While living in Japan, I read Moby Dick a total of four times and recommended it about a google times. (Remember when a google was just a big number?)
Anyway, Moby Dick has always been one of my favorite books, and one character in particular has always been a source of comfort and entertainment. We’ll get to that later, for now though, let’s take a look at a few characters from Moby Dick and how they can be used to describe some of the non-Japanese people I’ve met in Japan.
Captain Ahab… hmmm some maniacal pursuit of something, right? I see him coming to Japan for a fast and furious short period of time in pursuit of something – if it were still during the “bubble economy” period I’d say money, but there are many things an ahab might have his heart and mind set on. I doubt he’d bother to learn Japanese in his focused pursuit, so you can count out Ahab as my inspiration.
Queequeg – Now this is a nice character, and I think there are a lot of long-term resident ex-pat “queequegs” in Japan. Think of the British woman who wears a kimono whenever possible, or the Canadian guy learning Shodo (Japanese Calligraphy). These are good people who, in various manifestations, can innocently illustrate both the beauty and absurdity of some aspects of Japanese culture. A “queequeg” is unapologetic about his own cultural idiosyncracies while not thinking twice to adopt certain aspects of Japan’s. As the original Queequeg was openly cannibalistic, a queequeg in Japan might be seen in costume at a McDonald’s in Akibahara with no irony or ulterior motivations intended.
I picture someone who follows the Pequod’s second mate, Stubb doing well in Japan without becoming especially fluent in Japanese. This is a serious guy who would navigate the society successfully as a long-term resident. I could see him as the ignorantly blissful (and blissfully ignorant) lifelong resident English expert in a small town or neighborhood. He or she might end up a business or property owner, and fill a niche somewhere. Stubb might actually be one of the Moby Dick characters best suited for life in Japan.
During my time in Japan, I’ve known a few starbucks as well. Some were people for whom Japan was an OK vacation, a year abroad, but no place to make a home. Starbuck was one to take a stand and stick by his principals. Staying happy and healthy in Japan can require some degree of acceptance and choosing of battles as well as times and places. A person with principles too rigidly held might last a while in Japan depending on how different those principles and some of the fundamentals of lif in Japan mesh. I have known a starbuck who could neither accept nor change some things he saw in Japanese schools, and ended up leaving the country before finishing a year. During the short time he was in Japan he fought tooth and nail to change some things he didn’t like about the schools and strongly praised the things he did.
A “Moby Dick” in Japan could be someone who ends up in Japan brought by fate and happenstance. Some might even have their own Ahabs back home with their own harpooner filled Pequods.
And what about me you ask? Well, call me Ishmael.
An ishmael may be a little sarcastic, maybe a little dark-humored, looking for a little adventure, or some other change, not to mention something to experience and write about. An ishmael must be able to stay good-humored in the face of the good, the not so good, and the completely inexplicable. The only un-ishmael thing about my experience was that I stayed so long in Japan without my “hypos” getting the upper hand.
I’ll leave you with a quote that sums up the idea of Ishmael and me and moving to Japan so many years ago.
“…whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
Now if you were walking down the street in Philadelphia and had your hat knocked off by some random guy in the mid 1990s, I wholeheartedly apologize and assure you that I got my “hypos” in order during an enjoyable and fruitful career in Japan.