On my way back to the office last week, I had an unusual cabbie. For one thing, he was chatty, unlike the other Japanese cabbies I've encountered. For another, he looked very much like one of my bosses back in Washington, if my boss had been Japanese rather than of Mediterranean descent. It was the second time he'd been my driver, and both times I noticed the resemblance immediately.
Occasionally, we come across Japanese versions of familiar faces from back home. What's interesting about these occurrences is that they cover a wide variety of Western features. My boss looks nothing like an old client, American Idol-era Clay Aiken, or Steven Spielberg, yet we've seen Japanese versions of each of them. And, as a general rule, Japanese features are pretty homogeneous, so it's not like we're keying off of similarities in hair or eye color. It would be easy to say it's a trick of the mind, that it comes from needing some connection to home, but the first J-Clay sighting occurred while we still lived in America. The likenesses must come from somewhere more fundamental than that.
Anthropologists and ethnologists probably have researched this phenomenon and come to some conclusions about why we see the familiar in the apparently unrelated. For us, the non-scientists, it's just a part of the ongoing adventure — who are we going to see next?
Occasionally, we come across Japanese versions of familiar faces from back home. What's interesting about these occurrences is that they cover a wide variety of Western features. My boss looks nothing like an old client, American Idol-era Clay Aiken, or Steven Spielberg, yet we've seen Japanese versions of each of them. And, as a general rule, Japanese features are pretty homogeneous, so it's not like we're keying off of similarities in hair or eye color. It would be easy to say it's a trick of the mind, that it comes from needing some connection to home, but the first J-Clay sighting occurred while we still lived in America. The likenesses must come from somewhere more fundamental than that.
Anthropologists and ethnologists probably have researched this phenomenon and come to some conclusions about why we see the familiar in the apparently unrelated. For us, the non-scientists, it's just a part of the ongoing adventure — who are we going to see next?