Confessions of a Grade School Role Model

I spent Saturday at the Osaka Human Rights Museum (Liberty Osaka), an extraordinary collection of exhibits on "Japanese Society from the Human Rights Perspective" according to its English-language pamphlet. The building itself stands at the former site of the Sakae Elementary School, established in 1928 to educate the children of Japan's untouchable class, the Buraku.

The museum was divided into four sections, "Discrimination and Social Status," "Gender and Family," The Japanese Archipelago and its Peoples," and "Health Problems and the Environment." The majority of the signs were in Japanese, but the main introduction and summary signs were translated into English, Korean, and Braille, taped commentary was available on free headphones, short films on monitors throughout the museum were available with subtitles, and an enthusiastic tour guide invited me behind cordons a few times to touch particularly tactile exhibits, such as handicrafts, as the museum was sparsely populated.

A few notes from the museum:

Taiko drums, a core element of traditional Japanese music, are traditionally made by buraku. The drums are constructed partly from animal hide, and slaughtering and preparing of animals is traditionally left to this class. For this reason, shoe making and repairing is also the domain of buraku.

Japanese Buddhists are given new names after their deaths. Those of the Buraku class are given names denoting their inferiority, even in death.

As in many societies, women in Japan are considered unclean. Women are not to enter iron works, tunnel construction sites, or sumo rings. To this day, women are not allowed on Mt. Ohminesan near Nara.

A young second-generation Korean woman had taken the bold step of using her original Korean name rather than the Japanese one imposed on her, despite the difficulty and discrimination this risked. She was heartbroken to find that at her first part-time job in college, after years of proudly using her true name, her employer had issued her a name tag with a Japanese name, and refused to listen to her protests.

Indigenous Ainu chased onto land in Hokkaido, a hunting people by tradition, were forced to farm. Now, in the 70% Ainu village of Nibutani, they are fighting even for this farmland, where the government wants to construct a dam.

For 36 years, from 1932-1968, the Chisso Corporation dumped methylmercury into the Shiranui Sea. Residents of the area, and in areas up to 45 minutes away by car, began to show symptoms after eating fish from the bay, developing Minamata Disease, a severely debilitating and eventually lethal neurological disease. The disease was also passed on to their children. Dumping in the bay was stopped by legal action in 1968, but 600 tons of sludge remain. Heartbreaking photos of the victims by W. Eugene and Aileen Smith were accompanied by the following summary: "The morality that pollution is criminal only after legal conviction is the morality that causes pollution."

If you ever find yourself teaching fruit names to a class of Japanese four-year olds, try to make sure the kid in the front row isn't wearing a shirt that says this: "Don't pee in your WOOL if you don't Dump" (emphasis is the shirt's, not mine). You may find such a shirt very distracting.

In Japan, an "American breakfast" is often a hardboiled egg, toast, and a salad. "American coffee" is the weak, watery counterpart of the regular blend, which is actually pretty accurate, unless you think you'll be getting a refill, which you won't. An "American dog" is a corn dog, while a hot dog is a "WEE-nah." Viennese coffee is also "WEE-nah," which confused the hell out of me the first time a friend ordered a "WEE-nah coffee," which turned out not to be disgusting after all. It was just coffee with whipped cream.

On TV last night was a special highlighting exotic global marvels. The first segment featured a group of natives of Lake Titicaca, Peru, who had built their own small floating island out of reeds, which they also occasionally ate. The segment following came from somewhere in the exotic midwest of the United States, and followed a group of Repomen as they legally stole cars from rifle-toting shirtless deadbeats. Judging from the shocked faces and gasps of the Japanese studio panel, the Repomen were judged the far more unbelievable of the two groups.

When I was young, I moved a lot. Perhaps from sheer momentum, I still do. Two different second grades, two different apartments in third grade, 6th grade in two different cities, high school in two different states. My mom once showed me the section of her address book she kept for me in college; I took up two or three pages, a long sequence of 6-month or one-year leases scattered about my university town. Last year, I got my passport stamped in six different countries.

As a child, I spent most summers with my grandparents in various cities always several hours from home; my grandparents moved frequently too, generally staying well outside city limits. I loved their houses in the country, so different from my apartments in the city. I loved the trees, and the way the air smelled, and the stars I could never see when I was back home. Still, I was young, and I got homesick.

My grandfather and I used to sit at night on the patio furniture in the backyard, and look up at the stars and have long talks. One summer, Halley's Comet was coming, and we both became very interested in stars, scouring the libraries for star maps, and peering through his binoculars at the moon. On one of these nights, under an enormous clear sky, I felt particularly sad and small.

"What's wrong?" my grandfather asked me, after I had stared out silently for a little too long.
"I miss mommy. She is so far away," I told him.
He was silent for a moment, staring up at the sky sympathetically, thinking.

Finally he pointed up at the brightest group of stars, "See that constellation? That's called the 'Big Dipper.' It's the same one your mom can see from her apartment too. So see, you are not so far from home after all."

I stared up at the strange big cup and wondered if my mom could be seeing it at just that same moment, and somehow I felt better, the world didn't feel so big. I looked for it the next night too, sure that whatever was up there, it could see my mom at that moment even if I couldn't. If it could see her, and it could also see me, then we must be very close. I didn't get homesick again.

A few years later, we went to Hawaii, my first trip across an ocean. It was beautiful, dazzlingly so, but I felt restless. The first night there was cloudy and starless, I couldn't find my Big Dipper, and I couldn't find my place under it either. The next night was clear, and I could finally settle in. When you live in too many houses, a constellation makes a fine compass pointing home.

The Big Dipper is still the first thing I look for in a new place. Once I find it, everything else eventually sort of orients itself. Being wholly ignorant of what the relationships might be between constellations and hemispheres, I was relieved to find the Big Dipper also hanging over Japan. No matter how a dayful of strange language might swirl between my ears, and the enigmatic kanji might melt and morph before my eyes, on a clear night, I can always find in that space between the buildings, high above the trees, something that tells me I am not so far from home.

A Japanese friend's advanced English textbook has an entire section on ethnic jokes. Mostly they are about Europeans: an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman walk into a bar; a German, an Italian, and a Frenchman are at the gates of heaven, and so on. Only one joke included an American, me, and a Japanese, the author of the textbook, so naturally that's the one I was most interested in.

In the joke, two male and one female representative of each of several different countries are stranded on a deserted island. The two Italian men fight to the death over the Italian woman, the three French move in together and menage-a-trois happily ever after, the English men stand around waiting for someone to introduce them to the English woman, and the Germans do something involving organizing and harsh schedules, exactly what I can't remember. The two American men did something I wasn't expecting: they contemplated the virtues of suicide. The American woman was more obedient to her stereotype, and talked incessantly, complaining and arguing unprovokedly about how her body was her own, she was the equal of the males, she was getting along better with her mother lately, but at least it isn't raining. I am glad to find that Americans are commonly stereotyped as being optimistic and upbeat, although I can never tell how people feel about the observation when they make it.

The joke's Japanese group left me troubled. The two men immediately faxed Tokyo for further instructions, hardy har har, but of all the people that populated the joke, the Japanese woman alone was never mentioned in the punchline. I am troubled as to why: was she accidentally overlooked by the joke teller? Was the joker, a Japanese, taking pains not to offend the women of his country, or did he actually believe them above all fault and joking? Or what troubles me most because it actually seems plausible, was the very fact that the Japanese woman was totally overlooked and unconsidered a vital part of the joke? I'll never know.

I wonder sometimes where my elation at living in Japan comes from. In high moments, I know it to be from the daily surmounting of small obstacles, the constant splendor of new sights and sounds and smells, the fulfillment of a challenging life. But in low moments, I wonder if the elation doesn't just come from something less heady: the wearied gratitude of one submerged, who, though the water gathers and swells about her ears, has still managed for one more moment not to sink.

Maybe it's just rainy season.

Depending on the kindergarten, school lunch either comes pre-packed in a small plastic box, or is scooped out by the teachers from big communal bowls. Lunch last Monday came with an unusual treat -- dessert! Monday's dessert was a "shoe cream," which in Japan, naturally, is a flaky pastry filled with sweet custard. Although for the four-year old girl seated across me, dessert was a flaky pastry filled with a lion. She told me so herself.

"I can do magic," said the little girl. "Oh, yeah, like what?" I more or less asked her in Japanese.

"I can turn my shoe cream into a lion," she told me in that peculiar matter-of-fact tone only four-year olds can muster. "OK. Please do," I answered hopefully.

She shook her shoe cream vigorously, bits of custard filling flying out of the place where she had already bitten into it. "See?" she gestured. I didn't see.

"Where is it?" I asked her, her own confidence half-assuring me I might really see the lion.

"Inside!" She held out the shoe cream patiently for me to see. Before I could get a really good look at the lion though, she took another big bite.

"You ate the lion?!" "Yep!" she grinned, and pointed at her stomach. "And now I'm full!"

I'd really wanted to see that lion, too.

Shortly before returning to Texas for a bit last year, I dreamed I was in a gigantic American supermarket. I had a huge American shopping cart, and a strictly-timed 15 minutes in which to rush through the store and grab everything I could before my immediate return to Japan. The other few people in the store seemed to be only there to watch me and cheer me on, but they refused to help me in any way. "Where are the black beans? I need canned black beans!" I screamed at them desperately over my cart full of tortillas and Reese's peanut butter cups and cereal. But they only backed away quietly against the aisles, obscuring my view of the granola bars and grape jelly. "Help me find the black beans pleeeeaaase!!" I pleaded wildly, but they said nothing. I woke up with my heart pounding quickly.

Strangely, now with another visit to Texas planned for next month, I find myself thinking a lot about what Japanese treats I should take with me to tide me over for the summer, and what kind of looks I might get if were to start screaming about ryokan and tsukemono at the local HEB. Still, I sure am looking forward to some black beans, and I think I even remember their aisle...