Learning To Bow

Paul Durant — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:45:00 +0000

By Bruce Feiler
Harper Perennial
1993

I went to Japan on the JET programme myself, some 10 years after Bruce Feiler was “invited by the Japanese government” to teach Junior High in Sano Tochigi in the late 1980’s. The circumstances under which I entered the program must have been quite different from those Feiler encountered. By the time I entered, the programme had already some 15 years under its belt. Thousands of foreigners were being recruited to teach English and increase nationalization in Japanese public schools. In addition, my assignment took me a day’s journey away from Tokyo, on the other side of the island some 3 hours from Kyoto by train. Like Feiler I spent only one year in my town, but while Feiler felt that he was in the sticks, I resided in the most rural part of the most rural prefecture on Honshu Island. It would take more than an hour’s drive for me to encounter a city of even 100,000 people. It is said within the JET programme that everyone’s experience in Japan will be different. Perhaps that is why my experience was so different from his.

Still while experiences will naturally be different, I must confess to have a few issues with Feiler’s portrait of the Japanese people. First of which is the regrettable tendency we all have of generalization and oversimplification. Feiler does not apologize for sweeping generalizations of the behavior of Japanese and especially rural Japanese – based entirely on a single year of exposure to a single place. As I spent no more than a day or two visiting Tochigi myself, I certainly cannot contradict his observations there, but the folks in my town would be hard pressed to fit their personalities and behavior in Feiler’s neat little boxes.

Perhaps equally as oversimplified and maybe a little more irritating was Feiler’s stylistic choice to interrupt each chapter at least once to explain to the reader the historical or cultural background behind his observations. For example, in the chapter explaining Sports Day at school he told the story of how his male and female students felt constrained by the gender expectations placed on them by the faculty. Then he would go on to explain to us the history of gender specific behavior in Japan. I found these social studies lessons tedious, and I rarely agreed with Feiler on his interpretations of the facts.

In fact, Feiler is quite proud of his interpretations and criticisms of Japanese culture, as were so many fellow Americans on the programme with me. Like many of my associates, Feiler expresses points out numerous imperfections within Japanese culture and Japanese education and, rather arrogantly, proposes his often simple, usually Western, solutions. Like many foreign teachers Feiler points out the numerous mistakes that the Japanese school system makes in teaching their children. Naturally no system is perfect, but as I often pointed out to my associates “How can you, as a person who has not been raised in this culture, and with only a year’s shallow exposure to it, feel qualified to change it? Furthermore,” as I would continue to point out, “doesn’t it seem silly for teachers from a system that produces a literacy rate of about 80% to criticize a system that produces a national literacy rate of 98%. “ What, then, would Feiler’s advice be to the American school system?

I know this review is a bit harsh. Feiler’s book does have some moments. But for cultural understanding he is no Ruth Gordon. As the book ends Feiler tells of how his Japanese associates told him he had become Japanese (Mine did too – I’m sure they all say that.) Judging from the cultural arrogance Feiler illustrates throughout the book, I am convinced he believed himself successful in penetrating Japanese culture. Yet Americans who have lived in Japan for decades often say they still have not penetrated the culture. The name of the book is “Learning to Bow”, and perhaps Feiler believes he learned. But bowing in Japanese culture is an act of respect and humility. Perhaps in writing this book Feiler forgot what he learned.

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Learning To Bow