First of all, a sincere 'thank you' for giving us the shared (yours and Alex’s) benefit of insight, regarding your attitudes and outlooks on this somewhat ‘prickly’ subject.
I find myself chuckling (empathetically) over your remarks concerning intelligent displays of knowledge and/or formidable ability/ambition/proficiency being construed as daunting, since it certainly would be true of any 'traditional' Japanese male that this would be perceived as a threat to the age-old customs still prevalent in much of Japan.
[As an aside here, it strikes me as the uttermost irony that throughout my own life (as an avowed aesthetic) that intelligence was always foremost on my list of desired attributes in a woman (especially in an Asian woman) and yet I somehow never met a suitable match on that stage of life (sadly). In this context, and mindful of all that you’ve said here, as well as what certain cross-cultural experiences have demonstrated (for me, at least), I can say with reasonable certainty that there is NO such thing as a balanced, equitable, fully fulfilling male/female relationship, ever. That is as true for same-race liaisons as for cross-cultural ones.]
When it comes to relationships between individuals of two distinctly different cultures (especially cultures as profoundly different as are those of America and Japan) such liaisons are even more fitful at best, storm-tossed, constantly semi-chaotic and never, ever fully intermeshed in mutually pleasing synchronicity! This fact is usually well hidden due to a number of mechanisms, not least being the fact that most Americans openly wear their hearts on the sleeves and the Japanese are world-class masters of skillfully ‘hiding’ their truest, inner feelings and/or emotions (along with the Chinese).
In pursuing this line of reasoning, I find myself turning to several instances involving noteworthy cross-cultural pairings between East and West, one of them being that between John Lennon/Yoko Ono and another between Richard Brautigan/Akiko Yoshimura (the former of whom you will perhaps recall as a literary phenomenon in Japan of the 80s).
In Lennon’s case, he was not at all threatened by Yoko’s astoundingly daring ‘avant’ attitudes and artistic proclivities. In Brautigan’s case, however, although he also stemmed from very modest proletarian roots (originating in the American Northwest, compared with Lennon’ humble industrial UK origins), he was stuck in that typical American stereotyped impression of Japanese women being the soft, ultra-feminine, compliant, and subservient wife and never really fathomed his wife Akiko’s katana-edged intellect and/or her keen aspirational ambitions. Further, given that Brautigan was by the time of his marriage to Aki in a full-blown ETOHic state, his ability to see her as anything other than his personal woman-toy blinded him to all else. In the end, it was the aggregate of all these factors that resulted in their divorce in 1980 and very likely a major, further factor in his suicide in fall of 1984 at age 49. As Aki was later quoted saying, “We Japanese are very skillful at hiding our innermost feelings…”
Back in the 70s, while studying in Berkeley, I myself was a keen student of ancient Asian culture and history. I was particularly fascinated by the classical era Japanese traditions, not least being classical Bushi-Do (Iai-Do, Aiki-Do, Ken-Do, etc.), and all aspects of late Tokugawa culture.
Not realizing the horrific dysynchronicities that exist between contemporary Japanese-Americans and and Post-Edo ‘Japanese-Japanese’, I must have presented a bizarre aspect to the JAs I was trying to date, since they all felt I must be mentally imbalanced in my imitations of the cha-no-yu (茶の湯) ceremony and Iai-Do exercises! It was somewhat disheartening, of course, since my motives were sincere and quite academic. It took a while for me to understand how decades of acculturation had resulted in most JAs having almost no interest in their native historical origins!
With the benefit of a great many years of hindsight, as well as much time spent overseas, I now fully understand the laughable inadequacy of those early and misdirected expressions of cultural empathy of mine, but I also learned that the mind-set differences alone between America and Japan are vast and daunting. That status-quo continues to exist today, regardless of the emerging women’s movement in Japan (indeed, all over the world).
Regrettably, a great number of ‘average’ Americans are not complex, thoughtful or highly reflective thinkers, but ultimately trying to negotiate the ‘no-man’s land’ between Eastern and Western individuals, a great many find that this usually entails negotiating a formidable minefield of hidden cultural hazards and interactive emotional deadfalls.
The observations shared by both you and your friend Alex here are quite illuminating and potentially productive of a great many interesting conversations over warm Sake on chill October evenings. Thank you for your collaboration on this ‘project’; it is a most interesting colloquy to follow!
As a closing note, I recommend William Hjortsberg’s ‘ultimate biography’ of Richard Brautigan (in English), titled ‘Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan’) for its insights into this subject of East/West dating relationships (if it’s of any interest).
