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.

Pursuing an American Accent (3)

“Where are you from?” One Japanese lawyer complains that her clients and other lawyers curiously ask her, having noticed her accent. Some openly express doubt about the ability of the Asian woman lawyer. She is keenly aware of struggles that lie ahead as she competes for a partnership. In her office overlooking the Manhattan skyline, she ponders her future.

One Japanese saleswoman takes frequent business trips while suffering from severe morning sickness. But she isn’t allowed to complain. “If you want equal treatment,” her male boss told her, “don’t expect special treatment.” Gender equality can be attained only when women meet the male standards of work, she concludes. “America is a land of opportunity,” she says, “but once you have been given the opportunity, it’s now your responsibility to prove yourself.”

Lacking marketable skills, many Japanese women in America endure low-status jobs. Many nonetheless refuse to return to Japan. Harsher realities await them back home. Their parents would waste no time in contacting matchmakers for their “aging” daughters. Some employers refuse to hire them; they tend to view Western-educated women as self-described cosmopolitans who may disrupt the workplace harmony. Eager to remain in America, some women look for Caucasian husbands –for both pragmatic and symbolic reasons. Marrying a U.S. citizen remains the easiest way to obtain a green card. Moreover, it is considered a status symbol (among Japanese women) to be married to a white person.

Yumiko Hayashi, a Ph.D candidate in linguistics, married a bus driver who took her Japanese class at a community college. Getting her doctorate from an obscure university, Yumiko had been dismayed at the bleak prospect of obtaining a tenured professorship. But she refused to go back to Japan, where she would have less difficulty landing a job. Feeling as if she had been struggling in a sinking ship, she saw marriage as a lifeboat. Back home, her parents were stunned to hear about her marriage. Their daughter had once turned down an arranged marriage with a sober-suited businessman in Tokyo.

Without hope of independence, Masami Terao (*see “Pursuing an American Accent #1"), too, sought shelter in marriage. Even after finishing her English-as-a-Second-Language course, she accumulated a pile of rejection letters from various business schools including NYU. Not knowing what to do, she began to work as a clerk at a sourvenir shop for Japanese tourists. She finally married an American she had met at a friend’s party. Now a mother of a two-year-old, she stays at home.

Here lies the irony: Seemingly tough-minded women who have once disdained the sentimentalized role of wife and mother ultimately escape into marriage as a way out of their confused self-search in a foreign country.

Pursuing an American Accent (2)

“How can anyone say American men treat women with respect?” One Japanese businesswoman says emphatically. “In this country, women can’t even go out alone at night. What about rape? What about domestic violence? Where’s liberty?” She adds, “American men share housework? Well, when we have office parties at work, it’s always the women who prepare food and do the dishes. Male co-workers just come, eat, and leave.”

Jobs are hard to come by. In a country where even kindergartners effortlessly produce the flawless “r” sound, Japanese women can no longer rely on their English as the focal point of their resumes. Surrounded by native speakers, these former self-described bilinguals strive to overcome their inferiority complex. Sooner or later, there comes a time when they face the reality: the language barrier pushes them into safe occupations as translators and language teachers. Some forge their way into the American professional workforce. But even they invariably face obstacles due to their gender, race, or a combination of both. Petite Asian women are rarely taken seriously. (...CONTINUES...)

Pursuing an American Accent (1)

After seven years of clerical work, Masami Terao left an electronics firm in Tokyo. Approaching thirty, she felt desperate. No career prospects. No Mr. Right. Her boss urged her to contact a matchmaker. Instead, she left for New York. She wasn’t accepted to NYU Business School as she had hoped. Instead, she was to enroll in an English-as-a-Second-Language course at a school filled with Japanese students. She nevertheless felt thrilled at the prospect of crafting a new identity in a city she had long dreamed of. She had no doubt that her English would improve substantially after a year of intensive language study. NYU Business School would accept her next year, she convinced herself. Masami envisioned landing a job with a major securities firm. She would stride down the streets of Manhattan, clutching a briefcase –like those women who emerged from the pages of Japanese women’s magazines she pored over. Or so she believed.

“OLs’ Ryugaku” (“office ladies studying abroad”) have rapidly increased since the late 1980s. The strong yen has enabled uniformed clerks to redefine themselves outside of Japan. “In America, women and men can build careers on an equal footing,” they believed. Japanese women’s magazines have given them a glimpse into American female independence. Sharp-suited women smile triumphantly in their spacious offices. Diplomas and awards adorn the walls. They are financial analysts, lawyers, M.B.As, Ph.Ds, Harvard grads. They and their husbands divide up housework and keep separate names. Glorifying this image, many women eagerly flee the Japanese workforce, aching to pursue their professional goals in America. Among them, an MBA has become one of the most popular degrees. Every year applications from Japanese women pour into business schools across the nation, from NYU to the University of Montana.

Such career-oriented women often take pride in their English. The Japanese glorify speaking English as a sort of art. Perhaps no other people have poured more energy and money into mastering the language. In a country overflowing with “eikaiwa gakkou” (“English conversation schools” where blond teachers, many of them with no formal training in language teaching, teach how to cultivate an American accent), those who can pronounce the most challenging “r” sound (which requires the curling of the tongue tip, a painstaking task for the Japanese) consider themselves members of an elite group. Pursuing an American accent, women also endeavor to absorb egalitarian concepts from America. Some adopt the sweet rhetoric about independence and autonomy. They distinguish themselves from “typical” Japanese women who quietly pour tea at work or mop the kitchen floor on Saturday morning when their husbands are out playing golf.

But once they arrive in America, they do not necessarily find the country that emerged from the magazines they studied back home. Who is the “typical” American woman? Perhaps few Americans would point to an executive who attends a board meeting or a scholar who authors a book. Some might point instead to a homemaker who pushes her cart down the aisle at a grocery store while yelling at her two young sons running around. Some might point instead to a secretary who faces her computer screen while internally moaning about the fact that her technically incompetent sixty-something boss is incapable of checking his own e-mail. (As soon as she gives him the message printout, with a pleasant face and mild manners, she plays Solitaire on the computer, eagerly awaiting payday Friday.) These are the everyday realities of America, a nation committed to equality. The one-dimensional portrait of American womanhood by the Japanese media fails to reflect such realities. Millions of American women find themselves confined to traditional roles, coping with the daily grind of making ends meet and caring for the family. Equality remains a lofty principle that does not necessarily touch the lives of ordinary people. The experience of American women parallels that of Japanese women in many respects. (...CONTINUES...)