Being Two-Faced

A few nights before leaving San Francisco for my bright and shiny new life in Japan, a gay Taiwanese friend invited me to dinner. It was years ago and I can't remember the name of the place, only that it was on a hill near Coit Tower and it sold only varieties of quiche. But I digress.

Solemnly, after the plates were cleared away, he gazed at me from the other side of the table. "When you get to Japan," he told me, "you have to be careful. Don't believe anything anyone says. The Japanese have two hearts and two faces."

I was shocked, indignant the way only a young, liberal, former Teach For America volunteer could be. I knew of course that there was still some bad blood between Japan and its neighbors, but "Ning" (all names in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent) was a member of the young Asian demographic awash in and enamored with Japanese fashion, manga, and video games. Surely Ning, who gobbled up Japanese magazines to copy the latest hairstyles of the Johnny's Entertainment idols wasn't holding on to the memory of war atrocities? It smacked to me of simple bigotry, and I believe I said as much to him. Ning just shrugged. "Maybe. But sometime you are going to remember what I said."

Flash forward three and a half years. Shouhei and I had been together for two years, and things were going well. We'd been to China and Thailand together, and he had come back to meet my family in the States. We weren't quite living together, but I had a key to his apartment and spent half my nights there. The sex was happening less often than it had, but when it did occur it was fantastic. He'd said he loved me and I believed it.

If there was a problem, it was that he worked to hard, but this was hardly unusual in a country that coined a word, karoshi, for death by overwork. He left early and came home late, often very late if etiquette required he go out with his co-workers. That he often did not answer his phone annoyed me, but this was Japan, not the States. The rules were different. Almost none of the Japanese guys I had met were openly gay, and they liked to keep their private lives hidden. For Shouhei, that meant keeping me hidden. I had long before put aside jealous suspicions in an attempt to live as I should "when in Rome," to understand him on his own terms.

It was one of those evenings. He was out. I was waiting. I decided to check my emails as I often do, when suddenly a message popped up from another gaijin, written in English. It was only two words.

"Hello Sexy!"

I ignored it. Shouhei had forgotten to sign off and this guy--possibly his ex, whom he was still friendly with--was messaging him. After a few minutes, another one appeared.

"What's wrong? Shy?"

I clicked on the box, but of course the software on Shouhei's computer was in Japanese, a language I was struggling with back then. I wanted to log him off.

"You weren't so shy the other night."

Still ignoring, I made a guess and clicked the cursor on a box I assumed would shut it off. Instead, his email opened. Not his regular email. A separate email, all in English. I read.

There were dozens of emails from dozens of guys, going back the entire two years we had been together. I didn't read all, but I read enough of them. Shouhei had been meeting guys behind my back the entire time, and I hadn't a clue. I remembered suddenly making love the night before, with him looking up at me with soft, sincere eyes, telling me how much I meant to him. It was the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. When-You-Get-Home-I-Am-Gonna-Kick-Your-@$$.

Ning could have phrased his assessment of the Japanese character a bit more diplomatically (which would have been the way the Japanese would have done it), but he was not essentially wrong. They call it here tatamae and hon'ne, saying or doing whatever is necessary to maintain an atmosphere of harmony and peace and the "truth." Most cultures do it to an extent, but like sword-smithing the Japanese have perfected it. It is even part of the language. As a trilingual French friend of mine recently put it, "French is the perfect language for expressing emotion. English is the best language for swearing. And Japanese is the supreme language for dodging questions, being evasive, and hiding what you really mean."

The astute reader may wonder what the photo above had to do with the actual content of this post. I had to get your attention somehow.