A Matter of Identity
I was talking with a young Japanese professional who used to study abroad and is now occasionally on oversea business trips. As our conversation got more personal, I asked him how he would raise his children, whether he would choose to let them have more exposure living abroad and going to a foreign school early on or let them grow up in the conventional Japanese education system. He told me that this was what puzzled him at times as well. On one hand, getting international exposure can grant a person with the ease to navigate between cultures and, hence, opportunities. However, for him, it is also a “matter of identity”.
Japan, as you may already know, is an extremely homogeneous culture. Everywhere I go, there seems a sense of collectivism on display. People strictly follow the street lights no matter how late at night it is; professionals in white shirts and black suits hang out for some beers after a long day at work; most children are taught from an early age to follow rules, get good grades that will get them to a good university and, hopefully someday, jobs at big corporations. Everyone is a small cog in a big machine that runs smoothly together to move the society forward. This is, of course, an over-generalization. But for the majority, it is the norm. It also entails both the good, such as the beauty of Japanese traditions, and the bad, such as Karōshi (the culture of overworking). This duality nature is probably one of the reasons why it is so hard to decide what should be the future especially now when Japanese society is pressured to open up to the influx of foreign tourists and workers.
In the movie Jiro’s dream of sushi, the director spares a big part talking about the famous sushi chef’s older son, who is supposed to take over the restaurant after his father. Jiro admits that he is sometimes stricter to his son than other apprentices, but for his own good, because a sushi chef requires years and years of training to perfect his craft. A Japanese friend also told me how children are taught to learn many rules of Japanese etiquette. It is so hard to contemplate that one day those traditions may not exist.
Growing up in Vietnam, this is not unfamiliar to me. Vietnamese early on learn about the collective identity of being “Vietnamese” through the schooling system. We must know Vietnamese “characteristics”, and how we should be nationalistic. People who go study abroad are expected to “come back and build the country”, which, most of the time, turns out to be unrealistic. As I study and travel abroad, There is a the stark contrast between mine and my friends’ cultures. I hardly heard my Western peers talk about their collective national identity. Perhaps, it is because the true identity of countries such as the United States is its individualism, and how it is supposed to be a melting pot cultures and ideologies. Again, it is so hard to tell which way is better.
Minerva is, by many standards, a non-conventional environment whose diversity has challenged me to open up my own identity. In one of our residence halls in San Francisco, there is a quotation that pops up in my mind whenever I think of the philosophy of our school: “The wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great soul is the whole world” — Democritus. It encourages the diversity within a community, cracking up the boundaries of nationality or culture. It also changed my underlying assumptions about the static nature of culture and, instead, insisted on the power and inevitability of change.
I was standing on top of a bridge across Omotesando street the other day, watching lines of cars moving at a nearby intersection while listening to a story about the evolution of Harajuku, the famous fashion neighborhood in Tokyo. This city challenges one to dig deeper, layers upon layers, to realize the constant changes that have shaped its history. It also reminds me to open up to new opportunities that will, someday, shape mine.
