Life in Japan is like an unending stint at a school where you have to keep taking tests - giving your answers under pressure without help or guidance, knowing that you will get no second chance if you make a mistake. Japanese people have to make many of the big decisions of thier lives - whom to marry, what company to join - without detailed information, since it is rude to ask direct questions even at omiai meetings and job interviews. They have no choice but to trust authority and do their best, just as they were supposed to in school. If their job or marriage turns out to be a disappointment, they will be given the same vague exhortations they heard from their teachers: keep trying, work hard, pay attention.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with trying harder. Sometimes when I see my former students in Green Bay seeming to flounder - waiting on tables or working clerical jobs they hate, the whole time talking about their big plans to "go back to school" soon - I think maybe a little Japanese perseverance might not hurt them. I know that for them or anyone else, going back to school does not guarantee a job or happiness. Within school, too, when my students complain that everything we read in a modern American literature class is depressing or that I simply do not "like" their work (when every poem they wrote in class is a love poem in couplets), I long for a little Japanese respect for authority. Some of my students would be better off if they trusted me a little rather than questioning my decisions at every turn. Still, I would rather have students who question too much that those who assume that I know best and don't owe them any explanations. No one should have power that is unjustified and unjustifiable, regardless of how convenient or efficient it may seem for the smooth running of the classroom, the educational system, or the country.
Kyoko Mori, Polite Lies
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