Applying a Critical Metatheoretical Approach to Intercultural Relations
The Case of U.S.–Japanese Communication
In this chapter, William Kelly dissects how U.S.–Japan relations mediated personal experiences of White U.S. Americans in their intercultural encounters with the Japanese. He takes a critical approach and focuses on power relations between different cultural groups. From his nineteen-year personal experience in Japan, he reflects on the privileges and disadvantages that White U.S. Americans commonly experienced in Japanese society. Consciously or unconsciously, according to Kelly, White U.S. Americans took advantage of their race, nationality, language, and culture, which were implicated by the imbalanced power relations between the United States and Japan. At the same time, they also encountered the racism of Japanese people who discriminated against them out of their defensive psychology. He attests that, as Japan rose to an economic power by the 1990s, some Japanese became more internationally and interculturally assertive to be on an equal footing with White U.S. Americans. Kelly’s work is an excellent exemplar of critical intercultural communication scholarship that connects a macro-analysis of larger political and economic structures in international relations with a micro-analysis of communication behaviors in interpersonal interactions.
U.S. American scholars initially researched U.S.–Japanese communication in the 1970s (Condon & Saito, 1974, 1976; Barnlund, 1975). They emphasized differences in patterns of self-disclosure and in values between members of the two cultures. Since that time, the research approach to U.S. –Japanese communication has hardly changed. Intercultural scholars still focus on cultural differences between the two nations along dimensions such as individualism/collectivism (Yamaguchi, 1994).
What is striking is that intercultural researchers have largely ignored the larger political and economic context and the ways in which this context influences interpersonal communication between U.S. Americans and Japanese. They also have failed to systematically address issues of history and power. It is as if Perry’s forcible opening of Japan in 1853, World War II, the U.S. Occupation of Japan, and the long-standing trade disputes had never occurred.
A new research direction is needed based on a critical metatheoretical perspective. A critical approach brings to light the ways in which both U.S. Americans and Japanese have been influenced by power dynamics related to Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, its political subordination the United States, and its rise to economic superpower status. A critical approach emphasizes that relations between U.S. Americans and Japanese have never been equal due to structural factors within the world political economy. Until the influence of structural forces on U.S. –Japan communication is recognized, the applicability of intercultural communication concepts to actual communication between members of these two cultures will remain partial and limited.
Critical approaches have emphasized the importance of structural factors, power relations, and historical context, but they have tended to focus only on mass media discourse, thereby neglecting interpersonal communication across cultures (Martin & Nakayama, 1999). The value of the present article is that it attempts to compensate for such neglect by focusing on interpersonal communication between U.S. Americans and Japanese. By utilizing a critical approach, I connect communication at the interpersonal level with the larger international context.
I will first compare difference-based and critical metatheoretical approaches to intercultural communication. Second, I will present my personal experience as a case study of U.S. –Japanese communication. Third, I will analyze this personal experience to demonstrate the ability of a critical metatheoretical approach to deal with interpersonal communication across cultures. Finally, I will summarize the advantages of a critical metatheoretical approach to intercultural communication and suggest some new directions for future theorizing concerning U.S.–Japanese relations.
Comparing CD and Critical Approaches to Intercultural Communication
I will use the abbreviation “CD” to refer to the traditional social scientific approaches based on the analysis of cultural differences that have made up the mainstream of the intercultural communication field since the early 1980s. A classic statement of the difference-based approach to intercultural communication was made by Barnlund (1998). He stated the requirements for human survival in the global village with its diverse cultures in the following terms. “What seems most critical is to find ways of gaining entrance into the assumptive worlds of another culture, to identify the norms that govern face-to-face relations, and to equip people to function within a social system that is foreign but no longer incomprehensible” (p. 37). Thus the task of the inter-culturalist is to discover the ways in which cultures can be distinguished by studying differences in cultural meaning. There have been many studies of U.S.–Japanese communication that have almost exclusively focused on the study of cultural differences (e.g., Condon & Saito, 1974, 1976; Barnlund, 1975, 1989; Okabe, 1983; Ishii, 1985; Hall & Hall, 1987; Gudykunst, 1993).
The CD approach will be contrasted with a critical metatheoretical approach. I define a critical approach as similar to what Martin and Nakayama (1999) call a critical humanist perspective, incorporating critical theory deriving from the Frankfurt school, cultural studies, and postcolonial perspectives. The central tenet of such a critical approach is an emphasis on relations of power between different cultural groups. There is also a concomitant rejection of the fundamental premise of the CD approach that the study of cultural difference provides the key to intercultural understanding.
Critical metatheoretical approaches have only recently begun to have an impact within the field of intercultural communication, and this newer trend within the intercultural communication field has recently blossomed (González & Tanno, 1997; Tanno & González, 1998; Martin, Nakayama, & Flores, 1998; Orbe, 1998; Nakayama & Martin, 1999;; González & Tanno, 2000; González, Houston, & Chen, 2000; Martin & Nakayama, 2000). Outside the intercultural communication field, Young (1996), an Australian social theorist, has written an impressive philosophical critique of theoretical perspectives on intercultural relations from a Habermasian perspective. Another noteworthy effort has been made by Dahlen (1997), a Swedish anthropologist, who has critiqued the training aspect of the intercultural communication field for its dependence on outdated anthropological models. Nevertheless, with regard to the specific area of U.S.–Japanese interpersonal communication, few critical studies have been carried out.
I will now present CD and critical perspectives formulated in highly general terms. By presenting them in such generic terms, the ways in which CD and critical approaches deal with the various dimensions of intercultural communication can come more clearly into focus, thereby highlighting their differences. I will distinguish between a difference-based and a critical approach to intercultural communication in five areas: (1) notion of culture, (2) similarity/difference, (3) relations of power, (4) importance of history, and (5) communication competence.
Notion of Culture
Two well-known theorists who have studied the influence of culture on communication are E. Hall (1959) and Hofstede (1991). E. Hall (1959) posits a cultural unconscious that influences people to communicate in certain fashions beneath their conscious awareness. For Hofstede (1991), culture is the programming of the mind that operates like computer software. These theorists share a belief that the understanding of social structural and economic influences upon culture does not make a major contribution to the theory and practice of intercultural communication.
In S. Hall’s (1996) reinterpretation of Marxism, however, culture is the realm in which a contest of ideas takes place. These ideas are themselves influenced by the positioning of their proponents within the social structure. Therefore, culture cannot be understood without reference to the social context within which ideas are formulated. Such material factors such as people’s class, race, and gender do not determine the content of ideas, but they do have a considerable influence upon people’s thinking.
As a contested site, culture cannot simply be viewed as an arena of shared meanings and values in the manner of CD theorists (Moon, 1996; Ono, 1998). Hegemonic concepts of culture are subject to challenge by those whose voices have not been represented in the present construction of that culture. The culture that reflects the interests of more powerful groups may be resisted directly or indirectly by members of subordinated groups.
Similarity/Difference
Bennett (1998) writes that “the topic of difference—understanding it, appreciating it, respecting it—is central to all practical treatments of intercultural communication” (p. 2). From his CD stance, all universalist perspectives are ways of minimizing difference. Bennett believes that those who claim that recognition of human similarity is a positive factor in promoting effective inter-cultural communication are guilty of trying to impose their cultural beliefs on the other. They are denying difference in order to preserve an attachment to their own cultural beliefs and values while avoiding the need to accept and appreciate other ways of life.
Young’s (1996) work illustrates a critical metatheoretical perspective on similarity/difference. His aim is to provide a theoretical approach that is capable of dealing with the remnants of imperialism and colonialism. Such an approach must be capable of allowing us to celebrate differences but not at the expense of denying our common humanity. His plea is for a middle path between the universalism that was used to justify European conquest and rule over weaker nations and the relativism that often leads to separatism and ethnic conflict.
Critical anthropologists and postcolonial theorists have also argued against the tendency to emphasize cultural differences in research. They have seen the emphasis on difference as a way of “making other.” In their view, this celebration of difference stems from an absolute division that has been constructed between West and non-West. As Said (1978) points, out, such a division, historically, has been used to justify the power exercised by the West over others. By viewing cultures as separate and bounded entities existing in isolation, the Orient appears as radically other. The West is constructed as masculine, democratic, progressive, dynamic, rational, and moral; the Orient as feminine, sensual, backward, and duplicitous.
Relations of Power
The main premises of the CD standpoint on power and the reasons for rejecting a critical approach to power have been expressed by Bennett (1998). Bennett does not deny the existence of power differentials that have an impact on communication. Yet he believes that the examination of power relations leads into politically charged discussion that is beyond the province of the intercultural communication field. Discussions of ideological discourse should be avoided since they create much heat and little light. “When communication behavior is labeled as ‘Marxist,’ or ‘imperialist,’ or ‘racist,’ or ‘sexist,’ the human aspects of that behavior are overshadowed by the reifications of principle. Polarization usually supplants any hope of inclusivity, and further exploration of communication differences is drowned out by the political commotion” (pp. 10–11).
From the CD perspective, the research focus should be on communication difficulties between members of different cultures that are “well-meaning clashes” (Ting-Toomey, 1999). A well-meaning clash occurs when all parties in an intercultural encounter follow their own cultural script and behave in accordance with their own cultural norms, rules and values.
A critical approach to the role of power relations in communication recognizes the negative role of ideology whereby meaning is constructed and conveyed in the service of power (Thompson, 1990). Systematically asymmetrical relations of power are structures of domination within which members of less powerful groups are expected to act in accordance with particular scripts and social roles. As Young notes (1996), such a pattern of behavior is inimical to the dignity and self-respect of subordinated groups, prevents them from pursuing their own interests and needs in an unhindered fashion, and maintains social inequality and their own subordination. Under such conditions, members of dominant groups will tend to enforce social expectations that reinforce their own dominant position and power, whereas members of subordinate groups may resist them.
Critical interculturalists, therefore, do not focus only on miscommunication due to cultural differences. There are also important occasions when the structure of people’s roles, tasks, and situation does not allow the basic needs of subordinated group members to be realized. In addition, the meanings that may be employed are often limited by distorted communicative frameworks and by ideological practices. When there are relationships of domination and subordination, members of dominant groups will tend to impose their reality on members of subordinated groups. As a result, members of oppressed groups who question or reject the existential claims of members of the dominant group violate the socially and politically constructed interaction norms of that speech context (Young, 1996).
Historical Context
Among CD theorists, Bennett (1998) has explicitly rejected the notion that historical understanding should play a major part in intercultural communication. History should be downplayed, he believes, because it usually has little connection with current behavior. He does recognize that an understanding of history may help us to interpret present behavior that is a response to past mistreatment by another group. Nevertheless, his overall view is that a focus on historical context is a distraction from analyzing the influence of culture on face-to-face interaction in the present.
Postcolonial theorists as far back as Fanon and Memmi have pointed to the need for historical reconstruction of the colonial period in order to uncover the ambivalent and symbiotic relationship between colonizer and colonized whose effects have continued to the present time. The colonized may have identified with the colonizer, and the colonizer may have applied great violence against the colonized (Gandhi, 1998). Bhabha (1994) sees the task of the theorist as bringing back to consciousness the memories of events that the colonized person’s mind could not accept. In this way, the blocked memories can be released and their influence upon present behavior can be neutralized.
There tend to be two phases of identity construction that occur once the colonized has thrown off identification with the colonizer (S. Hall, 1996). The first is when colonized peoples try to decolonize their minds by making efforts to recover a pure culture that existed before the colonial intrusion. The second phase may follow after cultural integrity has been regained. In this phase, the influence of the colonizer is admitted, and a new hybrid culture is created that faces toward the future rather than the past.
Communication Competence
The CD view of communication competence is that it has three major dimensions: affective, cognitive, and behavioral (Chen & Starosta, 1996). The affective domain centers on intercultural sensitivity; the cognitive dimension includes self-awareness, cultural self-awareness, and knowledge of other cultures; and the focus of the behavioral realm is on skill development. Intercultural sensitivity is defined as acceptance of another culture, but the issue of whether members of the dominant culture have sufficient motivation to give up their power and privilege is not addressed. The CD theorist views the cognitive dimension in terms of thought patterns and social values, norms, customs, and systems, but no mention is made of the historical relations between nations and their present relations of power.
From a critical metatheoretical perspective, Young (1996) claims that traditional interculturalists fail to provide an adequate theory of context and circumstances because their treatments do not address the realities of political economy and human emotions such as pride. The communication ideal that Young proposes is based on Habermas’s notion of open speech and unconstrained communication. He maintains that all communicators regardless of cultural background have some notion of communication that is free from external intervention and oriented toward what is true, what is right, and what is sincere. In the process of communicating, people can choose whether or not to follow this ideal, and he views such choices as a continuum with rationality at one pole and power/knowledge or ideology at the other. From this standpoint, communicative competence means speaking authentically, accurately, and appropriately with regard to the social relationship, as well as a willingness on the part of those in positions of power to cooperate with those who resist domination.
Personal Experience as Evidence
In this article, I will share my own personal experience as evidence to support the usefulness of a critical approach to intercultural communication. This experience involves living in Japan for nineteen years and considerable familiarity with Japanese life, including marriage to a Japanese woman and the raising of two children. I have used published accounts to add credibility to my reports, but my own experience provides the primary evidence for the value of a critical approach in understanding U.S.–Japanese intercultural communication.
Was my experience representative? Countercultural and mainstream U.S. Americans were living in Japan as well as those who were sent by their company or by the U.S. government. Despite the different backgrounds and circumstances, I found that we all tended to share certain attitudes and behavior toward Japanese people. We generally felt superior to Japanese people and played the role of a teacher, since we consciously or unconsciously understood ourselves to be members of the leading nation in the world and expected others to communicate on our terms. I am not claiming that all U.S. Americans had this type of attitude, but in my observation, a large majority of the Americans that I encountered in Japan did have such an attitude.
There are several advantages of relying on personal experience. One is that there is an active personal involvement that provides the flavor of what it felt like for a White American male to be interacting with Japanese people in Japan. Another advantage is that we have a chance to listen to a distinctive voice, that of a White American male trying to unlearn privilege. In addition, there is the close connection between experience and theorizing that Kondo (1990) addresses. It is our participation and immersion in events that enables us to create order and meaning. Living in Japan led me to perceive power as an issue for intercultural communication and to take an interest in critical approaches.
Using personal experience as data, I will argue that a critical metatheroetical perspective can be applied to the understanding of interpersonal communication across cultures. I will examine my personal experience and show how these experiences can be interpreted on the basis of a critical approach with regard to notions of culture, similarity/difference, relations of power, historical context, and communication competence. My argument is that the application of critical concepts enables us to understand my communication as a White American male with Japanese people in Japan in useful and valuable ways that a CD approach cannot match. The personal experience that I will analyze in terms of critical concepts includes the ways in which I first benefited from privilege as a White American in Japan, the changes in outlook that I underwent while living in Japan, and the reasons for my letting go of my colonial attitude towards Japanese people.
Taking Up the White Man’s Burden
As an English teacher and sympathizer with Western countercultural trends, I entered a milieu of like-minded people who seemed interested in making sufficient money either to resume traveling, to accumulate savings, or to enable them to go out and enjoy themselves. Not unlike the adventurers and misfits who partially made up European colonial society, many of us did not experience comfort or success in our own country. Consequently, it was pleasant to have status, money, and popularity merely on the basis of being White. As Iyer (1991) points out, there was a comfortable groove for U.S. Americans in Japan: “being taken as an exotic, or a demigod, was one of the hardest states to abandon” (p. 190).
For Western men, the availability of Japanese women has been a big attraction. Especially when I first lived in Japan, the romantic image of the Western male was very strong. There was never a shortage of Japanese women in Tokyo who could be met at discos, parties, English classes, or through friends. Some Japanese women accepted the image that Western men were more kind and less sexist as well as more romantic than Japanese men. Western men, including myself, often took Japanese women lightly and enjoyed the psychologically secure relationship that we had with them. For example, I felt more confident and secure being with Japanese women inasmuch as their standards seemed lower. At a time of rapid gender role changes in the United States, Japanese women tended to follow traditional gender roles and were pleased to have a White partner. The ability to enjoy such status and privilege was rooted in a colonial-type relationship between the United States and Japan. In Ma’s (1996) words, “If America’s position as Japan’s conqueror and savior helped to reinforce a general sense of awe and respect toward Westerners, then it also produced a colonial attitude among Western men … who believe they can easily ‘lord it over’ the Japanese” (pp. 107–108).
Not long after I arrived in Tokyo, I went on a television program with a large international audience and made up stories about my unusual sexual experiences in Japan and then came back the next week and did a commentary on a film about streaking in California. For that first show, I dressed in five-color Balinese pants, wore a batik shirt, and was somewhat drunk. During my first year in Tokyo, I was a movie extra, a secretary at an international health conference, lectured and taught at well-known Japanese companies on American thinking and values, and made much money teaching English at prestigious Japanese companies.
My way of life with its freedom and excitement seemed much better than that of the typical Japanese salaried workers I taught. I looked down on them and frequently told them that I did not want to settle down and live a regular life. In a condescending way, I implied that they were stuck in their routine lives, while I was not. I preferred not to recognize that it was my White privilege that allowed me to be accepted and to get jobs in foreign countries. Japanese people, for example, did not have the same opportunities to get well-paying jobs teaching the Japanese language or doing Japanese-language rewriting and editing in other countries.
As part of my exciting life, I hitchhiked all over Japan during the 1970s and early 1980s. White people could easily get rides from Japanese drivers, although Japanese people themselves generally could not, and sometimes we were brought to where we wanted to go, even if it was far from the driver’s actual destination. Kerr (1996) talked about hitchhiking in the Japanese countryside in the early 1970s as a wonderful experience during which he was treated “extremely well.” Japanese people showed tremendous curiosity and kindness to him, and it was an easy time for foreigners.
Discussions with other European Americans about Japan usually led to sharing of complaints about Japan or, at best, predictions that Japan was in for deep trouble due to its stubborn unwillingness to internationalize. One U.S. friend who had studied philosophy at Columbia University said that Japanese people have no morality, power always prevails in Japan, and weaker groups are mercilessly exploited. He refused to believe that the income inequality was far greater in the United States than in Japan during the 1980s.
There was a certain predictability in the interactions between White Americans and Japanese throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Japanese were almost always expected to speak English, show interest in the United States, compliment and flatter White Americans, and do what was possible to make White Americans feel good. When White Americans said something, Japanese were not supposed to contradict it. At the same time, though, we would criticize Japanese for being so reserved and unable to express themselves.
White American arrogance was greatly in evidence at that time, a phenomenon that CD approaches cannot account for. When I taught at Mitsui & Co., one of the leading trading companies in Japan, in 1974, a student asked me to go with him to Kamakura. I replied that I had already been to Kamakura and wanted to go somewhere new. My casual dismissal of this invitation could be interpreted as unawareness of the importance of face saving in Japan, that is, in terms of cultural ignorance. But my behavior could also be interpreted as the kind of arrogance often displayed by those occupying dominant positions within a colonial-type relationship. It could be interpreted in terms of my enjoying power and privilege rather than as a failure to acknowledge cultural differences. Since I felt that I was a kind of minor star in Japan as a White American and that Japanese were interchangeable as acquaintances, I think that arrogance of power is a more accurate explanation for my behavior.
White Americans had reality-defining power in most circumstances where they came together with Japanese people. As critical theorists have noted, the form of domination that tends to prevail in today’s world is the power to define reality. In the case of White Americans in Japan, we often took advantage of U.S. cultural hegemony in our attempts to impose our ways of thinking on Japanese people. It was not until the early 1980s and the sudden popularity of Japanese-style management in the West, that the idea of learning from Japan first surfaced. Before that time, it was always tacitly understood that when Japanese and Americans came together in Japan, the Americans taught and the Japanese learned. Until intercultural scholars recognize these contextual factors, they will not be able to account for the distorted patterns of communication that have had such a strong impact upon U.S.–Japanese intercultural relations.
The issue of communication competence is related to that of power. In the CD account of communication competence, neither recognition of power differences between the communicators nor a willingness to give up one’s privileges is a precondition for communication competence. The idea that the politics of communication can prevent effective communication is not entertained. Since the CD approach ignores the political dimension, it creates the impression that knowledge, affect, and skills are sufficient conditions for the presence of communication competence.
My experience shows that until I admitted that I was taking advantage of my skin color, nationality, and culture, I did not seriously consider developing the knowledge of Japanese culture and language, the feeling toward Japanese people, and the communication skills that would enable me to relate to Japanese people beyond a very superficial level. Much personal development and reflection had to take place before I was willing to leave the world of English conversation and segregated foreign ghettos. A critical metatheoretical approach emphasizes the importance of the politics of communication, and in my case the political choice was whether to continue accepting the U.S.–Japanese communication hierarchy. This political decision determined the very possibility of my achieving communication competence.
The Well-Worn Paths of “English Conversation”
As an English teacher in the world of “English conversation,” I experienced the situation that Lummis (1977) described in his critique of that world. Over the years, the situation became less extreme, but I believe Lummis’s description is accurate for the period covered before Japan’s rise to economic eminence. In those days, in order to teach English in Japan, it was not necessary to be qualified as a language teacher or to speak Japanese or know anything about Japanese culture and society. It was enough to give Japanese people a chance to meet a foreigner and to be entertained. Consequently, a teacher could talk about anything during the class and preparation was hardly necessary. Our salaries were also higher than those of Japanese teachers of English who were qualified and experienced.
When teaching at Mitsubishi Corporation, the leading trading company in Japan in 1974, I remember doing some teaching for one hour and entertaining and exchanging ideas with students for the other hour of the class. Once I even arm-wrestled the ten male students in the class. It was also generally understood that English teachers would be White, even if not native speakers, and that native speakers of other colors would usually not be hired under “normal” circumstances.
In those days when I walked around Tokyo, I had experiences of being stopped by young Japanese who asked me in a fawning manner if they could practice their English. Lummis (1977) describes how Japanese learn English conversation from Whites in an extremely alienating manner and then speak to White people in the same depersonalized way. “Typically ‘English conversation’ is characterized by an attitude of obsequiousness, banality, a peculiar flatness or monotone, and practically no hint as to the identity or personality of the speaker” (p. 21). I looked down on these speakers of English conversation as having a slave mentality and tried to avoid them.
At the first meeting of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) Japan that I attended in the late 1980s, I noticed that U.S. Americans who had recently arrived in Japan would discuss Japanese culture and communication while Japanese remained silent. All meetings were held in English at that time, and native speakers had a tremendous linguistic advantage that enabled them to dominate discussions at these meetings. The purpose of the organization was to promote intercultural communication, but it seemed that U.S. ethnocentrism was being promoted instead.
The English language also played a part in the way Japanese were often treated at public meetings by U.S. native speakers of English. Tsuda (1999) notes that native speakers often take advantage of their English proficiency and push non-native speakers aside during discussions by stepping up their speaking speed, using much jargon and idiomatic expressions, or making grammatically complex statements. Thus some Japanese and other non-native speakers feel inhibited when speaking English. “I have constantly observed that non-native speakers of English apologize for their inability to speak English correctly, make excuses for their poor English, and ask for the native English speaker’s indulgence and forgiveness” (Trifonovitch, 1981, p. 213).
My experience of communication between U.S. Americans and Japanese points to some well-worn tracks along which conversations have tended to travel. There is already a deep groove in the world of “English conversation” that is difficult to avoid for both European American teachers and Japanese students. It is a groove that was formed as a result of unequal power relations between the two groups in which White Americans in Japan play the role of teacher, whether working as an English teacher or not, and Japanese are the students, despite the fact that the setting is Japan. A personal example of this phenomenon was telling one of my students about the advantages of living a free and adventurous life beyond social obligations and ties. My efforts went as far as trying to convince him that my way of life was better than his cramped and restrained existence as a salaried worker at a Japanese company.
In this artificial world, not only are the conversations often boring, trivial, and shallow, but White Americans never learn much about Japan or expand their identity. They do not have to go through a difficult struggle of adaptation to the various aspects of Japanese culture because the Japanese people are expected to do all the adapting. European Americans just have to “be themselves” and let Japanese help them whenever they have to deal with anything new or unusual that they are not used to.
As part of the norms of English conversation, I expected Japanese to assimilate to my culture. I also felt superior to them. Due to their culture, I believed that Japanese would never reach the goals of individual freedom, rational thinking in daily life, and speaking English like a U.S. American. Therefore, they would always remain aspiring U.S. Americans, not capable of achieving equality. During my first stay in Japan, I gave up any attempt to study Japanese and concentrated mostly on making and saving money.
Like many other Western English teachers in Japan, I scathingly criticized the Japanese educational system for the inability of Japanese people to speak English. By emphasizing only reading and writing, by forcing students to pass difficult school entrance exams in English grammar, and by allowing Japanese English teachers who could not speak English themselves to teach, the Japanese Ministry of Education ensured that Japanese people would not learn how to speak English in school. Reischauer (1988) intimated that an important reason for this deliberate policy was that the Japanese government was afraid Japanese people would lose their Japaneseness through exposure to Western people. What I failed to recognize until much later was that this fear of the Japanese government was not unfounded.
When I came to Japan, the easiest path for me to take was to enter the domain of English conversation. Consciously, I was not a cultural imperialist but it felt comfortable and reassuring to enter a world where I could make money, be looked up to, and not have to adapt to a new language and culture. This world was built upon structurally distorted communication in which the English language, U.S. culture, and White Americans were assumed to be superior within a colonial relationship. This example reveals the importance of the material as well as the symbolic realm for the understanding of culture. It was the material conditions of White U.S. power and privilege that led me to assume a stance of superiority in relation to the Japanese people I encountered. The communication grooves that I unthinkingly entered when I began living in Japan were the outcome of a colonial relationship between the United States and Japan.
Role Models and Catalysts
A U.S. American I met, whose behavior contrasted in many ways with those of the other Whites that I knew, really opened my eyes. He did not teach English and had little money, his friends were mostly Japanese intellectuals and artists, and he spoke almost perfect Japanese while acting in a manner that was nearly indistinguishable from that of most Japanese people.
I learned about another side of Japanese life from him as I heard about Japanese people who had self-respect and communicated with foreign people on their own terms in Japanese about things that mattered. These Japanese had no desire to imitate White Americans and to learn English because it was fashionable. His knowledge and understanding of Japanese society and culture seemed enviable, and through him I came to know what more equal and meaningful communication with Japanese was like, what it would require of me, and what the rewards might be.
A critical metatheoretical analysis of the behavior of the Japanese people with whom my American friend associated, would emphasize that they were resisting the unequal world of English conversation by refusing to enter it. They were also contesting the third culture that had been created by U.S. Americans and Japanese during and after the U.S. Occupation of Japan. By using the Japanese language and style of communication, these Japanese people were rejecting the role of student and setting up new norms for relations between White Americans and Japanese.
This example also illustrates the contested nature of the relationship between U.S. and Japanese. In creating a third culture, U.S. Americans and Japanese can choose to relate largely on U.S. terms, on Japanese terms in opposition to the prevailing norms, or create their own hybridized third culture. Japanese people who resist U.S. cultural hegemony may contest English-language dominance and Western communication norms. Their desire is to overcome the legacy of a Japanese colonial mentality. On the other hand, Western people who are anti-colonial may also contest these same norms when interacting with Japanese.
When I left Japan for the first time, I exited through Okinawa. There I met a man from western Japan with whom I went around the island for a few days. Even though I could only speak a little Japanese, and he could speak no English, we somehow communicated in a very natural and warm way. I appreciated so much that I was not treated as an English speaker and felt free of all stereotyped roles. His humanity deeply impressed me in a way that I could not easily explain. Although I did not keep in contact with him, I knew that if I returned to Japan, I would learn the Japanese language and would try to meet more people like him. Through meeting this person, I began to understand at a deep level that Japanese also had a desire for self-expression, for personal integrity, for equal relations with others. Eventually, I was able to reach a level of understanding that accepted both the common humanity of U.S. Americans and Japanese and our differences in cultural background.
I came to realize that my attempt to teach Japanese people and carry the White man’s burden enmeshed me in contradictions. I looked down on Japanese because they imitated the United States, yet I taught them to become more like White Americans and received gratification through their acknowledgement of my cultural superiority in the world of English conversation. I felt negatively about Japanese people because I maintained a belief in their difference, yet I was holding out to them the promise of erasing that difference by teaching them English.
As long as I believed in a racial/cultural hierarchy, I could not accept Japanese people’s humanity. And it was by accepting their humanity that I also accepted their uniqueness and allowed them to choose their own way of life. Thus both similarity and difference need to be recognized (Hirai, 1987), and as critical theorists have pointed out, an emphasis on difference alone can lead to greater objectification of the Other (Dahlen, 1997).
On Being a Racial Minority in Japan: Lessons From History
The other area of experience which greatly affected my perception of Japan and Japanese people was that of racial discrimination. In the early 1970s, I lived in a block of apartments in Tokyo where only foreigners lived. After I married a Japanese woman, I thought I would be able to live anywhere, but that was not always the case. There was a house my wife really wanted to rent, but the landlady said that no foreigners were allowed. My wife got the real estate person to intercede and finally the landlady relented on condition that I prove that I was not Black by showing my face at the real estate office.
Later, in the early 1990s, I tried to help U.S. friends who could not speak Japanese to rent an apartment in Tokyo. One agent of a small real estate went into a panic when I entered. She said that no Japanese would rent to a foreigner in that area. The larger real estate agents were helpful, but they had to mention that a foreigner wanted to rent whenever they called the owner by phone. The refusal rate for Whites was about 50% in the areas of Tokyo that I visited, and landlords and landladies asked no questions about where the person worked, whether the person could speak Japanese, had a guarantor, or had been in Japan long enough to understand Japanese customs.
For Whites, not to mention people of darker skin, marrying a Japanese could cause huge family problems. Moreover, foreigners could not get loans, enter certain establishments, or have the same jobs as Japanese. In these cases, appeals could not be made since there were few laws that could deter racial discrimination, and it was customary for such discrimination to exist.
For many White Americans, racial discrimination is a new and very unwelcome experience that leads them to complain bitterly about Japan and the Japanese. But such conditions are not like racial discrimination in the United States where the darker “races” are treated as inferior in most respects. In Japan, Whites are treated better than Japanese as long as they stay in their circumscribed area and remain honored guests. The consequence of this type of treatment is that a White cannot forget his or her difference. I had many experiences where I would speak fluent Japanese and the person I was speaking to would reply in broken English. The message I received in those situations was that it did not matter how long I lived in Japan—I would always be treated as a foreigner.
How can this situation be explained? Does my experience show that Japanese are typically racist like most people in the world, including U.S. Americans? Ivan Hall (1998), who has lived in Japan over thirty years, views the Japanese concept of internationalization as openness to foreign things but not to foreign people. “Japan’s concept of ‘internationalization’ as a controlled ingestion of foreign civilization while keeping foreigners themselves at bay, rests on a perception of racial and cultural homogeneity as something that is both dynamically creative and easily destroyed” (p. 175). He goes on to say that “the Japanese simply do not want non-Japanese physically present among them for any length of time, embedded as individuals in the working institutions of their society. As short-term feted guests or curiosities, yes; but not as fixed human furniture” (p. 178).
My own explanation of Japanese discrimination was similar to Hall’s during my early years in Japan. I felt the same outrage at Japanese insularity and the same frustration about being kept at arm’s length by many Japanese. But reading about Japanese history really helped me to see racial discrimination against White people with new eyes. No longer could I simply agree with the statement that Japanese are the world’s most racist people put forward by Crichton (1992) in Rising Sun.
The history of postwar U.S.–Japanese relations made it apparent to me that Japanese racial discrimination against Whites has often been a defensive measure to keep members of a powerful nation within well-defined spheres. The goal has been to maintain a private area for Japanese people where the overbearing Western presence and gaze were absent and where Japanese could be “themselves.” Dealing with Western people on Western terms within relations of unequal power has been a tiring and strenuous experience for many Japanese people, and there has been a desire to make certain areas of Japanese life off-limits to Westerners. Although racism is also involved, it is hardly of a simple and unambiguous type. It is far too simple to dismiss people who have experienced a series of wrenching identity crises lasting through nearly a century and a half of contact with the West as mere racists.
My reading of hooks (1995) on Black separatist thought confirmed my early recognition that an oppressed group needs to have a space of its own. The Japanese experience in communicating with White Americans resembles what Blacks experience when communicating with Whites in the United States. African Americans are expected to communicate like European Americans and have to endure a lack of respect and sensitivity on the part of Whites. Similarly, Japanese are often stereotyped by Westerners as little men who are ineffective and inconsequential or else as samurais in suits who are bent on economic conquest of the world (Littlewood, 1996). Thus Japanese who have to frequently deal with Western people need the same kind of respite and space of their own as Black Americans, and that is one reason why White people are sometimes excluded.
The ways in which the United States has treated Japan since Japan first became its economic competitor at the end of the nineteenth century also made a deep impression on me. I read about the Yellow Peril threat that was spread after the Japanese victory over Russia in 1904, the segregation of East Asian pupils in San Francisco in 1906, the refusal of the Allied powers to enact the racial equality clause at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I, and the exclusion of Japanese and Chinese immigrants from entering the United States in 1924 which Nitobe, Japan’s most famous internationalist, described as a slap on the cheek from a best friend that occurred suddenly and without provocation (Iriye, 1972; Schodt, 1994).
My study of Japanese history helped me to fathom why Japanese had a pronounced complex toward Whites and behaved in such a stilted manner toward them. The Western intrusion into Japan and the other areas of Asia, in Van der Post’s (1977) view, had produced intolerable frustration due to Western people’s arrogant belief in their own superiority and their forcible transformation of Asian ways of life. The frustration that Asian peoples experienced was the result of not being able to remain “their own special selves.” In communicating with Western people, the various Asian peoples were required to step out of themselves and become someone other to themselves. Van der Post (1977) wrote that “it was almost as if the peoples of Asia had only to come into the presence of a European to be hypnotized out of being themselves, and forced to live a kind of tranced life in his presence that was not their own” (p. 36).
Later I realized that the U.S. anger toward Japan at the time of Japan’s economic rise and the ensuing Japanese resentment against the United States was a partial reenactment of a tragic drama that had already been staged during World War II. I concluded that many U.S. Americans were being high-handed and arrogant in their criticisms of Japan in the late 1980s, just as they had been since the time of Perry’s intrusion into Japan in 1853. When the United States heavily criticized Japan for its unfair trade and refusal to adopt laissez-faire capitalism, I thought that a strange reversal was taking place. Japanese people who had suffered a severe identity crisis due to Western intrusion were now being blamed for trying to preserve their present way of life and their agency.
Instead of complaining about Japanese racism, I began to focus on the long history of White racism against Japanese people and the various ways that such racism was resurfacing in a particularly severe manner due to Japan’s increasing economic strength in the 1980s. I also needed to recognize the colonial context of U.S.–Japanese relations since the middle of the nineteenth century. The result of the “opening” of Japan through Perry’s gunboat diplomacy was that “Japanese experienced feelings of helplessness, and it left a psychologically critical and traumatic wound upon the Japanese psyche” (Tsuda, 1993, p. 73). Through this understanding of Japan’s predicament, I was able to resist the often intense pressure from U.S. American people and media to view Japan negatively in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The value of a critical understanding of history was that I recognized that Japanese reluctance to allow Western people a firm footing in Japan has been largely a defensive measure for protecting Japanese cultural space. It can be traced to the historical experience of Western attempts to impose their values on Japan in the name of the White man’s burden, Christianity, and civilization. Viewed in this manner, the Japanese tendency to adopt an exclusive identity is part of the historical process of moving from a colonized identity to one based on the recovery of a cultural heritage that had existed before the Western intrusion. Therefore, I cannot agree with CD theorists who believe that historical concerns distance one from present issues. Rather, historical consciousness can make the present comprehensible in all its complexity for the first time.
A Power Shift in U.S.–Japanese Relations
My efforts to communicate with Japanese people in a truly respectful manner were assisted by the diminishing of the unequal power relations between the United States and Japan. I noticed that by the 1990s, there were more Japanese with experience of the West that were no longer so positive about Westerners, and especially Americans. They expected White people to learn the Japanese language and communicate in a more Japanese way. In the intercultural communication field, too, during the 1990s, one Japanese pioneer said that there was no connection between English-language teaching and the teaching of intercultural communication. Another well-known interculturalist made a video for studying intercultural communication in the Japanese language, implying that Japanese, not English, should be the bridge language in Japan.
At this time, it seemed that U.S. Whites, at least in Tokyo, did not stand out as much as before and they could blend in more easily with Japanese people. There had been a large increase in the number of Whites living in Tokyo over the years, many Japanese had gone overseas to work or study, and there was less of an inferiority complex among Japanese towards White Americans. The result is that European Americans have been very gradually losing their place of privilege. And as a beneficial side-effect of this process, they find it a little easier to enter the inside world of Japanese people.
A critical approach is valuable for understanding this gradual process of change in Japanese communication behavior toward White Americans, because it points to the effect of power on hierarchical relations of communication. Power does not determine communication patterns in any simple causal sense, but it does have a major impact on the direction that communication takes within intercultural relations. Although U.S.–Japanese communication is still affected in numerous ways by the legacy of the U.S. Occupation of Japan, Japan’s economic power has given Japanese people a new pride that has lessened their inferiority feelings toward White Americans. They are less willing to automatically defer to White Americans.
Former Prime Minister Hosokawa’s open disagreement with President Clinton on trade issues and his refusal to accede to U.S. wishes in 1994 was a highly symbolic event in the bilateral relationship. It signaled the growth of Japanese pride, a large step toward an independent Japanese foreign policy, and an important move toward equal relations between Japanese and U.S. Americans. It was also an act of resistance, in the same manner as the refusals of Japanese interculturalists to automatically give the English language priority over Japanese in intercultural relations taking place in Japan.
Conclusion: Intercultural Communication in a Postcolonial World
My analysis of my personal experience in Japan indicates the many ways in which a critical approach illuminates important dimensions of interpersonal relations across cultures. Through a critical metatheoretical perspective, we come to understand that U.S.–Japanese communication has been affected by material factors and that its third-culture communication has been contested. This third culture or in-between space cannot be viewed in an abstract manner, as if the larger context of preponderant U.S. military power and cultural hegemony has had no impact on U.S.–Japanese communication.
There is also a need to emphasize both the similarities and differences between U.S. Americans and Japanese, since a single-minded focus on difference may obscure the humanity of members of the other cultural group. In my case, I had to recognize the humanity of Japanese people before I was able to progress toward accepting them as equals. The CD approach may lead to an overemphasis on difference that reinforces the tendency of members of dominant cultures to view members of less powerful cultures as opposite and inferior to themselves.
A critical metatheoretical approach sheds light on the world of English conversation by focusing on power relations and structural factors that lead to patterns of distorted communication. Teachers of English define reality for their Japanese students in an institutional setting according to whose norms White people are superior. The result is that Japanese are taught to acknowledge the superiority of U.S. culture and its communication patterns in comparison to their own cultural and communication norms.
Another value of such a critical approach is that it enables us to understand the ways in which the past has influenced the present and how identity has developed over time. My study of the history of relations between Japan and the West played a large role in my letting go of colonial attitudes toward Japanese people.
In addition, I have described the advantages of a critical metatheoretical approach for communication competence. For me, communication competence defined in CD terms was not even conceivable until I decided to give up my White privilege and to make the initial efforts to study the Japanese language, learn about Japanese culture and communication, and begin to communicate on Japanese terms as well as those of my own culture.
There are many connections that can be made between my analysis of U.S.–Japanese communication based on a critical metatheoretical approach and the concerns of specific critical approaches such as those of postcolonial theory and feminism. Since my personal experience is taken from White American–Japanese encounters, it may seem that this setting is not connected with colonial politics. In the examination of my experience, however, I have shown that the context was, and to a lesser degree still is, a colonial-type setting. Although Japan lost its political self-determination for only seven years from 1945 to 1951, it has nevertheless experienced U.S. cultural hegemony and a considerable degree of political subordination throughout the entire postwar period, only moving toward a more independent foreign policy in recent years. This asymmetry of power in the international sphere has been carried over into interpersonal communication between European Americans and Japanese.
The U.S.–Japanese relationship has been a postcolonial one of a special type. Japan’s economic strength makes this relationship more equal than any other relationship between the United States and non-White nations. A more equal relationship between nations makes it easier for less distorted communication between members of the two nations to occur. Yet this is also an unstable situation because White Americans whose dominance is endangered may react with outrage at the prospect of more equal communication and take steps to defend their privilege. Such a state of affairs existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Equal relations between White Americans and Japanese is an ideal case that the CD approach is better equipped to deal with, since present power relations would not play a role in communication. However, existing relations between the United States and Japan are still unequal, and the shortcomings of the CD approach become apparent under these circumstances. Unlike the CD approach, a critical metatheoretical perspective directs our attention to the stance of the members of the dominant culture within the unequal relationship. A focus on the standpoint of dominant White Americans enables us to focus on the main reason for communication problems within the U.S.–Japanese relationship: the asymmetrical distribution of power and the communication behavior of White Americans that reproduces the present structure. Japanese complicity may also contribute to the reproduction of the unequal relationship, but the onus is on the members of the dominant group to make the first step toward dissolving unequal relations at both structural and individual levels.
In shifting our focus from cultural differences to the attitudes and behavior of White Americans, we move into the terrain of research on Whiteness. So far, this research has mostly examined the power and privilege of members of the dominant White group in the United States (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995; Fine et al., 1997; Lipsitz, 1998). An exception to this research trend is Shome (1999) who has written on the power and privilege of Whiteness within India. I believe that similar examinations of White power and privilege in Japan are warranted. Such research would complement intercultural research on cultural differences and provide a sense of the larger context that has tended to be lacking until now in the intercultural communication field.
The experiences that I have presented can also be analyzed from a feminist point of view, and feminist postcolonial theoretical analysis has already appeared within the communication discipline (Hedge, 1998). In the case of U.S.–Japanese relations, the “Madame Butterfly” image analyzed by Ma (1996) is a fruitful place to pursue such a feminist inquiry, and Kondo (1997) has exposed the connection between gender, Orientalism, and essentialism in the construction and maintenance of this image. The critical metatheoretical approach that I have outlined also can be supplemented by postmodernist approaches (Chen, 1996; Mumby, 1997; Spivak, 1990, 1999) that retain a critical dimension and focus on issues of power and the larger historical and political context.
In the early 21st century, non-Western peoples are proceeding with their efforts to mentally decolonize. With the increasing power of non-Western nations, particularly those in East Asia, the key issue is whether U.S. Americans and other Western people are willing to communicate in a way that facilitates relations of equality. For intercultural communication scholars, it is necessary to craft an approach that will aid in our understanding of the present world context. When dealing with U.S.–Japan communication, the prevailing emphasis on cultural differences limits the ability of practitioners to cope with issues of history, power, and privilege. My presentation of a critical metatheoretical approach to U.S.–Japanese communication based on personal experience is a contribution toward overcoming such limits. It also provides an example of how context affects interpersonal communication that can be of value when studying relations between members of any nations whose power is asymmetrical.
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