The Cultural Exchange Checklist

I was recently informed of a JET Programme event coming up in May that calls for me to prepare a kind of ‘mini-exhibition’ about my home town and home country. It’s the last Board of Education-related event that I will be asked to participate in before my contract ends in August. Although there is a sentimental quality to it, I could hardly say the thought of trying to prepare a booth to educate Sakai City’s octagenerians about Australia got my juices flowing. (It’s not specifically for senior citizens but in my experience they’re the only members of the general public that turn up to these things, everyone else has to be there.) What it has got, er, flowing are my thoughts about Japan’s attitude to culture. Specifically the way that the Japanese learn about foreign cultures.

The JET acronym stands for the Japan Exchange & Teaching Programme and the various ministries involved in the programme are always keen to remind you that you’re not just here to teach students how to swear in English. You’re here to participate in grassroots cultural exchange. Like a lot of things this sounds really good on paper but doesn’t always translate well into action. Clearly, May’s exhibition event is Sakai City’s attempt to remedy this situation and foster a bit of grassroots action where they can. But here’s the problem. If past experience is anything to go by this will not be a ‘true’ cultural exchange wherein both parties learn not only something about another’s culture but also something about their own, it will instead be a ‘look and gawk’ exercise somewhat akin to how one would view animals at a zoo: ‘Oh, look honey, it thinks it’s people, too.’

I blame this failure squarely on the Japanese people and their cultural exchange checklist. It at this point I note my debt to Sarah Fullmer, a fellow ALT here in Sakai, for suggesting the metaphor of the cultural exchange checklist. Although I had come up against it before our conversation, it wasn’t clear exactly what was going on until she made the connection for me.

At the risk of overgeneralising, every Japanese person (ever) seems to have a form they fill out whenever they are learning about a new culture. If you can remember back to your days at school you will perhaps recall a similar form that was given out whenever you went on an excursion to a museum or art gallery. Filling out the form was always incredibly important, far more important than the things you had ostensibly come to see. With that particular brand of perversity that seems reserved for formal education, filling out the form became the reason you had gone on the excursion and not filling it out would be to make the entire exercise a collosal waste of time that could only be remedied with a detention. It is my opinion that Japanese people – all of them (ever) – have a similar form for learning about another’s culture. This isn’t a real form, though. It’s not a form you can taste or see or touch. It is a form you fill out in your head and one I have grown to despise.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the form allow me to give you a brief overview of the cultural exchange checklist. Once we get past the perfunctories, the first item on the form is what people from another culture look like. If you do not have a dominant racial majority in your country, too bad; one will be selected for you, normally on the basis of whatever stereotypes about your country already exist in Japanese culture. In the case of someone from Australia this means white people. If you are not white, don’t worry, you will be considered an aberation and may even elicit special interest in the same way we all want to see the rare albino monkey when we go to zoo. The next item on the form is where your country is located. If you feel a particularly strong connection to another country because, for instance, you were born there, this will be helpfully ignored: everyone only comes from one country. Following this are national flag, national dress, national food, native flora and fauna and famous celebrities. If you do not have a national dress or national food – or if you have multiple costumes and foods within your culture – one will be selected for you at random, typically on the basis of which is the most far removed from its Japanese equivalent. In terms of fauna, the most cute will be selected and when it comes to famous celebrities if you are from Europe it will be either a footballer or artist and if you are from anywhere else in the world it will be a movie star.

Conversations related to ‘cultural exchange’ should be conducted with an eye to helping the Japanese person fill out this mental checklist. Conversations which suggest the checklist is a poor tool for analysing another’s culture or attempts to change the checklist to better accomodate your situation are largely pointless. In all situations you are reminded to look foreign. Should you attempt to communicate in Japanese it will be treated with the fascination one might reserve for parrots that can mimic speech. People are impressed with the time you have put into it but will still treat you as if you do not speak, nor even really understand, the language.

Why is the cultural exchange checklist so prevalent amongst (all) the Japanese (ever)? I think it belies an understanding of their own culture that is then superimposed onto others. Japan likes to think of itself as monoracial, monolingual, mono… other stuff, and when looking at other cultures applies the same standards it applies to itself. This is not an altogether unreasonable thing to do. That the idea that Japanese culture is monolithic is ridiculous is beside the point. It’s easier to think of it this way and it fits within a historical narrative that has animated Japanese society for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Now when I quite proudly told Rui all about this she made the adroit observation that the same thing occurrs in other cultures, too. (Well, you’d expect a Japanese person to say that, wouldn’t you?) Even in my native Australia – which regards itself as a multicultural society (or at least did for most of the 1990s) – there is a tendency to reduce cultures to fact sheets that can be easily digested. That such fact sheets ignore the complexity of culture or marginalise entire groups of people that don’t fit into easily defined categories is precisely why we have them in the first place. If we actually had to analyse these things they would take a long time – at least 30 minutes.

Now while I can do little about the situation vis-à-vis other cultures, I have taken it upon myself to try to remedy the situation in Sakai as best I can. My booth will be displaying faces of various nationalities and explaining these people are all Australian. I will explain our national flag comes from the United Kingdom, as does most of our food and sporting events. I will explain that while we like to help propogate the myth of Australians as bronze-bodied Adonises we are in fact a nation of sports watchers rather than sports players. I will explain that while there are ‘traditional’ Australian activites like surfing there is a large proportion of people who cannot do them and have little interest in doing them (a category in which I include myself). Finally, I will create some ‘cultural exchange checklists’ which I will print off and offer to people approaching the stall. These people will be further invted to tear it in half symbolising, if you will, the destruction of their own internal checklist. Scales will also be provided that patrons can use should they get into this whole visual metaphor thing.

I’m not sure how well this will go down with the BOE but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. My feeling is that they’ll regard it with a sense of nervousness at best. The fact of the matter is that Japanese people as a whole are not this bad. Like any society, there are some who have a particularly set view of the world and struggle to think outside of it while there are others who are more than happy to find there are alternative ways of doing things. I imagine that it will most likely be the latter who will attend the exhibition. Rest assured this will be another exciting adventure I will not tell you the end of!