by Bruce Feiler
LEARNING TO BOW
Inside the Heart of Japan
Bruce S. Feiler
For my parents,
Jane and Ed Feiler,
above and beyond the commas
Oshieru wa manabu no nakaba nari.
Half of teaching is learning.
—A Japanese proverb
CONTENTS
MAP
EPIGRAPH
1 THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR
2 DRAWING THE LINES
3 THE FIRST DAY IN SCHOOL
4 THE WELCOME PARTY
5 THE SPORTS FESTIVAL
6 FALL IN THE CHESTNUT BASIN
7 THE ANATOMY OF A JUNIOR HIGHSCHOOL UNIFORM
8 MAKING HOSPITAL ROUNDS
9 TRASH DAY
10 THE LOST ART OF SCHOOL LUNCH
11 NEW YEAR’S EVE AND THE RISING SUN
12 THE JAPANESE COLOR WHEEL
13 TWIN WINTER ESCAPADES
14 THE TEACHER IN JAPAN
15 THE JUKU GENERATION
16 DRINKING ALONE IN RURAL JAPAN
17 HOW TO PICK UP A JAPANESE GIRL
18 GRADUATION DAY
19 A CHERRY BLOSSOM SPRING
20 A TALE OF TWO STUDENTS
21 THE INVISIBLE CLASS
22 A JAPANESE WEDDING SPECTACULAR
23 THE ANNUAL SCHOOL EXCURSION
24 THE AMERICAN CLASS
EPILOGUE
A FINAL BOW
GLOSSARY
FURTHER READING
SEARCHABLE TERMS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
OTHER BOOKS BY BRUCE FEILER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Map
1
THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
—Edwin Markham, “Outwitted,” 1915
I DROPPED MY PANTS and felt a rush of cool wind against my legs. Slower now, I slid off my remaining clothes to stand naked on the stone path, which felt warm below my feet. The smell of pine from the nearby hills lingered in the air. The sun had just set. It was a midsummer evening, my first night out of Tokyo, and standing bare on this mountain, I soon realized how quiet a body can be.
Unsure, I kept my eyes down, shifting first from my feet, now white with the chill, to my clothes, which lay in a shy heap on the grass, my pants still clinging to the shape of my body. Then suddenly I saw the other feet, and the legs. They too were bare. And as I watched them shuffling in my direction, my eyes told me what my mind had not time to know: these feet were looking at me.
Stepping back, I met the eyes that the feet belied and for a moment felt locked in a frozen stare. There were twenty-four eyes in all—open, agape, peering!—and despite all I had heard about Japanese eyes being narrow, these eyes seemed remarkably wide. As I stood on this mountain path, face to face with the twelve men who would be my hosts for a year as a teacher in their rural town, the only difference I noticed between them and me was that they were all wearing towels and I was not.
To my relief, one stepped forward. “Mr. Bruce,” he said, offering a slight bow and a nervous laugh, “we are going to take a bath now. Perhaps you would like a towel.”
I had never taken a towel into a bath or, for that matter, taken a bath with other people, but under the circumstances I agreed. “Thank you,” I managed, trying to bow discreetly while drawing the small hand towel across my body.
As soon as I stretched it halfway across my waist, the others cheered, rushed forward, and with all the glee of a band of ten-year-olds parading a captured mouse, led me to the mouth of a nearby cave and the steaming, pungent fumes of a hot spring bath. As a newcomer in Japan, I would be welcomed into my office as I was welcomed into the world: with a bare body and a fresh bath.
Inside the cave, the bodies of other bathers emerged from the steam. They seemed to move slowly at first, as if muted by the weight of the thick white mist. Bare arms cut through the air, drawing handfuls of water to splash over shoulders; heads bobbed in the murky liquid like croutons in a gray broth. Some of the bathers—all men, I now realized—stood half submerged in the round pool, nodding their heads intently and speaking in echo; others floated quietly by, suspended by shadows of steam that lingered above the surface. From above, the pale evening light sifted through the air, giving the space the eerie feel of a Roman bath. But instead of wearing a toga, each of the men wandering outside the water held a small white towel over his private parts. As I watched these men clutching their towels while splashing and chatting and strolling about, I wondered if I had discovered the secret reason behind bowing in Japan: to shake hands at a time like this and release the towel would mean a certain loss of face.
As we approached the water, the teacher who had earlier offered me the towel, a short, squat man with wiry black hair, a cherubic face, and a waddle that rocked him from side to side like a penguin, pushed the others away, put his arm around my shoulder, and led me forward.
“I…Mista Burusu boss,” he said, tapping first himself and then me on the nose. “My namu…izu…Sakuragi. I amu Mista Cherry Blossom.”
At this early stage in our relationship he spoke in English. Though my Japanese was far from fluent, I had the facility to understand most things when necessary and the ability to pretend not to when prudent. Both of these skills would prove vital to my survival.
Mr. Cherry Blossom led me to the wall of the cave and a row of men seated with their backs to the water. We sat on two round stones facing the wall and, with our towels draped over our knees, proceeded to douse ourselves in warm, chalky water from a shallow trough at our feet.
“In Japan,” he said, this time in his native tongue, “we clean ourselves before entering the bath. Then we just soak in the water. This is our Japanese custom.”
After pouring water over our shoulders with buckets and wiping our bodies with our hands (no soap), we were ready to step into the bath. Moving from the wall to where the water splashed at the edge of the pool, we walked slowly down the steps, slid up to our necks in the warm liquid, and for the first time removed the towels from below our waists and placed them—dripping wet—atop our heads.
“Doesn’t it feel wonderful?” he said, closing his eyes, stretching his arms, and flashing a dreamy, self-satisfied grin.
“The water seems…alive,” I said as I struggled to keep myself afloat while pushing away the flotilla of bugs swimming past my head. Then slowly my feet began to sink, and I realized that instead of being in a stone cavern, we were standing in an open mud basin with hot spring water bubbling up from the ground. With each burp from the earth, I would slide down further, until chalky liquid lapped at my mouth from below and dripped down my nose from above, where the wet towel slopped on my head. I closed my eyes and tried not to remember that I had just removed all of my clothes and washed myself with great care, all for the purpose of taking a bath in a giant bog of mud.
But I could not forget: “This is our Japanese custom.”
I arrived in Japan in early August, at the time of year when the rusty orange afternoon sun lingers over hilltops for an extra hour at night, when the trees sit breathless throughout the day waiting for a whisper of evening breeze, and when people all across the land journey to the countryside for a brief summer repose.
“In Japan, we change with the seasons,” Mr. Cherry Blossom explained. “What we eat, what we drink, what we say, all depend on the time of year.” His dimpled face came alive as he told me tales of summer fruits and dancing fireflies. A former science teacher who now served as a regional curriculum adviser for the prefectural
Board of Education, Mr. Cherry Blossom had an exaggerated bonhomie that reminded me of a bumbling chemistry teacher I had in high school who was nicknamed Mr. V. And so Mr. Sakuragi, whose name means cherry blossom, became Mr. C.
“When you write a letter to a girl,” he continued, “you must always begin by referring to the season. ‘It’s summer, the air is hot, my heart longs for you.’ And of course you should enclose a summer flower for her.”
“What’s a summer flower?” I asked.
“Red ones are best, like a hibiscus or a rose. Japanese girls all love them; they squeeze them on their lips.”
Although I never saw a Japanese woman with hibiscus juice on her lips, I did come to appreciate the importance of these seasonal symbols: the song of the cicada after summer rain; colored leaves in autumn; snowdrifts in winter; cherry blossoms in early spring. The bath, an enduring and romantic symbol of leisure in Japan, is also steeped in the traditions of time. A bath in December, which relaxes the body after a strenuous day in the snow, differs from a bath in August, which legend says will “take the dampness from the body” after the rainy season. Mr. C told me proudly that his wife still places the skin of a citron in the family bath on the winter and the summer solstices. “In winter the citron keeps our bodies warm,” he said. “In summer it cools us down.”
Despite Japan’s international status and its fascination with high technology, these cultural symbols from a fabled past remain alive in the collective imagination of modern Japan. A successful office, the Japanese insist, is one where the members build “a relationship without clothes on.” In order to prime the caretakers who must tend the native spirit every day, the men of the Ansoku Education Office of the Tochigi Prefectural Board of Education took off three working days every August to welcome all new teachers, which this year included me, with a collective outdoor summer bath.
We had not soaked long in the water before my presence began to attract a crowd. Soon other men came wading over to our corner of the bath, sloshing through the mud and clutching their towels to their loins.
“This is Mr. Burusu,” Mr. C said to the first well-wisher. He was stretching my name into Japanese form, in which all syllables end in vowels.
“This is Kato-sensei,” he said, using the honorific sensei, which means teacher or master, instead of the more simple san. “He is my boss, but he is very fat.”
Kato-sensei was a short, pudgy man with sagging cheeks, a bulbous nose, and wavy black hair that shook over his eyes as he hurried toward me past the other new teachers, gesticulating widely and leaving a sizable wake. I bowed slightly as he approached, being careful not to dislodge the towel from my head.
“Oh, oh, oh! So nice to meet you,” he shouted, reaching out his hand and nearly embracing me. “You are a handsome boy.” His greeting startled me; then I realized that he and others were admiring me not because I was particularly handsome but because I was white and tall. “I hear you are going to teach English in junior high schools,” Kato-sensei continued. “I hope you teach Mr. Cherry Blossom, too. His English is very bad.”
“You’re crazy,” Mr. C broke in. “My English is very good. Listen.” He put his arm around my waist and straightened his back as if addressing a group of judges at a speech contest. “My namu Kazuo Sakuragi. I amu supaman. I amu hansomu boy.”
The other teachers cheered and splashed water in support, but Kato-sensei pulled me toward him with a quick jerk. “No, no, no. Mr. Bruce is handsome boy. Mr. Sakuragi is crazy boy.”
Suddenly our bath had become a cozy ménage, and I struggled to keep my head above water while these two middle-aged men clasped their arms around my back and compared me to a summer’s day. Our party naturally attracted others, and soon most of the veteran teachers were sizing up the new man in town.
“He sure is tall,” said one man.
“And his nose is high, too,” observed another.
“He looks like a model.”
Under these circumstances, I realized that developing a relationship without clothes on meant them appraising my physique.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” someone asked.
Just as I approached the point of total desperation, a group of young teachers appeared at the outer edge of the circle. They too wore towels, but they were much quieter than their superiors. Mr. Cherry Blossom hushed the crowd and gestured for the three to come forward. “New teacher, new teacher,” he said, pointing back and forth from them to me in great excitement. They did not look very enthusiastic about cutting into this dance, but the shortest of the three, perhaps sensing my helplessness, stepped away from his friends and moved closer.
There, standing alone in the middle of two dozen bathers all pondering this low-tech import from abroad, he very calmly reached his hand out and in near-perfect English said, “Hello, my name is Cho Takashi. You can call me Cho.”
A friendship was born.
I came to Japan at the invitation of the Japanese Ministry of Education, to teach English language and American culture in Japanese schools as part of a program to bring native English speakers into the heart of Japan. The scheme is part of a broad effort by the government to achieve what the Japanese call “internationalization,” the buzz word for a new, more globally powerful, more globally conscious Japan.
As I traveled through rural towns, going into schools and homes and participating in the lives of Japanese people who might never feel the trickle-down effects of their country’s newfound wealth, I came to appreciate both the difficulty and the necessity of internationalization. In my city of Sano, I was the first foreigner many of the people had ever seen in person. I was the first person they had met who had white skin, brown hair, and a “high” nose—one that sticks out from the face, not one that starts high on the forehead. I was the first person they had known who was not Japanese. Even among teachers, those trusted with telling the next generation about the outside world, I was an anomaly.
After the bath I stood again alongside my colleagues, shivering as steam floated off my warm body and bemoaning the fact that my towel was wet. Soon Mr. C brought me a folded white robe with a dark blue bamboo print.
“This is a yukata,” he said, “a summer kimono. Please wear this to the party tonight.”
I slipped the starched cotton over my shoulders and drew the sash around my waist. The cloth clung to my wet body like papier-mâché to a balloon, except for the flaps in front, which dangled helplessly just above my knees. Feeling a bit exposed, I quietly pulled a pair of shorts up under my robe, but still I felt—and looked—like a half-wrapped candy bar.
“Let’s have a party,” the men shouted, grabbing my clothes along with theirs and pushing me down the path toward the lodge.
As we approached the three-tiered stone pavilion where we would be staying for the night, Mr. Cherry Blossom again eased close to me and put his arm around my shoulders.
“We want you to give a short speech tonight.”
“A speech?” I said, glancing down at my bare knees.
“A self-introduction.”
Before I could protest, we had arrived at the hall and entered a large banquet room with latticed beams on the ceiling, straw mats on the floor, and long rows of low tables lined with over 140 freshman teachers—now men and women—sitting on the floor with bended knees and decked out in identical white robes with the dark blue bamboo print. Were these teachers, I wondered, or dolls?
Mr. Cherry Blossom ushered me to the front of the room and a seat on my knees next to the “fat man” from the bath.
Beginning with Kato-sensei, each of the men at the table addressed the gathering, laboring through prepared speeches in which the teachers were admonished to work hard, to understand their role in society, and to do their best. Throughout, the recruits sat stone-faced and silent.
Finally the oldest man at the table raised a toast. The mood lightened, the beer flowed, and all the teachers shifted off their knees and settled onto the floor. After a half hour of eating sliced fis
h and shrimp and downing beer and whiskey, Kato-sensei again rose to his feet.
“This year we are having an international party,” he announced. “We have an honored guest with us tonight, who has come from America to be a teacher in our prefecture. As you can see, he is a very handsome boy.”
As I rose to stand beside him, the general murmur of the party dimmed and everyone turned to hear me speak.
“Good evening,” I said, using my best speech-contest Japanese.
“Good evening,” the crowd said in unison, mumbling to one another about how this foreigner could speak Japanese, as if I had just recited an original haiku.
“My name is Bruce…
“I come from Georgia, in the United States of America…
“This year I am going to teach my language and my culture to your students. I hope you will also teach me about Japanese culture.” I mentioned something about the weather and then about the approaching school year. To end, I tried to add a bit of self-deprecation to my speech, as I had been advised by Japanese friends to do. “Since you and I are new teachers,” I said, “I hope we can be friends. But my Japanese is very bad, so please speak English with me.” Instead of solemn admiration, this last line brought unexpected laughter from the crowd, and I realized I had a long way to go before I mastered Japanese humility.
After thanking them for their patience and bidding them good night, I kneeled down as fast as I could without flashing open my robe. But the audience was giving me a standing ovation and shouting for an encore. Several teachers from the front row conferred with Mr. Cherry Blossom, then scampered over to my place and asked, “Won’t you answer some questions?” Within seconds I had a microphone in my hand and Mr. C was laughing merrily at my side, telling the troops they were free to ask whatever they wanted. It was open forum on the foreigner: seven score of drunken Japanese teachers versus one very sober American man.