November 2006
Bullying
I often keep my eye on the news in Japan and there is always the same story. Child, boy or girl, aged 13 to 16, commits suicide due to 'bullying.' It makes an American's mind reel, what kind of horrific bullying could possibly be so severe that a child would take their own life? The Japanese news is always understated, lacking any details but the little that they disclose would probably confuse you.
Let me step back a little. As many of you know, it has been a goal of mine for some time to eventually relocate my aging carcass to that island nation of the rising sun. Whenever I express that desire to my Japanese friends I get a very consistent response, "You will never be accepted, you will never be a [sic] Japanese." It always elicits the same internal response from me, what are they really trying to say? The Japanese are notoriously oblique and I've trained myself to look for the deeper meaning of the things they say, much as I've adapted to the unique way they use English itself. This way of thinking is really the key to the whole child suicide issue though.
You see the bullying that the children experience is some of the most mild sort of insult you have ever heard. When you hear the details of what the children actually said, you go agog. This kid's take their life because the are told that they are "smelly," "sweaty" or "slow." Frankly I'm not thrilled that kids say mean things to each other, but seriously, a single average middle schooler from any town in the US would seem to posses the verbal ability to decimate Japan's entire teen aged population in an afternoon of half hearted The Dozens. But what I have come to realize is that the bullying isn't what is said, it is the ostracism, the excommunication from the group that is what crushes them.
This kind of thinking is so ingrained in the Japanese psyche that to be pushed out into the cold isolation is enough to cause the fragile youth to end their lives. The suicide notes are often apologetic to the one's that caused them to kill themselves, sorrow for not living up to the expectations of the very people that created the problems in the first place. It drives me crazy that a parent would raise their child to be so fragile, so lacking in self worth and identity that they can only value themselves as much as their peers do. It's not just the parents though, in a society that always jumps at the chance to take blame, the schools inexplicably always try to cover their ass and deny that any bullying takes place. In another recent example of proper behavior a principal recently resolved the issue he created by assigning the wrong science classes to some of his classes delaying their graduation (admittedly a big deal in Japan) by hanging himself in the forest (not that big a deal.)
The thought of needing to belong to a group is so foreign to me. It's like they are telling me about a color I can not see, that can't be learned unless you are born with knowing it and that frankly, given all the colors I can see, I will never miss. In Japan I have met great and kind people. But the exiles say that that kindness is all on the surface, that deep down the people don't accept me, it is all just politeness and false sincerity. Whatever. How it is any different from the way people are here is beyond me. I have a handful of people that I trust, who have ever been close to me, they are all I've ever needed, I doubt that's likely to change.
So I always shake my head a little when I'm told I'll never be a true Japanese. It is unfathomable to me why they think that's my desire, or that anyone could want to be so constrained. The Japanese I know in the US are all loathe to return, they face the invisible barriers erected against the tainted expatriates who have absorbed the foreigner's way of thinking. This is why most of them left to begin with, the subliminally pervasive bullying that pervades Japanese society, the color we can't see. They were deprived of their comfortable little place in the machine through fate, ambition or the worst crime of all, possessing genuine uniqueness of character and a willingness to express it. Pushed out, they find a world in the west where they can just be... The thought of trying to go home is about as appealing as putting on a pair of freezing cold, wet jeans three sizes too small and full of sand.
When I was a kid, I was one of the very few poor children in my town. I was picked on, made fun of and ridiculed for my poverty, lack of a father and old clothes. I can't ever recall thinking of killing myself, Americans just aren't raised that way. I guess we are more likely to place blame where we think it belongs, right or wrong it's usually not ourselves. The Japanese never do that, even when they should. Japanese have a hard time understanding the whole "cover your own ass" concept that we live by over here.
The simple truth of the world is you can't make everyone like you and you'll never make everyone accept you, but just as importantly you can't make people pine for the colors they will never see. I've never felt the need to be accepted by any group, I am a happy outsider, beholden to none, my clique of one.
Posted by Bakafish at 8:11 PM | Comments (4)
