Imagining Japan

I can remember when I first arrived in Japan being rather surprised by some of the things the Japanese seemed to think that their country was famous for abroad. People I spoke to would regularly ask me whether I had been lured to Japan's shores by the promise of it's world famous cherry blossoms, their high speed bullet trains and the unusual delights of a country with four seasons – having four seasons being something which the Japanese tend to boast about rather incessantly. Yet the Japan that was being described to me was very different to the one of popular imagination in Scotland. My mental image of Japan before I arrived here was of a nation populated by fanatically hard workers, who watched very bizarre game shows on TV, enjoyed luxuriously high tech toilets and had a rather unpleasant tendency to kill themselves. I hadn't ever given any thought to how many seasons Japan had, but coming from a continent where every country has four seasons, it struck me as a rather pedestrian thing to boast about. Equally, I don't ever remember cherry blossoms featuring in my pre-Gonohe image of Japan, yet the Japanese are utterly convinced that it is one of the first things that comes to mind when a foreigner thinks of Japan. And as for the Shinkansen (bullet train), I think I did watch a programme about it on the Discovery channel once, but it would have featured very low down on my list of famous things from Japan.

It has been very interesting, however, discovering how a country's people believe their homeland is perceived abroad. I was rudely shocked myself when I discovered that Scotland's relatively high profile in Europe, Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand is not matched in Asia. I could just as well come from Burkina Faso for all people here care. In Asia most people's image of Scotland doesn't advance much further than whisky, and bagpipes if you're very lucky.

Today I did a class at school where I asked all the kids to take a minute to think of some of the things they believed would feature in a foreigner's mental image of Japan. After the minute was up I then asked each individual student to name one of the things which they thought of. The responses were quite interesting, for while many of the kids did manage to select the kind of things which would likely spring to mind if a foreigner were asked to think of Japan, such as Sushi, Samurai, Kimono and Mt Fuji, far more students chose things which the Japanese people tend to believe their country is famous for, such as Natto, a foul Japanese food composed of fermented soya beans which it is believed only Japanese people can stomach; Onsen, the volcanic hot springs frequently exploited as public baths which dot the country; and the Tokyo Tower, a marginally famous structure in the capital purposefully built to be larger than the Eiffel Tower. Conspicuous by their absence were Karate, Oragami, Karaoke, Bonzai trees, Fugu (Blowfish), Godzilla, Haiku, flower arranging and a whole host of other staples which traditionally make up the classic clichéd image of Japan as seen from abroad.

Quite a few kids did guess correctly that Hara Kiri, the custom of committing suicide by ritual disembowelment, was indeed famous abroad, yet many were surprised to discover that Ninja are well known. No students volunteered Kamikaze as an answer, and I decided that it was probably best that I didn't mention it. On a similar note, when asked to name internationally famous places in Japan, none of the kids chose Hiroshima or Nagaski, despite them both being infamous for the tragedies visited upon them during the Second World War.

I guess gaging how your country is perceived abroad is essentially very difficult unless you actually visit foreign countries. Although the Japanese do a good job of scattering themselves throughout the globe in their infamous flag totting tour groups, the style of Japanese tours often means they have little interaction with the local people, and as such miss out on potential opportunities to learn about their international profile. Subsequently the Japanese, like people in many countries, generally rely on their own media to inform them about how about they are viewed from afar. So it is perhaps understandable that there is a considerable discrepancy in how people here believe Japan is viewed and the actual reality. I wonder if I could help by showing them a copy of Karate Kid.