Feeling Like an Imposter in Japan

I have always had impostor syndrome, but it becomes especially acute when I’m in Japan. Perhaps that is because I actually am an impostor. In casual interactions, I seem perfectly Japanese, but if I keep talking for more than ten minutes, it becomes obvious that something is off. My Japanese has not progressed much since middle school, and I remain oddly unfamiliar with certain social norms.

In Japan, social norms matter enormously. That is part of what makes the country so distinctive: the norms are highly developed and deeply internalized. Life here can be extraordinarily comfortable if you move easily within them. People can speak economically, or hardly speak at all, because so much is already understood. But the flip side is that the burden of seeming normal becomes unusually heavy.

When a society operates within a narrower band of acceptable behavior, people become more sensitive to subtle deviations within that band. For instance, my glasses have transition lenses that darken outside. Many Japanese people still associate sunglasses with shady or antisocial characters, like yakuza. So my glasses alone can suggest that something is slightly off.

I went to hear a Japanese pianist perform an improvised piece that most people would probably dismiss as random banging on the keys. I found myself wondering at what age she went off course. It is easy to recognize and even admire other people’s deviation from the norm, but most people do not have the courage to do the same themselves. I can only assume that something compelled her to do it, that she had no choice but to express herself that way. Short of that, I do not think anyone would willingly choose to risk being shunned or ridiculed. I suspect this is generally true of revolutionary artists.

I am more of a conformist. It is not exactly people’s judgment that bothers me. What unsettles me more is the possibility that I make people uncomfortable. They can quickly sense that I am not quite what I appear to be, but they also cannot simply classify me as a foreigner. So what am I, then: mentally disabled, psychotic, trying to pass as normal? I am an impostor not by choice, but by circumstance.