Backstage

As I am currently re-reading Goffman's brilliant 'Presentation of Self in Everyday Life', I thought this picture might be appropriate. It is a view of the stage of the National Theatre in Hanzômon, seen from backstage. While many houses in Europe and America are designed to be representative of the inhabitant's taste and sophistication (and often horribly fail in doing so), Japanese interiors are to a much larger degree 'backstage' to their presentation of self. It is not very common to entertain guests at one's house and if one does so, the guest only enters the small part of the house that is made representative through preparation. Interestingly, that space for formal visits is usually not used by the rest of the family at all. It always struck me as slightly odd that my hostfamily and me would sit in the crammed kitchen while there was a large empty tatami room just on the other side of the corridor. Over time I realised that it is precisely this backstage setting that made me part of the family and that I sometimes disrupted by being to formal and polite.