Cultural Identity

When we think of our identity, it is often argued about patriotism. We are taking this feeling for granted, but in fact, when we look back the class in which we discussed about Tim Hortons and Canadianness, nationalism can be found as a strategy in various aspects of our daily lives. While Tim Hortons achieved their success by filling the gap between typical iconic images of Canadianness and that of those who felt uncomfortable with it, it also can be said that Tim Hortons itself reinforced Canadian identity. Through the topics in a lecture, it also can be said that national identity could be something constructed and always requires reinforcement through media like advertisement of Tim Hortons. I personally as an international student, found it interesting to see Canadian identity as it always exists in comparison with Americanness. It seemed for me proved that patriotism was not something definite but obscure that could only exist in relation with a strategy in national scale. As nations have each plot in depicting their national identity, the way patriotism exists can be diverse by nations to nations. As Canada attempts to reinforce their identity with multicultural policy, Japan also maintain our identity by excluding other cultures. Government is not active in accepting foreigners and as a result, even with the age of globalization, we live in a homogeneous environment in which most of us had felt any need of using English. It is often said by foreigners who came to Japan that they felt awkward since Japanese people got curious and stared at them, which in a sense Japanese are unconsciously excluding them as others. We swear that we do not mean to be mass of racists, and reality is that we are just not getting used to those people. According to this weird habits we do to new people and some weird cultures that were distributed by media, Japanese people somehow know that we are strange, if we interpret this word positively, “original”, which caused me so much troubles in adjusting Canadian cultures. Weird nerdy cultures like comic books or maid cafe had never been that popular before this was featured and was accepted by foreign media. Accordingly, being something strange and original became somehow part of identity as Japanese, which was constructed and refigured by media. In a same way, I strongly felt the difference in this national tactics when I talked with my roommates who were Koreans and Singaporean. As both of them had experienced army training as an obligation, they do have stronger patriotisms compared to that of mine. They in fact argued that nation exists before family, which surprised me. As I have already exposed to the ideas of Benedict Anderson saying nations are social imaginary thousands times in my university life, I just could not believe that this strong patriotism can still exist. I believe that this success in forming stronger patriotism is attributed to the national strategies of military life in which they embraced their group identity physically and mentally. I also believe that their current development of economics in Korea and Singapore can be ascribed to this strong nationalism which we Japanese had lost in the past few decades. The topics may have been disconnected, but through the discussion with Tim Hortons and nationalism, we saw massive possibilities through nationalism and group identity.