100. BE SILENT

I have finally reached number 100 in this blog. I wondered what to write about this time, and I thought I would like to try to bridge the gap between writing about my own life and writing about the Japanese psyche, as I would like to do from now on (at least until my website runs out). My plan is to concentrate on something I hope I have learned a lot about in my time here, namely my ideas of what makes Japanese people tick (and where and why I feel bothered by these revelations, in other words where it conflicts with the way I myself was brought up). So here we go with the first 3-digit blog in 2026, the Year of the Fire Horse. My watchwords for this year are Courage and Patience. A horse needs a lot of courage to step into a fire, and those who trained horses to do this (as on the early horse-drawn fire trucks) would necessarily need a lot of patience. A rather good metaphor for gaijin who spend a lot of time in the crucible of this culture?

Net influencers who write about Japan often praise the public silence – in trains, etc. (One wonders exactly how noisy their home countries are.) I have noticed silence where it wouldn’t exist in other countries, like in elevators and restrooms. People who are talking up a storm will fall silent when they enter these places. Why? What influencers don’t talk about (maybe they don’t know) is WHY there is so much silence here, because there is. In my rural village, there is almost no noise in the daytime except cars going by, and natural sounds e.g. birdcalls etc. At night, it is just as quiet, although recently I heard a sound I haven’t heard for years – kids riding loud, souped-up motorbikes down the straight bypass road in the middle of the night. It is loud, which is its very purpose – to make noise. It reminds me of a doggerel song I once wrote:

     O the high school dropout’s bike is loud

     His parents live under a cloud

     They think he should be the shamefaced one

     But he’s having too darn much fun.

It is fun as well as liberating to make noise, either oneself or with devices, as people (mainly men) have figured out from time immemorial. Think about noisy cars and trucks, power tools etc. But any kind of deliberate noise is frowned upon in this culture. You can’t even raise your voice to call your family to dinner; you have to go specially and talk to individual members quietly. I have very seldom heard a raised voice in the neighborhood; if kids are in the house, you might hear footsteps running, but that’s about all. Even when you might expect to hear some noise made by a person – as in a baby delivery room – it is, for the most part, eerily silent. I am the only one who makes noise—shouting at recalcitrant cats, etc. – and I shudder to think what the neighbors think of me.

That’s not to say that there isn’t any noise here. Tools, both for gardening and cutting wood etc., are OK, as are the announcements on train platforms and in the train itself. There are auditory annoyances in everyday life as well. A very loud motorcycle is ridden on the weekend in circles in a nearby car park, though I have never heard anyone complain either to the guy himself or to what authorities there are. There is a dog next door that barks incessantly when left alone, though I think I am the only one that ever spoke to the owners about it. Why are you expected to be silent, and why does no one complain (except sotto voce to your best friends, maybe) about noise? It seems to be a contradiction in terms. Is everyone against noise in general, or not?

I think this is connected to the group idea of harmony. You should try not to make any noise yourself, as this would disturb others; but so would complaining, which might hurt the feelings of the person who makes the noise. Avoiding causing meiwaku (trouble) is the name of the game. You can’t complain, because you might hurt some inconsiderate person’s feelings! (This is also connected to the “guidelines” for behavior, I wouldn’t call them rules, that tourists are inundated with. Don’t complain, just stare coldly, and maybe they will get the idea.) This becomes even more weird when you have a legitimate complaint, as happens frequently. You can almost hear the people around you thinking, “Why is she making such a fuss, why doesn’t she just gaman (endure)?”

One type of problem noise for me is leaf blowers. They don’t pick up leaves that I have seen, they just blow them (loudly) to another location. I think they come under the heading of Noise for the Sake of It, legitimized by its being part of a job. When I was a University teacher, in autumn we could not have the windows open in the classroom, because you couldn’t hear yourself think due to the gardeners wielding leaf blowers. Not a very good situation for a language teacher, or students either; but I never heard any complaints about that noise.

As you can imagine, I grew up with noise, in the form of my dad shouting, and other noises such as his radio and carpentry workshop. He was a noisy person. Other people, both in our house and in the neighborhood, made various noises. There wasn’t any social prohibition against noise that I remember. My dad’s shouting was scary, but I realize now how frustrated he must have been for various reasons, and having become rather noisy myself, I know that it isn’t only because of anger. Old-age deafness plays a part, and a pervasive feeling of distance that makes you want to be heard.

So do I have to learn to be silent now because I might hurt someone’s feelings – someone that is too shy to come out and say, “Be quiet, you are making too much noise.” That is what would happen in my culture, and hurt feelings would be the problem of the hurt-feeling person. Where does one draw the line with one’s own behavior? Do I eventually come down on the side of my adopted land or the way I was brought up? Yes, I can talk to other gaijin in the elevator or restroom, if I want to get looked at as though I were a dead cockroach by Japanese people around me. It takes courage to do what one was brought up to do, in the face of a whole culture full of people who don’t understand. This is the basis of a lot of bad feelings against “foreigners” these days. I know they say “When in Rome” (this proverb is also front and center in Japanese culture); in this case a little voice inside me keeps saying “but…but…but…”.

One of my favorite TV programs is “Seinfeld”, where people shout at each other all the time with no lasting hard feelings. (is it the Jewishness or the New Yorkiness?) It has taken me this long to appreciate the value of noise. I have a “screaming place” in the middle of wide fields, where I can make as much noise as I like, but it isn’t available all the time. What do others think about this aspect of culture shock? I’m getting tired of having to be silent to fit in. It’s one more thing that I think is difficult about living here.