Tumbleweeds - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 14: The Trouble with Paradise
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Doug Hendrie
MY BOSS DAVID WAS A TYPICAL LONG-TERM FOREIGNER and over time had developed the standard complex love/hate relationship with Japan, with his institution. He spoke Japanese, had a job outside the English teaching ghetto, bullied his underlings, possessed a wife, kids and a mistress or three. Japanese culture is fantastical, complex, a constant source of wonder. But still these long-term refugees complain, clustered in gaijin bars with other white foreigners. They complain of never feeling at home, of the racism taught in schools, the standoffishness, the pervasiveness of nihonjinron, the sense of Japanese superiority and uniqueness that survived World War II – Japanese, not Asian – while Germany twisted in the throes of guilt.
Being white in Japan is such a mixed blessing: working-holiday gaijin curse their treatment, the racism they partly deserve, children gazing with fearful eyes like hill-tribes in suburbia, and they complain while toting Japanese girlfriends obtained easily, through a mutual exoticism that boosts their attractiveness far out of proportion. At home, they were losers, geeks, proficient fantasisers; here, they are gods in one sense, but with few to brag to and a tenuous purchase on the surface of Japanese society.
It's an open secret why they're there. You can read about it every month in Metropolis, the Tokyo expat magazine which features the cartoon exploits of Charisma Man – a hapless nerd in America who becomes a white god in Japan, ploughing through women, soaking up sex. And the offcasts? All I ever heard were stories second-hand: Peter, who raped a woman who'd had a crush on him and run away up north; Diego, who had a long-term girlfriend and had soaked up the local traditions – a partner for comfort, other girls for sex. He'd come to work and bounce children on his knee, grinning furtively, telling me of last night's exploits. All went well until he embroiled himself with a Yakuza woman and had to beat a quick retreat. Matt, appreciatively watching Rachel ahead of us on the elevator: "She's be a great fuck. If only she weren't so talkative," he says of my friend. "You'd have to cut out her voicebox." He mulls over his own thoughts meditatively. Matt, who married for a visa and now works the gaijin bars, fuck-hunting every Saturday night. Matt, Peter, David, the worst white men I've ever met, fleeing to the land before feminism, refugees from strong women. I like to think I was none of these, but I do not know whether it is true.
IN MY FIRST MONTH THERE, I MET A MIDDLE-AGED MAN in a Kyoto bar who beamed and extended his friendship to me. He had a ruddy face, his hair lightening and lifting away from his scalp like fairy floss, an expansive man, a man who looked good when he gestured with a wine glass in one hand. You could tell by his tongue that he was a sensualist – the lithe tip flicked between his lips when he spoke, or even at rest, unconsciously. His name was John. Almost immediately, we were talking about sex – or rather, talking around sex. It was old lion to young; he exerted a jovial magnetism, a magnanimous conferral of "male knowledge".
"How long have you been here?" I ask.
He laughs. "I was one of those blowing through, fifteen years ago, and
I've stuck around. How long are you planning to stay?"
"Six months," I say.
His smile broadens. "Six months! That's a story we've heard before, isn't it, Matt?" His drinking buddy laughs too, a knowing conspiracy. "Matt was planning to stay six months. He's been here four years now. And David was just passing through, 25 years ago."
"Why?" I wonder.
If possible, his smile broadens further and he points to each person at the table. "Japanese wife. Japanese girlfriend. Japanese girlfriend. Me, I've got a Japanese girlfriend. Best girls in the world, Japanese girls. After two to three years here, you won't find white girls attractive at all."
I'm taken aback by his candour. There's a brief lull. "It's why we stay, we long-termers. Japanese women are something else. Elegant, graceful, beautiful. And as for their bodies ..."
He briefly enters a reverie, eyes closed, then flickering open to find mine. He's testing me out, this man, to see if I'm of like mind. I'm fascinated by him.
"But what about their famed submissiveness? Doesn't that irritate you?" I venture.
Another broad grin. "No. No, I like it."
He must have seen something in my eyes – too much too soon – and back-pedals, tempers his last sentence. "It's only on the surface," he says, subsiding a little. "A friend of mine once said that American women are strong on the outside and weak on the inside, while Japanese women are weak on the outside and strong on the inside. I happen to agree."
He drinks his wine, content.
JAPAN STILL COMES TO ME AS I TRY TO SLEEP IN AUSTRALIA. Neon nights, the joy of children leaping in my classroom. Sumo wrestlers palming babies for photo-ops. A Richter 6 earthquake in Tokyo, the buildings bowing low to each other. Ten million frogs erupting out of rice paddies in Osaka's suburbs, 40,000 balloons fizzing around a baseball stadium, a riot of colour.
I've accustomed myself to my old personality, settled back in. But Kiyono still visits me in my dreams and cuts herself for me again and asks me why I left her and why I could not love her enough to stop her cutting herself so deeply. She asks me what's wrong, why I couldn't love her and I tell her again from the safety of dreams, from the safety of Australia, that love is not the desperate clinging thing we had, that swallowing twenty sleeping pills was blackmail, very effective blackmail, but she doesn't understand the word in English and my Japanese is horrible and so like everyone else we end up silent, staring at each other across the culture gap, she in her hospital bed and me in my skin, wondering how, exactly, I ever got to that point and whether I'd have been better off as one of the many, many men who use and abuse Japanese girls so easily. ♦