Years ago, I was told that the Japanese language has no word for PRIVACY. It's a concept that they just don't get. Living in houses with paper walls and being crammed into trains by guys with white gloves there's not much opportunity to experience aloneness. During my last visit to Tokyo, I was taken to a club so exclusive it had a lawn in front. When I failed to show any sense of awe at being confronted by a green rectangle, a fellow American told me to imagine a similarly sized space at home paved with gold bricks - the relative costs being about the same. Yet the Japanese cope. They are so clean and controlled there is no sense of undue intrusion even in a crush of bodies in mid-July. And their social interactions are so tightly scripted that commingling with crowds of strangers is no more demanding than the stateside equivalent of an occasional Have a Nice Day. Privacy has become an internal mindset rather than an external fact among the people of that densely populated island nation. Dealing with foreigners like myself, who are apt to say and do things designed to stand out, to get attention, to affirm rather than deny one's individuality, must get very fatiguing after the first six seconds or so.
Traveling around the world, it becomes obvious that one's need for privacy (and the means by which that need is manifest) is very much a product of time and place. This was readily apparent at a United Nations' function I attended years ago. A friend pointed out two men (one from Spain and the other from England) who were having a conversation. Whenever the former moved in to create a comfortable personal space of about a foot, the latter pulled back to reestablish the two-foot distance to which he was accustom. As they discussed global politics the one fellow chased the other around the room. Neither was aware of what was happening but, no doubt, any chance of a consensus between them was a long shot. This is why simply getting opposing sides together and talking can turn out to be counterproductive. The one becomes a "Pushy Dago SOB" while the other is a "Stuck-up Limey SOB." When cheap travel was discovered along the Costa Brava, the English would complain about staking out a secluded picnic spot only to have the natives appear out of nowhere and set up their fete a few feet away. And did you ever wonder why Prince Charles keeps his hands so firmly clasped behind his back? That's just in case some silly sod might think it appropriate to attempt pressing the royal flesh. As Mother used to say: "There's no need to paw a friend and why in the world would one want to touch a stranger?"
The Russians and the Americans have a similar problem and on any number of occasions it might well have turned the Cold War - Hot. Over there, deep silence and penetrating eye contact make for closeness. Over here, that's intrusive, perhaps threatening behavior; small talk is a social lubricant and the fixed stare is an affront. "What are you looking at you Ruskie SOB?" "Why do you chatter and flit your eyes you Yankee SOB?" Those twin notions of the Russians trying to start something and the Americans trying to hide something bedeviled years of attempts at détente between the nuclear powers.
And even amidst talk of a Missile Gap abroad, there exists a Gender Gap right here at home. Males and females have different needs for privacy. Just take a look at the lines outside the different restrooms during a convention. It's been said that the quickest way to fame and fortune is through the identifying and then the filling of a need. But if the idea of women's urinals just crossed your mind, forget it. Various designs have appeared in plumbing catalogs at least since the 60's to no avail. They have already been invented but are still a long way from being accepted.
And yet women find security in the physical closeness of other women. Faced with what experimenters told subjects was to be an unpleasant experience, women were comforted when crowed into a small Lady's Waiting Room while men forced into a similarly small Men's Waiting Room reacted with an equal but opposite degree of discomfort. That men and women ever agree on anything is a wonder. A man will stand further away from a male friend than a woman will stand next to a female stranger. However, while a woman may need less in the way of personal space that need is still readily apparent. In fact, one of those best selling How to Beat Everybody at Everything books advises male executives to alternately step into and out of a female executive's personal space as a means of disorienting her while you then move up to the next rung on the corporate ladder.
Look At It This Way
Privacy may be defined in a number of different ways. Call it personal space or an inner place, social distance or an alone zone or - as in Japan - don't call it anything at all but the fact remains that it appears to be a natural need. Nurture, however, can shape it in seemingly subtle yet obviously significant ways. From culture to culture, class-to-class and even across age, race and gender, people differ in their personal notion of privacy and what constitutes a violation thereof. Keep that in mind the next time your perfect opening is met with a less than perfect closing.
