January 28, 2006: In a post-modern feminist’s world

I am known for being loud, over-the-top, animated…and the words “Kristin” and “drama queen” are often used in the same sentence. In America, this makes me a wild child, in Japan, I am a rambunctious “seikyo” foreigner. Seikyo means forward in Japanese, which brings a very interesting topic to light. Back in the good old U.S. of A., a woman who grabs life by the horns and obtains what she wants is admirably ambitious. In Japan, this makes you exhibit male qualities that leave the opposite sex running for the yama (hills).

So why, in a nation as democratic and advanced as Japan, am I labeled “seikyo,” or forward? Why is this negative? Just because I don’t sit back, shut up and listen to my male elders, does that make me so outside of the pre-existing box that I’m a rude, overbearing enigma?

In America, of course, I understand that not anytime soon will the Republican rebel-rowsers be knocking at my door asking for contributions. I bilk marriage for law school, women’s rights rule over men’s egos, and antiquity and decorum be dammed when it comes to wearing high heels while vacuuming my living room…as Maureen Dowd (my heroine, about whom Salon.com’s Rebecca Traister writes, “You can love her or hate her, but you can't dismiss her”) says, “our Hoovers are turning on us.” Well I’d rather have the fat sucked out of me instead of my female charismatic values, also known as my God-given rights (take that Falwell and Alito).

Campus Progress critiques Dowd as criticizing the patriarchal boundaries but while living within them. Am I doing the same thing? In America, if I wanted something, I went for it! I wanted a man…I tagged and bagged him (kudos to you sweetie). I wanted to go to a fantastic college that was financially out of my league. I made sacrifices. I wanted to work for the Democratic presidential candidate, the leading female senator in Minnesota and the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner: I campaigned, I convinced and I conceded.

Unfortunately, us modern fem-Nazis (as my girlfriends in high school used to call ourselves) are nastily chided from all sides. The right call us lesbians at best and “anti-Christian immoral” women who ignore God’s place for us in the world [gag me]. The left, even the progressives, pettily accuse us of accepting the “gender games.” Others, like Katha Pollitt, a woman I respect greatly, of The Nation wrote, “The young women I know--most of whom, contrary to stereotype, have no problem calling themselves feminists--are so far ahead of where I was at their age, so much more confident and multicompetent and worldly-wise, I only wish I could hire one to renegotiate my girl-money salary for me.” While Pollitt claims that Dowd believes the age of Aquarius to be dead, alongside it’s “Feminism is Dead polemic.” Harsh words. But do they ring true in the new millennium for women in America and the world?

It seems that in an age where Germany’s Angela Merkel, even Chile and Liberia where Michelle Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf rule respectively and respectfully, that the only country that is steeped in a male patriarchy is the land of Starbucks, Botox and boob jobs. I’m not professing that feminism led nowhere, after all, my mom is still a tried and true hippie to this day still questioning my affinity for dresses and Dior, but are we really where we wanted to be? That is the question I believe Dowd to be asking, and we still ponder why? Why are we amazed at the Indira Gandhis, Margaret Thatchers and leaders with two X chromosomes that can be counted on one hand?

The answer was poignantly discussed in a recent New York Times column: “Women's successes in Liberia, Chile and Germany are being celebrated in part because this kind of achievement is still rare. In most countries, women have yet to achieve the critical mass at the lower levels of government that will be necessary if their ascension is to be seen as part of the normal course of politics.

In Japan, my joie de vivre trumps my femininity, unfettered by Asian, or even American convention. I refuse to uphold values that still continue, regardless of geographical location or boundary, to bind my values and dreams. I want to be the next Merkel, Bachelet and Johnson Sirleaf…whose poetic largesse and strong intellectual charisma led them to the top spots in their own countries. If that makes me seikyo, so be it. At least I’ll do it with dignity, and a little feminine finesse to boot!

January 25, 2006: Foreigners, assimilation and the basic of all rights


“I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”-Robert Frost

Immigration versus assimilation. This topic transcends borders, from France and America to the far sea of Japan. What makes someone indigenous? Native? Why do some countries welcome foreigners and others create concrete walls of precaution to protect themselves from these “threats” (as Bush, Rove, Cheney and the rest of the White House cronies would have us believe them to be)?

Living in Japan as a five foot eight inch Caucasian woman, I obviously stick out in the massive Osaka crowds. I politely ignore the stares on the trains, laugh off the jibes in subways and calmly rebuke the negative jingoist comments I can often understand in Japanese. I never in my life thought that I would experience discrimination that I had read that existed in America or heard first-hand from my friends who experienced outright bigotry. Fortunately, the Midwest somewhat sheltered me from this harsh existence that many others experience, so my first-hand knowledge at being an outsider was the moment I entered the geographic borders of Japan as a “resident alien.”

The conversation is a fluid and timely one in our lives. We are still learning lessons from Paris’s riots, groping at understanding the subtle differences between Shi’ites and Sunnis, and commemorating Martin Luther King’s dreams of a day when the content of our character pushes aside color and creed. For now, however, we live in a time where the pugnacious nature of racism is truculently inevitable.

In Japan recently, one of the Diet (parliament) members proclaimed that Japan is a “homogenous” nation. Furor erupted from the Brazilian, Korean and Chinese communities (to name a few) who celebrate their ethnic diversity while embracing their inherent “Japanese-ness.” So why do some nations value the idea of a melting pot and what provokes others to forego this diversity?

The Economist from last November explained that “hyphenating beats segregating” in America, a nation whose stars and stripes better assimilate Arabs than France or other European nations. The article describes “assimilation” as the ability for minorities in America to have equal opportunities for education, income and advancement, i.e. social, educational, commercial, political equality. While I virulently inveigh that we as Americans have a long ways to go, I remember a conversation I had with an Arab-American friend of mine, Razi, several summers ago.

We met at a conference for young leaders concerned with American’s image in the world, and Razi was a representative from Dearborn, Michigan; the location of the nation’s largest Arab population. Being a deftly and embarrassingly ignorant Midwesterner, where the only diversity I ever experienced was the variety of cowboy hats I saw each day, Razi patiently described his reactions after 9/11, his Muslim faith and how he appreciated every opportunity to explain his views to an ignorant person (i.e. me). He truly believed that Arab-Americans had an opportunity those in other nations did not, even if he did get hassled by the FBI and frequently pulled aside at airports.

So why do nations like France and Japan not possess mechanisms that allow this same kind of understanding? I am not about to proclaim from a soapbox that American is the epitome of equality and understanding, but at least our nation was founded upon the shoulders of men and women who knew these borders were transient; a melting pot, an Ellis Island of good will toward all man and womankind, with a few bumps along the road of course (like Bush’s immigration plan).

My brilliant and insightful tomodachi Takara (Sista in Sendai) has highlighted the fact that in Japan, a place where thousands of years of culture meets tomorrow’s trends in technological and scientific advances, still has vast difficulties using archetypal images for minorities, from African-Americans to Korean-Japanese. And according to the Economist’s pre-requisites for assimilation, Japan certainly exudes arenas where fairness in social, educational and some political equality, at least for a modern, capitalist nation-state.

So what must be done? I too, am in a lover’s quarrel with the world, as Frost so poetically had inscribed on his epitaph. Therefore, I do not feel that we can simply envisage walls and borders. Rather than America alienating Vincente Fox and our Mexican neighbors, rather than Japan eliminating educational rights to foreign children, instead of ignoring the poverty of Arabs in Parisienne tenements, we need to inclusively create political equality for our increasingly globalize world. David Ardo, a human rights researcher colleague, highlighted in a recent Japan Times article how Japan must exhort lawmakers to support legislation that promotes the rights of gaikokujin, or foreigners and extend basic human rights to all peoples living within the borders of Japan. We must cede this bombastic idea that foreigners are a threat, and instead embrace the diverse qualities that they bring to our lives.

Only then can we truly embrace the ai, or love, that Frost, spoke of…the whole world over.

January 24, 2006: A Room with a view...and so much more!

After a month long absence, I admit it is high time I get my writing into full swing and once again return to blogging. My holiday season was filled with warm wishes and wonderful family reunions as I traversed the world over to meet friends and family back in Rapid City, South Dakota. The season is never complete without passing away the hours with my mother cooking sugar cookies and cheesecakes, going to the quaint church my grandparents founded, checking out the latest happy hour specials in local, po-dunk bars with high school friends and simply remembering how blessed we all are for the opportunities we are given.

I sit here reminiscing over these warm tithes, of memories filled with beautiful, blinking Christmas lights, mugs of hot chocolate, and the brilliant white snows that graced the Black Hills while I was home. Rapid City will always be my home, and my mother said to me once I returned to Osaka, “Kristin, I am slowly learning that I need to let my children grow their wings. I can’t be your mother forever.” What an honest realization. For so long, I have thought that my life would be found within the memories encapsulated in South Dakota. I used to feel like Romeo, desperately proclaiming, “there is no world without Verona walls” when I thought of leaving my nest. Now, however, I have found the world to be flat, just as Thomas Friedman claims. Japan is really not so far from America is from France is from India, etc, etc, etc.

Of course, this bold realization also came with the arrival of my LSAT score, several days before Christmas. Sometimes, one wishes that Santa really would forget addresses, or not visit homes without chimneys, because the big guy upstairs was obviously not concerned for my Christmas wishes when I opened up my inbox and was filled with mixed reactions to my disappointing LSAT score.

Alas, my friends and family were right by my side to alleviate my woes with their support and I have now decided, much like Lucy Honeychurch, in E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, that I have my whole life ahead of me to determine my course. I have now signed up for the Foreign Service exam should I want to pursue diplomacy as my friends at the American Consulate in Osaka have suggested. The GRE is another item on my To-Do list, considering I always wanted to obtain my Master’s in Public Policy. I might even spend next year teaching in China or writing in France. Who knows? The wonderful thing about life is that it is glorious and difficult all at the same time, as Forster wrote. We learn the instruments as we go along, and this is one heroine who has many things to check off her life’s To-Do list.

Ciao!

Sunday, December 19^th

After a fitful night of fabulous taiko, I once again had the opportunity to have my Osaka gents escort me to yet another concert, this time to hear the wonderful group Ikari play. First things first, however. I was on a mission to get my cell phone to work again, regardless of me having not paid the bill for month (how long does the gaijin excuse work…one, two months?).

So I marched to Yodobashi Camera in downtown Osaka, had my list of vocabulary all prepared and the longer I stood waiting in line watching hundreds of consumers purchasing new ketai’s, my confidence shrank lower and lower. My friends warned me that I might be SOL, but I thought I could try right?

Luckily a kind gentleman came to my assistance, and as soon I rattled off my problem in Japanese, he ran off to help me, leaving me anxiously awaiting the outcome. Unfortunately he came back with a car charger and a grin a mile wide, proud that he could understand my awful Japanese. I felt like Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke;” “what we have here is a failure to communicate.”

An hour and a half later, my cell phone back to normal, I met my buddy Alex and we ran the 12 blocks to Liberty Osaka, a museum recently re-opened to support local human rights movements, which happened to be the host of the concert. Just before the concert started, we were seated (I always love to make an entrance) and the proud, anthem-like drum beats filled our ears. It was so powerful to see groups of otherwise disenfranchised minority ethnic groups coming together to celebrate something so primal, so Japanese. It was moving.

An afternoon of taiko cannot end without wining and dining with the taiko greats. Or so my friends convinced me as we traveled to Nara to dine at the home of the leader of Wudaiko Hiryu, Minehide-san. This is a gigantic man, bubbling with crude jokes and a personality that could fill the Parthenon. I was so honored at simply being invited, but was even more astounded as Shingo, another member of the group, joked with us that his house was called Minehide-jo, or Minehide’s castle. I understood immediately what he meant. With Jeep Cherokees sitting in the garage and a three story home complete with 60-inch flat screen HDTV, it wasn’t a castle but a palace!

With open arms and plenty of sake to go around Minehide warmly greeted us and we immediately settled around the kotatsu, a Japanese table with a heater underneath, to warm our hands from the cold and begin the fabulous meal of nabe. Nabe (literally meaning “pan”) is a traditional Japanese treat, where a large bowl with a soup base is placed on the dining table and everyone partakes in adding ingredients like mushrooms, cabbage, beef and onions. Each one taking his or her turn to stir the pot and serve one another. It is the ultimate communal dining experience, and for a nation that prides itself on integrity and social discretion, it is wonderful to simply sit, drink sake and share a meal with friends where no one cares who has “double-dipped” (George Costanza from Seinfeld would LOVE this culture!).

Amongst many cups of sake, red wine and cold beers, we somehow got through the language barrier and erupted with plenty to talk about, from food to sports. It was so wonderful to be in a home environment, complete with dogs in Santa suits and children running rampant. Unfortunately, the scene got a little too comfortable when my friend blurted to Minehide-san that I had a small crush on one of his group members, a young man named Makoto. Well, when a loud, gruff, practical jokester is armed with information like this, the only thing he can do is call Makoto on his cell phone, tell him there’s a foreigner who’s in love with him, and to get over here ASAP. Literally.

So an hour later, as I was trying to convince everyone that I was supposed to be making my way to Kyoto to meet friends, Makoto shows up, joins us, and is egged on by Minehide-san. The class clown even proceeded to put in a video of one of the group’s concerts and every time Makoto’s image graced the screen Minehide would cry, “Kristin-san, you see Makoto…eh?” with a grin a mile wide on his face. I couldn’t tell if it was the sake or the nabe, but things were definitely getting warm in the home, so I decided to graciously thank them for the meal and leave for Kyoto.

Or so I thought. Minehide took Makoto aside and asked him to drive me to the train station. With Makoto chain smoking during the inappropriately long drive to the station, I began to realize that I had no idea where I was. This feeling hit me hard as the car stopped in a covered garage and Makoto got out of the van. “Well this is the nicest train station I’ve ever seen,” I thought to myself, and no sooner had the thought entered my head did I realize where we were. Makoto had taken me to a love hotel, Japan’s equivalent of a seedy place where couples get it on. Before I could demand he take me back, he had a receipt for a room payment in his hand and was holding the elevator with a look like, “c’mon Kristin, what are you waiting for?”

So I did what any rational, confident twenty-something feminist would do. I screamed at him to leave immediately and drop me off at the next stop or I would hurt him severely. Oh, and who did he think he is? As his smile turned into a look of pure fear, he ran to the van and I quickly got out my cell phone, yelling into the microphone what had just happened as my friends laughed on the other end and Makoto tried to find the nearest station.

Very long story short, I made it to the station, but decided to go home after the eventful night. As it turned out, Minehide had dared Makoto to take me to the hotel and the poor kid fell for it…hook, line and sinker. It’s certainly a night I’ll laugh about for a long, long while.

December 17^th, Saturday: A funny thing happened on the way to the taiko…

…when my local taiko gurus, Alex and Joe, graciously invited me to a fantastic Kodo concert before I left for Japan. I anxiously anticipated the event with bated breath. Since my time here in Japan began, my affinity for taiko, Japanese drumming, has skyrocketed, particularly since Kodo is one of the most world-renown groups in this genre, and they have a couple buff cuties showing off their muscles of steel of which I have developed an unhealthy crush. So, off to Southern Osaka I traversed to meet my boys and a few of their friends.

Or so I thought. As I tried to call them to ask where on earth I was going (you know Kristin and directions; my geography genes must have come from the paternal side of my family with my continued lack of public transportation know-how), my cell phone made a funny noise and died. But not before I received a dry e-mail from my cell phone provider stating I hadn’t paid my bill in several months. Uh-oh!

Not that I’m a delinquent or anything of the sort, but hey, things come up right? Now my friends and family will constantly laugh and tell you that when it comes to numbers and myself, we’ve never gotten along. More of a love-hate relationship. Heck, I barely passed math in college, what with my “Gateways of Mathematics” class where Professor “Paco” let us discuss our feelings on math. Yes, really.

But this time I had an excuse. Since moving from my friends’ place into my new apartment, my provider still hadn’t figured out the change of address. So on that fateful Saturday, they simply got fed up with me and cut off my service. It’s actually quite embarrassing and reminded me of those cliché TV episodes where you see the struggling artist return to his/her apartment only to find out the electricity has been shut off. (That reminds me, I must pay my electric bill.)

So after asking plenty of random strangers and almost missing another Kodo concert, I arrived at the hall just in time to meet my friends and rush inside. Of course, Kodo never disappoints, particularly since after the concert they came out and mingled with the audience. Merry Christmas to me!