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I have heard from a few people that they think Japanese people are crazy germaphobes. At first, I found this very confusing, but I realized that it is probably because the Japanese lifestyle seems so much cleaner than the American one from a distance. I can list a few examples. It is customary to take one's shoes off inside, leaving them in a special area by the front door. Traditional houses have big, open areas of tatami reed mat flooring, low tables with cushion seats, and minimal artwork hanging on the walls. There are books such as Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows that detail the Japanese love of empty space and how it is used to make new, beautiful shapes. Large spaces with white walls and wood trim create a feeling of cleanness and perfection. This ties into the zen gardens we see pictures of, with their perfect lines of sand representing the sea and cosmos. It is also similar to the flower arranging art of ikebana, which is all about the beauty of a few simple flowers with long stems set in a lovely, earthenware holder. Additionally, Japan has a reputation for cleaning up disasters quickly, or at least letting the world think that they do. I hear a lot of people talking about how on top of things those Japanese people are, how organized, how ready to clean up a mess. Some of the world's top organization gurus are from Japan. On top of all that, Japanese people do not shake hands when they meet, instead bowing and not touching. In America, this usually means a person is afraid of the germs on other people's hands. And when a Japanese person is sick with a cold, they will wear a face mask to cover their nose and mouth while out in public. They even wash themselves before getting into the bath tub! Perhaps even the use of chopsticks and avoiding cutting meet at the table plays into all this stereotype about germophobia.
(Picture of ikebana flowers found on Google Images.)
In my experience, however, I have not found Japanese people to be overly afraid of germs. Actually, I would I say that Russians are far more likely to be afraid of germs and sickness, which I found very surprising. One would think that Japan, where the cities seem very clean, would be the land of neat freaks while Russia, where the cities are old and dusty, would be dirty without a second thought. This is not the case. I would say that the opposite is true.
I think Japanese people's seemingly overly clean habits actually come from a place of superstition and etiquette rather than a fear of germs. Buddhism and Shintoism are very popular there, and people's focus tends to be on inner purity, tradition, rituals, and good fortune, rather than on staying physically clean. (Please do not misunderstand. I do not mean that people are dirty or smell. Japanese people bathe frequently, almost daily.) One good example of fear of being spiritually dirty versus being physically contaminated is the attitude towards death. At first, one might think that it is entirely natural to dislike corpses. And you would be right. However, the negative feelings towards death go deeper than that, further emphasized by the country's love of ghost stories. In East Asia, many languages are afraid of the number 4 (四, shi) since its pronunciation is similar to that of death (死, shi). Many buildings will skip the number four so that the floor numbers go 1, 2, 3, 5, 6... Even places that will still allow fourth floors will still dislike the number 4 in the same way Westerners might dislike 13; it is simply one of those unlucky things. Certain flowers are appropriate for funerals and are extremely rude at other occasions. You must also be sure to get the number of flowers in a bouquet right, since even numbers of flowers are associated with funerals. What I am getting at is that Japan seems less obsessed with being clean and more interested in getting the ritual right. You do certain things in a certain way because that is how the ritual has evolved over time, such as bowing to another person, thereby showing them respect by angling the highest part of your body towards them. (Along those same lines, showing someone the bottom of your foot is quite rude, which is part of why sitting on one's knees with your feet pointing behind you is so important.) Many parts of Japanese culture are like a bonzai tree, carefully pruned and shaped over hundreds of years. Sometimes there is no deeper meaning beyond having a perfect tree in a manageable pot. Control can be the obsession. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, such as special bathroom slippers, but maybe that comes from a time when outhouses were still the norm.
Russia, on the other hand, is much less formal about things, but it has its own share of rituals and I have often found that these rituals are justified based on everyone's desire to avoid getting sick. A good example is taking off one's shoes in the house. In Japan, the shoes are left by the front door, and sometimes there will even be the aforementioned special bathroom shoes. When I asked about this, people would just say that it was simply what one does, that your shoes might be dirty, that the bathroom floor might be dirty, that kind of thing. In Russia, on the other hand, I got much more passionate responses. Of course I should leave my dirty shoes outside, walk around in slippers, and wash my feet before bed! I should also change out of my street clothes and into my clean indoor clothes, like pajamas or a house coat. (I really was forced to wear an old lady's house coat once.) There is an interesting balancing act when it comes to clothes in Russia, in large part because people do not generally have very many of them. To give you some perspective, five pairs of pants can seem really excessive. So, to preserve clothes, they are worn out and about and taken off at home. People do not bathe as frequently in Russia, so it makes sense to change clothes a lot and wash bits of yourself now and then to avoid getting dirt or skin oils all over everything. They might wash their bodies off a lot during the summer, but not their hair. I think that Russian people are aware of their surroundings, and do their best to keep their home interiors clean. Rugs are frequently rolled up so that the floor can be mopped. They also work very hard not to touch their food with their hands when they are out in public, since their hands have probably touched many dirty things like door handles and money. Although holding food with the wrapper is not unusual, I was surprised to be told so many times not to get my dirty fingers near my mouth. Admittedly, Russia is also a very superstitious place, but a lot of superstitions seem to be about bodily harm instead of spiritual contamination like in Japan. I can recall many times when people told me not to lean on a cold wall because it would give me a cough or not to sit on a cold surface because it would give me kidney stones.
Other Comparisons:
1. Bathing
I mentioned before that Russian people bathe less than Japanese people. However, I did not say how the bathing process works. In Japan, you wash your body outside the tub in a tiled area where you can dump water on yourself, then you get in the tub to soak. Public baths, which are everywhere, work the same way. You wash first, then get into the pool-sized bathtub with a bunch of strangers. Japan is famous for its hot springs, and they work the same way. You politely wash off before getting in the water, like you would at a public pool. Traditional bathing in Russia works a little differently. People's favorite way to clean themselves is either in a shower with a hose shower head, or in a banya. A banya is a lot like a sauna, with steam filling up the room that is meant to make you sweat and bring all the bad things to the surface and out of your pores. People will take turns beating each other with a small broom of branches with leaves, stimulating the skin and bringing out more skin dirt. (I do not know if this works scientifically, but that is the idea behind being smacked in the sauna.) Afterward, you wash off the filth extracted by the steam, and go have a cup of hot tea to cool down. (As a side note, Japanese people drink both cold and hot tea with most meals while Russians generally like all drinks save juice and soda to be hot. Drinking water is seen as kind of weird.)
2. Hand washing
Or foot, mouth, or bottom washing, as the case may be.
I do not recall being told many times to wash my hands in Japan, although I did see signs in bathrooms instructing people on how to wash their hands properly. They had pictures of hands washing their wrists, between the fingers, and under the fingernails. I still use these borderline surgical techniques when I wash my hands now. I remember clearly going up into the mountains for a mini vacation and I used a communal restroom there with only cold water and a single cloth towel fro everyone to us. Other than that, Japanese people wash their bottoms more than Westerners do because they have amazing toilets with built-in bidets. You press a button or two, and a water jet cleans you up. As someone who feels that going number two takes forever, bidets are one of my favorite modern marvels.
In Russia, people are less concerned about their bodies, teeth, and hair than they are about their hands, feet, and mouths. (My family may simply have been more aware than others, but I noticed bits and pieces of all this wherever I went.) Lots of Russian people have gold teeth, wear the same outfit three or four days in a row, and do a full body wash only as they need to or want to go into the banya. What they will do every day is take their shoes off at home, change into indoor clothes (e.g. old boxers and a ill-fitting T-shirt), and wash their hands and mouths of the day's dust and grime. Before bed, we would wash our feet, then walk to bed in slippers so that our feet would be clean and the bed would stay clean too.
All cultures are different, and all cultures are going to have one thing or another that they think is overly dirty. And people from all cultures will surprise you the same way you surprise them. I once spent time with a woman and her son, and she was very shocked to hear that Americans wear their shoes in the home, especially if they are only coming inside for a minute. While staying the night at her home, I took my shoes off and followed normal etiquette. When I came back for a brief visit to grab any of my remaining belongings, she insisted that I leave my shoes on. This made me feel very nervous and uncomfortable because I had so far had to take my shoes off in every home, and felt extremely rude. She actually had to grab my hand and pull me to the couch to get me to enter the apartment with my shoes still on. Some behaviors become quite learned.
