Learning to Bow

by Bruce Feiler

  We left the restaurant and began wandering around the nightclub district, renewing our search for the pickup scene we had heard so much about in previous weeks. As Jane and I veered down a lane toward a pool hall, we stopped suddenly at the sound of some brash disco music raining down in droves. We looked at each other in surprise: Sano had no disco.

  We followed our ears up a vacant stairwell that opened onto a vacant karate studio converted into a makeshift dance hall for the night. The narrow fluorescent lights had been replaced by frosty purple Day-Glo bulbs; portable strobe lights hung from the ceiling. A man dressed in a black leather jump suit, with a six-inch gold dollar sign strung around his neck, was performing a Japanese-language rendition of Grand Master Funk. I felt as if we had stepped through the looking glass into a SoHo underground nightclub.

  Despite the elaborate decoration, we were the fifth, sixth, and, as it turned out, last persons to arrive all night at this experimental disco. The proprietor, anxious for bodies to fill the vast open space, ushered us to seats on the wooden benches and gave us each a free cold Budweiser beer. No one was dancing, as all the guests sat huddled against one wall like nervous fourteen-year-olds, watching the scattered reflection of the strobe lights against the full-length karate mirrors and coughing every several minutes when the artificial fog machine inundated us with smoke.

  The woman next to me sat stone-faced with a serene smile frozen on her lips and an Indian tapestry scarf around her shoulders. After several moments of awkward silence, she leaned over to show me how the black light glittered on her contact lenses, an effect that gave her eyes the eerie purple glow of a Siamese cat.

  “Good evening,” she whispered in a husky voice. “I met you before. Do you remember?”

  I had no immediate recollection, but from the penetration of her eyes and the tone of her voice I could tell she was not a junior high school teacher.

  “Oh sure,” I said unconvincingly.

  “I am the one who sells natural foods,” she whispered. “We met on New Year’s Eve.”

  Moko and her husband, Mino, she reminded me, owned and operated a small, natural foods restaurant in town called Rasa, or “Enlightenment.” They served a small clientele of independent farmers and struggling artisans who lived scattered throughout the hills of Sano. “No married people come,” she said, “and only a few men. Mostly women who want to start their own communes and make their own thread.”

  “What kind of food do you serve?” I asked.

  “Whatever anyone wants,” she assured me. “No meat, of course, and no chicken. Mainly brown rice and vegetables. Also no fish.”

  “You mean you don’t eat sushi?”

  “Oh, I love sushi,” she said, pulling closer. “I eat it with my friends, but don’t tell my husband. He doesn’t know.”

  Finding it difficult to talk over the blare of the Sex Pistols and the glare of the lights, she and I wandered out into the foyer, leaving Mino to dance with Jane. Mino, she explained, was her second husband. For ten years she had been married to a salaryman in Tokyo, living a blithe domestic life with one child and a conventional husband who went off every morning to work in a construction company. For many Japanese this would represent the ideal middle-class lifestyle, but for Moko it was dull. “I couldn’t do what I wanted,” she told me. “I had little time to see the sunset.” She divorced her husband and married Mino, a long-haired, bearded musician who had just returned from a five-year stay in India. Together they began the restaurant. “We have no money,” she said of her new life, “and no time. But my heart is much cleaner. Now at least I feel better.”

  Her parents, she said, were sympathetic, but could not entirely understand why she would sacrifice stability in search of sunsets. “Intellectually they understand,” she explained, “but really they just aren’t involved. After all, they still eat white rice and meat.”

  We returned to the studio and joined the others for a dance to the rap music now on the stereo. The singer slid around the wooden floor in black-and-white-striped socks, banging two Budweiser cans together as if they were bongo drums. On the back of his leather jacket, two patches were sewn together. One of them said, in English, “WHEN I DIE I’M GOING TO HEAVEN, BECAUSE I’VE ALREADY SPENT MY TIME IN HELL—U.S. MARINE CORPS.” The other showed a silhouette of two fighter planes and a battleship against a replica of the Japanese imperial flag. Its message: “REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR.”

  “By the way,” Moko said, still twisting awkwardly to the music, “please don’t think that I am not a good Japanese.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think I am a good Japanese,” she said. “I may not be normal, but at least I’m natural.”

  Jane and I said our good-byes and made our way out of the karate studio. At the bottom of the stairs I noticed a mimeographed announcement taped to the wall. “Everybody is invited to a new Saturday Night Disco,” the bill declared in English. “Our name: The Weirdie’s Party.”

  By now our search for the local singles scene had been deflected by the discovery of this thriving contingent of nonconformists living out their personal fantasies on the outer banks of the Japanese mainstream. Certain that we had happened on several flukes in the system, we ventured into a hostess bar, the type of place most often frequented by Japanese businessmen, and one that would surely have a more “normal” clientele.

  The club, called Ysei, or “Request,” had a musty atmosphere with smoke lingering in the path of yellow spotlights, black velvet walls, and the kind of green velour couches that sag in the middle and give the customer no choice but to recline. The couches were half empty when we arrived at twelve-thirty, but before we had a chance to turn around, our coats disappeared into the hands of three Filipino girls, who smiled and welcomed us in both Japanese and English.

  This type of establishment, known locally as a “Filipino bar,” has emerged in recent years as the latest addition to the floating world of the Japanese “water trade.” Enterprising club owners trek to the Philippines, peruse the bars and brothels, and convince young dancers and prostitutes to come to Japan for a chance to get rich quick. Because most of these girls can make more money in a single night of pouring drinks and giving massages in Japan than they can in a month in the Philippines, they readily agree. Over fifteen thousand such girls live in Japan at any one time. The Japanese government, aware of this new international geisha trade, grants each of these hostesses, often teenagers, a two-month working visa. The visa can be renewed twice, for a total stay of six months. Once in Japan, the girls are often crammed into small apartments and forbidden to have social contact with Japanese men. They learn a small vocabulary of necessary Japanese phrases, such as “Would you like to dance?” and “Do you think I’m beautiful?” as well as a few traditional songs to sing along with the guests. The men who flock to the clubs pay from seventy to one hundred dollars for two hours’ entertainment above the waist, and twice that amount for an hour below the belt.

  “Excuse me,” said a girl named Candy as she downed a free snack of spinach and sesame paste, “can you use chopsticks?” Obviously she had been trained well.

  Just as several of the girls nestled down on our couch, we were joined by a man in a lime-green blazer, a black silk shirt, and a large swath of hair that draped over his forehead. From appearance alone it was clear that he was no company hack. Hideo, as he told us, was thirty-one and ran his own antique shop and homemade jewelry store. Instead of offering the standard fare of Buddhist icons and lacquered cabinets, Hideo sold American army paraphernalia and cultural relics from the 1950s. “The fifties were great,” he said. “It was the time of rockabilly, Elvis, and the New York Yankees. It was America’s time.”

  “The Yankees?” I questioned.

  “Sure, the Yankees were the ultimate,” he enthused. “When Japanese people think about the 1950s, they drink about the New York Yankees.”

  In addition to Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle, other cultural idols from the 1950s such as Carl
Perkins and James Dean blanket coffee shops and youth hangouts from one end of the country to the other. In Shinjuku, a popular youth section of Tokyo, one department store hung a hundred-foot banner of Marilyn Monroe from its façade during a promotion. A best-selling James Dean poster encourages lovelorn teenagers to think for themselves and preserve their individual dignity:

  Self-deceiving love can be unsure.

  Keep a level head.

  Maintain your pride.

  Such symbols have become the slogans of a new generation of trendy Japanese, the shinjinrui I learned about during my weekend in the Snow Country. Hideo sold these “new types” all manner of “old-fashioned” American memorabilia.

  Jane, for her part, saw more than a coincidental connection between contemporary Japan and 1950s America. Japan today, like America thirty years ago, enjoys sudden prosperity after a long spell of fiscal hardship, and many Japanese are starting to believe that their unprecedented national wealth entitles them to spend more money for their personal comfort and satisfaction. As a result, Japanese women have begun buying fancier home appliances like electric bread makers, men have begun turning to fancy European cars, and students have taken to eating imported ice cream, playing video games, and worshiping such hedonistic heroes as Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

  Hideo looked to the American spirit as his model. “America was great in the 1950s,” he said. “You had the Frontier Spirit.” Although he spoke in Japanese, this expression, which constitutes the one pure, unadulterated fact that all Japanese students learn about the American character, came out in English. “America is very big, with a lot of land,” he continued, “so Americans can live on the frontier. Japan, on the other hand, is very small. We have no land, so Japanese are boorish and unromantic.”

  Hideo chose to live according to the principles of happiness and self-indulgence, which he saw as the pearls of the American way. This goal led him to turn away from the well-trod path of cooperation in favor of an independent existence. He did not attend a university. He did not join a big corporation. He started his own store instead. “Japanese companies have lifetime employment,” he said, “so the workers have no Frontier Spirit. It is the free merchants, like me, who have this feeling.”

  Not only did he personally reject the canon of Japanese thought which stresses “groupism” over individualism, but he felt that younger people in general were turning to this new philosophy, the Way of the Yankees. “Nowadays young men are becoming more individualistic, whereas in the old days they thought only of the group,” he suggested. “Now, each man can discover new worlds.”

  As Hideo grew more and more animated, our Filipino hostess grew more and more concerned that she was not fulfilling her duty to make us happy. She thrust a songbook into Hideo’s lap and requested that he sing a song on the kara-oke stage. To press her point, she stood up and started to clap. Soon the whole bar was applauding in suit, and Hideo, unable to resist such temptation, took his turn at the sing-along stereo system. His song proclaimed his manifesto: to others’ will I never kneel; I will go the way I feel. He sang the Frank Sinatra standard “Myyyy Wayyyy.”

  By the time he finished, half of the room was singing along as Hideo flipped his hair back and soaked in the spotlight. When he returned to our table, he made one final observation. “Japanese people are all yellow monkeys,” he said, repeating a common self-effacing slur. “We are a different color from you. Nevertheless, the Frontier Spirit does not care about color. Even the Japanese can have it.”

  Finished with his speech, he picked up a napkin, wrote something down, and thrust it into my pocket. Then he asked Jane to view a “late-night movie” with him, and the two of them left the bar. For the first time all evening I was left alone with the bill—$120—and I set off quietly for home, the lonely victim of the pickup scene I had set out to uncover.

  I wandered the empty streets of Sano toward my apartment, past the barbershop, the billiard hall, and the “Swan Song” music store, which had closed down the previous year. Each of these buildings stood apart from the others, but the mist of the night and the pale moonlight seemed to draw them together in a single line. As I walked, I thought of the people we had met that night. While others view Japanese society as strict and unforgiving, these individuals believed it to be resilient enough to incorporate them. Although they rejected traditional definitions of Japan, they did not flee its boundaries but broadened them instead. Even alone, in the middle of the night, they kept in sight of the Sun.

  As I stood in the cold outside my door, fumbling for my key, the napkin from Ysei fell out of my pocket. I opened it to read the message Hideo had written. “Japanese people are one race,” he had scribbled, “so we always return to the land of our ancestors. We love the cultures of all other worlds, but most of all we love Japan.” At the bottom of the page he had written his name, the date, the hour—2:00 A.M.—and a simple message in English: “Good Life. I love you.”

  17

  THE WAY OF LOVE: HOW TO PICK UP A JAPANESE GIRL

  If anyone among this people knows not the art of loving, let him read my poem, and having read be skilled in love.

  —Ovid, The Art of Love (I:1)

  “YOU HAVE A DISTINCT ADVANTAGE,” the bartender shouted from behind his counter. “Japanese girls love blonds.”

  During my search for the secrets of nanpa, I often heard this remark. Few people claimed to know much about picking up girls; even fewer confessed to having done it; but everyone agreed that I would find it easy because I am naturally blond. Actually, my hair is brown, but that didn’t seem to matter: the true secret to nanpa lay in marketing.

  One rainy Sunday night in early March I got much closer to the heart of nanpa when I found myself in a quiet one-room coffee shop in Sano with the unlikely name “Potato,” in the hands of two self-proclaimed experts who had volunteered to teach me a few tricks of the trade. From the pickup line to the check-in desk, they included every step.

  “You have to think ahead,” began Ishikawa, the owner of the SPEL juku who had brought me to this coffee shop to meet his friend Sato, the master. “You have to go to a place where the girls are. Remember, the early bird catches the worm.”

  Sato, who like his friend was married with one child, confirmed this strategy. He recommended a department store, a girl’s natural lair. There the cunning fellow scouts the ladies’ floors, spots an appealing prospect in the linen—or kitchen, or bathroom—department, and approaches with this line: “Excuse me, I was just trying to buy a pillow—or toaster, or towel—and I was having a bit of difficulty making a decision. I wonder if you might be able to give me some advice?” This strategy is advantageous, they agreed, because it creates an artificial debt which the gentleman owes the lady and which he insists on repaying immediately—say, at the coffee shop on the top floor of the store.

  While this approach has been time-tested and is virtually geek-proof, Ishikawa insisted that the absolutely best place to meet a girl is on a ski slope. There, the man, in his natural capacity as “master,” offers to teach the girl, in her intrinsic state as “disciple,” the most up-to-date alpine techniques. This approach is preferable, my sensei said, because it rekindles memories of school and the seminal teacher-pupil bond.

  This initial meeting qualifies as the first date. The skillful man, however, must not conclude this introductory encounter without first acquiring his potential beloved’s vital statistics: her name and telephone number. From here, he is ready for the second date.

  “Sports are best,” Sato advised. “When you play together, she develops an appetite. First you play, then you eat, then you ‘play’ again.” Athletics, it seems, are the aphrodisiac of choice.

  Short of sports, the séducteur could suggest some other leisure-time activity such as zoo-going or movie-watching. But the man’s objective throughout this encounter should be to indicate his unflagging interest in the girl by making physical contact.

  “Be sure and touch her,” Sato stresse
d. “Of course the shoulders are best.”

  “But don’t forget,” warned Ishikawa, clearly the more prudent of the two, “you should praise her as much as possible. Hair is best, or the face. Just praise what you like about her.”

  “What if I think she is smart, or funny,” I asked, “should I praise her mind?”

  “Of course that’s all right,” Sato said, “but you better stick to her hair or ears or chin. Looks are more important than brains, you know.”

  Having arrived at the crucial third date, Sato and Ishikawa warmed to their subject and adopted a sincere, almost solemn tone. Sato decided to close down his shop for the night in order to devote his undivided attention to guiding me through the delicate stages of advanced courtship.

  The third date, they announced, is the right time for the first kiss. After taking her out for the evening and treating her to a few drinks and a fine meal, the man must be ready to make his move.

  “All it takes is guts,” Sato said. “You gotta push.”

  “Walk her to the door,” Ishikawa suggested. “Stand still for a moment. Then kiss her—”

  “But only a light kiss,” Sato interrupted. “Not too hard, not too deep. Give her a chance to respond.”

  “Then,” his friend continued, “if she doesn’t resist, you can take her in your arms. Just as I tell my students, slow and steady wins the race.”

  By this time, if the prudent man has proceeded with caution through the previous stages, lavished praise on his lover’s locks and whetted her thirst, he is ready to advance to the final frontier of romance in Japan: the “love hotel.” These modern mosques of passion, which the Japanese call labu hotelus, are as good a symbol as any for contemporary Japanese culture. They mark a unique confluence of architectural ingenuity, lasciviousness, cuteness, and efficiency—attributes that would appear high on any list of Japanese character traits. An estimated twenty-five thousand of these unabashed, neon-blazoned dens of desire fill the downtown alleys of major cities and the outer reaches of rural towns. Constructed to look like medieval castles with towering turrets or cruise ships with soaring bow and stern, love hotels rent rooms by the hour (a “rest”) or for the night (a “stay”) and provide “easy in/easy out” service. They are, in short, the fast-food franchises of love.