Culture Clash

With in the novel, My Year of Meats, there are several prominent phenomena that are “colliding” during the story. The most prominent phenomena that are clashing within the novel are cultural expectations as focused around the main character, Jane Takagi-Little, and the real and perceived notions of what is a true “American Family.” Throughout the novel, Jane not only experiences the differences in American and Japanese culture through her recount of childhood experiences, but also wrestles with a mental clash of cultures as she struggles to identify with her mixed heritage. Concurrently, the Japanese view of American families clashes with the real families that Jane portrays on her episodes of the series “My American Wife!”
During the novel, Jane recounts her experiences growing up as a child of mixed race. The clash of culture is even present in her name, where her mother decides that her American surname of Little will bring great burden upon her life, and therefore decides to have her child keep a Japanese surname of Takagi, literally meaning “tall.” For Jane’s father, Little is “just a name,” but to her mother, her surname is “very first thing! Name is face to all the world.” More important than her external experiences with the Japanese and American cultures, is her internal struggle to identify with a race. As a child Jane fantasizes about marrying a man of mixed heritage, an indicator of her youthful openness to her mixed race. After she reads of the supposed inferiority of her race in a local book in her hometown library of Quam, Minnesota, she begins to doubt the benefits of her mixed heritage. Though her mixed heritage did cause her a great deal of struggle, eventually Jane finds peace with it. This is evident in a conversation she has with a WW2 veteran upon arrival to her first shoot. After asking repeatedly where Jane is from, the man asks what she is. In response to this, and proof of her acceptance of her mixed heritage, Jane ends her internal struggle with her racial identify by yelling that she is “a fucking American.”
Also present throughout the film is the collision of what the Japanese audience expects of a proper American family and what is actually real. Primarily, the producers wanted to present their audience with white, upper middle-class Americans. Though families such as the Flowers presented this ideal family, the shows received lower ratings than other shows that presented a more non-traditional family, such as the show chronicling the Burkowsky’s, a family with a severely handicapped girl. These differences in ratings demonstrate the cultural collision of what is real and what is perceived. More traditional families, though considered to be more “moral” by the Japanese producers, are not the true depiction of American families. The clash of realities ultimately leads to the “real” families winning over the hearts of the Japanese. Though not what they would expect in their traditional values, the uniqueness of these families leads the Japanese audience to relate to them more.
Ultimately, Jane wins her internal struggle with racial identity by accepting her mixed heritage and identifying herself as an American. In turn, the Japanese public accepts the more believable American families represented on “My American Wife!” and thus takes a step at ending the culture clash that is occurring on their television screens.