To belong…


“I would rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not,” is what I read on a t-shirt worn by a teenage girl in Tokyo, who passed me by on a train plat- form. In a high-end department store I saw decorative items and posters for girls’ rooms saying, “space where I can be my- self”. Are these the changes in modern Japan


that I was expecting to see? I was always fascinated with the Japanese concepts of Honne and Tatemae. Honne is a person’s true feelings and desires (本音hon’ne, ‘true sound’), and tatemae is the behaviour and opinions one displays in public (建前 tatemae, ‘built in front,’ ‘façade’). As a fairly straightforward, yet diplo-


matic ‘Westerner,’ I often found that this discrepancy bothered me, though I tried to withhold judgement as this honne-tatemae divide is considered to be of paramount importance in the Japanese society, culture and social norms. While at some level I was happy and in- trigued to read the inscription on the girl’s


24 FOCUS The Magazine March/April 2020


t-shirt, it brought down the realisation to me that below the surface there is a belief that we will be hated and not accepted for who we are. Tat is the first half of this statement, the grounding statement. Whether being accepted, fitting in and


almost blending into the environment is a norm like in Japan, or not, like in most Western cultures, deep down, we all want to be accepted – this comes from one of our deepest human needs to ‘belong’. I personally struggled with that and still


do. I am often criticised by my children for not feeling more allegiance to my home country, Serbia. Having gone to Japan at the age of 24 to live and work, significant parts of my persona were af- fected by their value system. While some values I recognised as intrinsically my own and I found them present in Japan much more so than in my home country, such as meritocracy, commitment, dedication, hard work, loyalty, orderliness, sense of contribution to the whole, but some oth- ers, like honne-tatemae, I found really dif-


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ficult. Te need for full freedom of self-ex- pression and the ‘pursuit of truth’ (what- ever that may be for me) aligned better with an individualistic society, such as Britain’s, than a strongly collectively ori- ented society like Japan’s. Now back to the sense of belonging. So


while at the same time I rebelled against this “collective oppression to fit in” and be part of the group, I also felt very touched by the beautiful examples of co-ordina- tion, unity and collective effort presented


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