For a brief moment, X stopped reading like a machine built to aggravate, divide, and degrade the people using it. Instead of the usual sludge of foreign bots and demoralizing propaganda, American users found themselves, thanks to a new auto-translation feature, staring at something unexpected: a flood of posts from Japan celebrating the United States. Monster trucks, backyard barbecue, Old West revolvers, bluegrass music, country songs, and all the rowdy symbols of American life that our own elites often treat as embarrassing were suddenly being admired from abroad.
It reminded Americans that our culture is not only real, but vivid enough that another people can see its beauty even when we have been taught to sneer at it ourselves. If Americans and Japanese are to continue to enjoy our distinct cultures, we must fight to maintain the true diversity that makes a civilization worth preserving.
Most Americans know that there is a strong current of appreciation for Japanese culture in the U.S. Americans eat Japanese food, watch anime, read manga, practice karate, and revere samurai movies. While we were once in a brutal war, Americans have come to respect the noble and beautiful traditions of the Japanese. What many Americans did not know is that the Japanese also have a robust subculture of appreciation for American culture.
Americans are constantly told that they have no culture, or that what they do have is shallow, vulgar, and unworthy of defense. In much of elite life, status comes from mocking the tastes and traditions of ordinary Americans. Status in the U.S. and many other Western nations is acquired by looking down on the folkways of the average American.
It is not just that the Japanese love American culture, but that they seem to focus specifically on rural Southern and Western archetypes. Banjos playing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” barbeques grilling comically large steaks, monster trucks crushing everything below them. The Japanese love and celebrate everything that American elites have trained the population at large to sneer at.
Recently, many people have been asking the question “What is an American?” But the Japanese seem to know right away. There is no confusion, no debate. The answer is obvious and plays itself out in the memes, re-enactments, and celebrations the Japanese enjoy while honoring American culture. Sometimes another people can identify your defining traits more clearly than you can, especially after your own institutions have spent years trying to dissolve them.
In a period when many people in the United States feel estranged from their own inheritance, it was oddly heartening to see ourselves reflected in a nation we admire. If the Japanese know who Americans are, then the least we can do is be proud to act like the Americans the Japanese love.
This sudden outburst of cultural appreciation also puts to bed the idea that Americans are xenophobes who hate other countries. Japan’s love for the U.S. is reciprocated with great fervor by Americans. But why are Americans so willing to appreciate and embrace the Japanese while being dismissive of so many other countries? The answer is simple: The Japanese are worthy of admiration. Not all cultures are equal, and the Japanese have emerged from the devastation of war to rebuild a high-trust society on a foundation of rich history and honorable conduct. It turns out that Americans don’t hate other cultures; they simply save their appreciation for those that deserve it.
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