Homecoming

“Let’s talk about O.J. Simpson’s trial.” As soon as the professor announced the topic in our Constitutional Theory seminar, several hands flagged in the air. Quick to express their empathy for the Black community, my blue-eyed classmates applauded the outcome of the criminal trial. I was subjected to criticism when I expressed doubt about the verdict.

My friend Erin was ignored by some classmates after she supported one’s right to enjoy pornography in her Feminist Jurisprudence class. The First Amendment held little power in our predictably liberal law school community.

The law school boasted of its ethnically diverse student body in the brochure. But reality told a different story. My classmates were virtually all fair-skinned. I was the only Japanese student among the entire student body of nearly seven hundred students. I struggled with my outsider status. Am I the only one? I wondered, for instance, as I sat mute in my contracts class as we discussed the following case: We’ll continue playing music for half an hour without interruption, announced a radio station. It failed to fulfill its promise. One inmate sued the station, alleging breach of contract. (This happened in real life.) When our professor read this case aloud, no one laughed. On the contrary, my eighty classmates discussed, in all seriousness, whether there had been a legally enforceable contract. A fierce debate lasted for the remainder of the class. Ask any Japanese law student; no one would spend forty minutes pondering the contract formation theory when an inmate with all the time in the world files a lawsuit just to start a fight.

Passing through the student lounge, where symposiums on environmental justice and affirmative action were held regularly, I quietly made my pilgrimages to the library. While other students sat frozen in front of the television in the lounge, awaiting the outcome of O.J. Simpson’s trial, I worked on my paper in the empty computer lab.

I didn’t understand why those students who prized diversity approached me when I was having sushi for lunch and told me how unsophisticated it was to eat raw fish. I could have said the same thing about eating turkey. I didn’t understand why Janet, a socially-conscious, twice-divorced mother, said to me, laughing, “You must have been a C student in college since you’re a foreign student.” In fact, I had graduated with honors. But I shook my head modestly. Later, I felt angry with myself. Why did I lack the courage to confront her stereotype?

I had felt like an outsider in my homeland. And I felt the same way in America, where I carried my permanent resident alien card with me. To me, living in America meant constantly navigating between two alien cultures. I found myself too American to embrace a culture with arranged matches and company anthems; yet I also remained Japanese enough to distance myself from my classmates who rambled on about individual choice and autonomy. I disdained Japanese "burikkos" –women who acted cute and sweet (knowing that I myself acted that way sometimes); but I also felt irritated by an American woman who munched on a sandwich in Commercial Law class and addressed the professor by his first name.