A Portrait of the Home Visit Partner as a Young Japanese

The practice of お見合い ('omiai'), arranged marriage meetings of the kind seen in Kon Ichikawa’s classic The Makioka Sisters, is becoming less common as Japan modernizes and the 21st century charges ahead.  However, the tradition of bringing together two individuals in a formal meeting in hopes that they prove compatible, but then letting them decide whether to cultivate a relationship, is in full force at Kansai Gaidai.

Snapped on Haru's cell at our first meeting.

Rather than arranging marriages, Kansai Gaidai makes concerted efforts to establish ties between the 外大生 (Japanese students) and 留学生 (international students) – they pair us with Speaking Partners and Home Visit Partners, arguably a modern, platonic co-optation of the of お見合い, with all the accompanying nerves prior to first meeting one another.
But from the moment I met Koga Haruna, my home visit partner, I could tell that 仲良くなる-we would become great friends.  A shared connection to Nishinomiya (her hometown, and where I had a 4-day home stay 5 years ago) and a love of film (she wants to make trailers and/or commercials, and I am a editing-happy CAMS major) are great places to begin any friendship – not to mention an equally shared, fervent devotion to Sister Act.

Haru treated me to shabu-shabu. 

Purikura AND plaid AND posing, oh my!

Since our ‘arranged friendship’ began, we have been to the movies, shared meals of shabu-shabu and train rides.  She has taken me to プリクラ ('purikura'), a phenomenom with which America’s average photo booth has no hope of competing, and I have explained in detail the difference between 'plaid' and 'check' – apparently a distinction not drawn in fashion-forward Japan.  In the guise of simply getting to know each other, we are already engaging in comparative linguistics and cultural anthropology.

Thus, my new friend Haru seems the perfect subject from which to craft a portrait, inductively, of the Japanese people.

Haru!  As spring-like as her name suggests...

...元気, thoughtful, a ready conversationalist, and, in her own words, いつも笑ってる– always laughing.

After explaining my blog and the project to her, we started off talking about keigo, the formal language that Haru has had to use it at her バイト (part-time job) at a local supermarket, and when talking to her senpai in the baseball club which she served as manager for.  How does the kouhai/senpai system, and having to use keigo, affect her relationships, I wanted to know.  Haru says her closest friends are those of her same cohort, with whom she need not use extra-formal language, but she recalls enjoying a gradual relaxation of the regimented linguistic system in her baseball club as she and her two senpai became closer – they would go out to dinner together, and were very friendly.

どうしようかな？

However, she never stopped using keigo entirely with them – always, standard polite language with some keigo interspersed served as a reminder of their seniority.  When I probed her feeling about these systems, suggesting that from a Western point of view, them seem rather arbitrary, Haru expressed a general lack of discomfort with them, because they are, for her, simply part of Japanese culture – she says she feels a little weird when her kouhai fails to use keigo with her, and thinks that the fact that one’s senpai have more experience is a reasonable basis for elevating them linguistically.  However, today’s systems are a far-cry from the immediate post-war era, in which failure to correctly show respect with keigo could earn actual physical punishment, Haru told me – clearly Japan has changed (and is continuing to do so) over the last century.

I asked Haru if she was glad she was Japanese – yes, she said, and no – she loves Japan, the temples, the food – but she wishes Japanese society where more 自由 – free – like America. Visiting Disneyworld recently, she was shocked to see an employee can chew gum on the job, something that would never happen at Tokyo Disney – Japanese are 几帳面, she says – they care too much about little things.

If Haru is a 'typical' Japanese, it is because there IS no ‘typical Japanese.’

One of the major things I wanted to ask her was what makes her ‘Japanese’ - officially, Japanese-ness is based on one’s legal entry into the こせき, the national register of family names.  But looking for this definition with Haru is much harder, because individuals can’t be generalized into nations.

真面目？  Seriously.

Haru herself is very sociable, but she feels that Japanese people, compared to Westerners, can be unsociable – a Japanese, she says, would never say hi to someone they don’t know.  Oddly, I have been struck by just how friendly everyone in Japan has been to me – is it because I’m a foreigner?  Haru wasn’t sure.  As an English major, Haru herself studies hard (she was doing homework until 2:30 am the night before our interview, before having to awaken at 6:00am for her commute) – but she also noted how hard the ryuugakusei work compared to native students.  Comparatively, I’ve always conceptualized Japanese students as incredibly hard studiers (at least until they’ve taken the 入学試験, college entrance exams) – throughout our conversation, both Haru and I were struck by how our perceptions of one another’s cultures were often diametrically opposed.

かわいいね！：）

Sitting outside the Center for International Education on a sunny afternoon, the conversation that we ended up having was full of surprises and revelations that went much deeper than simple passing comparison of fabric names or group photographic practices.  These university facilitated friendship-omiai could easily stop there, but I think we all hunger for a deeper cultural exchange – after parting ways, Haru soon sent me a keitai mail to say that she liked talking to me, but wants to become better at English, frustrated that she couldn’t express Japanese culture and herself as clearly as she had wanted.  But I too should see this as an impetus to improve my own Japanese, to better understand what she expresses, for the sake of anthropology and our friendship.  Ultimately, though, what she wrote about her family in her original Home Visit Partner 自己紹介 (self-introduction) proved most true in our exploration of Japanese culture and our developing friendship – “We can’t speak English well.  But don’t worry, we will never give up.  We believe that we will be able to communicate with you without words.”

And so I take her picture; CLICK: 1000 words.