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Saturday, April 09, 2005
Estanislao: No, not just in the green tea
By Jacqueline Estanislao
Part II
REALITY however is an altogether different scenario. Most Filipino-Japanese marriages that I know of are borne out of an utmost consideration for convenience or necessity. Almost always, the decision to marry is tied to the acquisition of a visa or the desire to provide their loved ones with a better life.
The Japanese is seen as a "messiah" - usually their only hope out of a working contract that subjects them to every night of drinking and entertaining, a mounting "oriyage" or a growing quota for "dohans"! The pressure is so, that even their waking hours are spent on calling their customers to beg them to either take them out for a date or visit them at the club. Thus, a regular client almost always becomes the husband that they had always prayed for. An offer of marriage is the best fortune that can ever beset anyone in this line of work. An entertainer coming home to marry a Japanese is the envy of one's community as she is seen to be the kin's key to prosperity.
But a fairy tale happens only in storybooks and their dreaming ends as soon as reality sets in. Problems arise when there are greater family expectations that can no longer be met. The Japanese will never understand why he will need to provide for not only his wife but her entire family in the Philippines as well. The Japanese culture discourages an extended family ties, with an 18-year-old leaving his parent's home to live a life of his own.
I remember some of my Japanese friends telling me that they've never been home again after the first day they declared financial independence. Culture differences now become a common cause of domestic problems, where simple discussions turn out into violent fights that will frequently rock the home. The wife then finds herself going back to work to support the demands of her family in the Philippines and to cope with the growing needs of her immediate family in Japan as well. With finances as her priority, she is forced to leave her child, probably starting from four months old to the care of a day-care center where the City Hall decides.
Such is the arrangement so common that the Japanese government provided a facility for it, unknowingly laying the ground for the disintegration of the basic unit of society, the family. With both parents pre-occupied with financial obligations, they find themselves becoming lesser and lesser involved with each other's concerns and their home becomes a house where one comes to sleep and bathe. Their relationship that had not even really flourished turns as cold as the snow that sets in on their windowpanes.
The Japanese then turns to "asobi" or night-club hopping to unwind, meets another Filipina, gets involved, and in most cases, files a divorce. So starts a cycle that gets more complicated because there are now more people involved.
Seemingly, the collapse of a Filipino-Japanese marriage is tied to economics. The Japanese has been so accustomed with the high cost of living in their country that their life revolves around work. Where the Filipinos work to live, the Japanese seem to live to work. Thus, the Japanese husband is judged as "sumetai" or cold, with the Filipina wife not understanding his only concept of survival.
I have stayed in Japan for more than four years, not too long a time to speak of but long enough to say that I had quite adapted to the Japanese way of life. The yardstick-my Japanese friends would say, would be in one's capability to do away with soda drinks or juices after meals and in one's preference for tea that is so typical among Japanese. I cannot spend a day without me drinking Japanese tea. I had gotten so accustomed to it that admittedly it had now become a habit. But as I sip it, I could not seem to think, "No, it's not just in the green tea."
(April 9, 2005 issue)
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