Doshite nihongo o benkyo-saretan desu ka?
どうして日本語を勉強されたのですか。
Why are you studying Japanese?
It all started in 1995 with a lightly used copy of Japanese for Busy People and a Kanji workbook, gifts from a good friend who had briefly attempted, and then abandoned, the project of learning Japanese. I became fascinated by the dual syllabaries, the ideographic characters, the ancient culture embodied in every sentence. It was unlike anything I had ever tried to learn before. And so, during my commute to Manhattan, I began to study the Japanese language in earnest. While I have made some modest progress over the ensuing years, I still have a long way to go. Gambarimasu!
Doshite nihongo o benkyo-saretan desu ka?
どうして日本語を勉強されたのですか。
Why are you studying Japanese?
Didn’t I just answer that question? Like I told you, it was an intellectual attraction. Why does it have to be anything more than that? There’s nothing more to tell. Okay, you want me to explain? Look, I don’t know where the attraction started. I liked monster movies as a kid . ゴジラ！Isn’t that how most people get into Japanese, from movies and fashion and anime? Except back then, they’d only show the monster movies once a year around Thanksgiving. And we had the Shogun television miniseries and comic book ninjas, Wolverine and his Japanese girlfriend saying <LOGAN-SAN>. Japan was part of the culture, and I just took it to the next level.
Doshite nihongo o benkyo-saretan desu ka?
どうして日本語を勉強されたのですか。
Why are you studying Japanese?
So you’re not going to let it go, are you? I know how this works. You’ll just keep asking the same question over and over again until I break down and tell you the truth. Frankly, I don’t care if you know. It’s just a bit awkward, that’s all, awkward for you, not me, I’m cool with it.
Okay, it wasn’t all James Clavell and comic books. I heard all sorts of things about Japan growing up.
Here’s one of my father’s stories:
It’s October 1941. We went to Hawaii. We stopped at every one of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaii, Kauai, Lanai, Molokai, Niihau, Maui, Oahu. Molokai was the leper colony. They made a movie about Father Damian there, he lived with the lepers for 40 years, then he caught leprosy and died. Anyway, all the islands used to have whorehouses. Mostly, they were Japanese girls, they had Japanese farmers all over the islands. It was two dollars a shot, and I used to visit them all.
Except for Molokai. I skipped the leper colony.
We went back to San Francisco, and then I made a second trip.
I’m in Honolulu. I meet my friend George Soloff, who’s in the Navy. We buy a bottle of whiskey and we go to Waikiki Beach. I get drunk, fall asleep on the beach, and wake up 15 minutes before the ship is due to leave. I’m sick, I throw up. I grab a taxi and get to the ship. They’re picking up the gangway, but I get aboard. It was seconds that made the difference. The date was December 1st, 1941. Had I missed the ship, I would have been hanging around Pearl Harbor six days later.
We were a day out of San Francisco when we got news that Pearl Harbor was attacked.
And then after the war:
Japan had geisha girls. They weren’t whores, they were just companions. They would just sit and pass the wine glasses, and they’d work on the fish and cut the steaks for you.
I saw the devastation we had done to Japan. I didn’t see Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but I saw Yokohama. My God, what we did to those Japanese. I said to myself — you fuck with the United States, boy, we had to build the ships, we had to build the planes, we had to train the soldiers, we sent them to different countries all over the fucking world, and we kicked your ass. But you know what? We’re not the kind of ruler that takes over and enslaves the country. We gave them food, we brought them money so they could get back on their feet.
I also remember bringing weekies, a set of seven underpants of different colors, each labeled with a different day of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. For a set of weekies, you could get laid for two weeks.
All that’s from the book, LEON: A LIFE. I’ve been told that it’s unusual to hear about the brothels. Usually, it’s glossed over in mariners’ biographies and autobiographies, but I’m glad my father was honest about it.
Can you blame me for taking an interest?
Doshite nihongo o benkyo-saretan desu ka?
どうして日本語を勉強されたのですか。
Why are you studying Japanese?
Okay, I guess I see your point. Through these questions, or better yet the repeated question, we’re starting to get somewhere.
We’ve established an intellectual interest in Japanese and the cultural influence of Japan, but those could apply to all sorts of people who never take up Japanese studies. My father’s influence was also a factor, but that didn’t guide my siblings towards the language. There must be something else.
The simplest explanation is usually the best. That means sex.
Back in high school, I was interested in a girl. She liked me well enough but not like that, and I was too short for her. For more than a year, I tried to make headway. Nothing. And then one night I go out with her and her folks, her parents liked me, we go out to a Japanese restaurant and it’s the first time I try sushi and we tasted sake and later that evening I make my move and it’s not a complete rebuff, not at all, although I should have known better than to try and it never happens again.
That association between an unrequited first love and Japanese cuisine may explain what was to ensue in my Japanese language learning, an extraordinarily outsized effort toward an unattainable goal culminating in a momentary and fleeting taste of success followed by eventual acceptance that it wasn’t to be.
Doshite nihongo o benkyo-saretan desu ka?
どうして日本語を勉強されたのですか。
Why are you studying Japanese?
This isn’t in the book, but my father would tell this joke:
I asked one of the whores: “What are you doing with the money you’re making?”
She replied: “Buying real estate in Tokyo.”
It’s not a very good joke, and I don’t like it. But I’m telling it now because it says something about economic anxiety toward Japan. In the 1980s, Japan became an economic powerhouse. The US dollar lost strength against the yen. Prestige assets were being snapped up in the US. At the peak of Japan’s real estate boom, the Imperial Palace was said to be worth more than the state of California. Thus the demeaning and sordid joke imputing unsavory sources of well-earned Japanese wealth. ごめんあさい。
My father was a survivor of the Great Depression and World War II. He had the highs of being an American abroad with an ascendant dollar during the postwar era, and the lows of trying to sell stocks and bonds during the market downturn of the Vietnam War era. He struggled to find employment later in life, and this led him to become a house-husband raising three kids.
With that upbringing, I inherited a sense of unease about America’s economic future in an increasingly competitive world. It didn’t pan out exactly as anticipated or as quickly, but there’s no question that such unease was, and is, warranted.
I started learning Japanese because in it I saw the future, what we now call “The Asian Century.”
But it was much more concrete than that. For those last few months of my employment as a database programmer, I drove around in a leased Nissan Pathfinder. This was my first experience driving a Japanese car, and it was a beauty. I liked the engineering, the lines, the design, the aesthetic. How did they do it so well?
I remember driving around in the Pathfinder, the audio for Japanese for Busy People in the tape deck, thinking: “I have to learn this language.”
My final answer: I’m studying Japanese for business.