Shoes
The Eleventh Commandment:
"Thou shalt remove thy shoes!"


Paramedics show style.
The inseparable relationship between foreigners and toilet shoes, between felt and privileges, and between shoelaces and heels.

A German acquaintance in Tokyo had a tragic experience years ago. His roommate, also German, committed suicide in their mutual apartment by putting a plastic bag over his head, tying it shut, and inserting the tube from the gas tap into a previously precisely cut hole and turning up the gas. When the smell of gas had made its way through to the room of my acquaintance, he dashed over to his roommate, turned off the gas, tore the bag from his head - he was no longer moving - and called the Emergency Medical Services. The paramedics and the doctor raced up the stairs, entered the hallway - and then they all stood there to first take off their shoes before daring to enter the room of the suicide candidate in socks and initiating the desperately-needed emergency procedures. Hopefully, the 15 seconds it took for them to remove their shoes weren't responsible for the patient dying while still on the way to the hospital. The persistence of this convention, even in the most extreme situations, just goes to show how seriously the Japanese take it. And it makes clear just how big a faux pas it must be in their eyes when a foreigner doesn't respect the convention of removing their shoes. In doing so, foreigners rather seldomly make the mistake of entering a Japanese residence in their street shoes. Rather, what happens much more often is that we get entangled in the intrahousehold shoe system.
In this instance, however, every travel guide preaches to us in a prayer mill-like fashion: at the entrance to the home, slip out of your street shoes and into the available slippers. But only enter rooms furnished with rice straw mats in socks. Take your slippers off in front of the restroom and slip into the specially provided toilet shoes. After leaving the restroom, switch back to the house shoes. Unfortunately, even I've shuffled back into the dining room in toilet shoes several times, where, after a passing glance at my feet, the atmosphere froze over in a fraction of a second. My Japanese hosts lost their voices and they politely strained to look upwards in order to avoid having to gaze upon the bone of contention again. That they reacted in such a way at the sight of slippers for the john doesn't exactly speak in favor of the cleanliness of Japanese restrooms. For this reason, a German friend has even been pleading for a sharpening of the rules: "Rubber boots instead of toilet slippers!"
As is the case with residences, so, too, is the entire country sharply divided into shoe-free and shoe-required zones. Businesses, public houses, government authorities, and most office buildings may be entered unopposed in most cases. In contrast, large signs in front of sports centers, temples, hospitals, doctor's offices, and many museums unmistakably say, "Shoes off!" And while taking a completely normal walk through a fashion boutique, the saleswomen pay close attention to make sure that you leave your shoes in front of the curtain before entering a changing cubicle.
In schools, each student has to slip into plastic casuals, labelled with their names and lying in small boxes, likewise labelled with their names, standing at the entrance. The students thus accumulate in the entrance area before the beginning of school every morning because everyone's changing their shoes at the same time and placing them in the boxes. At my university there was also a lecture area that you weren't allowed to enter with street shoes. Appropriately enough, two large boxes stood right at the entrance for street shoes which simultaneously provided slippers. One box was for the teaching staff, the other for students. The students got normal plastic casuals of the simplest make while the teaching staff received special, padded slippers that were softer and therfore more luxurious. A text label on each of the professor slippers once again referred to their exclusivity: "Only for teaching staff and university visitors. Use by students strictly prohibited!"
Whether felt or plastic - it's not only unpleasant but also unhygienic if, in the most diverse of locations, you have to put on slippers that a few thousand feet have already been stuck into. No wonder that commercials for remedies against athlete's foot are a mainstay of Japanese advertising television...
The strict custom of removing one's shoes is admittedly tiresome, even to the Japanese. A gas meter reader must relieve himself of his shoes over fifty times a day (and does it) if he wants to gain access to the meters in residences. Here, the tying and untying of shoelaces becomes a Sisyphean task: barely in, already out again. Only a few people escape this restraint by wandering around in easily-removable sandals or street casuals. On the other hand, no one in the hyper fashion-conscious Tokyo would like to leave themselves open to criticism. Here, most would rather dispense with the tying and untying and torment themselves by stuggling to get directly into and out of their laced-up shoes. Naturally, this kind of treatment crushes the heel end of the shoes after only a few repetitions, and the army of shoes in the large entrance area of my sports center almost all have an inwards-dented heel end. But even the finest Italian leather shoes look shabby if they're treated in this way. The pretty young Japanese with their well-groomed hairdos and expensive clothes appear strangely paradoxical when you allow your gaze to wander downwards and see the dented stompers.
Even when you dispense with tying your shoes, you still always have to pull up the heel end. Again, bending over and doing so by hand almost cancels out the time gained. Most have therefore mastered the art of doing so while walking: during the forward step, the foot slides deep into the shoe towards the front, with the swingback making use of the heel to prop up the heel end. However, this always looks a little retarded, especially if you see a larger group leaving a building of the shoe-free zone and watch them collectively limp for their first few steps. Only the radically lazy are even more unaesthetic. They completely forego pushing up the heel end and stand with shoes open towards the back in the subway and office. "Practical casuals would be three times more presentable," thinks the unlearned Western observer, for whom the complex interrelationship between a country's customs, current fashion, and comfort remains obscured by the value system of the Far East.
This inscrutable world of values must also be the reason why female Japanese cling to their high-heeled shoes at all costs. While the battle with shoelace-tying primarily affects men, women don't appear to have any normal shoes in their closets. They even trudge through the rare Tokyo snow in their high heels. These aren't just fashion accessories but an essential remedy against the complex of being too small. In the meantime, these purchasable supplements of body length have reached up to 30 centimeters. Only in residences (Shoes off!), then, do you first notice that the Japanese female extends to just below chest height.
The point of removing one's shoes appears to have been lost on many Japanese. Why else would every Japanese guest standing at the entrance to my residence for the very first time be asking me, "Do I also have to take off my shoes at your place?" As if removing one's shoes weren't only a matter of hygiene but another custom inapplicable to foreigners and their residences, like bowing or democratic karaoke singing. I don't want to sound condescending about it, but to many who've asked me at the entrance if the shoe prohibition is applies to my residence, I glance over at my living room with a look that seems to ask, "Maybe I can try and see what it feels like to tread on a carpet WITH shoes at your place?"

This piece originally appeared as the third chapter of the book Darum nerven Japaner - Der ungeschminkte Wahnsinn des japanischen Alltags (That's Why Japanese Are Annoying - The Unvarnished Insanity of Japanese Everyday Life) by Dr. Christoph Neumann. While this document is his intellectual property, it was translated from German into English by the Lunar Archivist (Hans Schumacher) and the first version released on September 17, 2003. Aside from some small cosmetic changes made in order to accommodate the HTML format, it is absolutely identical in textual and visual content to the original.

Born in Munich, Germany in 1967 and raised in Würzburg, Christoph Neumann moved to Japan in 1995, initially as an exchange student. Little did he suspect that, three years following his arrival, he'd achieve celebrity status there after becoming a regular on the television show Koko ga hen da yo! Nihonjin (They're Crazy, the Japanese!). Hosted by world-renowned movie director Takeshi Kitano, the biweekly series, which ran from October 1998 to May 2002, essentially served as a platform for foreigners to give their two cents (or vent their collective spleens) on myriad aspects of Japanese life and culture. Dr. Neumann's frustration and annoyance culminated in the birth of his book, That's Why Japanese Are Annoying - The Unvarnished Insanity of Japanese Everyday Life, which quickly became a bestseller, both in his adoptive home of Japan when it first appeared in March 2001 as well as in his native Germany when it was released there in May 2002. You can visit his trilingual homepage at http://www.noiman.com or contact him via e-mail at neumann@noiman.com.

Back to "FAQ You! - The Sheer Lunacy Sailor Moon FAQ"