The Haunted Condo

Over the past few months, I've talked with a few students about the Miyuki Hatoyama thing (in which Japan's first lady expressed some highly unconventional ideas, concerning UFOs and past lives), which did finally become widely publicized in the Japanese media only after it was overseas. Such beliefs are not unheard of in Japan, but they are unusual enough that most students chuckled at them.

With one student, about a month ago, I made the same point (about comparing it to Christianity) that I made in a previous blog post, then added a new one that came to me at that moment. I postulated for her the following scenario:

"Imagine that you're about 30, as is your spouse. You have no kids, but want to within five years. You live in an apartment now, but want to move to a condo, one spacious enough for kids in the future. You'd also strongly prefer one that's within 30 minutes of central Tokyo. But those condos tend to go for about 40 million yen (roughly $400,000), and you can't afford it; the best you could do now is one for half that price. It'll take another eight or ten years to save up for the down payment on the one you want.

"A few months after you start looking, a real estate agent calls you and asks you to come out to see a condo he wants to show you that is in your price range, and fits your requirements. You go there, and what he says is true: it's nice, big enough, 25 minutes from central Tokyo, and the building is modern-looking and only five years old. The price is 20 million yen ($200,000).

"You say, 'It looks really good, but most condos like this go for twice this price. Why is this so cheap?' He explains that about six months ago, a young couple lived in the condo. The man killed his wife, then killed himself, in the living room in which they and the agent are now standing.

"So," I asked the student, "will you buy this condo?"

She immediately and vigorously answered 'no', which from having talked about the subject in general with other students in the past, I pretty much expected. I then told her that I would buy it, with few if any misgivings, and I thought most Westerners would. The point of the question was to point out that she may think that someone who says their spirit went to Venus on a UFO is strange, and maybe they are, but it could also be said that someone who gives up a possible $200,000 in value on a home based on a fear of ghosts could be, and probably would be, seen by those in other cultures as being pretty strange, maybe even stranger than someone who believes in UFOs. She was very interested, and wondered how many Westerners would buy it. I had to admit I wasn't sure. In the next few days I asked most other teachers here (total of nine people: seven Americans, one Canadian, and one Brit); six teachers said they would buy it, two said no, and one wasn't sure.

I then decided to conduct a survey of the students (I ended up asking 60 students these questions), and that I would first ask other questions to determine their general leanings on matters related to their answer to the condo question. I asked the following questions (I need not, but will anyway, stipulate that this survey is nowhere near scientifically valid, and is purely anecdotal):

Do you believe in any form of life after death?

Do you believe in fortunetellers?

When marrying, is it important that the date be a taian day? (Occurring once every six days, considered a lucky day, especially for weddings. In Japan, wedding halls charge substantially more on this day, due to high demand.) Or is a butsumetsu (unlucky) day acceptable?

Then I asked the condo question. With the first three, I intended to get at the following basic ideas: Do you believe in spirituality, in psychic or paranormal phenomena? Do you believe in luck? Basically, in the power of things unseen and unproven. The results were:

Do you believe in any form of life after death? Yes 18, Somewhat 13, No 29

Do you believe in fortunetellers? Yes 8, Somewhat 21, No 31

Do you believe taian is important? Yes 13, Somewhat 19, No 28

Will you buy the condo? Yes 10, No 50

When told the results, students tended to be surprised at the large number of 'no' answers in the first three categories, since Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and there are some Japanese Buddhists; street fortunetellers are easy to find in Tokyo, and taian days are expensive. A few common comments: "I don't care about taian, but my parents/in-laws/extended family feel it's important to have it on a lucky day." "I want to believe in life after death, but I don't." "I believe in fortunetellers when they say something good will happen, but not when they say something bad will happen." The last one was especially common.

Two aspects of this were of particular interest. One was the question of why there's such a huge difference between how many Japanese will buy the condo, and how many Westerners (I assume) will. The other was the fact that while I wasn't specifically keeping track of this, I'm sure that there were over a dozen people who answered 'no' to the first three questions, but then said they wouldn't buy the condo. This seemed inconsistent to me, since if you don't believe in ghosts or luck, why not buy it? What could happen? I particularly pressed those people to explain the inconsistency. Most of them thought about it, and finally good-naturedly admitted that they couldn't. I heard a lot of 'kimochi warui' (literally 'bad feeling', though in this context 'creepy' is probably closer to what they wanted to say). Some said that simply knowing the murder/suicide had happened would stick in their mind, and interfere with their enjoyment of the condo. My response of "for $200,000, can't you make an effort to change how you think?" met with a quick shake of the head. Over a dozen said that probably it would be fine if they didn't know the murder/suicide had occurred, but since they knew, they couldn't live there. Even if they couldn't explain it well, even if it was inconsistent with their other beliefs, they were quite sure that they couldn't buy it.

The best answer, I felt, was from a guy who's a scientist, working in the field of water treatment and purification. He said that as children, Japanese hear a lot of ghost stories, and in Japanese ghost stories the ghosts are more violent and mentally ill than in the west, where for example we have the perfectly friendly ghosts that inhabit Hogwarts castle. Some Japanese parents apparently say to their young children, "You'd better be good, or else the ghosts will get you," which I found quite an appalling thing to say to a young child. So, this student said, even if as an adult you're perfectly confident that ghosts don't exist, there will be a sense deep in your unconscious that you'd better not buy the condo, and will creep you out enough that you feel you'd better not buy it just to be on the safe side. I thought that made a lot of sense.

The ten who would buy the condo were generally aware that they weren't in the majority, but didn't mind. Most didn't hesitate much, and firmly believed that nothing spiritual exists, so there was no problem at all living there. One guy, 60 years old, did say that he would call in a Buddhist priest to spiritually 'purify' the condo, after which he was sure it would be fine. It would cost over a hundred bucks for the priest to come out, but hey, money well spent!

As for me, for the record, I do believe in life after death (reincarnation), I don't believe in most fortunetellers (though I believe a few might have a genuine talent, and should be referred to as psychics rather than fortunetellers), I don't believe in lucky days (though I do believe that if you really believe they'll be unlucky, they might well be), and I would buy the condo.

Students tended to be very interested in the topic and the questions, as was I. My original intent was simply to point out that you probably shouldn't make fun of someone's odd beliefs if you have your own odd beliefs (which you may not realize that you have, or recognize as odd), but it turned into an interesting examination of cultural differences in the area of spiritual and paranormal phenomena. Also, it's now become part of my history with these students, most of whom are my regulars. If they ever make a skeptical comment about someone else's religion and beliefs, I can respond, "Yeah, but you weren't willing to buy the condo." Even a year from now, I suspect, they'll remember what I'm referring to, and laugh.

P.S. After I finished writing this, but just before posting it, my wife found this short article on Consumerist.com about Americans' willingness to share a house with a ghost–not just the possibility of one, but assuming there really was one. Of course, there can be a gap between what people say they would do and what they would really do, but this is still very interesting, and shows the culture gap very strongly.

To Venus in a UFO, part 2 (spirituality)

"Hey, I know this guy. He's pretty amazing. First of all, his mother was a virgin. Never had sex in her life, but she had a son! And when he got older, he did some incredible stuff. He could heal people by touching them, and he took a tiny amount of food and turned it into a big amount. Like magic! And he walked on water. No, really! I saw it! And after he died, he came back to life!"

If you had never heard of Christianity, you'd roll your eyes and ask your friend what he'd been smoking. Or, at least, you'd nod politely and back away slowly. Either way, you'd take it as evidence that he was a real nut case. But as we know, there are literally millions of people on this planet who believe this. Most Christians, I believe, think of this as a parable, not to be taken literally. But there are a good number who believe that every word of the Bible is literally true. ("Two of every animal? Really? What about the gene pool? Okay, okay, never mind... and he lived to be how old? Really?" When every question raised can be answered with 'God took care of that', the discussion doesn't last long.)

Very few people (Christopher Hitchens leaps to mind) snicker at this; it's such a part of Western culture that whether you believe it or not, it's old hat. But I'm now thinking of those of my students who snickered at the notion that the wife of the new Japanese Prime Minister once wrote that she believes she traveled to Venus in a UFO, and said on TV that she was acquainted with Tom Cruise in a past life. I suspect that many Westerners would snicker at this as well, which is why the Western media ran so many stories about this. The stories themselves didn't snicker (though the New York Times used the word 'kooky', not in reference to Ms. Hatoyama per se, but it wasn't hard to get the drift), but the editors knew the readers surely would. 'Get a load of this woman!' they were saying, in so many words.

So, to me, the logical question is: Does anyone who doesn't snicker at what is written in the first paragraph of this post have any right to snicker at the wife of the Prime Minister? If I had to choose which one was crazier, I'd give it some hard thought. But I have no doubt that plenty of Christians would, and did, get a good laugh out of this story. 'Ha ha! A triangular-shaped UFO! Hey, that's good! Tell me another one!' If it was then pointed out that Christians believe something that appears equally unlikely from a scientific point of view, I doubt many of even the moderates would grant the point. They'd point to the belief's long history and its place in the culture. And if this were suggested to Bible literalists, I strongly suspect the inquisitor would face their righteous wrath ("How dare you compare the Word of God to a crazy Japanese lady!"), but would not get any kind of reasoned discussion. (I know I am engaging in substantial generalizations, but I do believe I'm not too far off. And so that the reader knows my point of view, I was not raised with any religious teaching, and believe the Bible to be a mix of fact, recollection, third-hand anecdote, and fiction.)

Now, I don't mean to say that there should be a reasoned discussion about the Bible and whether it is literally accurate, mostly because I don't think there'd be any point. With something like this, either you believe it or you don't. Ironically, though, I'd think that scientists would be readier to believe Ms. Hatoyama if forced to choose. The existence of UFOs and spirits can't be proved, and can't be disproved. But I think most scientists would state with certainty that a woman cannot have a child in the absence of sperm, that food cannot be spontaneously generated, and so forth. 'Well, they were miracles, which by definition are outside the realm of what is humanly possible.' Fine. But I don't think this has any greater credibility than the claims of the PM's wife.

I do know that there are any number of Christians who don't believe in the Bible literally, and chuckle at those who do. At least if they make fun of Ms. Hatoyama, they're not being inconsistent. But why make fun of anyone? Unless someone ties me to a rack and pulls until I profess complete agreement with his worldview, why should I care whether any particular person believes any unprovable thing he chooses? Why ridicule him? (Why people have the urge to ridicule and judge others will, I suspect, be the subject of a future post.) I'd rather just nod, and accept that this is the way he sees the world. As do I with Ms. Hatoyama. She seems like a happy and fulfilled person, so good for her.