2 types of ”kind Japanese people”
A few days ago, I took a very rare test called Swedex, which is a Swedish Language test. It’s pass / fail based test like Cambridge English Language Assessment, rather than a score based test like IELTS or TOEFL iBT. I guess I probably did well enough to pass it, but I occasionally make a quite stupid careless mistake, so I don’t really know how well actually it went.Come to think of it, though it was a fairly long time ago, I passed the English teacher employment exam in Japan on my second attempt. This means that I failed on my first attempt, and probably the biggest reason for the fail was that I didn’t fill in the back of the answer sheet at all. Oh well, I was just wondering why I was able to finish the test that early. I repeatedly checked the answers that filled in on the front of the answer sheet and I was confident that I answered the questions well, but right before the test was over I realized that there werea bunch of questions to be answered on the back of the sheet as well, which left me astonished. Now that it is also one of my good memories in my younger days.So after all, I’ve got to wait until the test result is revealed. I’m so curious of the result and can’t really wait!By the way, last week there was interesting news that drew my attention. Actually I wanted to write an article on my blog on that day or the day after, but I was studying for my Swedish test, so I just decided I would write about it about a week later.The interesting news was ”The worlds happiest countries ranking”. This ranking is based on each country’s GDP per capita, how healthy the citizens are, how clean the politics in the society is, how much freedom is guaranteed to the citizen etc. These pieces of data are put together, and the countries were ranked according to the score. As I expected, the countries that I mostly saw were the Nordic countries. The number 1 was Norway, Denmark 2nd, Iceland 3rd. Finland came 5th, and Sweden was 10th. All of the Nordic countries were ranked within the top 10, and this represents how wonderful those countries are.As a Japanese citizen, I was also curious where my own country ended up, and sadly it turned out to be the 51st place, which was the worstamong G7. In Japan, there are many workplaces whose working conditions are terrible. The “karoushi” (death by over-working) problem still remains, and it’s quite hard to maintain the work-life-balance. If these things were raised as the negative aspects of the Japanese society which contributed to such a bad result on the rankingI wouldn’t be surprised at all. But this time, the highlighted negative aspects included “low level of tolerance / generosity towards others”.If you know about Japan and Japanese people at least to some extent, you might think that this isa bit weird. Yes, Japanese people are generally considered to be very nice. And the question is, doesn’t this contradict the aforementioned statement “Japanese people have low level of tolerance / generosity towards others”? How come such “nice people”, namely Japanese people have "low level of tolerance / generosity towards others"?I bet there is a bit of trick here. Since a fairly long time ago I have been thinking about it. Then I came to the conclusion that there are 2 types of “kind Japanese people”, and this mayexplain a bit about Japan'slow level of tolerance / generosity towards others.Then what are those 2 types of “kind Japanese people”? The answer is “genuine nice people” and “fake nice people”. As for “genuine nice people”, I assume there is no need to be explain. They are literally nice people, and they are kind and respectful towards everybody. They don’t change their attitude depending on who they talk to, so when you are facing this kind of people, there is no worry of being mistreated. And probably there are fairly many “genuine nice people” in Japan, so I guess the reputation “Japanese people are nice” that we hear from foreigners who come to Japan is correct, at least to some extent.On the other hand, who does the word “fake nice people” refer to? I think you may already know. It refers to people who behave nicely only in front of certain people, whiletheir true nature is quite nasty. Then, to what kind of people do those “face nice people” behave nicely? There are several different answers for this question, but I can give you a few examples: “customers”, “native English speakers”, “Caucasians” and the like. Let’s look into a little more details of them.First I’ll begin with ”customers”. In the Japanese labor market, there is a famous saying “okyaku sama ha kami sama desu”, which means “customers are gods”, which is a very radical way of thinking. In Japan, as customers are treated extremely nicely as though they were gods, foreigners who come to Japan often get overwhelmed, and many of them say “Japanese people are extremely kind!”.Now I want you to take a moment and think a little bit. Of course they feel that Japanese people are very kind and they are treated nicely, but this is because they see the way Japanese people behave from customers’ perspective. What if they saw the Japanese society from workers’ perspective? Would they still say “Japanese people are so nice!”? I highly doubt it.From workers’ perspective, the Japanese society could be very depressing to you, because many customers expect to be treated as though they were gods, and if things don’t go as they wish, fairly many of them easily throw a tantrum. Also, many of the Japanese working environments are based on a rigid hierarchy. When you enter the labor market for the first time, you are most likely to start from the bottom of the hierarchy, and when you are at the bottom it is not so rare if you are treated in a way that makes you feel you are a slave.Now let me talk about another example, which is ”a native speaker of English”. When it comes to English, “fake nice people” suddenly dramatically change their attitude, regardless of whether they are good at English or not. The way they flinchin front of a native English speakeris almost like this TV commercial. (←English subtitle available) (Oh, don’t get me wrong by the way. The other way round is not always true. I mean, just because some Japanese people get nervous in front of a native English speaker, this doesn’t always necessarily mean that they are “fake nice people”)Because I used to work as an English teacher at a school in Japan, I know exactly how much a native English speaking teacher is worshiped. I worked with an American English teacher, who was of course a native English speaker. There were some teachers who had an arrogant attitude, but even those teachers dramatically changed their attitude and became humble once they faced with this American teacher.By the way, at a typical school in Japan, there is a significant difference between a Japanese English teacher and a native English speaking teacher in their working conditions. While native English speakers are given enough time to prepare for their lessons and can go home without working overtime at all as soon as the lessons are over, Japanese English teachers’ working conditions are extremely bad. They are forced to do many other things that are irrelevant to teaching English, such as club activities, tons of paper work etc etc and often end up working overtime 100 hours a month. Even though the employers make sure to keep native English speaking teachers’ working conditions quite comfortable, they never try to improve Japanese English teachers’ working conditions. Native English speaking teachers are so privileged. At least they seem to be privileged, from Japanese worker’s point of view.Come to think of it, one of my teachers when I was studying how to teach English in a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) program in the United States said something like this…”I used to work at a private English language school in Japan, and it was quite comfortable working place. I mean for me. Just by looking I could tell that the working environment was pretty stressful for the Japanese staff“Well, so far I have talked to some extent about the ”fake nice people”, who are unfriendly to Japanese but suddenly become really kind when they see a foreigner. Let me tell you that the story doesn’t end here. These “fake nice people’s” “kindness” becomes even greater if the foreigner is a Caucasian. Earlier I said that native English speakers are privileged as an English teacher, but if you are a Caucasian, it ispossible for you to earn the juicy position of “native English speaking English teacher”, even if you are not actually a native speaker of English.In fact, I know somebody who earned this juicy position of ”native English speaking English teacher”, even though he was a Russian andnot a native English speaker. He’s got a Russian accent in his English, but nobody found it problematic. On the other hand, there are fairly many Japanese parents who rush into the school and argue something like “My son / daughter’s class’s English teacher has an accent, and I don’t like that. Get him / her replaced with somebody who speaks perfect English!”. Don’t you think it’s weird? Japanese people hate Japanese English teacher’s accent, but if a White non-native English speaking English speaker has an accent, they don’t think it’s a problem at all. Furthermore, I even knowsomeone who got the juicy position of “native English speaking teacher” in spite of being unable to speak proper English. He was a Swiss guy, but was not good enough at English, so he was often taught by some Japanese English teachers, even though his status was “native English speaking teacher”. This example indicates how powerful and advantageous being White can be in Japan.Contrary, there are some peoplewho sufferin Japan just because they are not Caucasians, though they are still native English speakers. For example, I know an African American girl who came to Japan several years ago to teach English at school. When I talked to her on Skype before she actually started working as an English teacher in Japan, she was super excited. However, one day I saw a post like the following on her Facebook wall.”During today’s lesson, one of my students pointed at me laughing, and said to the student sitting next to him something like this.‘Hey, don’t you think that that teacher is way too much suntanned? lol’I’m actually fluent in Japanese, so I understand everything the students say in Japanese, but according to the school rule I’m not allowed to speak anything in Japanese in front of the students, so I couldn’t say back anything to them. Besides the Japanese teacher who was in charge of this class didn’t correct the student’s remark / behavior at all. What the hell wasI supposed to do?”What a shame that a Japanese student is at the same level as Berlusconi, no, even lower than him.Let me raise another discrimination against the black in Japan. Last May or June, I was at the locker room after working out at the training gym. There were two young guys nearby me and they were talkinglike this.Guy A: “Hey, the Japanese Track and Field national championship is coming soon”Guy B: ”Yeah, who is worth watching besides Kiryu in men’s 100m dash?”Guy A: ”Yamagata and one more, um, that guy. That black weird one.”Recently, in the field of athletics in Japan there are more half-blooded athletes than before, so it’s not so rare to see some dark skinned athletes. Why did he have to be called a “weird guy” just because he was half-blooded? This guy (Guy A above) is clearly worse than Berlusconi.I hope that you have learned the 2 important lessons, which are that in Japan there are ”fake nice people” as well besides ”genuine nice people”, and the “fake nice people” dramatically change their attitude depending on your status or appearance.And let me emphasize one more thing again. We Japanese people have a reputation of “being very kind”, but there is a trick with this reputation. Generally, in front of foreigners, both of “genuine nice people” and “fake nice people” behave nicely. This is especially true if you are a Caucasian and a tourist. And this is probably why many foreigners feel that the majority of Japanese people are extremely kind.However, as a Japanese man I don’t feel that that many Japanese people are very kind, because to me, a Japanese guy, those who are kind to me are “genuine nice people” only, and “fake nice people” are not kind to me at all. Rather, fairly many of them are even mean to me. And this may be why Japan was poor in “tolerance / generosity towards others” in the happiness ranking, because “tolerance / generosity towards others” is not only about hospitality towards customers or being nice only for certain group of people.Although I have no problem with ”genuine nice people” being praised (rather I’m happy about that), if ”fake nice people” are also judged as really nice people by foreigners, that fills my belly with disgust, because I know how nasty they are behind the scene. I wish my article would help foreigners to have a very keen insight to identify who the “genuine nice people” may be.
