Hello! I'm new here. I'm the wife of Kossack Hatrax. I'm from Japan, and English isn't my first language, so please bear with me. I'd like to write some diaries about Japanese culture and the problems of the Japanese mind.
There's an internet site, in Japanese, called Chiebukuro (the wisdom box).
It's similar to Yahoo! Answers: people ask questions, and others answer them.
I’m Japanese, born and raised, but I always get culture shock by reading the answers.
Today, I encountered this one.
Follow me below the twisty thing.
On Chiebukuro, I read the question from a woman who just had her first baby, and wants to divorce her husband because he witnessed the birth of his baby, that is, his wife's labor and child birth.
She made him promise not to come to the delivery room and he reluctantly agreed.
But the medical staff offered to let him come in, so he witnessed whole thing.
He was very happy about the experience and gained an appreciation of the process of labor, but she only felt betrayal and says she can never forgive him. To her, it was a very shameful and humiliating experience. Why?
Japan has a problem with too much formality. Sometimes this leads to beautiful customs, like the elegant bow on greeting someone. Other times it's harmful, like when Japanese women are afraid to leave the house if they don't wear full makeup. I was a registered nurse and I saw a checklist for psychologists: signs of insanity. One of them for women was “doesn't wear makeup”. Really.
I kind of understand that she didn’t want her husband to see her when she was less than perfect- in her point of view anyway. But I cannot understand her for punishing him for only wanting to be part of the childbirth, and hate him for that. I was more shocked that most of the women who answered her question agreed with her! Well, people might defend her for having “maternity blues”, but somehow this sounds different, since everybody who chimed in, are way past the post maternity and still hate their husband for that, too.
I guess, it’s easy to say, Japan is 50 years behind the times from the western nation, at least when it comes to womens rights. But the level of pretentiousness and the bitterness overwhelmed me.
To him there were nothing wrong about child birth and it didn’t tarnish anything of his wife's image, which means he didn’t find her ugly or anything, which means she didn’t get humiliated.
Then I remembered the Japanese folk tale of “Tsuru no Ongaeshi” (The crane returns the favor). It goes like this: The man helped the injured crane, the crane somehow magically turned into a beautiful woman. She came to ask the guy to marry him, then they happily married. She produced a lot of beautiful clothes and contributed to their household. But she always made the guy promise, never to see her when and how she does it.
Every time after she hides out to make another set of clothes, she came out quite pale. He couldn’t help worry about her, so one night he sneaked to peek at her hiding place, he saw his wife in her true form, of the crane, pulling out her feather to produce clothes.
She noticed him looking at her, she got so mad and left him and their children forever.
This kind of story is really typical in Japan.
I think in Japan something needs to be secret all the time.
I thought this might be a key to the Japanese mind. You must pretend nothing goes on, when clearly something definitely goes on. Just like everything about us right now, all of the problems Japan faces- the history revisionists, the pointless dolphin hunting, and so on. I’ve been trying to break through the Japanese mind, but always got blocked by, “better not to know” whoever tried to know anything should rightfully be punished. This is the attitude most Japanese have.
What do you think? Can I ever make my own people aware of this…?