First Foreign Geisha
Check out this short article about a non-Japanese person who’s become a part of a very-Japanese part of society:
Japan Today – News – Japans first ever foreign geisha debuts
The interesting thing to me is that it says she’s spent half of her life in Japan, and yet the article’s title still calls her a foreigner. It’s interesting because of what it says about Japan’s attitude toward foreigners: no matter how long a person’s been in Japan, and no matter how integrated they become in that society, they’ll always be considered a foreigner if they weren’t born there (or if they were born in Japan but aren’t Japanese racially speaking). Now, to be clear, I’m not saying that they’re racist or anything; just that it’s such a homogenous society it’s nearly impossible for an outsider to become an insider. Even the Japanese word for foreigner — gaijin — itself carries the connotation of being an outsider.
Kudos, though, to Sayuki the Geish, for becoming more of an insider than most of us could ever dream of.
So how does a skinny, white, English-speaking, Canadian boy like myself get “in”? I love Japan, its culture and its people, but no matter how long I’m there I’ll always be gaijin. It may be a frustration I’ll just have to live with.