Customer Reviews

Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I understand her pain in losing her mother through reading the work "Dream of Water." However, it is quite unfair to base the entire society of Japan around one family. That's similar to someone else saying "Well I had a bad childhood and my father beat me and my mother was a severe drug user so therefore everyone else in the United States beats their children and uses drugs."

I notice that she discusses social issues which are also a bit too general. People are individuals and don't act alike, even in conformist societies -- we all have little quirks. Therefore, it's unfair to generalize about social characteristics of the Japanese. Also, because she had one or two experiences with vulgarity on the trains in Japan doesn't make a whole race of men pigs. We have problems with people acting up in New York City subways, but that doesn't make every person in NY insane or vulgar.

If it wasn't for her great writing style I'd be severely disappointed. However, I still find myself floating in and out of reading the book while reading on the train, and it's not because the people are being vulgar or obnoxious, it's just redundant to her last work. I was also very turned off to her treatment of her husband, and I agree with other reviewers that her rationale is clouded at points. I would rework this into a more socially - current work if I were Ms. Mori, because there's definitely nothing wrong with the writing.

I am 24years old Japanese. This book was pretty interesting to me when I saw it at the bookstore by accident because I moved to california from Japan a couple of years ago.
While I was reading the book, I was kinda confused because almost everything what she wrote about Japanese culture seemed like old stuff to me. I don't want people who read this book to believe everything. In my opinion, she exaggerated the fact too much(I'm not saying about her family, but Japanese culture).
She hasn't live in Japan for twenty years, so she doesn't know well what's going on in Japan NOW. People and Culture have changed a lot. She wrote the old facts about Japanese culture as if those are going on right now. She just lived in old Japan.

Ms. Mori, in her social commentary and comparison between the Midwest and Japan, exposes the soft underbelly of contemporary Japanese culture. Having hosted over 25 exchange students from Japan (all women) I began to have a deeper understanding of what their experience of Japan really was.

To be sure, Ms. Mori is an English professor, and her social examinations are based on her own experience, yet her generalizations do strike a chord with what I have come to know of both Japanese and American culture. While we either praise or damn other cultures what I have found is that both cultures have their flaws.

What I found most interesting is that she has confirmed my thesis that Japan never had a Renaissance. The country went directly from a Feudal state to an Industrial state without the pain of dealing with the questions of humanity. The social structures of Japan still reflect the Feudal culture of the Tokugawa era.

To be sure, there are beauties in both cultures. And, a bad childhood can easily mask the good side of the culture you live within. Read this book if you want to understand contemporary Japan from the eyes of a child who lost her mother and had an abusive father. There is a lot of pain and suffering found here. There are also the seeds of what will be the yet to come Japanese Renaissance. That will be interesting to watch.

What a coincidence! I was born and grew up in Kobe and Ashiya city where Ms. Mori was. I lived in Wisconsin for 7 years before I moved to Boston three years ago where I currently hold a professional position in higher ed. I am a few years younger than Ms. Mori but I considerd myself as in her generation. However, why are my experiences and views as a Japanese woman so different from hers? Certainly, I have stronger family ties with my parents. Also, she left Japan when she was 20 years old when she might have been too young to see the society in a larger context or make a connection deeper in the society outside her family circle. On the other hand, I left Japan when I was 27, after I finished college, held two professional positions and made life-long friendships with friends and some of my co-workers there. The Japanese women she talked about and the women I knew there were very different. No, they may not so different, but her reaction or reasoning to their behaviors are very different than mine. Why?

I don't think that she has been able to face her difficulties from her childhood and with her family yet. She might not hate Japan or its culture. But, because she can't overcome her inner weakness which prevents her to speak up for her own sake and to her family, she uses Japan, its society and culture as her excuse for her weakness. And that makes this book more subjective and lacking of objective descriptions of Japanese culture in both negative and positive ways. That is a very dissapointing part of this book and makes her writing "isagiyokunai" (lack of courage). She should stop victimize herself.

This book will flatter Orientalism which is still rooted in this country, but unfortunately, you must know that not all Japanese women are victims of the strict "masculine culture" anymore (where is a masculine man in Japan anyway?) and as someone wrote, "Japanese society (as other societies as well) has been changed day by day".....

Mori attempts to compare and contrast Japanese and Mid-west American cultures through the eyes of a woman. Although she highlights several differences between the two cultures, she does not objectively analyze them. In fact, she confuses cultural issues with her own emotional baggage.

The author cannot seem to glean any positive commentary on a Japanese woman's social role, and this sends up a red flair to the reader. As Mori bravely reveals herself, her unhappy childhood and her relationships, it becomes clear that she has been unable to come to terms with these things, and that has affected her writing.

For example, when discussing how Japanese women do too much housework for their husbands, she contrasts it with her own style: if she happened upon her husband's wet laundry sitting in the washer, she would not put it in the dryer for him. However, she writes that she WOULD do such a favor for a girlfriend. This behavior seems dysfunctional, and the more she reveals about herself, the more credibility she loses with the reader.

I read Ms. Mori's book at the recommendation of a friend, and am glad I did. Although I do not agree with her opinions all the time (her negative reactions sometimes cloud rational judgement), her observations and experiences are described frankly, in straightforward language. The negativity with which she writes is necessary in describing the abusive, dysfunctional childhood she experienced, and her resulting rebellion against her birth culture and language, but the book reads like a personal journal. I sometimes felt I was reading something I shouldn't, and as if this were a form of therapy for Ms. Mori to confront her demons. It would be wrong to subscribe to sweeping generalizations of Japan or the Midwest based on Ms. Mori's descriptions. On the other hand, she provides us with insight to a side of those two areas that we might not be otherwise aware of. Likewise, the events are so personal that it often matters not that she is from Japan and both bicultural and bilingual, since what she experiences growing up and later professionally could have happened just as easily to any monocultural, monolingual person. The difference is that she is interpreting her life from two culturally polarized perspectives.

I loved this book. I am not surprised that there are bad reviews. Some Japanese and japanophile readers could be offended by the revelations about Japanese culture. But, Kyoko is giving the reader tremendous insight into the social structure of Japan. She points out quite a few similarities to American Midwest culture. Best of all, her stories draw the reader in and keep reader wanting more.

Having lived in western Japan, far from the more broad-minded society in Tokyo, I observed that the restrictions experienced by the women Mori describes are still true. Her book may seem delicately written only to those who don't realize how radical it is in Japanese society (and that includes those who live now in the US) to speak the unvarnished truth, to act authentically and to write unblushingly about one's inner turmoils rather than communicating according to formalized patterns.

I just want to add my voice to the other reviewers in saying that Mori's analysis is distorted by her terrible childhood experiences. Please note that the reviewers who say this are the ones who have spent considerable time in Japan.

I am very sorry that Ms. Mori had such a miserable childhood, but I wish she had focussed on discussing her personal story, which she does beautifully and poignantly. When she tries to translate her personal life into social analysis, however, she fails disappointingly. Rather than provide insight, she contributes to outsiders' misconceptions about Japanese society and Japanese women. My personal experience (having lived in Japan and made several close, lifelong female friends, as well as having studied Japanese literature and culture on the undergrad and graduate level) has shown me far more diversity in the lives of Japanese women, and also demonstrates that many of Mori's assumptions are dictated by the half-truths that adults convey to children about their private lives--for example, her understanding of Japanese women's sexuality (both traditional and modern) is particularly far from reality.

One can imagine a person having the same terrible experiences here in the U.S. that the unfortunate Ms. Mori endured as a child. But would one accept Ms. Mori's sweeping generalizations if they were made about U.S. society?

There are much better works out there for deepening cultural understanding. I strongly recommend readers to avoid this one, and if you've already read it, try to erase its inaccurate societal critique from your mind.

Kyoko Mori does not like to return home to her home in Kobe, Japan, so how can she pretend to know so much about her culture...?
Yes, it is true that she lived in Japan, and visits occasionally, but when did she live there..? twenty years ago. As a student in the United States, who attends Japanese school and visits Japan every winter and summer, Mori is off on details.
Sexism in the roles of a household, yes, are distinguished in Japan, but you are seeing less, and less, of a "Women stay in the house" behaviour. My own, grandparents, who lived during WWII, help eachother with clearing the table, washing the dishes, preparing the vegetables, all of the daily tasks that Mori defines as "being a women's job" in Japan.
How could Kyoko Mori return to Japan and not see the huge changes taking place? In a homemaking textbook that I had about four years ago when I was in the sixth grade, it taught the basics of stitches, and cooking skills. Both boys and girls were in the same class, we used the same textbook, boys were clearly depicted in pictures of sewing and cooking just as the girls were.
The Japanese way of teaching is still very strict, but teachers circle specific areas where the calligraphy characters are wrong, with a sheet on the side telling you the angle of your brush stroke, all to help you learn.
Some of the stuff is true, but all of her ranting on a women's place, school, is old. Symbols are beginning to wear off, and although a good book, lacking in knowledge on modern Japanese culture