Long Distance | Historical Context

Long Distance Historical Context

Japanese Culture in the 1980s

In the story Mieko starts weeping when she's on the phone with Kirby, after they both realize that their relationship is over. She tells him that he "should not have listened" to her cry, but Kirby, raised in an American culture, asks her, "How could I hang up?" To this, Mieko replies, "A Japanese man would have." Later, at the end of the story, when Kirby is telling Leanne about Mieko, he notes that Japanese women must make certain emotional concessions if they are to live "in a Japanese way." As Edwin O. Reischauer says in his book The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity, "Japanese men are blatantly male chauvinists and women seem shamefully exploited and suppressed," especially when viewed by Americans and other Westerners. Reischauer's book was published in 1988, one year after Smiley published "Long Distance," so his observations of Japanese culture help to better understand the world...
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