Precious Little Darlings

            When I was a kid, one of the things I really hated was people who started their stories with, “When I was a kid…”

            My parents were prime examples of this sort of person.  Both of them had grown up in rural Southern Indiana during the Great Depression; both of them had been from poor families to begin with, that only got poorer after the loss of a parent.  My mother was shuffled around from relative to relative and treated as a live-in servant, my father lived in a two-room shack in the country with no heat, indoor plumbing, or floor.  Trying to convince these people in 1978 that my life was over because they wouldn’t buy me a pair of Brittania jeans was an uphill battle, to say the least.

            But it didn't do me any harm to do without things from time to time, and it taught me how to fend for myself.  For example, I went and got a job flipping burgers in my senior year of high school so that I could buy clothes for school.  On one Saturday, I got a check with some overtime on it: one hundred and twelve dollars.  Flush with this newfound largesse, I drove up to SeaTac Mall to do some shopping.

            When I came home a few hours later, my dad was sitting in his chair by the window, reading.

            “How’d it go?” he asked.

            “Fine,” I mumbled.

            “You get everything you wanted?  Did you get that black leather jacket you were after?”

            “No.”

            “How about those designer jeans?  How much were they?”

            “Sixty bucks.”

            “Wow.  Did you get them?”

            “No.  Went to mumble mumble instead.”

            “Didn’t quite catch that.  Where did you go?”

            “I said, I went to Discount Jeans Warehouse.”

            I felt that the smug grin I got in response was really beneath him.

            The expectations of Japanese children seem to need a similar adjustment these days, at least in the opinions of some studies.  Are Japanese children really as spoiled as they seem?  A casual stroll through Kawasaki Station would seem to prove this.  Children screaming, crying, pitching epic fits in the middle of the station, laying flat on the floor and hollering because Mom won’t stop at McDonald’s – it seems like one can see evidence everywhere.

            Any expatriate can share half a dozen anecdotes about spoiled Japanese children: the adult researcher who still lives with his parents, who still cook his meals and do his laundry; the high-level education professional who wakes up at 4:30 every morning to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner ahead of time for her teenage son; and the moms who travel for hours up to Tokyo every weekend to clean their sons’ dorm rooms.

            None of these things would be, by and large, acceptable in American culture.  A grown man who still lives with his parents is slightly creepy and a case study in arrested development.  A career mom in the States would encourage her children to take on as many household chores as possible to help with the workload.  And any American college student who had his mom come up every weekend to do his housework would be a relentlessly-teased American college student.

            So why should this be the case?  Surely any society that spoiled its children to such an extent would run into serious trouble after one or two generations; after all, once Grandma has died and taken the Secrets of Laundry with her, who will wash the clothes?  If something happens and Mom can’t cook dinner any more, how long can we eat 7-Eleven oden before our digestive systems seize up?  (Hint: not long.  Not very long at all.)

            The key to understanding this question might be in a Japanese concept called amae.  According to Japanese academic and psychoanalyst Takeo Doi, in his work The Anatomy of Dependence, amae is defined in English as “indulgent dependency.”  This can be expressed as a mother-child bond, in which the mother experiences fulfillment by, in effect, keeping her child in a childlike state for as long as possible.  This would seem to make a certain amount of sense: some moms only feel a sense of self-worth when they are being a mother.  Spoiling a child and indulging their helplessness would ensure that Mom has a job for a long, long time.  In this light, amae starts to gain traction as a concept.

            Another possible answer might lie in the Japanese education system.  In the book Japanese Sense of Self, Joseph Tobin writes that “the Japanese school system is viewed by most Westerners (and not a few Japanese) as a Godzilla-like monster with (the Ministry of Education) for a brain and preschools for a mouth,” chewing up little kids with individual, vibrant personalities and turning them into automata who are totally dedicated to the group dynamic above all else.  “The nail that sticks up is pounded down,” as the old saying goes, and it is therefore not surprising that, after a long day of being pounded down, these little nails might find their way home to the indulgent care of Mother.  (It also might explain why the sarariman, after a long day of being pounded down in the office, enjoys his return home to a hot bath and warm meal.)

            A third factor might be the infantilization in Japanese culture.  This is a nation that worships kawaii, a word so pervasive that it has cross-pollinated to Western culture as well, although, as with most Japanese words that make the leap to American society, such as otaku, without all of the implications intact. Rima Muryantina, in an essay posted to academia.edu, quotes a couple of ancient Japanese proverbs, “Katawa no ko hodo kawaii (‘A deformed child is the dearer to his parents’) or Kawaii ko ni wa tabi saseyo (‘Send the beloved children on a journey’).”  These proverbs do not reference the modern concept of “cute” inherent to kawaii at all; rather, they call upon an older and more untranslatable concept assigned to the term: feelings of compassion and dependency within the family unit. 

            It is quite possible for words to be passed down from generation to generation with some or all of their original meanings intact.  The English “awful,” for example, quite literally means “full of awe,” and has over the years changed in meaning from a generally positive term to a negative one.  Likewise, the word “terrific” has done a similar volte-face, transforming from its original meaning, “inspiring terror,” to its modern positive usage.

            It is therefore not a grand leap in logic to consider that the word kawaii, practically built in to daily use among some Japanese (especially those young women between the ages of 10 and 50), might still retain some vestiges of the original, some elements of semantic programming that connect the concepts of “cuteness” and “helpless dependency,” and so from there to the “indulgent dependency” of amae.  It is in human nature to forgive and indulge adorable things.  As the couplet by American humorist P.J. O’Rourke goes, “It’s always tempting to impute/Unlikely virtues to the cute.”  Cuteness is a survival mechanism, it generates sympathy in humans and compels us not to leave our children in trees or to abandon them on the toy floor at Yodobashi Camera, no matter how much they scream and cry for the Doraemon playset.  The line between caring for the cute and indulging their every whim is a vague one, however, and can easily cross over into outright spoiling, especially when grandparents get involved.

            It’s also important not to ignore the cultural aspect of this issue.  Not to put too fine (or blindingly obvious) a point on it, but Japanese culture is not Western culture.  Specifically, it’s not American culture, with its emphasis on independence.  Tobin notes the prevalence of ethnocentrism in American cultural studies of Japanese life, the overpowering need for American exceptionalism in all things driving our need to assign binary values to another culture based solely on our own. 

This is a very easy mistake to make, especially in a place like Japan, where it sometimes appears as though whole sections of American culture and belief have been wholeheartedly adopted.  Just because the people here wear Nike shoes and eat at McDonald’s and shop at Costco does not mean that they are Americans, with American values.  Americans tend to place a high value on independence, with children leaving to make their own way in the world as early as possible and moving out of the house to assert control over their own lives.  We venerate the cowboy, the fighter pilot, the renegade: lone wolves who follow their own path and find success on their own.  Individual success holds greater merit in the American national eye than does team effort.

So are Japanese kids more spoiled than their American counterparts?  I would have to say it’s a case of apples and oranges.  The roles and expectations of children within the family unit differs considerably between America and Japan.  In America, a child in his teen years is expected to begin learning the skills that will allow him to function independently of his parents.  These skills can include driving, basic homemaking functions, and the first steps toward financial independence; Japanese teens, by contrast, concentrate on their studies to the exclusion of little else, in order to pass the stringent university entrance exams.

            Ultimately, it’s the prioritizations that create the cognitive dissonance in the culture.  Japanese people look at American kids as being blithely disinterested in their schoolwork or family, not understanding the need to prepare children for an independent life.  They might not also realize that American colleges are relatively easy to get into, but rather difficult to excel in, in contrast to Japanese schools, which have notoriously stringent admissions standards but are fairly lax in terms of required schoolwork.

            Americans, in turn, might not understand the strict entrance requirements for a Japanese university, nor the subtle class structure that rules their hierarchy. A degree from a top-tier college, such as Tokyo or Kyoto University, can mean an addition of  several thousand dollars a year in starting salary, not to mention access to certain high-level jobs in government or with top corporations.  It’s therefore understandable that high school students are encouraged to concentrate solely on their studies, to the exclusion of household chores and a social life.

            ‘Twas ever thus: the problem with teenagers is, ad oculos, that they are teenagers.  Having experienced them in several cultures, their main issue is that they are trying to find their way in a world in which all the rules are subject to change without notice.  It is the last period of growth in a human’s life in which everything is changing: attitudes; physicality; sexuality; relationships; everything.

            The best that we can do is offer our support, understanding, and perspective.

            Still no excuse for that kid screaming in Yodobashi Camera, though.

Bibliography

Doi, Takeo, M.D. The Anatomy of Dependence. Kodansha USA, 2014.

Muryantina, Rima. "Academia.edu." Why Is It Important to be Cute? Depicting The Notion of Kawaii Via Natural Semantic Metalanguage. www.academia.edu (accessed December 16, 2014).

Smith, Herman and Nomi, Takako. "Is Amae the Key to Understanding Japanese Culture?" Electronic Journal of Sociology (ICAAP), 2000.

Tobin, Joseph. "Japanese Preschools and the Pedagogy of Selfhood." In Japanese Sense of Self, edited by Nancy R. Rosenberger. Cambridge University Press.