Surreal Escapes

Take a moment to think about the following things related to Japan.

• How many famous Japanese people can you name?
• What about important dates?
• Can you name and locate any prominent geographical features?
• What about cities? Prefectures?

I had a recent conversation with some of my Japanese friends, and it made me realize just how little I knew about Japan. Most of what I know now, I have only learned while being here. I think a lot of Americans are the same, in that they know only a little about Japan. On the contrary, the Japanese seem to know quite a bit about the U.S. My friends knew presidents, even had at least some idea of when they were president. Washington was 1st, Lincoln 16th, Franklin Roosevelt during WWII, Kennedy in the 60′s, Nixon and Watergate, Reagan, Bush is the current president’s father, Clinton, Bush. They recognized Carter and Jefferson when I mentioned them. They knew Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Einstein (wait, he’s not American). They knew 1776 was when we signed the Declaration of Independence. 1861, the Civil War. I drew a rough map of the U.S. and they could name and locate the Rockies, the Appalachians, the Mississippi, the Great Lakes (not individually), Niagara Falls, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, New Orleans, New York City. They recognized San Francisco, Las vegas, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit (and said, oh yeah, cars), Boston, Baltimore. They even knew many of the cities’ baseball teams.

Now, this was just one conversation with two people, and I am sure there are many people who know only a fraction of the above, but there are probably many others who know more. It’s hard to say without doing a proper study. As such, I am left with just a hypothesis waiting to be proved or debunked. Using what I have gathered from observations and conversations here in Japan combined with what I know from experience at home in America, I would say that on the whole, Japanese know far more about America than Americans know about Japan. If that is true, it is interesting to ask why.

Why don’t we know more history?
My exposure to Asian history in secondary school was poor. I remember vague bits about ancient Chinese history, some about Hinduism and Bhuddism, Matthew Perry and the opening of Japan’s borders, the Russo-Japanese War, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. I suspect many Americans had a similar experience, being mainly exposed only to the parts of Asian history that directly concerned the U.S. While sad, it makes sense to focus so much more on Europe, Mexico, and South America. There is only so much time for teaching, and first priority should be on what has affected us as a nation. Even so, I feel like I missed out on a huge piece of human history.

Why don’t we know more people?
Maybe Americans can’t name very many Japanese people because there are none. Well, of course that isn’t true. The Japanese themselves can name plenty of famous Japanese. However, they are a humble and group oriented people, rather than individualistic. Within the country, I believe people only become famous from the praise and promotion of others. They are too humble to promote themselves and would rather give credit to the group in which they belong. Perhaps this is why few Japanese people are famous outside of Japan. The country itself is humble, and no member would praise their own group publicly, nor any member of that group. In their eyes it would be considered arrogant. So simply put, perhaps to Americans there are few famous Japanese people because no one tells us about them.

Why do they know so much?
Perhaps the largest reason for the incongruity is this: The United States of America is one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world. Other countries study us, to know how we became what we are, to know how to interact with us, and to know their enemy, should we ever become theirs. Our ideals and our culture spread around the world, sometimes by force, sometimes by happenstane, and sometimes by willing adoption. In Japan specifically, we brought much of our culture here during and following the occupation after WWII. Since then, they have continued to willingly and eagerly adopt more and more Western culture. One can hardly deny that America has adopted bits and pieces of culture from around the world itself. However, more often than not it is because the culture was brought to us and not because we actively sought it out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.