Soon after my unfortunate encounter with Mr Mitsui's car (see "A small mishap"), Kanaflex is visited by a representative of his insurance company, a Mr Murayama if i'm not mistaken. Murayama-san is welcomed into one of the company's meeting rooms, served with the usual obligatory nasty instant coffee with single serve sugar, single serve milk substitute (see "Cross Cultural Miscommunication") and I go to meet him with Nishi and the President's PA (I still can't remember her name, it was Oka-something, so I'll call her Okachi for now).
Murayama embarks on an amazingly roundabout string of questions, interspersed with pleasantries about how good my Japanese is, and how important it is that "Gaijin-sama" like myself have a good experience of Japan. What was I wearing on that day? Were my clothes damaged? What am I studying at university? Oh, I must be so intelligent! What about my glasses? Glasses are so expensive these days, aren't they? Can I describe again what happened before the accident? Oh, I was jogging - I must be very healthy! Can I draw a diagram of it for him? Oh, I draw so well! What speed was I running? Oh, I must be very fit! How do I find Japan? Can I describe what I heard before the car hit me? Oh, my hearing must be so good, since I am so young and healthy! and so on ad infinitum...
Mr Murayama thanks us very much, says that this has helped him considerably, and that we shall hear from him "probably next week". As I am also leaving to go back to my office, I say to Ms Okachi "This is very strange, in Australia, it doesn't matter what a pedestrian was wearing, or what the circumstances are, the driver is always at fault in this kind of accident". She says "Oh yes, it's the same in Japan". It wasn't until I got back to Australia that I fully understood the implications of this. Mitsui's insurance company never had any intention of paying my hospital expenses, even though their client was clearly at fault. But they sent Mr Murayama all the way to Youkaichi (which, from Osaka, is about a 1.5 hour trip) just for... for what?!
Welcome to Japanese tokenism, where it doesn't matter what the real issues, intentions or interests are provided that the right thing is "seen" to be done. This concept is also important in explaining the Japanese obsession with good endings, of which I can give many examples. Best of all was my farewell party, organised by Kobe LC two days before I left Japan.
But where is this all going? Tokenism may be rife in Japanese interactions, but beyond the fact that it seems a bit insincere, what more should it signify for me? Maybe this. Kanaflex never showed any intention of deriving benefit from my presence - from day one I was just a nuisance foreigner, whom they were happy to just leave sitting at an empty desk for hours on end. Yet they were content to keep paying my salary, letting me stay in their company dorms, meet with the AIESECers now and then to report on my "progress". The President of Kanaflex was an ex-President of AIESEC Kobe, so he could hardly claim not to understand the purposes of a proper AIESEC exchange, nor that this was NOT such an experience. Was this Traineeship then just a face-saving exercise, a charade engineered so that he would not be seen to be abandoning his old Local Committee? Was my entire 9 weeks in Japan just part of a higher level of tokenism?