Stereotypes toward Nationalities

When I get tired, of school assignments, of miscommunication with my parents, of the lack of my ability, of having nightmares or what ever,many things that usually do not bother me start to annoy me a lot; I feel annoyed by the ice on the road, the snow stepped on by so many foot, the cigarret butte wet on the snow, the person threw the cigarret, the person smoking while talking on the phone, the person talking in the language I do not understand, and even the person talking in my mother tongue, Japanese.

Indeed, there is the time that I suddenly start to hate being a Japanese speaker. More correctly, I sometimes hate to be a Japanese. Even more specifically, I hate to be seen as a Japanese girl.

I am not saying that I hate Japanese people or Japanese culture. As a person who grown up in Japan, I know so many heartful and awesome people who are Japanese. I also like the culture I have grown up with, and I do respect both modern and traditional culture of Japan. I like Japanese literature, and I like the handy and reasonable book style that what we call bunko-bon in Japanese. I like, well, I should stop here other wise I would take hours to list everything I like in Japanese culture.

Yet I sometimes hate to be Japanese because some people see me as a Japanese girl. Being labeled as a Japanese girl annoys me so much because I think many of stereotypical images of a Japanese girl do not represent who I am at all.

What are the stereotypes of Japanese (or East Asian as a whole)? The other day, we talked about it in class, and what my classmates said are;
a. Polite
b. Hard working
c. Quiet
d. Passive
e. Women are subordinate of men
f. Women works only at home no matter how high they are educated
Indeed, those are the STEREOTYPES of Japanese, andnone of them are applicable to me.

Well, I would love to be a polite and hard working person, but I am not successful so far. And I am pretty talkative person especially when topics come to politics or social issues. I like to experience new things actively, and I like to state my opinions out loud. I like to decide what to do by myself, and I hate may father telling me to follow what he says. Plus I have no intention to marry anybody. So will I be a house wife and prepare meals and bath and open a door to greet a husband coming back from his work, saying "Welcom home, my darlin, would you take a bath first or have a dinner" ? No way.

Of curse, there are Japanese who are polite, quiet, and working hard as a house wife. Indeed, my mother is polite, hardworking, quiet, and working as a house wife (even though she is neither passive nore suobordinate of her husband). I respect my mother, and I admire her having such nice personality.

But it is that those charactristics do not fit into me. So when people see me as a Japanese girl, I feel the huge gap between how they see me and how I see myself. I have my name and my personality. You cannot judge me in the categoly of Japanese girl.
"Oh, you are so talkative as a Japanese girl."
Excuse me? What do you mean "as a Japanese girl"?

I suppose that many people feel uncomfortable that people assume who they are with stereotipical images. If you have a blond hair and blue eyes and come to Japan, you would most likely to be English speaker, Christian, carzy over parties and drinkings. If you are from Phillipine and live in Japan, you would be automatically labeled to be a prostitue. If you are from Kenya, you would be seen as a person running with lions and being nature friendly. Those sound redicuras, but I feel that many of us still use stereotypes to judghe people unconciousely. I heard the story that my friend's friend who is a Native American encountered the situation at his university that his classmate said, "oh, you are pretty clever as a native."

So I just do not like that some people judge me with stereotypes of a Japanese girl. Even though I am not a patriotic person, I am happy to be Japanese, holding a Japanese passport (because in many cases I do not need a visa). I do see myself Japanese when I think of Japan's war crimes. And I am a Japanese girl in the end. Thus,it is just stereotypes that annoy me a lot.

S.M.