I Stick Out...

In Japan, in fact, everything had been made level

and uniform—even humanity. By one official count,

90 percent of the population regarded themselves as

middle-class; in schools, it was not the outcasts who

beat up the conformists, but vice versa. Every Japanese

individual seemed to have the same goal as every

other—to become like every other Japanese individual.

The word for “different,” I was told, was the same as

the word for “wrong.” And again and again in Japan,

in contexts varying from the baseball stadium to the

watercolor canvas, I heard the same unswerving, even

maxim: “The nail that sticks out must be hammered

down.”

—Pico Iyer, Video Night in Katmandu

(Adler. Looking Out, Looking In, 13th Edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning/CourseSmart, 01/01/2010. 54).

Could I really be happy in Japan? Probably not. I would be different on purpose and that would show that I didn't want to fit in. I would always be viewed as wrong there. I'm happy to be part of Western Civilization where individualism is valued. I'm happy to be an original.