The Kafkaesque Absurdity of Japanese Paperwork

I had a rather eventful weekend, the less positive side of which was having my nice bicycle stolen (apparently by someone with a hacksaw and quite a bit of determination) from Koenji late Saturday night/Sunday morning.  The upside of the crummy experience was that I got to feel quite good about myself after going in to talk to the police and rather uneventfully reporting the theft on Monday morning.  Everyone I talked to was quite sympathetic and very helpful.

That was, for all its shadows, the good story.  The bad one began when last week I decided to finally get settled back into a yoga routine, which I'd been letting slide.  I found out when I first got here that though a recent yoga boom made studios pretty common, many of them - particularly those associated with the Yoga Lava chain - are women only.  But, since yoga has proven so vital to me keeping on an even keel over the last two years, I decided it would be worth it to trek down to Shibuya a few times a week to the closest male-friendly spot (I was also planning to bike there frequently . . . oh, cruel irony!)

Japanese Newspaper Marketing

Japanese newspapers are doing considerably better than their American counterparts, though their circulations are still falling fast.  I just found out firsthand one reason for this - aggressive door to door marketing tactics.  I was just offered a case of beer and two bags of rice if I signed up for a minimum of three months with Yomiuri Shinbun.  This is the third time (in two months!) I've had a door to door salesman offering me the newspaper, but this was the first guy who wouldn't be put off by the fact that I don't read Japanese that well.  He was keen to let me know that Yomiuri Shinbun doesn't use kanji beyond the sixth grade level (that is, beyond the 2000 kanji considered standard) and that it would be good practice for me.  And he actually carted in the beer and food, making it that much more difficult for me to turn him down.

Kanji - Violent Language

Practicing Kanji is a constant reminder of the fact that language is how we mediate between our violent natures and our desire for at least temporary peace.  For instance, the word for "policy," 政策 (seisaku), combines the symbol for government, which literally derives from "correct with a hand," and the symbol for "plan," which derives from the idea of long strips of wood or bamboo being used to whip a horse (that is, as a way to guide it).  And of course, all policies are ultimately enforced by the implicit threat of violence, aren't they?

Fake expertise by pleading (occasional) ignorance

The nice man from Tokyo Gas came today to turn on the stove and hot water at the place I'll be staying for the next two weeks or so.  I used one of my patented tricks on him, something that works every time to convince Japanese people that I am Wonder Gaijin, capable of linguistic feats that absolutely transcend the humanly possible.  This is also, importantly, a method that can be applied in a wide variety of situations, and which speaks to some deep function of human intersubjectivity.

It works like this.  The gas guy (or any given Japanese person) is talking a blue streak at me, which usually happens pretty quickly after I greet them with a reasonably confident "Konichi wa" and explain to them that "I don't speak much Japanese" in decent Japanese.  I do not understand much, if any, of the specifics of what he's explaining to me.  But about halfway through the chat I pick out a word - you can pick out pretty much any word, you don't understand any of them, remember - and stopped him, puzzled.  I repeated the word a couple of times, then went to grab my dictionary.  I figured out what the word was, made a slight "o" of recognition while nodding gently, then looked at him, cueing him to continue.  I then proceeded to not understand the bulk of what followed.

As he was leaving, the mechanic told me that in the entire time he'd been working the job, I was the best Japanese-speaking foreigner he'd met.  At least, I think that's what he said.

The lesson here is pretty simple.  If you make a big, ostentatious deal out of not understanding one very specific element of a conversation, presentation, or what have you, then your interlocutor is likely to assume that you understood everything else that they said.  It's a misdirection, a slight-of-tongue, a gaslighting - the one point of misunderstanding effectively distracts from even the possibility that you didn't understand anything else being said, either.  This could be an effective tool/weapon in, say, a graduate classroom ("What exactly do you mean by gradation?") or a boardroom ("I'm not sure I'm following your point about ISO ratings.").  I hope all of you use this insight responsibly, but I'm more concerned with the deeper structure we're encountering here . . . in precisely what way does a protestation of ignorance make your erstwhile silence seem like comprehension?