Stereotypes

I was thinking about the theme for this post and I remembered some photos of a group of Japanese people visiting the Güell Park , one of Gaudi's masterpieces, I took in Barcelona before coming to Japan.

As you can see in the picture they are all wearing casual clothes and the typical caps and hats they usually wear when they are abroad, because they don't use to wear these caps here every day, and some of them wearing a white mask covering their mouth and nose. To me it was like a "Japanese tourist uniform", it has been really easy to guess who are Japanese and who are from somewhere else in Barcelona.

We are talking about Stereotypes.

Stereotypes have change a lot along history. Some decades ago, when somebody was thinking about Japanese people in my country , they thought about Geishas, Samurais, etc. After the II World War they have been considered a hard working people, but if you ask somebody in Spain to describe a Japanese tourist he would probably tell you that they are very polite people, bowing to everybody with their heads, traveling in groups and with the camera hanging from their necks.

They seem to be always in a hurry, running from place to place, with just a few seconds to take a photo and running again to the bus to go to a new monument. It is said they usually visit Spain in less than a week and there are even some jokes about their knowledge of the country after this week. People think they have just a week of holidays and they wont be able to remember if the Holy Family is in Barcelona or in Sevilla or the Prado Museum and the Alhambra are in Valencia, in Madrid or in Granada because they have seen all these cities and their sightseeing monuments in just two days.

Japanese cinema does not help in this way:

"Andalusia" is the title of the movie, I have not seen it but in the trailer I have seen only images of Barcelona (Catulunya) and even traditional arts and the national flag of Catalonia. But... who cares? Spain - Paella - Flamenco - Gaudi - Andalucía ? (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 0)

But I have to say that obvioursly all these stereotypes have a reason to be and part of them are a reflex of the real situation but others are just fruit of the ignorance between far away culture.

Once in Japan, I realized that most of these stereotypes were just that, stereotypes, and the Japanese are very different. It is true that they have less holidays than we use to have, at least during the Summer, when most Europeans have a month. But the number of bank holidays, free days during the year, I think it's even greater here than in Europe. So this stereotype doesn't reflect the true situation. (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 1)

On the other hand we never bow anybody except some monarchist to the King , the flag etc., or some religious people to the Cardinals, the Pope or images of Saints and God. So it is a representative feature that justify this stereotype. (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 2)

And talking about culture, I think that all Japanese people who have traveled abroad that I have met during these months here, are educated people that perfectly know where they are going on holidays and, of course, where they have been spending the last ones. As an example I could state that I have found more people knowing everything about Antoni Gaudi and his works here in Japan than in my own city. So this is another wrong stereotype.

(Stereotypes 2 - Reality 2)

So the best way to know something about other people or about another culture is not throw the stereotypes but living among them, the stereotypes which are completely wrong and the ones based in some true are often mixed together and hard to separate.