “Sorry, but smoking seats have already been full.”

Then, as soon as I got off a train at the Tokyo terminal station after the two and a half hours trip from Osaka, I lighted a cigarette and blew a thick white cloud.

Today, smoking in a passenger plane is no longer allowed outright. After the 9/11, even carrying a lighter was banned in every flight to the U.S. I have had two lighters seized at security checks before the passport control of Osaka and Tokyo. I knew the new rule, of course, but I expected I would be lucky if I could pass undetected.

These days, my mother sent me an email and said my father finally gave up smoking at the age of 70. It is clear she implicitly suggests I quit, too.

Sorry, but I still can’t give up smoking…

It’s been a long, long time. I spent this summer in Morocco, Spain and France. But I am not going to tell about my journey itself endlessly. That would be boring. I don’t think people want to see comments like “Tanger in Morocco was so exotic!”, “The Alhambra Palace in Granada was fantastic!” and “The view from the Montmartre was stunning!” The better comments are available everywhere else.

In Japan, autumn is considered the best season for art though I have no idea who started saying it. So, let’s discuss art.

In this journey, I went museum-hopping and watched a lot of art. Yes, I didn’t appreciate art but did watch.

The reason I used “watch” above is because I’m still wondering if I could really enjoyed art there. Honestly, I have poor knowledge of art and never the first man who likes to go to museums in daily life. It’s probably easy to count from the last. But somehow, I become an instant art fan only when I travel abroad.

It’s a mystery. Why do I feel like visiting museums in foreign countries though I seldom do at home? Is it because every travel guidebook always “orders” tourists to go to the Louvre Museum and the Picasso Museum as if tourists would be killed if they disobeyed?

Perhaps I really don’t want to go to museums to appreciate art but to feel secure. Museums give me a kind of spiritual confirmation that I am certainly standing on an overseas country. I suspect some of foreign travellers rushing into the Louvre Museum in Paris seek the security in the same way.

But I don’t mean I didn’t enjoy. The Venus de Milo at the Louvre is certainly one of the most popular idols in the world. I was amazed at a huge crowd around her and camera flashlights rather than her beauty itself or the virtu. Children and adults, men and women, whites, blacks and Asians, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and whoever — all kinds of people from the world have the honor of seeing the goddess of love. Her existence is far beyond people’s preference, ideology and philosophy. No lofty comments are necessary there. All need is love. Diverse values of all the visitors are sublimed to the one thing there. I had never experienced such a wonder atmosphere.

Barcelona in Spain is a huge museum stuffed with modern art works. When you hung around the city, you can see lots of way-out-shaped architecture including Antoni Gaudi’s. Oh, Gaudi. His design reminds me of huge organisms seen in Hayao Miyazaki’s movies. Yes, they have souls. Opening your ears, you may hear their breathing.

No wonder the Sagrada Familia temple has still been under construction since the 1880s. It’s just too difficult to make the temple physically. It is beyond art. It is like human-beings are trying to create a organism which only God does in the Old Testament. The temple has too many natural curbs and is composed of too many irregular-shaped blocks made of various kinds of marbles. Huge columns supporting the dorm inside are not upright but has several bends with slight angles to express them being “natural.” On top of that, the column cross-sections vary many times. If I were a construction staff member and got in hold of the drawings, I would faint or get mad.

But still, why these beautiful things have been created in Europe?

Come to think of it, I had a shocking experience in Europe a few years ago. When I was a company worker in Osaka, I made a business trip to Porto, a beautiful port city in Portugal. My mission was not tough. I took a tour at a plant of a local firm which produces industrial machines licensed by my company. Another task was to confirm if some machine components had reached to the factory from Osaka with no problem.

On the last day in Portugal, I was allowed to have a day off by my boss in Osaka. So I asked a Portuguese staff worker about an interesting place to visit in Porto. He, a salesperson who commands English and French, recommended I visit a contemporary art museum called the Museu Serralves.

Contemporary art always takes me to a wonderland. Museu Serralves was no exception. I was puzzled by a tiny TV noise screen in a completely dark room and colorful plastic umbrellas hung on a sparkling white wall. I found it difficult to see the artists’ messages even if I read the explanations.

The next scene was the most shocking thing at the museum, or in Portugal, or in Europe. There was a group of school children accompanied by a teacher. The kids, fourth or fifth graders apparently, were sitting on a floor of an exhibition room quietly and listening seriously to a museum staff who was explaining about an avant-garde work even adults have difficulty understanding.

I had never, ever seen such a scene before. Yes, Portugal is not as rich as Japan. I mean, materially. But how about culturally and mentally? In Japan, woefully, even adults enjoy getting aboard a Jumbo Jet decorated with shamelessly huge Pokémon illustrations alongside kids!

Watching the Portuguese children, I felt ashamed to remember how I behaved in art classes in my schooldays. Like most classmates, I didn’t work seriously on the classes just because art wouldn’t be on entrance examinations for high school and college. In a music class, we used to annoy a teacher because we didn’t sing a song at all. Only the piano accompaniment she played sounded hollowly in the classroom. In the worst case, she, a novice who had just graduated from college, got out of the classroom sobbingly running out of patience.

During my stay in Paris this summer, I met a group of young Portuguese travellers at a Youth Hostel and went to the Orsay Museum together. Can you imagine how they did at the Orsay? They, the future generation of the children who I met in Portugal, taught me precisely what impressionism painting is, how different between the impressionism era and the pre-impressionism era, and how a pastel drawing is technically outstanding among others. The boys and girls, early 20’s who were chatting up like youngsters in the streets before entering the Orsay, looked more mature than I at that time.

What I learnt during the journey the most is Europe has built a solid base to support artists. The people don’t watch art but really know how to appreciate art. Wealthy patrons have financially supported artists. Collectors have spent lavishly on art objects and established a know-how of the long-term preservation.

Imagine we instantly pursue rationalism. Neither Picasso nor Mozart are needed in our daily lives. Live in an inorganic complex housing like a matchbox and eat instant nutrition food for dinner. You shouldn’t dream of a Ferrari whatever you do. Just buy a Toyota Corolla.

But in reality, nobody likes such a grey life. Life is fun because there exist unnecessary things. Honestly, Gaudi’s architecture is far from rationalism. Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera and Casa de Batlló, all of his works must have costed astronomically and it’s hard to say these buildings are practical to use. But the people in Spain willingly accepted his fervor and chose the artistry rather than convenience. If he had been in other countries, his dreams might not
have come true.

In the long run, however, this choice was turned out not to be wrong. Gaudi’s works largely achieved admiration from the world and have been attracting many tourists to Spain.

What I realized in this journey is how important it is to invest on art. I remember a Japanese antiwar lawmaker of the Diet who said with a serious look that the government should spend more on art if it could afford to buy weapons. Honestly, at that time I thought he must live in a fairyland. But now I think his words may not have been wrong in a way.

So, I will stop to envy my friends who get music and movies for free on the Internet. What’s wrong with using money for CDs and DVDs? I am contributing to the world peace!

By the way, I am considering taking an art history class in the next semester if time permits.

I love reading magazines. When I was in Japan, I subscribed to two weeklies and four monthlies. So I still have my parents send a couple of my favorite Japanese magazines every month from Japan. Above all, what intrigued me the most is a long feature of August 15, 1945, when Japan surrendered in World War II, covered by a monthly magazine called Bungeishunju (September, 2005). In this article, 26 prominent persons, including four Americans, talk about the fateful day over more than 35 pages.

In this article most of them say they had never anticipated Japan would lose, until they listened to the announcement on the radio by the Emperor Hirohito himself that Japan had accepted the Potsdam Declaration.

In spite of the fact that the land was devastated by heavy attacks of the U.S. and it was clear that Japan was at a disadvantage in the war, the domestic Japanese mass media, which was fully controlled under the government during the war, did not cover anything inconvenient for the authorities.

But while the people certainly regretted the defeat, by and large they actually felt relieved and realized new freedom. They no longer had to fear frequent air raids. They had been really exhausted by the long term war.

After the defeat of Japan, the country was temporarily governed by the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces (GHQ). The leader of the GHQ, General Douglas MacArthur, became the hottest man of the moment in Japan. A famous scene where he was resoundingly stepping down from a airplane wearing luxury sunglasses with a pipe between his lips had an impact on the Japanese citizens who had been taught, “We want nothing till we win (the war).”

The GHQ stamped out propaganda promoting militarism by censoring publications including school textbooks. “Death for honor by 100 million people” was replaced with “Viva MacArthur” in one night. Curiously, many Japanese people accepted the new policy without much resistance, placing blame upon the Japanese government, not upon the Allied Forces, though this topic is still debatable. But if I were asked to speak of one characteristic of the Japanese, I could not help but focus on their skittishness.

Children were really innocent. Although they had been taught that Americans and the British were devils during the war, they were in fact entertainers rather than devils for children.

My father is a member of that generation. When the war ended, he was a fifth or sixth grader. He seldom talks about the wartime, saying he does not want to remember his wretched and poor life of the time. But he told me an interesting story about his first impression of Americans with a laugh just before I left Japan.

One day after the war, American soldiers came to his neighborhood riding a military Jeep and stopped by a stone stairway to a temple on a hill. A Jeep was really uncommon. Most Japanese could not afford cars at that time. Moreover, foreigners of a different color were like Martians to them. Naturally many local children including my father gathered around the strange vehicle.

The stage was set. The young Jeep driver glanced at the audience proudly, put the Jeep into first gear and hit the accelerator. The moss-green-colored big iron mass roared up the stairs to the temple in no time.

“I was totally blown away and had never seen such a mind-boggling vehicle,” he said. “They perhaps just wanted to amuse children, but at the same time, I wondered why my country decided to fight a war against their country that has such an astonishing stuff.”

My mother is a bit younger than my father and also one of those who are reluctant to talk about her poor childhood. But when my father told this story, she began to talk about her memory.

“When we found American troops passing by, we used to sing out at them with a full voice, ‘Saaankyuuu beriii maaachi (Thank you very much)!!!’ and they sometimes tossed chocolate and candy to us.”

I have heard similar stories to this from other old people. In the country, which had lost everything because of the war, even chocolate and candy were precious sources of nutrition for children while they had never tasted such sweet things before.

“When a chocolate bar was luckily obtained,” my father said, “I took off the wrapping foil respectfully and put it on a chopping board ceremonially. And then, I carefully carved up the small and thin bar equally with my hand quivering, under the strict supervision of my siblings.”

The chocolate that was melted in their mouths must have been much sweeter than one we taste today.

This event reminds me of the aftermath of Iraq War. In fact, when President Bush refers to his policies in Iraq, he often cites the U.S.-Japan relationship. His blueprint is: although the U.S. and Japan were enemies to each other and fought more than 60 years ago, they succeeded in developing a good relationship today and are able to share values of democracy and freedom. Thus, Iraq should surely end up the same as Japan in the long run.

Aside questious about the justice of the Iraq War, this itself is be a good thing. We all hope that peace will visit Iraq as soon as possible, and no one wants to see a worsening relationship between the U.S. and Iraq. The new Iraqi draft constitution was adopted by the public referendum and the general election was barely carried out. Yet the political chaos has apparently not ceased. Sectarian violence has intensified and frequent roadside bomb attacks are killing an increasing number of people.

I cannot tell the distant future. Looking at the severe situation, however, I wonder if it is really valid to compare Japan with Iraq, who has a different cultural and historical background.

Since I came to MSU, I have met some American students who are very interested in Japanese culture. I did not look for them purposely but just ran into them though I assume they are relatively rare.

I am glad they want to know more about my country. But the problem is that most of them are abnormally knowledgeable about Japanese art.

Their preferences are very similar. They are fond of ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world during Edo period (around the 17-19th century), the films of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, and novels by Yukio Mishima and Junichiro Tanizaki, which most Japan’s younger generations are not familiar with at all.

Honestly, I hated Japanese class when I was a high school student. Above all, Japanese classics like “The Tale of Genji” were mumbo jumbo. So I used to spend the class hours drawing graffiti, cartoons, and instant animation pictures, using lots of text pages. I was forced to read some Mishima just because teachers said they were “good books,” but to me they were effective sleeping-inducing drugs.

Out of the classroom, on the other hand, reading Western novels was considered a “cool” thing. Although I had not been an avid reader up to then, I easily became one of those who caught up by the fashion. Then I came to enjoy Japanese translations of American novels such as John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, John Irving, and Jay McInerney instead of Tanizaki and Mishima.

At the same time, Haruki Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood” caught on in Japan. My elder sister bought the book and lent it to me after finishing it. Murakami was stronlgy influenced by contemporary American writers such as Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger, and his novels have neither geisha nor samurai but Beach Boys and Miles Davis. So I was able to accept his novels easily and I continued to enjoy his other works like “A Wild Sheep Chase” and “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.”

As for films, I have watched a few Kurosawa’s and Ozu’s, for they happened to be on TV. I grew up watching a large number of Hollywood movies instead, as other Japanese did. I can still visualize crystal clear the scene when I took a train and went to a cinema to see “E.T.” for the first time, accompanied by my father. The movie pamphlet became my treasure and I read it again and again until it got too soiled from handling.

When I was a company worker in Japan, I had a basic English conversation class in the office. The class teacher was an American who was dispatched from one of Japan’s major English schools. One day a classmate, my colleague, asked her about the origin of Halloween.

She instantly looked embarrassed and said in a sheepish voice, “Ah…, it’s a kind of a superstition.” Is that all?! Her answer is clearly empty when I look back now. But, fortunately, no one else in the class knew the meaning of “superstition.” I stupidly said an unnecessary thing to her, remembering a song that has the same title as the word, “Stevie… Wonder?”

She broke into a smile as soon as she caught the name and started to talk perkily about his music like a fish that has found a body of water to swim in (she was certainly a big fan of Stevie). Halloween was gone somewhere before we knew it. Unfortunately I’m not a quick-thinking person who can make a surprise attack broaching a topic of Halloween, a heavy metal band.

I am not making fun of her poor knowledge of Halloween. We all tend not to pay attention to and realize the value of our own familiar cultures because we accept them as things that go-without-saying. Come to think of it, it’s not until I came to the U.S. that I came to be more aware of my home culture. This may also be a big benefit of living abroad.

These days an international student asked me to teach how to make a crane origami, or traditional paper handcraft that I had not done for ages. But I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to make it, though I certainly used to do as my childhood. At last, I felt frustrated and looked into it by Google on my Macintosh screen, and succeeded in making a small, lousy crane.

Enjoy shopping for pairs of socks all you want at a clothing shop that boasts, “We Support Your Socks Life,” parking at a carpool with a sign that says, “Please don’t parking here, without my guest” and reading the special menus at a restaurant that offers “Home Cocking.” Where do you want to go next? What if you need a restroom break at a resort spot? Let’s go to a public restroom called, “A Sight-Seeing Toilet.” Are you thirsty? Try a sports drink, “Pocari Sweat.” Are you in a mood to have a karaoke party over beer? OK. Why don’t we go to a pub, “Let’s Beer with Music“? Your tooth hurts? Don’t worry. I will take you to “Ouchi Dental Clinic.”

I’m not talking about English, but Engrish. Engrish indicates poor quality of English language seen especially in Japan.

Those who have watched “Lost in Translation” may be able to remember a scene where a movie star, Bob Harris (Bill Murray), who visits Tokyo for a commercial photo session, is confused by Japanese photographer’s misuses of English pronunciation such as “Loger Moore.” (The name, Engrish, derives from the tendency that the Japanese find it hard to distinguish the sound difference between “l” and “r.”)

Search “Engrish” on Google and you will find 2,070,000 entries. Above all, one of the most famous Web sites is Engrish.com, where you can laugh out loud at tons of Engrish photos - signs, advertising displays, product logos and many other examples scattered over the country.

The founder, Steve Caires, became an avid collector of Engrish while he lived in Japan and launched Engrish.com. It now receives more than 7 millions of visitors annually and many contributors frequently post a bunch of Engrish which they encountered in the country.

The joke went beyond the joke. The collections of the Web site finally became a photo book titled “The Joys of Engrish” last autumn in the U.K. at first and subsequently in the U.S.. British newspapers (Telegraph, Independent and Guardian) selected it as one of their recommended humor books for Christmas season.

Do I think it offensive to the Japanese? Why should I? That is a task of blind human rights activists. I rather realized for the first time the country is like a tin box stuffed with joys. It’s even a pity that I cannot have a same laugh as English speakers can. Engrish is almost an impossible feat for English speakers. Even if they make it, their Engrish will be much less amusing because they have to be intentionally calculated. In a same way, I sometimes see American students here who wear a T-shirt with bizarre but fascinating Japanese with which is a mission impossible for me to come up no matter how much I fully use my imagination.

Many of those who work on cultural studies may have difficulty specifying a certain entity of a culture at first. The reason is simple - a culture is ever-changing: integrating and disintegrating, fusing and diffusing, and emerging and vanishing. Japanese culture is no exception. She has always been ingesting cultural nutrition from the rest of the world, transforming or tweaking the sources in its own fashion, and putting out new cultural waves, which are enjoyed not only in the country but in the world. Engrish may be one of the real examples, indeed.

Hi, I am a resident of this blogger’s mind and often called a tsukkomi kobito (a dwarf playing a straight man) in my country. My role is to point out his misunderstanding and arrogance. As I am a bit perverse, this blogger is sometimes annoyed by me.

Now he is out of room, so I am writing instead of him today, for I am bored with his big excuse about writing English.

Since I came to the U.S. how many times have I heard from some international students including this blogger pouting about how:

“I’m struggling with an essay assignment because it’s Engliiish!”

“Gee, I couldn’t do well in the exam because it’s Engliiish!”

If you cannot feel empathy for them well, you can replace Engliiish with other languages like Spaniiish, Chineeese, and Arabiiic all you want. Anyway, the students sometimes lick at others’ raw wounds each other like small poor bruised dogs attributing their own timidity to English language.

Their complaints are apparently true. But hey, one second. Let me think it in a mathematical way. Let’s remember a principle of transposition logic which we learned in high school;

“If a proposition is true, the contraposition should also be true.”

According to the logic, suppose the students’ grievances are true, the contraposition should be as follows;

“The students would be able to write “A” papers with no difficulty and get high test scores if they did in their first languages.”

No way! This is false or not at least necessarily true. This logical collapse is proved by showing an evidence that this blogger failed lots of classes and wasted one year during his college days in Japan, though this is just between you and me.

Of course it’s not “technically” easy for non-native speakers to output their thoughts smoothly in other languages. In fact, I’m writing this blog surfing up and down over four channels: English- Japanese, Japanese-English, English-English dictionaries, plus Google and spending much time seeking right words and expressions that mean what I really want to say. This blogger often has difficulties dealing with a problem trying to determine if an English translation of Japanese metaphors and connotations is also be effective for English readers.

Even so, however, I don’t mean to ask you to empathize with those non-English speaking students for the language matter because foreign language fluency is a different issue from good writing. I suspect that the students who complain do not understand that they cannot write well not because of English language but just because of their lack of ideas and substantial knowledge. Don’t miss that “because it’s Engliiish” can sometimes be used as an effective defense to cover their shallowness.

Regardless of any language, writing is really tough for everyone. When trying to write something, all of us, including Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, more or less suffer from birth pains of words. How many of us are able to write a serious love letter without any difficulty?

At the same time, that means that non-native speakers also have opportunities to write well in foreign languages if they have a certain level of language skills.

Oh, yes! Here is a nice example, Keith Richards, a guitarist of the Rolling Stones. Why is he admired above guitarists far more skillful than he? He is superb at creating the world’s coolest guitar riffs that knock out the audience.

Do you think it’s too stretched? But believing Keith might lead you to a positive orientation when you learn a foreign language.

…Oh my god, he’s coming back! I have to go. See you!

The Danish newspaper’s cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad have stirred up Muslim resentment. Riots against the cartoons have taken place all across the Muslim world. Danish national flags were torn up and burned, their embassies attacked and some protesters were killed. Protesters’ targets have been expanded to other countries whose mass media have reprinted the caricatures.

This cannot help but remind me of a certain incident in East Asia last year: anti-Japan demonstrations over China. In April, 2005, the Japanese government approved the revised edition of a high school history textbook, “New History Textbook” published by Fusosha. It is written by “nationalistic” scholars and the Chinese consider it playing down the wartime past, where Japan invaded its Asian neighbors, including China and Korea. In response to the approval of the history textbook, anti-Japan demonstrations especially among Chinese youth broke out over the nation, and Beijing accused Tokyo in strong language.

Observing these two incidents, I have found that they have something in common: speech freedom and ethics.

Unlike the U.S., where school textbooks are selected at the school or local level, Japan has a screening system of school textbooks by the central government. Every textbook publisher must get the stamp of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (the MEXT).

The textbooks approved by the MEXT are required to go through the second filter. They are distributed to each local school board and are auditioned again if they are appropriate for education at their schools, and then just one of them is finally chosen for one subject. The adoption rate of the New History Textbook at schools is less than 0.1 percent so far.

The textbook dispute above took place after approval by MEXT.

I truly accept the resentment of our Asian neighbors. But we face a delicate problem here. Although the MEXT can check historical “facts,” it must not control historical “views.” It is the fact that the New History Textbook is written from a nationalistic viewpoint which means that it appears reluctant to cover inconvenient or embarrassing incidents, such as the Nanking Massacre committed by Japanese troops in 1937. At the same time, the government has a policy of approving any textbook as long as it doesn’t contain factual errors.

Why? This is because freedom of speech is guaranteed under the Constitution, Article 21. Even if a publication is a school textbook, the authorities are not allowed to interfere in its ideology. This subtle but significant difference may be difficult to be understood because the bilateral wartime history touches a nerve among the Chinese. They probably interpreted that the Japanese government certified the historical view of the text book.

Denmark’s case is also relevant to the speech-freedom matter, though the government wasn’t involved in the disputed caricatures. According to an annual report from Reporters Without Borders, Denmark is ranked as one of the top countries for free speech.

According to BBC, the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, placed a series of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad to satirize the situation that a Danish writer could not use an image of the Prophet to illustrate his book, since this is not allowed in Islam. Although the newspaper editors and the cartoonists might lack knowledge about the Muslim society and their sense of ethics, what the paper wanted to express was its frustration with the restriction of their free expression.

Freedom of speech is a two-edged blade. While it plays an important role to create and protect a peaceful society by acting as a check on power, it may cause many ethical problems like the Danish cartoons and a Japanese history textbook. Touching on sensitive matters such as history, religion, race, and sex can trigger irreparably serious conflicts.

On the other hand, some critics argue that it is not good for everything about a certain subject to be taboo in the name of political correctness. That is also true. If people close their eyes on all delicate issues, someone may exploit their “disadvantaged” position for their own self-interests.

So, what should we do? I don’t know. This debate will never be settled permanently. But all I can say is the talk underlines often unnoticed but very, very important matters.

“Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (Luke 11:9).” Although I am not a Christian, I believe this famous line tells all about my first impression of America.

Many say that Japanese students are so shy that they seldom open their mouths in classes. Having lived in Japan for so long, however, I have never thought the Japanese are shy.

Let’s walk around Shibuya district of Tokyo and watch schoolgirls wearing miniskirts, daubing foundation creams over the faces, dyeing the hair brown, and whooping it up together with their mates. Who thinks the girls are shy? Let’s hang around Harajuku streets on weekends and have a look at teenagers who wear weird costumes imitating geeky anime (or animation) characters and frilly Gothic Lolita. I want to take gaijin (or foreigners) to Japan and ask them if they think those Japanese are shy. They may be considered a bit extreme in Japan, but I can swear: even those unique species would shortly bite their tongues as the ordinary Japanese do if they were dumped in a classroom of an American school.

How can we explain the gap? Language barriers? Certainly. Alienation? Probably. But one of the most essential reasons is because they have long immersed themselves in Japan’s ‘passive’ society, not in America’s ‘active’ one.

In Japan, where you can obtain everything – from beverage (including alcohol), tobacco, food, and Hello Kitties to even porno magazines – just by inserting money and pushing buttons on vending machines scattered everywhere along streets, most students assume that they do not have to speak until a teacher asks them directly to answer his or her questions. If a teacher does not give his or her students useful advice, they will find it hard to understand the reason why. In other words, they (including me, of course) subconsciously expect that someone will do a favor for them without asking, as vending machines do.

Since I set foot on MSU in July last year, I have been being struck by numerous cultural shocks. Of course the barrier between two languages is still like a thick soundproof wall to me. No matter how much I strain my ears, I often find it really hard to catch grace notes, even if I luckily succeed in following the basic melodies and bass lines.

But one of the biggest things I noticed first was the re-acknowledgment of the difference between the passive and active societies, rather than the language barrier that I assumed at first. I was surprised at how many American students speak out and express their own opinions in a positive and logical manner in classes. Although I do not know if the active orientation is attributed originally to religious thoughts, they must know at least: a door will not be opened if they wait in front of the door, but if they knock, they will be rewarded and able to make a huge step forward. If I succeed in escaping from the Japanese vending-machine way during my life at MSU, it will be the biggest harvest I can reap in my whole life.