INTRODUCTION

There is a kissaten in Jinbocho. Whenever I have a visitor to Japan, I like to take them to the kissaten and there, within its secluded walls, the visitor either instinctively grasps immediately what it is that I find special about the place, or he does not. This intuitive understanding has nothing to do with language, for my visitors do not understand a word of Japanese and the proprietor himself speaks no English. Instead, it is about the experiencing of a feeling that needs no words to communicate. You could almost call it an emotional shorthand.

That kissaten was one of my earliest discoveries as an ingénue walking the streets in the wilting heat of my first Tokyo summer. I still remember it with a startling clarity of recollection, something akin to stumbling into a first love. I have been in Tokyo for close to two years now. A short time by some standards, longer by others, and I now find myself sandwiched in that odd and interesting place somewhere between a newcomer and an oldtimer.

Oddly enough, the second year has in some ways been more challenging than the first. When you are a foreigner living on another country's soil for the first time, your first year tends to be cushioned by a novelty of experience. Like all things which are approached for the first time, there is a Midas touch to it all. As time passes, the discovery of new things no longer compensates as well for your increasing homesickness, and you become forced to scratch beyond the surface to find something to sustain you in your new life. The first year holds the certainty of surprise. The second year harbours the promise of more truths. The kissaten has however withstood the deceptive and withering test of novelty. It remains in many ways my most treasured Japanese discovery - the quintessential Japanese experience.

In the beginning, I found that I was the only foreigner who visited that kissaten. Two years later, I'm still the only foreigner, I have never encountered another gaijin there, and this thought pleases me for a variety of reasons, mostly selfish ones. One, it allows me to maintain an illusion that I have managed to uncover for myself a part of the 'real' Japan, a Japan that is not easily found on the tourist radar screen. The other is a feeling that if the entire place were overrun with tourists and foreigners, that its ambience may change and not necessarily for the better. Its magic needs to be preserved, and part of its magic lies in the intangibles. The people who frequent it contribute to its atmosphere, in much the same way as a concert owes its ambience not only to the performing musicians but also to the idiosyncrasies of its attending audience.

There is much that I can say about the kissaten's unique charms, about why it is a place that I will only be able to associate with Japan, and part of me wishes that I could simply capture its essence in a bottle and take it with me wherever I go, but more of that later. First, I would like to share with you some general thoughts and observations culled from my experience in Japan.

1) The Cultural Context of Language

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that I have encountered in learning Japanese has not been the rote mechanics of syntax or grammar but coming to terms with the cultural context behind the use of Japanese.

Any language will naturally have some connection to culture, but it appears to me that English, by nature of its global usage, is far less dependent on cultural context, and Japanese much more so.

To give an example:

E-mails in English are fairly casual affairs, and as an opening greeting, a simple 'Hi' will suffice. There are a myriad alternatives to 'Hi' if you so choose, and it is by no means fixed in stone that you must use 'Hi' as an opening greeting. When I first came to the Japan office, I would receive many e-mails in Japanese with the opening header, “O-tsukare sama desu”. I did not read any Japanese, but I could read and understand Chinese, and I recognized the 'tsukare' character, which meant 'tired' or 'tiring' in Chinese. My first thought was that the sender of the e-mail was extremely irritated or angry with the matter that he was writing about. I completely misread the meaning and use of the header. After a while, I discovered that almost every single e-mail I received would have “O-tsukare sama desu” at the top and it could not be that everyone was so tired and annoyed about so many things every day. My initial puzzlement was resolved quite accidentally one day when I realised that the greeting at the close of the day, “o tsukare sama deshita” was rather similar to the opening e-mail header, and what it really meant was “I apologise for having to trouble you about this matter.”

My difficulty and confusion with the formalism of written Japanese was interestingly mirrored by my Japanese colleagues who were encountering a similar situation only in reverse, in their communications with foreigners.

My Japan colleagues would find English e-mails that they received direct and abrupt to the point where they were occasionally unsure if the sender was angry or annoyed, or simply, rude. Conversely, in preparing messages in English, my Japanese colleagues would frequently translate into English what they would have written in Japanese. The problem with the 'direct translation' approach is that the tone can be misunderstood by a receiver who is used to a more direct format. It is not usual in an English e-mail to find a phrase such as “I hesitate to trouble you over this matter”, or, “I appreciate your kind guidance in this matter”, and the danger is that the urgency of the request is frequently obscured behind these formalities.

After two years, I have learned, through trial and much error, to reduce my misunderstanding quotient, and my Japanese colleagues have in turn learned how to write short and rude English e-mails (Forget about being polite! Anything goes! Don't worry about causing offence! There is no such thing as being too direct in English!).

'O tsukare sama desu' as it turns out, was the easy part and the first step of a long journey that is still going on today.

2) Perfectionism and the Japanese Ideal

Another aspect which I found most interesting, on some days, and most frustrating on others, depending on the amount of work which I had, was the Japanese love of details.

I soon realized that I could rely on my Japanese colleagues to be an effective 'vacuum cleaner'.

Typically, if I send out a document for review to other countries, I have to resort to every whim and guile I could think of to obtain some form of response and feedback in time. Without prompt reminders, and a very, very, direct e-mail message, a lack of response is the usual response.

The first time I sent a document out to the Japan office for review, the first response came back - within 2 hours. It was a detailed response that picked up every single loophole in the document and listed out 10 other possibilities or eventualities that I had not considered.

I thought to myself - how wonderful. From now on, I shall send everything out first to the Japan office. By the time Japan gets through this document, it will be close to perfection.

I had not, however, reckoned with my Japanese colleagues' ability to carry a thing to an extreme.

I would receive an e-mail response with 10 questions on a matter. I would patiently compose a response to all 10 questions and send it off. Within a day (at most), I would find a return e-mail acknowledging my 10 responses, and adding another 20 questions to the list (since the more you know, the more you realize what you do not know). I soon realized that I had opened a Pandora's box filled with neverending question marks and problems and that I had to find a way to close it, quickly, or I would never be able to go home. Ever.

I began pondering why it was so - on the one hand, I found this continuing quest for understanding, this insatiable desire for learning and for getting something 'right', extremely admirable. I was filled with respect for my colleagues' drive for excellence and refusal to give up on a point until it was resolved satisfactorily. On the other hand, if this approach is carried to an extreme, it can in some cases mutate into an inability to call a halt to an issue and it can reach a point of diminishing returns on resources and time. The problem with perfection is that in seeking perfection, we become much more aware ironically of all the imperfections that exist. Some imperfections are conceivably more glaring than others, but the perfectionist casts a jaundiced eye upon all imperfections and to his practiced eye, even the tiniest imperfection mars the enjoyment of the whole which to a less keen observer, may have escaped entirely unnoticed. The desire for perfection is understandable and laudable, but perfection is an ideal, and the difficulty particularly in the commercial world, lies in deciding what and when the exact point of compromise should be.

If this were a race or competition, and if we divided the countries into different teams, the team from China would begin the race immediately without any detailed planning. Their mentality would be - “Let's not waste any time thinking about problems that may or may not happen. If a problem happens, let's deal with it then. Don't let it stop us now. Hurry, we must win this.” The team from Japan on the other hand, I am convinced, would not be the first to start, but it would instead sit and plan out the conceivable scenarios, map it against their resources, decide collectively the best way to win, and then, after resolving these issues, they would begin. I am sure that while they would not be amongst the first to begin, they would likely be amongst the first to end.

Which is the right approach? Perhaps the answer lies in a bit of both. There is no single method or approach to a problem. Each system has its share of good and bad. The Chinese however have a belief that it is the law of nature to maintain an equilibrium in all things. Extremes are best avoided, for they result in a tilting of the scale too much to one side.

Perhaps, in the global world that we live in today, the best hope that we can have for our long-term survival is not to seek to be the best in comparison with another for there will always be somebody who is better or stronger or more favoured by time and circumstance than we are. Perhaps the way ahead lies within ourselves, in understanding our own strengths and weaknesses so well that we may develop our strengths, deal with our weaknesses, and through learning and absorbing from other systems and ways, continually enrich and improve ourselves, and that the only yardstick that we can measure ourselves against is the one that we wage internally within ourselves.

It is my belief that one of Japan's outstanding strengths is its neverending quest for quality and excellence. Excellence and perfection are however two different ideals and concepts. The danger with perfection is that it is an absolute, and it assigns an equal weight to all things, large or small, and can lead one to miss, as an English proverb goes, 'the forest for the trees'.

3) The Japanese Aesthetic

I remember reading Tsurezuregusa, and discovering with delight that I agreed with the author in so many of his writings. There was an odd feeling of kinship, and I marveled that I could identify with the writings of a 13th century Buddhist priest so well. It was like a hand stretching down across the centuries. I had a similar feeling while reading Natsume Soseki's “Kokoro”.

The feeling of kinship arose from different contexts in both books. In Tsurezuregusa, it was an identification with the author's belief that the beauty of a thing is tied with its perishability. The sakura's beauty is enhanced because it blooms for but a short period. It is alas the nature of human beings that the more we have of a thing, the less value we attribute to it. Kokoro was a very different form of kinship. I found it a difficult book to read, because it is emotionally extremely honest, and it compels us to wrestle with that dark and fluid thing we call our conscience. In that book, there was no escaping from the protagonist's conscience. I could understand the protagonist's dilemma - it was a dilemma of conscience - he was not good enough to do the right thing and ultimately not bad enough to ignore the consequences of what he did, and so condemned himself to a lifetime of unhappiness.

I treasure both of these books. They have different themes, but a common aesthetic value that appears to me to be still very much prevalent in Japanese life today - the belief that there is beauty or value in restraint, and that silence can at times be as expressive if not more so than speech. This is an aesthetic that I personally believe in. It is a refreshing change from the more direct and expressive cultures that I have grown up in.

Let us think about a story, a film, where a single man is attracted to a married woman, and how this simple storyline would be treated in different cultures:-

If it were an American film, the single man would approach the married woman, they would fall in love, the couple would have an affair, and the story would still manage to resolve itself satisfactorily so that both the man and the woman would be able to end up with each other. There is a real desire on the part of Americans to see The Happy Ending.

If it were a French film, the single man would approach the married woman, they would have the affair, the married woman would not bother with the messiness of going through a divorce, knowing that passion has a definite shelf life and that what she is experiencing in their love affair may not necessarily be so different from her marriage once the initial passion has outrun its course. The French like to think of themselves as intellectual and mature in their approach to things.

If it were a Japanese film, I think it is perfectly plausible that the single man may never even approach the married woman. He would have a fantasy about her, but fall short of approaching her if she were married. Alternatively, she would consider the affair, but she would not enter into it knowing the consequences of her action.

This is very much a generalist's approach - but it serves to illustrate the very different modes of thinking imbued within a culture.

CONCLUSION

I would like to end by revisiting the Jinbocho kissaten once again.

The kissaten to me is precious and uniquely Japanese because it is a little of all of these things that I have just described. It is a place where complete harmony exists because there has been such care and attention to the smallest of details. It is as close to the ideal of perfection that I have witnessed. And so it is possible to attain after all, this ideal of perfection. The cups, the plates, the overhanging lamp, the umbrella stand by a corner, the plant that is arranged on a window, the leaf that is placed next to the summer dessert, the manner in which a receipt is placed upon the table, it all fits together in a completely innocuous manner, in a way that is entirely subtle, but utterly inevitable. It is the invisible hand of the artist at work. Always, less is more.