5 January 2001 (10 Tevet 5761)
This week during my continued stay at my parents' house for the winter vacation a certain TV program which is said to be viewed by about half of the population of the country in spite of its mannerism and poor contents touched my nerve and caused my rather emotional remark that Japan is sinking. I wish this would turn out to be wrong, but to my great sorrow, I notice too many symptoms that this country is collapsing from inside as quite a few publicists are warning, and as a person with strong social awareness I cannot keep silent, pretending as if I noticed nothing.
This remark of mine, which might have been too insensible in the given context, took an unexpected turn and deteriorated into one of the nastiest arguments I had ever had with my parents. In retrospect, however, this turned out to be a good catalysis for expressing suppressed emotions and opinions we had about each other. Since then my parents, especially father, seem to be trying more eagerly to make the best use of what little time I have with them, telling me their experiences, some of which I have never heard before.
This incident has reminded me anew how much I owe them what I am now as I slowly digest the significance of all the cost they have paid in all the major paths I have taken in my life. So I had a mixed feeling when they told me that they would prefer seeing me happy leaving Japan to seeing me unhappy remaining in Japan and I should not worry about their future.
Actually, ever since I came back from Israel to Japan in the summer of 1993, I have been oscillating between the two countries, asking myself what is more important for happiness, sociocultural adjustment or professional aspiration. Of course, it would be ideal if I could fulfill both, but in the meanwhile they seem incompatible. On the one hand, in Israel I feel like a fish in the water socioculturally, but I am pessimistic about the possibility of finding tenure in Hebrew and teaching Japanese is the last compromise I am ready to make there. On the other hand, in Japan I have a better chance of contributing to the dissemination of knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish culture through teaching and research as I am one of the few who major in Hebrew here, but I will never be able to adjust myself here socioculturally.
As I have not found any permanent position here though I have been trying to market myself for the past seven years, and as I am more and more inclined to think that sociocultural adjustment is more important for happiness than professional aspiration, leaving Japan for Israel must be more viable. The fact that I am still in Japan is more of the result of inertia and vain hope I feel every time I apply for a position in a university here as well as the total uncertainty about livelihood there. And of course, my lack of decision is partly because I cannot expel my guilty feeling for my parents about leaving Japan for my happiness though they tell me not to worry about their future.
12 January 2001 (17 Tevet 5761)
On the last day of my stay at my parents' I had the worst computer crash I had ever experienced since I started using my own computer seven years ago - the hard disk crashed in spite of the fact that the computer is still new. So since the beginning of this week my life, which was highly dependent on computers and the Internet, has been greatly hampered. I only hope that the computer will be repaired as soon as possible and I will not have to live under the present condition too long.
It is true that I have a sense of disorientation as I live with no TV, radio and printed newspapers, and rely exclusively on online newspapers in Japanese, English and Hebrew to keep up to date with the current topics. But the biggest problem is the inability to use email, which I consider is the greatest benefit offered by the Internet, which itself is probably the greatest invention of the last century. Luckily, I can check email at the universities where I am teaching, but the benefit of email has been largely crippled as the frequency to check email has diminished from several times a day to a few times a week.
If this condition should continue too long, it might even harm my mental health as quite a large percent of the communication I have is by means of email when I am in Japan. But I hope I will manage in this sudden state of seclusion from the world for a couple of weeks. The only consolation is that I have no urgent work to do with the computer and the Internet now.
I am trying to be positive, telling myself that this may be a good chance to reexamine my addiction to the Internet and the concomitant waste of time. Generally speaking, the dialog with myself about life in general, which I cannot evade during my stay at my parents', discontinues once I have returned to my flat. But this time this dialog is still lingering as there is nothing that distracts me. As I listen and relisten to tens of lectures in cassette tapes by Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb and Rabbi Mordechai Becher - two of the rabbis who immensely impressed me with their intellectual rigor and spiritual depth when I studied at the Jerusalem main campus of Ohr Somayach Yeshiva in March and August 2000, this self-dialog is enhanced by their profound insight.
19 January 2001 (24 Tevet 5761)
Since most of the works I planned to do in my free time this month require the use of a computer, and my broken computer has not been repaired and sent back to me yet, I still spend most of my free time listening to the audio lectures by two of my favorite rabbis at Ohr Somayach Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
I am reconfirming that in my case the sense of hearing is the most developed of all the five senses. I can digest a certain material much better when I hear it than when I read it. This also applies to language learning. I need to hear the actual sounds of a new language I intend to study from the very beginning and be constantly exposed to a sufficient doze of spoken utterances; otherwise I cannot start or continue to study that language. This explains why I simply feel too insecure about learning a language which is either "dead" or is not transmitted orally by a certain speech community.
The audio tapes of the rabbis are taking my mind back to the lecture halls of the yeshiva where I spent two months, and remind me so vividly of the most overwhelming learning experience I have ever had in my life, even in comparison with the experience I had at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for my doctorate. I remember having had a great difficulty in going back to "normalcy" in Japan after the exposure to such intensive intellectual and spiritual stimuli in the yeshiva.
In contrast to the insightful lectures on Jewish philosophy by Rabbi Yitzchok Ziskind, Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb and Rabbi Mordechai Becher, which penetrated my brain and soul so smoothly, I had a hard time in a Talmud class even though it was designed for complete beginners and our teacher, Rabbi Chaim Salenger, was excellent. He seems to be right when one of the rabbis there said that the Talmud is the only classical Jewish source that one cannot learn without the initial guidance of someone who is part of the living chain of oral transmission, and it takes four years of full-time study to be able to read it independently. It was so frustrating to find that my knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic, in which the Talmud is written, did not help me understand the text beyond its literal, superficial, meaning. So the Talmud still remains a daunting intellectual challenge for me.
Probably the most encouraged activity in the traditional Jewish learning is to ask a good question, especially in learning the Talmud, first under the guidance of a teacher and later bekhavruta/bekhavruse ('in pair'). As I think that this is precisely what the Japanese educational system is badly in need of, I not only bombard my students with questions but also encourage them to find questions on their own. I felt, therefore, so frustrated and miserable to find myself unable to utter even a single question in the Talmud class.
26 January 2001 (2 Shvat 5761)
Now that my broken computer was finally repaired and sent back to me, my social sensitivity-shmensitivity seems to have been restored as well. When I went this week to the university for the last time in this academic year, the way my fellow teachers interacted with each other, whether verbally or nonverbally, suddenly recaught my attention, and I kept on watching them attentively. Then I felt as if I were choked, finding that all of them were busy taking every precautionary measure, whether verbal or nonverbal, to avoid any possible confrontation. I am sure that some of them were not comfortable with this way of communication, but the atmosphere was such that an ordinary person would feel less uncomfortable succumbing to this invisible force. Actually such a force is hovering blatantly in many other social contexts in Japan.
There seem to be two opposing approaches to minimize possible injuries caused by confrontations resulting from interpersonal interactions. The first is to develop immunity to confrontations by exposing oneself to them; this seems to be the norm in Jewish culture, especially in Israel. The second is to avoid the very confrontations by self-censuring any speech or behavior liable to lead to confrontations; this is elevated to the level of "art" in Japan.
In a society where this is the norm, people who speak and behave according to the first approach will be frowned upon and considered "childish" - as I am often forced to feel on my own flesh though no one would, of course, tell me so verbally - unless they are perceived as non-members in the eyes of its members. In my opinion, however, precisely those who base their speech and behavior on the second approach are the ones who are immature and unhealthy. What is the healthier way of avoiding the danger of being drowned while swimming, to ban the very act of swimming or to train oneself in swimming? Although the first may be much more cautious, it cannot cope with the danger when one suddenly find oneself fallen into the water by accident. This is also the case with confrontations as there are more and more chances to interact with people from different cultures.
The biggest problem of the philosophy underlying this "sophisticated" approach, which is for me nothing but the crippling of human mind, is that it can escalate in its self-censure and deny the legitimacy of discussing about itself. An intelligent observer of the postwar history of Japanese society would not fail to discern the tendency to increase the degree and areas of the precautionary measures to avoid verbal and nonverbal confrontations. For example, as the notorious honorific language, or the so-called keigo, has more and more ritualized and overdecorated expressions, the language itself is becoming more and more "sterilized" and devoid of real contents.
I am sure that I am not the lonely voice in the wilderness and there must be many others who find the Japanese mode of verbal and nonverbal communication suffocating. But its force seems so invincible that one would have to be prepared to be ostracized in order to question the very legitimacy of this mode of communication through the very means one criticizes. This is actually a vicious circle. On the one hand, there will remain self-imposed censure of speech and behavior unless the number of people who decide to say good-by to this immature and unhealthy way reaches a critical mass. On the other hand, only if this self-censure is removed at the national level, there will be enough people who will openly criticize and stop it.
I do not understand what people are so afraid of. Personally, I prefer running the risk of hurting and being hurt, of course with no malice, for the pleasure of having non-censured communication and the resulting intellectual and spiritual stimuli to self-censuring communication by saying nothing but nonspontaneous formulas most suitable for those suffering from "brain death". I hope that the "muscles" of my mind are strong enough for possible "injuries".