My African-Canadian teacher in Japan

A few months ago, one of my English tutors was a black Canadian male who had traveled to more than 20 countries and had worked in Holland just after finishing high school. His brother married a Dutch woman and had lived in Holland and recently moved to England. He was intelligent, knowledgeable and had a sense of humor, and I always enjoyed his lessons. But one day he started criticizing white Canadian people in the lesson while he began to support traditional Asian culture such as Confucianism, which is not very popular in Japan nowadays. Then he started criticizing my viewpoints on Asia and did not listen to my explanations of Japanese society like Asian values attracted Japanese people in the past but western values were replaced them now and it will be more in the future.  I felt that his point of view about Asia was closer to one from Chinese or other Asian people than from Japanese.  He owned a bookstore in Vancouver and I think that he was very knowledgeable about North America and Europe but not as knowledgeable about Japan. I guess that he unexpectedly arrived in Japan after a journey in Asia.  Unfortunately this lesson made me stop meeting him because I, who grew up in westernized Japanese society, respect western culture and am not happy to listen to his anger towards white people in Canada.

Although I am sure that my points of view on Japanese society would not sound extreme to Japanese people, I wanted to know if they sounded so strange to other foreigners, besides the Canadian teacher.  I later told my American teacher the same opinions and she was not surprised at all and she agreed with me. Actually, she said that she had read many books on Japan before coming to Japan and as a result, she knew that Japanese people respect western culture.

Then I began to notice two things, one, that most anger among minorities comes from males and that, two, the successful minorities which appeared on TV or in magazines tend to be females. I then guessed that western feminism motivates female minorities to be successful in such a society. I informed my Canadian tutor of my observations and he accepted my opinion.

Before meeting him, I had not had much experience talking to black people because I saw many African-Americans living in low-income areas and had heard of some crimes committed by African-Americans in the U.S.  However, one day I met an American journalist from NYC, who used to write for a world-famous magazine and had authored a book. When I told him my experience of visiting Harlem, he replied that he had lived in Harlem. By the way, he is white. When I told him that some Japanese girls are huge fans of black people, he told me that one day his African-American friend visited his home in NYC and surprisingly said that many Japanese girls were interested in him in Japan.  It sounded like his African-American friend liked him.  His story made me think that I had to talk more to black people and I chose the black Canadian male as my new English tutor.