Group v. Individual; East v. West: Thoughts from an American in Japan

I like that being in Japan has led me to examine some of the prior assumptions I've made concerning what it means to have a Christian worldview. Many things that I've simply taken for granted as "Christian," when held in the light of Eastern philosophy, suddenly seem much more accurately categorized as "Western." I don't say this to postulate the definitiveness of the terms "East" and "West" to describe a dichotomy between two distinct cultures and ways of thinking. If anything, living in the "East" has lessened my confidence in what it really means for something to be "Eastern" or "Western," and, by association, what it really means to be "Christian." And I'm grateful for that.

As an American, I'm totally sold on the idea that my personal identity is an important and even sacred thing. I believe this, and it's a belief that has been reinforced repeatedly by self-help books, church sermons, and amicable advice-givers throughout my entire life. It's a belief I'm in no hurry to dispose of, either, because it makes sense to me. Obviously, I have a unique personal identity and, obviously, it is important that I be in touch with that identity because, if I'm not, I will undoubtedly end up making decisions that are detrimental to that immutable (and yet, somehow, fragile) essential identity.

There is no equivalent in the Japanese language for the word "identity."

You can imagine how shaken I was when I first heard this. How could a people group as advanced and globally influential as the Japanese not even have a word for something that I imagined to be so essential to human cognition?

Because it's not a concept that is essential to human cognition. It's a concept that is essential to the particular Weltanschauung into which I was raised.

Japanese society tends to be much more concerned with the condition of the group than that of the individual. Individual achievements are usually applauded to the extent that they benefit and reflect favorably on the group as a whole. At the same time, individual failures are something to be handled very cautiously. At the junior high school where I work, if one student is falling asleep in class or failing to complete an assignment, the teacher will scold the entire class rather than put that one student on the spot.

Yesterday, during the morning meeting in the staff room, one of my English teachers stood up and apologized to all the teachers. For something. I couldn't understand what. So I was grateful to have an opportunity to speak to her about it later that day. As it turned out, a ninth-grade student had gone into her desk and stolen a copy of the midterm along with the answers to the test. To further complicate the situation, a classmate spotted the thief and decided to blackmail him: cash in exchange for silence. When these events came to light and the students involved confessed their crimes, it was a scandal: these sort of things might be commonplace at most junior high schools, but the students at Yamazaki Junior High have a reputation for being honest and well-behaved.

Although the the two ninth-grade students were the ones who committed a misdeed, my English teacher was also held at fault for not having locked her desk in the first place. Hence, the demand for a humiliating apology to the rest of the teachers, whom she, as a member of their "group," had inadvertently let down.

She relayed these events to me, all the while expressing great regret and remorse for the terrible way in which she had shamed the school. I told her, "It wasn't really your fault."

"But it was," she assured me.

"No," I shook my head and looked at her earnestly, "It wasn't."

She has worked with a lot of American AETs in the past; she's been seasoned to quickly forgive my occasional lapses into cultural insensitivity. She was, after all, the one who informed me about there not being a Japanese word for "identity." She told me that she was also quite shaken up when she first learned this word, along with all its socio-psychological implications. Maybe my insistence that the incident with the stolen test was not brought on by any personal flaw of her own did not have the assuaging effect I intended. But I think she understood, nonetheless.