My time in Japan has for the most part marked a distinct downturn in the possession and exercise of any womanly wiles I may have previously possessed  (not that I think I ever did), and has generally seen me take a turn for the androgynous. This has not been through any deliberate exercise - if anything, I have been wearing more dresses and make-up than ever - but rather that in comparison to most of the gorgeous waifs here, one feels like rather a heffer. That and the fact that 75% pf Japanese men seem absolutely terrified of foreign women.

A few days ago, I had an experience where my race/ethnicity/nationality/call it what you will starkly trumped my gender. At my rather rougher school the third years are my favourite group to teach, if my most challenging. In every class there are one or two real trouble makers, the Japanese discipilinary system (or seeming lack thereof) such that they can as good as do what they please - if a female teacher is in charge.

In one class, the most troublesome of all of them was making life difficult for my teacher, ‘Marie’, who happens to be the smallest person I know and one of the soundest teachers there is. There was nothing she could do to stop this lad wandering in and out of class, throwing things at other students, and playing baseball with his English folder. The rules are that no student is to be sent out of class as it’s depriving him or her of an education (’What about the other students?!?!?!?’ I hear you cry), and Marie simply hadn’t the physical capability to make him sit down (physically moving students hasn’t been legislated against here yet).

Yet when I went into the corridor and very quietly asked him in English what he was doing, he got up straight away and went back to his desk. Every time he acted up in class, all I had to do was go and stand near him and he would stop.

 Admittedly, I clearly didn’t have the presence enough to make him pack it in altogether as everytime I moved away he’d start causing trouble again, but it was still unexpected and interesting for me to hold any sort of disciplinary sway, as usually being foreign negates my right/ability to discipline, and being female problematizes Japanese teachers’ rights/abilities to. His reaction was a double-edged sword: while it made for a calmer environment in which other students could get on with the learning, it was also indicative of a deeper xenophobia which it is my job to try and dissolve, so maybe I and my successor still have our work cut out for us.

Or maybe I just have a naturally terrifying demeanour. Grrrrrrrr.

‘Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. ‘ Michel on the Panopticon in ‘Discipline and Punish’.

The Panopticon described by Foucault was designed by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century, and was, apart from anything, a tax-saving idea. It’s design was such that from a single viewing post, prisoners could always be seen but could never see the seer. Thus being the case, it would be possible to have no guards on duty as the inmates must constantly presume they are being watched, as described above.

I first read this chapter, which becomes a broader critique of power through surveillance in hierarchical societies,  in my second year at university. Strangely, in Japan, I’ve had cause to revisit it, and within the seemingly rather dull context of the staffing of public services.

 As I may have mentioned before, there is a change around every April in all the schools, hospitals and local authorities in Japan. Not all the staff change; rather, a chosen few will be moved to a different department or a different school, no teacher being allowed to remain in one position for more than 15 years. Fifteen years is, in fact, exceptionally rare; usually people will be moved within 3-4 years.

In the case of education, this decision is made by a small group of big cheeses at the Board of Education, the final decision resting with the kyoikucho, the chief of, in my case, Hikari BOE. This year has seen my supervisor become Vice Principal for a different BOE at a school about 2 hours’ drive from here (about which he was not best pleased), and between 6 and 8 teachers have moved from each of my junior high schools (bringing, I must say, some very interesting new faces into the staffrooms).

When I first heard about this system, my immediate reaction was to see the positive side: surely through the annual circulation of people and ideas, public services can evolve and remain dynamic without the stagnation we see in some UK public sectors? Yet upon reflection, I see how this very move maintains the very specific social hierarchies for which Japan is so renowned and in fact makes large-scale changes, for the most part, rather slow.

This annual change in staffing serves as a kind of panopticon. Authority figures like kyoikucho remain in authority without ever really exercising his disciplinary power, and it is not  for the purposes of his authority alone that such a system is maintained. Rather, it is for the maintenance of a collective and simultaenously oppressive power system through which the group is at once self-governing and self-sacrificing (’self’ has rather a double meaning here). Through the constantly moving eyes and ears of ever-diligent personnel, digression from the norm or challenges to authority seem unattractive options and the instigation of large changes (e.g. to curriculum) seems impractical to an instigator who is not certain whether they will be around long enough to see them through. Discipline rarely needs exercising, and the head honcho(s) need not always monitor the behaviour of their subordinates (which, for the record, they really don’t - my last kocho-sensei spent 80% of his time smoking fags and gardening), as omniscience is dispersed and workers do not know for certain that they are being watched, but that it is always a possibility.

 It’s difficult to put into words the thoughts I’ve had about the workings of power in Japan. I suppose the staffing example is just another example of what it is to live in a such a very collectivist society, Panopticon metaphor or no Panopitcon metaphor. This has been the biggest privilege of my Japanese experience, and the hardest to describe. Collectivist societies are by their very nature self-regulating, and the questions that living here has raised about the relationship between the group and the individual have at once provided enlightenment and have sent my head into a giddy orbit without any hope of ever being un-flummoxed. 

But then everyone needs a good flummoxing once in a while.

So I’ve not been long back from one of the best holidays I’ve ever taken. It was a pleasingly international gathering comprising two Brits, one Canadian, two Hawaiians, one American, sporadic Jamaicans and Kiwis and lots and lots of South Koreans.

Again, as with so many other adventures, it’s difficult to know where to start. Our second day saw us visit the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), the 10km-wide borderland between North and South Korea. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever done, as we entered what seemed to be both a no-man’s-land and a highly securitized every-man’s-land, with coachload after ogling coachload going to have a distant peep at North Korea and to travel deep into the tunnels that were to be the making of an invasion that never was.  

What struck me most about our tour (we could only visit the DMZ on guided tours, for security reasons), was the optimism and hope for reunification instilled in us by our guides and by the film we saw in a visitors’ centre at the entrance to the third tunnel. The tour itself was political, in attempting to convince us that unification is possible and imminent, its operators might bring it one step closer to happening. Yet despite North Korea’s increasing visibility and communication with the outside world, the ramifications of unification are so great - economic, social and political - that I think it will be some time yet before we see it happen, if at all.

A place that gave me a strange sadness was Dorasan, the final train station in South Korea before the track crosses the border. Opened by dearest Dubya in 2002, it’s a sparkly new construction that is at once hopeful and farcical. Its only patrons are tourists, and a train has yet to stop and collect passengers there. There was the most beautfiul painting on one of the walls though, almost Dali-esque (not in the gallery yet as needs some photoshopping to merge all the takes needed to capture the entire piece), which depicted all the fear and sadness that the two Koreas have experienced and made it seem like hope is the only thing left.

 It was at Dorasan that our guide posited the idea that one day it may be possible to take the Transsiberian railway all the to Seoul. For various reasons I have had to postpone my journey on the TS for the time being, and hearing this made me resolutely decide that I will wait until North Korean borders become safe to cross and will return to Seoul from Europe by train; while I am skeptical about reunification, I do remain optimistic that in my life time North Korea will become foreigner-friendly enough for others like me to make this journey.

So that’s the DMZ. The remainder of our time on Seoul mainly consisted of shopping, eating (YUM being the operative word) and drinking, which most readers will be familiar with so I’ll spare the details.

The atmosphere of Seoul, however, is definitely worth a mention, especially as contrasted with Japan. I think I expected the Koreans to be much more like the Japanese, but I was way off the mark. While most people were polite, the general aura could be likened more to London than Tokyo, although I get the impression that Seoul is much safer than either of these places. As it was a festival weekend, the entire city felt like one enormous playground and boy, do those Koreans like to drink. It was also interesting just how stylish the Koreans are, as the Japanese have such a reputation for looking brilliant in all manner of outrageous outfits. Yet the Seoulites looked individual and classy without needing to be wacky, and if I’m honest I had sympathy with my friend Tasha as she groaned upon arrival back into Fukuoka, ‘these people make me cringe’.

 Not one of us was happy to return to Japan. The constant pussy-footing and living-to-work mentality is one which, 9 months in, one tires of frankly. Seoul was an Asian reminder of life back home, where we don’t have to feel guilty about having fun and it’s ok not to work at the weekend, and where saying what you think doesn’t cause instant panic. But I still feel glad that I chose Japan over South Korea (I was very close to choosing the latter), as not only do the seemlingly endless Japanese codes of etiquette provide a peace and sense of decorum here which I doubt I will find anywhere else; living in Japan is also a daily challenge in uncovering the many depths beneath these codes, and the many and hidden realities that exist for people here will never cease to fascinate me.

 Seoul certainly hasn’t seen the last of me though.