The Independent Archive: So you think that you've got problems

6 August 1990 When Japanese woman meets New York man, Steve Fochios and couch are in business, reports Reggie Nadelson

"I LOVE you is not a Japanese saying." Steve Fochios, a Manhattan psychiatrist and family therapist, has an interesting speciality: he treats Japanese women who are married to American men. In these relationships, and in the problems that beset them, he sees a metaphor for America's own uneasy marriage to Japan.

"The details of cultural problems that pop up resonate in politics and business," Dr Fochios said. "For instance, we Americans need to be told we are loved. Japanese don't do that. They think it's rude and empty; they read through a person's behaviour how he feels.

"The differences are enormous. Our notion of mental health is based on development of the individual. We try to get people to be direct, to deal with their feelings. We look people in the eye. For the Japanese, everything is the opposite. They love indirection. They do not speak of feelings openly. They are not confrontational. What is not good for the group is not good for the individual."

I saw Dr Fochios last week, a few days after The New York Times, in yet another article on the presence of Japan Inc in New York City, reported that racism was on the rise. Verbal abuse was common, it said: parents were pulling kids out of schools they saw as overrun by Japanese. The irony here was that all this was taking place in rich, white suburbs, and the problem with Japanese kids was they were too clever. Smarter than ours.

The 60,000 Japanese in the city are becoming too rich and successful, and they are too different. Unlike traditional immigrants, they are transient. They do not reveal their feelings by shouting "I LOVE NEW YORK", but by buying up big chunks of it.

New Yorker and Japanese, we are caught in a messy net of transcultural stereotypes, something Dr Fochios sees in his patients.

"Many American men have been lugging around the Madame Butterfly stereotype. Then they discover the Japanese woman is not this dainty creature in a kimono, but a tough woman who makes all financial, educational, social and living decisions," he said.

It appears that Japanese women who marry Americans also have a stereotype in mind. For them, America is a freewheeling place where families do not matter much.

"Then," said Dr Fochios, "they meet an American Jew. When a Japanese woman confronts a Jewish mother-in-law, she is stunned."

Dr Fochios, the first American-born child of a Greek family, did not speak English until he was seven and, as a psychoanalyst, his interest in cultural conflicts and language has stayed with him. Some years ago, he began seeing Japanese-American couples. He has learned the language and has travelled widely in Japan.

"They have their own indigenous depressions, but their therapies revolve around trying to cover it up. In Western psychotherapy, we try to foster independence from the family; for the Japanese, that is anathema."

His patients apart, Dr Fochios has interviewed a large sample of Japanese living in New York.

"They are here to stay," he said. "There's a word, gaman. It means to endure. A woman makes a marriage, it's a serious decision. She gamans. It's the same in business."

I said I was a little startled by the reports of racism. "The Japanese have terrible public relations," Dr Fochios said. "They are successful, they flaunt it and it causes resentment."

The resolution of cultural conflict, Dr Foschios told me, was infinitely difficult, the translations between the cultures dependent on the tiniest detail.

"Let me put it this way. A Japanese woman is organised around not touching, not shaking hands, not smooching. The American man likes to touch. He comes home, he pats her on the ass. `Hi, honey,' he says. After a year, it dawns on him she never touches him this way and it becomes an issue."

"Here's a Japanese lady not too swift in dealing with her feelings, but willing to endure. Here's an American guy who wants to feel loved but feels rejected. Take that into politics and business, and we all need a lot of help."

From the Living Page of The Independent, Monday 6 August 1990