"What We Heard About The Japanese" and "What the Japanese Perhaps Heard", by Rachel Rose

I love these two poems. I think they are fascinating in terms of the way they depict the "urban myth" quality of cultural misunderstanding, and that they paint a lovely picture of just how wide the cultural gap yawns for most of us. The incident referred to in the second poem is the 1992 shooting of Yoshihiro Hattori, for those (like me) who hadn't heard of it.

I found these poems through The Wondering Minstrels, a daily poem mailing and discussion list which I in turn found through Henry Jenkins, a Comparative Media Studies professor at MIT who is advising a graduate thesis on the community.

I belong to at least three poetry communities, and I read a lot of blogs in general. For those of you who don't already, you can manage both blogrolls and listserv subscriptions through Bloglines (thanks Shelly for the listserv tip), which means you can subscribe and then let the poems/posts pile up until you have a quiet half-hour or so to peruse them. Very handy! And speaking of handy tech, when I switch back to LiveJournal, I'll be able to put stuff like this behind a "cut tag" so that it's optional reading for those of you who aren't poetry buffs. I love that feature.

What We Heard About the Japanese

We heard they would jump from buildings
at the slightest provocation: low marks

On an exam, a lovers' spat
or an excess of shame.

We heard they were incited by shame,
not guilt. That they

Loved all things American.
Mistrusted anything foreign.

We heard their men liked to buy
schoolgirls' underwear

And their women
did not experience menopause or other

Western hysterias. We heard
they still preferred to breastfeed,

Carry handkerchiefs, ride bicycles
and dress their young like Victorian

Pupils. We heard that theirs
was a feminine culture. We heard

That theirs was an example of extreme
patriarchy. That rape

Didn't exist on these islands. We heard
their marriages were arranged, that

They didn't believe in love. We heard
they were experts in this art above all others.

That frequent earthquakes inspired insecurity
and lack of faith. That they had no sense of irony.

We heard even faith was an American invention.
We heard they were just like us under the skin.


What the Japanese Perhaps Heard

Perhaps they heard we don't understand them
very well. Perhaps this made them

Pleased. Perhaps they heard we shoot
Japanese students who ring the wrong

Bell at Hallowe'en. That we shoot
at the slightest provocation: a low mark

On an exam, a lovers' spat, an excess
of guilt. Perhaps they wondered

If it was guilt we felt at the sight of that student
bleeding out among our lawn flamingos,

Or something recognizable to them,
something like grief. Perhaps

They heard that our culture
has its roots in desperate immigration

And lone men. Perhaps they observed
our skill at raising serial killers,

That we value good teeth above
good minds and have no festivals

To remember the dead. Perhaps they heard
that our grey lakes are deep enough to swallow cities,

That our landscape is vast wheat and loneliness.
Perhaps they ask themselves if, when grief

Wraps its wet arms around Montana, we would not prefer
the community of archipelagos

Upon which persimmons are harvested
and black fingers of rock uncurl their digits

In the mist. Perhaps their abacus echoes
the shape that grief takes,

One island
bleeding into the next,

And for us grief is an endless cornfield,
silken and ripe with poison.

— Rachel Rose