JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

In the previous two posts, I talked about bar hostesses and the male trickle-down effect. What about the female trickle-down effect? Yes there is one of those as well. What happens to the wives when those men are all out at the hostess bars? And how does working as a hostess affect how those females treat other females who happen to work at night?
Well, as far as what the wives are doing while their husbands are out running around depends a lot on what type of support system they have. When they are still young, most of the wives are out working in a variety of jobs. On Okinawa, it isn’t uncommon for them to be hostesses (many times as the mamasan) as well, once the infant has reached adolescence. One common scenario is the grandparents taking on the role of babysitter at night, while the mother goes to work.
When business is slow, it is very common for hostesses to frequent another club and try to round-up business. Once these women become the patron of another establishment, they expect to be able to treat that establishment’s staff in the same manner as they treat their own at their kisatens. In effect, they try to steal the other club’s patrons by, as Ling of Alley McBeal would put it, “dumb-stick” teasing the men. Because the profession of these women constantly entails drumming-up new victims, they are always on the job. When they encounter females who are naïve to the whole process, they use friendship as a means to manipulate the unsuspecting female into entertaining their customer or prospective customer. If they encounter a female who doesn’t believe in the use of female sexuality as a means to manipulate men, that female becomes a target of ridicule and on occasion physical abuse.

In my last post, I opened the subject of local men’s views of women. Let’s explore the trickle-down effect of this system. The attitude that women are put on Earth merely as someone to provide men entertainment is not limited to the night hostesses. I have worked in various jobs in my twenty-five years on Okinawa, and in every single one of them the local men I encountered seemed to think I was open game to the same kind of behavior that they display at the hostess kisatens. Basically, the majority of local men I have encountered think I am here to baby sit them, since I am not their wife. This behavior is not limited to strangers. The difference is because I am a foreigner, they think they can get a better deal on the product. All the men have an unwritten code on the behavior and expect you to take it in stride. Over the years, I have had so-called friends of my spouse treat me in the same manner. Even when they come to the club where my husband and I both work, they still try to play their little games. When you as an individual choose not to accept this behavior from them, they (following the rule of typical social behavior) seek to “destroy that which cannot be assimilated.” All of this undertow leads to some of the obnoxious behaviors I have discussed earlier in Pet Peeve posts. What many of these men don’t seem to fathom is that people as individuals will determine whether or not a particular type of behavior is acceptable for them. And if those women who do want to accept being nothing more than purchased male entertainment choose to, that’s their choice. But some women will not limit themselves to being nothing more than a babysitter/caretaker of little boys of any age.

I was doing research for something else on the WWW and ran across what I think is a very good description of the stereo-typical view of how local men see women in the night life. The article is a pretty balanced look at “working night women” and provides two links at the bottom of the article with personal experiences. So if you are interested in how other people view Japanese bar hostesses, check it out So You Want To Be A Hostess!

Last week I had an old friend visit the club. She had just become a grandmother of a very beautiful little girl. It is so hard to belief that it has been almost twenty-five years since we were hanging-out in Naha discos. She was merely in her late teens herself at the time and I was still in the Air Force. Since then, she has become a well-known local singer. She looked so happy and I am happy for her. When I reflect on those times I see how much difference time can make in the perceptions of a culture. Not that the culture itself changes much, just the perceptions and the outer surface of the location. Back then, all the resort hotels were just beginning to be built. The roads were much smaller. There were a limited number of cars, so driving was a pleasure not a chore. On-base, there were no high rises and civilian concessions were extremely limited. There were no “shopping malls” so to speak, except in Naha. I would spend all my free time at the beach, in izakayas, or at discos. Life was nothing more than one big on-going party, but having hang-overs every morning got pretty old after a little while. This culture tends to treat a person who isn’t interested in getting inebriated totally different than the person who goes out and spends all their money on partying. Oh well as the saying goes, it’s more fun when someone else is buying. Over here everyone’s a friend, as long as you’re the one doing all treating. I look at it this way; living over here taught me a long time ago the importance of true friendship. I was lucky, some people never learn.

Sometimes people can be so funny, like this woman I was around this week. As she was leaving a facility, she made a loud comment on how someone (I’m not sure who) lacked in etiquette. Anyone who was raised with any manners at all knows the difference between someone who shows proper etiquette and an imitating snob. Any woman that truly had a sense of etiquette would never have made such a comment so loudly that others could hear. She wouldn’t whisper the comment either. Whispering only indicates that one is saying something that is not polite enough to be said out loud. Any women who possessed real manners would know that if you have to say anything at all, it is done in private where others are not affected by the comment! Whereas an imitating snob is merely trying to point out someone else’s supposed lack of formal manners. In doing so, she is trying to display her knowledge of proper manners so as to boost her own ego, as well as her standing in the public eye. What this woman fails to understand is that her own indiscretion showed total lack of proper form. Some people understand the difference between a person with proper manners and someone who is trying to use social formality as a means to manipulate.

One of the common phrases one hears locals on Okinawa say when someone is trying to manipulate them is the negative connotation of “… my way.” Which actually means, “You shouldn’t do this your ‘my way’ do it our ‘my way’ because it’s more advantageous to what we want.”

When I was growing up in the 60’s, I was fortunate enough to have a father who thought it was his job to make sure his daughters weren’t babied. He thought it was his role to teach us to be self-sufficient and capable of taking care of ourselves, because he knew he wouldn’t always be there to fight our battles for us. At the same time he was wise enough to provide us some tools to fight those battles with. Since I was a very scrawny, red-headed, little girl at a time when being an “all American” girl was about buxom blondes, he gave me the gift of logic to fight with. One of the sayings he equipped me with was, “The party of the first part puts-down the party of the second part, because the party of the first part feels the party of the second part is superior to the party of the first part.” This was quite a mouthful to say in response to other children when they were taunting me, and sounded very nerdy, but it always worked. What I learned from that one statement was to look behind what a person who was trying to belittle me was saying to find the reason why. Thanks Dad.

I never thought of myself as a political person. In fact I would rather stay away from the twisting and turning of the manipulative games. I have always felt more comfortable with the good-old fashioned straight forwardness of my upbringing. True at times I can be a little too straight forward, but only because I feel that it is a waste of precious time, energy, and effectiveness to play games with people. I see this as a system where like-minded people come and stick to mutually beneficial agreements. Yet, here I am on Okinawa where the social structure and politics run hand in hand. This is a culture that originated, after much internal feuding, as an autocratic Kingdom. This led to a tradition of secrecy and plotting in order to win favor with the ruling powers. What evolved was a system of hiding one’s true thoughts and feelings and channeling that energy into one’s goal, or being gamman. Although this system lends itself to a great deal of flexibility, the problem I see with it is that one never really knows what the other person’s goal is. This leads to a lack of trust and hidden shifting of commitments from one person to another when the second person’s goals are more closely associated to what is desired. This is more commonly expressed in Western terms as “yes” doesn’t mean yes and “no” doesn’t mean no.

For anyone who has ever studied Japanese as a second language, one of the most difficult challenges is the writing system. Although I have lived on Okinawa for what can seem like forever at times, the written language is still a thorn. With the spoken language there is a constant auditory refresher course in daily life. However, unless one purposely makes a daily effort to utilize it, the written language can pretty much be forgotten. The only problem with being illiterate as far as a writing system is concerned is that eventually one has to use the language for one reason or another. The Japanese written language is a complicated combination of three separate systems. Hiragana, a system composed of characters which are used for native Japanese words; Katakana, the characters used for foreign words; And Kanji, the most difficult system consisting of a type of hieroglyphics that was adopted from the Chinese written system of over 5000 characters. To complicate matters even further, the language consists of many English language foreign words that have been “adopted” by the Japanese. The largest problem with these words is that they are not pronounced or spelled in the same manner as the native language. So when trying to write these words, not only do you have to convert from the alphabet to Katakana, one also has to mentally change the words from English to the Japanese verbal version of the word to do so. It is no surprise very few foreigners ever become proficient in this written language.

Having lived in more than one culture for approximately the same amount of time (America 21 years, Guam 2, and Japan 25) I have had the opportunity to really observe the differences in those cultures, as well as the similarities in people. Many people believe the differences in the two cultures stem from the basic social structure, America being more individual oriented as opposed to Japan’s group orientation. I see the main difference more a question of how one obtains what one wants, while remaining in the “good graces” of fellow humans. On one hand, Americans tend to use the “black and white” strategy – what is right and what is wrong. This approach usually includes the intention behind an action, and therefore the consideration of others, in determining what behavior is socially acceptable. Locals, on the other hand, have a more “grey” outlook as to acceptable behavior – what can one get away with. (This standard may account for the child-like facet of their behavior.) For example, what many people see in the Asian culture as “being polite” is nothing more than “formal” cliché comments that are, usually, full of excuses. Normally the behavior is reserved for situations that can lead to personal or monetary gain. (If you don’t agree, spend a week just observing the locals in everyday situations and see how inconsiderate of others they can be.) In both countries, one can observe individuals who, for personal gain, try to use the cultural standards to manipulate the behaviors of others, despite the differences in approach.