What are YOU doing with that textbook!?
April 8, 2005
Hello. My name is Daniel, Midwestern-born and raised white boy. I speak Japanese. I know a bit about Chinese history. One of my favorite foods is Vietnamese noodle soup, popular in my city's Korean district. I often shop for clothes and gifts with my
girlfriend in Chinatown. Needless to say, I catch flak from time to time for being an "asiaphile", though not as much as some friends of mine.
The people that bandy about the term "asiaphile" often do so with palpable disdain. They spit the word at you more than saying it. It carries with it the connotation of being a culturally inept "ugly american" with an insulting fascination with facetious aspects of the culture of Asian countries. The story goes that these asiaphiles don't, can't, and won't ever really understand "what it's like", and that no amount of language study and noodle bowls will "make their eyes slanty," but they sure wish it could.
In my experience living in Japan, I found this sort of attitude more common among ex-pats than the native Japanese. The people most critical of the foreigner with a keen interest in all things Japan were the other foreigners who had either a) been living in the country for a while, or b) spoke Japanese very well. Sure, many Japanese felt that
gaijin couldn't understand the Japanese way of thinking, and even tried to hold back from getting to know them too well for this reason, but the level of vitriol shown by ex-pats was something I rarely saw matched in the Japanese.
I can't help but wonder about this. Most seasoned veterans of Japanese studies (I use Japanese because it is where my experience lies, but I imagine the same ideas could apply to Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean cultures, and so on and so forth) have had to put up with the unique challenge of a language with alien symbols and grammar. Most have made the same mistakes in the early stages of learning, and I dare be so bold as to say that most have had moments of enthusiasm and fascination that were less than culturally sensitive.
So what is it about weathered veterans of Asian studies that makes them turn on the newbies so quickly? In the case of foreigners in Japan, I think part of it has to do with the bad reputation foreigners already have. There are a lot of folks on working holiday that never learn the language, and plenty of students there to drink and chase the opposite sex, and anecdotal evidence wins the hearts and minds of the public, even though gaijin commit less crime per capita than the Japanese. The people who have been there a while and seen the bad apples may be very, very protective of what they see as their fragile reputation as a "good foreigner". I don't have any stats or research to back this up, but I suspect the harshness of their accusations springs from a deep-set insecurity that they, too, might be just a common "asiaphile", and that their motivations are just a more highly-developed version of what drives the skirt-chasers and partiers.