Gaijin Insecurities: The Japanese Language Proficiency Pecking Order

At the same touch-football game where I met Dave S., I also encountered a strange gaijin phenomenon for the first time: insecure gaijin who speak Japanese to each other to reassure themselves that their Japanese is better than the other guy's.

Back in 1991, the number of (Caucasian) foreigners who could speak decent Japanese was small. Rather than correctly attribute this to a general lack of interest in learning Japanese among non-Japanese, many Japanese, acting on a misguided national or ethnic pride, convinced themselves that Japanese blood was somehow required to learn Japanese. (Which is why I was frequently asked if I was part-Japanese.) Moreover, because the Japanese education system emphasizes reading and writing over speaking in foreign-language education, leaving most Japanese unable to speak English despite six years of mandatory English education (and more for those with college degrees), many believe that mastering a foreign language is not possible for people of normal intelligence.

These factors led many Japanese to believe that gaijin who could string together a sentence or two of Japanese were absolute Einsteins. And they fawningly told those gaijin so. After hearing this enough, many gaijin who spoke a little Japanese started to believe it.

However, a Japanese-speaking foreigner was no longer special if he wasn't the only one. Another foreigner was always a potential threat to one's ego, hence the need to learn where one stood in the Japanese-ability pecking order -- whether one could continue feeling superior to yet another gaijin who could not get past konnichiwa or would have to go home and sulk because someone else's Japanese was better.

After the game, as Dave and I prepared to head to "Oh, God!," I noticed two of the Yalies packing up their things. Their Japanese girlfriends were there, and they were each speaking Japanese to them. As each tried to make sure that the other knew he could also speak good Japanese, their voices grew louder and louder, until they both gave up the pretense and started speaking Japanese to each other, each trying to show that he was higher on the Japanese-ability scale.

I thought this was exceedingly silly. For me, speaking Japanese to another English speaker outside a classroom always had an "ick" factor to it. But it was not long before I started encountering people who wanted to reassure themselves that my Japanese wasn't as good as theirs by speaking Japanese to me. My icky feeling would instantly kick in. I'd answer their question in English and refuse to be sucked into their little self-affirmation game.

Even leaving Japan does not cure many ex-gaijin of their need to salve their egos by proving to themselves that they are the still the most specialist gaijin of all. It's still common for people I first meet, upon finding out that we both lived in Japan, to start speaking Japanese to see whether they are entitled to feel superior or must suck up to me.

Only two exceptions existed to my rule against speaking Japanese with another gaijin. One was when we were with a Japanese person who spoke no English. Then it was just a matter of courtesy and necessity and didn't give me the willies. The other was the rarer occasion where Japanese was actually our common language. For example, in 1991, I took Japanese lessons at a school that prepared foreigners for entrance into college. Most of the students were from Korea, and a few were from southeast Asia and the Middle East. Japanese was our common language.

You should have seen the faces of the people on the street when they saw us walking through Shibuya speaking Japanese to each other after class . . . .