Rules and escaping them

Monday, 22 Oct 2007 | Life in Asia

The image we have in the west of Japanese is that of a humble, polite and considerate people. And this is unmistakably true. But this is only one part of the spectrum, the part of the rules. I get the impression Japanese culture is one of 2 extremes, the extreme of rules and the extrame of the opposite of rules, freedom. Or escape of rules. Whichever.

Japanese are really good at following rules. Even if rules dont make sense, rules are adopted and flawlessly executed. One follows the instructions of the family, boss, the government, society and whomever may come up with additional rules. If they somehow apply to someone, they will be followed. Something like a tea ceremony for example is filled with protocol and Japanese I’m sure feel great pride in understanding and being able to execute this protocol. But always having to follow rules I’m sure makes a person a bit edgy at times, so it seems only natural to find escapes for this. The best example of this I guess can be found in comparing Japanese businessmen during the day and during the night. During the day, they are obedient and respectful workers who never contradict their boss (I’m sure even less so than Thai) and do their job with pride. In the night however, they get super drunk and really annoying at times. The getting drunk is not always an escape from being obedient though. It turns out saying ‘no’ to an invitation from your boss to get a drink is unheard off. You go, you get drunk with him and you will like it. End of story. What is cool about this is that during those two worlds remain apart, in the night you can get drunk with the boss and call him an asshole, this will stay in the bar and not get back to the office provided you show him enough respect from 9 to 5. Or rather, 8 to 8 I’m told.

Plenty of true escapes remain. The most interesting one is the obsession of the Japanese with the fantasy worlds of cartoons. From 5 to 55 years old, they read cartoons on the way to school or work. Discretely covered books (nobody needs to know what perverted manga story you are reading) and smiles on the subway, but it doesnt stay there. Endless rows of stores cater to the 3D version of comics, where you can let your own imagination run wild. Buy the little figurines in stores and you can spend the evenings at home playing out your own comics. Or whatever they do with those dolls, some of the dolls have interesting positions as this $160 little doll in the middle will show you.

And that brings us into the second escape - sex. I think it’s common knowledge those Japanese are fairly perverted people, but I never expected sex or sexuality to be so openly displayed here. An exhibit of this is perhaps the 6 story sex shop I visited where they sell anything you could ever imagine … and then have only covered 10% of the shop. The imagery of sexy girls is used everywhere, on tv and on posters and in screaming graphics praising a certain store. And a lot of the comics, or so I’ve heard, have quite the sexual inclination.

It might perhaps be stretching it a bit, but I had to work this into the story somehow, the so called maid cafes are a combination of these two escapes. Girls dressed up in the uniform of a French maid will greet you at the door with a “welcome home master, please sit down, would you like a newspaper, a drink perhaps?” and even give you a nice shoulder massage. Extremely popular venues, where the men go after work (one boss) to escape from their nagging wives (the other boss) and can relax at least for a little while. I never got to experience it, but I’m told you’re greeted as their ‘master’ and the girls (dressed up in old French maid uniforms) will listen to your complaining, serve you a drink and if they wear a pink dress (there are black and pink dresses) will even give you a shoulder massage.

While they are masters at following rules (perhaps a reason why Japanese are such engineering marvels?), they seem to be equally skilled at finding ways to escape from those rules.