“Go home, Yankee.”
 
It was 1988. The American dollar was struggling and Japanese yen was soaring so high that the joke was they should have bought Pearl Harbor instead. Japan’s economy rose to number two in the world and it was feeling really good about itself. This partly explained the young man screaming at me from the other end of the train car pulling out of Yokohama Station. The prodigious amount of saké he had drunk accounted for the rest.
 
This was actually the second time a Japanese had said this to me. A year earlier, when I had been teaching English in the Land of the Rising Sun for only a few weeks, an older factory worker, with close-cropped, graying hair, glasses, and blue overalls, had stared angrily at me from almost the exact same place as his younger compatriot did. The short, compact elder had suddenly begun to rant in Japanese, continually glaring at me. I had no idea what he was saying, but he spoke in a deep bass that reminded of old World War II movies in which the Japanese admiral, in an obviously dubbed voice, would give orders in English with an almost Zen-like manner. However, this angry worker’s rat-tat-tat delivery, something that had intrigued me about most Japanese speakers, was aimed directly at my soul, seemingly trying to inflict as much injury as possible. Then he narrowed his eyes and barked, “Go home, Yankee.”
 
I did not know what to do. Prior to going to Japan, I had lived in a small city in Taiwan for two and a half years. There, I had been the object of many stares and even finger-pointing, but, usually, it was followed by a friendly greeting, ranging from “Hello!” to “How are you?” and even “USA number one!” Before Taiwan, I had been to over forty other countries, and not once did I get a “Go home, Yankee.” I turned away from the factory worker and just hoped he would get off the train before me.
 
This second xenophobe was a sararīman, or, literally, “salaryman”, a term for white-collar workers who got jobs shortly after graduating from university and often stayed with the same company for their entire career. They were often expected to work overtime, with or, sometimes, without compensation, and often entertained customers and/or colleagues at karaoke bars, sakè pubs or hostess clubs. These sacrifices were rough on marriages and perpetuated the stereotype of the Japanese man working hard for the betterment of the family, the clan, and by extension, the nation. After a year in Japan, I had become well aware of the term and the type. I would see plenty of them passed out on the train on my nightly commute home, often with a manga, a Japanese comic book, lying on the seat next to them. This sararīman was young and skinny, his hair disheveled, spiky like a hedgehog, with one arm wrapped around a pole between the far doors in the train carriage, a briefcase hanging from the other arm, swinging in front of him in time with the train’s swaying. He was wearing a stylish gray suit, though the knees were stained. I figured he had probably slipped on a wet side street leaving a sushi bar after a night of kanpai-ing, or toasting, with his boss.
 
After a year in Japan, my language skills were good enough to understand that his rant was about Japan’s place in the world order. However, unlike the machine-gun delivery of the older factory worker, this guy sounded more like a slurring, slobbering Sylvester the Cat than a modern-day samurai. The other passengers sitting along both sides of the car stared at the floor wearing their invisible blinders, trying to ignore the situation. I turned and looked out the window at the passing darkness.
 
“Go home, Yankee!” he repeated more loudly. And then, so as to emphasize his enmity for me, he added, “Baka!” The drunk fixed his gaze on me, just begging for a reply, but I ignored him. I knew that, in twenty minutes, he would be passed out on his living room tatami, or “reed mats”, where his wife and children would find him tomorrow morning.
 
The traditional translation of baka is fool or idiot. However, in actuality, it is much worse, equivalent to words one is not to supposed to say at the dinner table. I smiled as I realized how appropriate those labels applied to him, and this must have set him off because he again called me a baka, and then threw in a string of slurs against my mother. In unison, the other passengers looked up at him and then turned to me. Still smiling, I gave him the finger while I slid my backpack off my shoulder and laid it at my feet.
 
His screaming went up another octave as he clumsily dropped his briefcase, let go of the pole and staggered forth, almost falling over at the middle doors before grabbing the center pole. Regaining his balance, he stepped forward, wobbling in time with the train’s rocking and not falling over, his face continually contorting as he flung new curses at me. Through the windows, I noticed the supermarket sign down the road from my approaching station. Relaxing my knees to keep my balance, I leaned back a bit. Just as he wildly swung at me, the train braked, sending him tumbling backwards head over heels. He landed on the feet of a pair of older sarariman, who kicked him and yelled, “Baka.”
 
I picked up my bag as this pathetic man sat up and looked at the floor with an expression of painful bewilderment. As the train came to complete stop, his face twisted and he puked on his lap. All of the other passengers quickly and quietly got out of their seats and exited the car as the doors opened, leaving the man and his vomit alone in the middle of the car and his briefcase at the far end. Many got on other cars of the same train, their stops obviously further down the line. I stood on the platform as the bell rang and the doors closed, and, as the train pulled out, the top of the salaryman’s head was the last I ever saw of him. 
   

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