The Soap Opera Continues...

Culture clash is something I've had to live with for almost two decades now. Things have certainly gotten easier since the early nineties when I was seriously running around bumping into things (and vice versa), but I still keep managing to run up against unwritten rules. Well, now I'm finding out the hard way that culture clash can often happen within the same country.

The Tohoku (literally "northeast") region of Japan has always been quite different from the Kanto region, where I live. It is often said that the coldness of the climate, the ruggedness of the land, and the rich agricultural and timber produce that still manages to grow there have all shaped the people up there. All I know is that my father-in-law's family, who hail from the Tohoku region, never cease to amaze me. With a couple of notable exceptions, they have always been a close-knit group, always quick to come to one another's aid when need arises. They are generally as skilled as they are motivated, armed with a "screw the 'experts', let's do this" attitude that I have come to appreciate. They are also a fascinating and colorful group of people.
(Now...if only I could understand their dialect better...a common complaint among Kantoites!)

Our recent family crisis has shown all these facts clearly. As I mentioned in the last post, my wife's uncle who is a carpenter/farmer up in Hokkaido didn't hesitate to come down to our place to help out. An aunt came up from Matsudo (Chiba Prefecture) for a short but very helpful visit. Then the two cousins I mentioned came up from Tokyo. A couple of days after they left, an aunt flew down from Iwate Prefecture (in the Tohoku region) as promised even though a massive earthquake had struck her area the night before, arriving with her daughter who lives in Yokohama. The daughter put in a full day's work in our yard before work obligations made her go back home, but the aunt continued to stay, helping us take care of garden and house work that should have been done ages ago but wasn't on account of our current family situation. The aunt is still here even now, cheerfully asking what she should do next.

I'm told that this is a tradition in many if not most parts of the Tohoku region. Friends and family are considered a treasure not to be taken for granted, so someone in need tends to bring in a whole mass of people ready and eager to lend a hand.


The problem is that this is NOT a custom here in Kanto. Here in Namegata City, at least, people are much more walled off from each other. Human relations are also dictated much more by pride. Anyone who is not a member of the immediate family is a guest and therefore must be waited on hand and foot for the duration of their (hopefully short) visit. If someone is in trouble, others might express their condolences either during a three-minute stopover or when passing each other in the supermarket, but real help is unlikely to be offered for the expressed reason that the helpee will then wind up feeling obligated to repay the debt.

In other words, we've hardly seen spit of any of mother-in-law's many relatives who live in our area. They ask how she's doing in passing, and then they promptly disappear. This despite the fact that she was always very active in our community, in our neighborhood, and among her family. But as far as my mother-in-law is concerned now, that's just fine. She has done nothing but gripe every time she has found out another relative of my FIL has shown up to help. Today she told my FIL to buy a return ticket for the aunt who is staying with us now and send her home on the earliest possible flight. And since she said that, my wife immediately backed her very vociferously.

This evening I politely informed the aunt that we wanted her to stop cleaning the in-laws' house. She said she understood, but she also said she felt sorry for me. Actually, though it may surprise some people, the one I really feel sorry for right now is my father-in-law, who is caught between his loyalty to his wife and his loyalty to his family, not to mention his own Tohoku-shaped sense of right and wrong. Watching his longtime closest companion melt away into oblivion before his eyes has been hard enough. Having her and then my wife bite his head off for observing what he was raised to believe is a matter of course...and insist he spit in his family's face...left him clearly devastated.

(Considering my MIL has been in no condition to do anything around the house or in the garden for months now, and the place wound up in a pathetic state despite our best efforts, I'm really not sure what her problem is, but anyway...I'd rather not make things any harder. As much as I appreciate the relatives' generosity, I guess I'll have to forgo it.)

P.S. I can't find my camera, so no pics of the lilies and gladiolas yet. They are beautiful, though.