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Full transcript follows.
Finding your own way in a country like Japan is certainly no easy task and my guest on Diversity rocks Innovation! Vol. 9, Tia Haygood, has certainly done just that. Tia grew up code-switching daily as she navigated her life in a mostly black neighborhood and her mostly white school in the United States. Now she runs an incredibly busy photography business and she tells us how she empowers her clients to create beautiful photos.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- Growing up in America and overcoming systemic racism
- Code switching in an American and Japanese context
- How Tia came to be in Japan and why she has chosen to stay here
- Why the job of a photographer is to empower clients as well as take great photos
About Tia
Tia Haygood is an English & Japanese-speaking photographer living in Tokyo, Japan. She enjoys photographing the urban characteristics of Tokyo and travels around Japan, tasting its many unique local foods. Tia received her first camera at the age of 13 and gradually became familiar with photography afterward. She has also attended classes through the New York Institute of Photography to further her skills.
She is very active in the international community and is currently a member of several Tokyo-based organizations such as FEW Japan, the Australian New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and Jarman International K.K. She has provided photography services to some of these organizations as well as others throughout Japan.
Connect with Tia:
Website: TOPTIA Photography: https://toptia.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toptiaphotos/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toptiaphotos/
Connect with Jackie:
Website: https://en-joi.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-f-steele-phd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enjoidiversityandinnovation
https://www.facebook.com/jackiefsteelephd Instagram: www.instagram.com/enjoi_diversity_innovation/
Transcript:
Jackie: Welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! Volume Nine. My name is Jackie Steele and I’m a long time Canadian political scientist living and working in Japan and also the CEO and founder of enjoi diversity and innovation. And I’m so excited today. We’re going to be talking with someone who I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for over four or five years now. And, we’re gonna certainly talk through and thought partner, why we think, diversity rocks innovation, and certainly for those who are joining for the first time, enjoi is a Japan based global facing business, working in English and Japanese, and sometimes in French. And we’re really committed to bringing evidence-based diversity, equity and innovation training and education for leaders, and for corporations that really want to learn a little bit more about how we can mobilize intersectional diversity.
Think about accessibility. Think about emotionally intelligent leadership and of course, build corporate policy ecosystems and corporate cultures that empower individuals and that notably unleash innovation. But not just any kind of innovation. We’re really interested in a kind of innovation that’s inclusive that is going to amplify democratic equality for all.
And that really will power our people systems for personal and for collective good. So in the live stream, one of our goals is to thought partner out loud. And this is a practice that I learned from a leadership coach. And it’s stuck with me as such an important part of lifelong learning. To basically exchange with others to hear their worldviews, their insights, their expertise, and to just thought partner in solidarity, and kind of a reciprocal giving of ourselves, that allows us to appreciate differences that other people bring to the table, different worldviews, and how we can mobilize all of those strengths and diverse ideas and perspectives to really move the dial on inclusion and innovation, not only in Japan, but across Asia Pacific.
So each week I invite and I feature one of the enjoi Diversity and Innovation thought partners in the network. And we thought partner out loud as humans with no business cards, no hierarchies, no worrying about, you know, are you a sempai? Are you a kohai?
Who’s older, who’s younger, but you know, we don’t care. This is really about showing up with our radical individuality together and appreciating all we have to offer just as human beings. And in this collegial exchange, we’ll thought partner out loud for the benefit of sharing these conversations and these insights and the wisdom that can come from these thought partnering out loud with the world.
So I am so pleased to welcome Tia Haygood, who I met, oh, goodness, right, basically through FEW Japan. Welcome Tia. You were already on the board of directors of FEW Japan. And for those who may not be familiar, FEW Japan stands for: For Empowering Women. It’s an organization that is working in service of diverse women across Japan and, and who are looking for a global minded, English speaking community to really feel normal in Japan and to sort of come together where diversity is normal, gender equality is a given, and all the women show up really as they are and can be appreciated for who they are. So that’s how we met. Right? You were on the board. And I remember joining, at the time, to join as programs director, co-director. And you were already in the role for about a year and a half, I think prior to me, as it was called strategic partnerships at that time? It was community service.
Tia: It was community service, I was a strategic partner.
Jackie: You were a strategic partner. That’s true. That’s true. You wore two hats. So welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! Thank you so much for joining today.
Tia:Thank you. I’m excited to be here
Jackie: Very much. I’ve been going back and forth on social media.
I wonder what we’re going to talk about. What should we focus on? So many things that we can dive into. I guess we only have a short, you know, 55 minutes and, and there’s so many things I want to cover, but maybe we can start out with a bit of your backstory. I know that there’s the Japan journey, which we’ll get to.
But before we tackle the Japan journey, could you maybe talk a little bit about, what are the core pieces or identities or experiences you’ve had growing up. That sort of make you who you are and helps give us a sense of why you’re doing what you’re doing today in Japan.
Tia: Oh, wow.
And I’m supposed to keep that short.
Jackie: Well, you know, let’s keep pulling threads. We’ll be fine, take your time.
Tia: Okay, well, hello everyone. I’m Tia Haygood. I am a Tokyo based photographer. I focus on branding, headshots and family photography. And my journey from youth to this point, was quite colorful, to say the least. I grew up in, or my background is a Belizean that’s Caribbean and, uh African-American and we had a pretty blended household culturally.
My mom was from New York, my dad’s from the south. And so there was just this, just within a black family, there was already a diverse kind of surrounding, where I grew up and you know I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood, but I went to a predominantly white school. So it was just very easy for me to see people of different walks of life, different socioeconomic status.
And again, just my mom being who she was, she wanted us to get out and see and meet everyone. So we met all sorts of people in her inner circles and as well as my father’s as well. So diversity was just something we grew up with. Being in my neighborhood, I just always had this passion to leave, because it was just so monotone.
It was so single note. I wanted to get out and explore, you know, people’s countries, people’s environments. And, it was just always a passion of mine to just be around things that were different to me. But of course, you know, when you’re in different environments, sometimes those monotone environments kind of clash.
Sometimes they’re not ideal for your own personal growth for your own, sense of worth, sense of being. And it was really hard, trying to jump from different environment to environment and trying to find the one that fits. Trying to find the one that produces a good environment for you to grow.
Sometimes it’s good for other people, but it’s not good for certain people. And yes, I am kind of dancing around the topic of race, and dancing around the topic of gender, but it is, you know, it was a reality. I’m from the States and racial politics and racial cultures are a thing in certain areas.
And it was really hard. It was really difficult. I didn’t understand race until I, hmm, I think it was in high school when people started to kind of vocalize their expectations or kind of low expectations of me being in international baccalaureate class or me aiming for a particular university for when I graduated.
And then it really came to the forefront when I was in college, when certain situations would happen and then certain conversations stem from it. And it was really hard, kind of navigating these conversations when you’re trying to both educate somebody of a particular point of view, but at the same time, understand, hey, I get your point of view, but please understand this is the reality for people who are like me. And those battles can be very, very difficult.
And sometimes people don’t even want to deal with that conversation. And you realize how much people in a majority shape you as a person, especially when you’re not a person of that majority. And it was really, really tough. And it got to the point where I decided at this point, I’d come to Japan, I’d traveled to Japan before. I’d studied abroad twice, once at Aoyama Gakuin and the second at Kanda University. So I, it was kind of like my outlet. Japan, culturally in Japan itself, was just an outlet for me. It was just the third wheel that I didn’t have to worry about. You know, man versus woman black versus white, you know?
Jackie: So exotically different that you can find an escapism limbo, maybe, that’s kind of like, okay, all bets are off. All common understandings are kind of maybe differently off. And we sort of over-exaggerate the differences of Japan in many ways. I think until you really settle here for a long time, it does feel like such a very different place from well, Canada, for me, or the United States for you.
And the longer you live here, you see all the commonalities that then actually do come across and all the different diversity of individuals in Japan who are, you know, super individualistic or super collectivist and the range all in between for 120 million people. Of course, there’s a huge range of that individuality, even in Japan.
You mention, and I think it’s interesting to think about, and I mean, as a political scientist, we’re always studying majority minority politics because, you know, everything in our electoral systems are structured around the majority. You need a majority to get the vote through.
You need a majority to win the election outcome. You need that sort of majority plus one, but there’s also the sociological majority demographics of a population. Separate from the political outcomes that is just demographics and that demographic, majority minority politics across race or gender or whatever, or heterosexual versus those who don’t maybe identify as heterosexual and would identify as queer, those majority minority demographics that set the informal culture and the informal worldview that is taken for granted as truth.
And when that’s not your reality and when that’s not your truth and you’re permanently in that minority position, right, and then, like you say, when their truth doesn’t actually account adequately for your experience, or understand you adequately, but is imposed on you from all sides. It can be very kind of suffocating right?
To then be able to say, and I mean, one of the Canadian political philosophers who I fell in love with in my undergraduate was Charles Taylor because he taught, he wrote this very famous book that is called justice, I think justice and the politics of recognition. And, and he really talks about cultural recognition or diversity, the recognition of diverse identity and then the non-recognition of others.
And how do you misrecognize others constantly misrecognizing them so that they feel unseen. And that majority minority dynamic kind of leads to, oh, everybody thinks A and therefore A is the dominant informal norm. And so we see you as B and you’re saying, no, I’m not B, I’m B. Why do you think I’m B?
And then you’re constantly having to say, I’m not B, like, I’m actually like, you know, L and then having to explain that over and it gets tiring, right?
Tia: It does, it does. I know a lot of times, it tickles me, you know, you see on certain international spheres, I’m really tired of Japanese people asking me how long I’m going to be here.
And, and if I can hold chopsticks and I’m thinking those are the kinds of questions and expectations that I constantly had to deflect in the United States. I would rather have the can you hold the chopstick question. That’s nothing to me compared to some of the other things that you have to immediately disprove right off the bat.
Right from, you know, hey, my name is…
Jackie: And I think those, well and really they’re stereotypes, right? They’re stereotypes that have been made from the majority perspective about the minority, the minority group. But it’s like simplifying and reducing them down to this thing that the majority thinks they are because they’re uninformed, frankly.
They haven’t met enough, they haven’t gotten out enough to meet enough diverse people to not stereotype. But it can obviously, I mean, there’s different degrees of what that then feels like, constant microaggression or is it just like innocent ignorance? Oh, you know, the assumption and we, you know, we think about in some ways, like you talked about in United States, if it’s the race politics, the black, white race politics, I mean, you come to Japan and it’s the Japanese versus, you know, gaijin kind of race politics or dichotomy.
Right? And we’re always stuck in these dichotomies of, are you A, or are you B. And you’re like, well, there’s actually 15,000 boxes. Could we acknowledge that there’s, or at least give me 15 boxes. Can we have at least 15 boxes that we could talk about at least, I mean, nationality, how many countries are there?
But it gets simplified to Nippon jin right? Nihonjin and Gaijin and you sorta think, well, really, is life really that simple, like, isn’t it a little bit more complicated than that? Right? And so then, you know, Japanese use chopsticks, ergo, the opposite of Japanese shouldn’t use chopsticks. And you’re sort of thinking really? Is that a logical assumption to make? But that tends to be the stereotype, right?
That if you’re, I guess, gaijin and not kanji ken not from a kanji ken country or an Asian country that therefore you might not have the capacity to hold chopsticks and use them in an eloquent way. And I think there’s other, I mean, ways in which we put people in boxes. So when you decided to come to Aoyama Gakuin, was that kind of your safe space, escape moment of freedom where the boxes, at least even if they don’t all disappear, you can trade the boxes in for something that feels a little bit more liberating?
Tia: Yeah. You know, it’s in the intro video that you were playing, it was talking about being celebrated for being unique and different. And I kind of felt it wasn’t like, it wasn’t tokenism, but it was this opportunity where I could meet people in this new environment. And these people could meet somebody who they’ve never met, you know, at all, or of that group.
And we just synergized so much. I made so many friends at Aoyama Gakuin and we hung out and we, you know, ask each other questions and the point of ignorance in terms of Q and A, didn’t really bother me in the sense of points of ignorance Q and A back in the states, right? Like, I mean, these are egregious examples, but I remember,I love NASCAR I’m from the south, I’m a NASCAR fan. I went to a NASCAR race and I remember one, you know, white lady, about my age, I was 19 at the time, and she asked, do black people get chicken pox? And I’m sitting here thinking like, you know, I really want to know what about us, gives us a vaccine against chicken pox.
I dunno. Maybe we’ve secret powers. So, but you know, some of the questions, again, egregious example,and then again, you know, the silliest thing I can think of when I was in Japan is like, hey, is your hair real? You know, can you use chopsticks? And I mean, they’re, they’re innocent questions within the context of, you know, they’ve never seen a person like me before in person.
Whereas you just kind of have that expectation in The States where we’re a diverse nation.
Jackie: We should know our internal realities a little bit better.
Tia: So I should point out context is a really key factor. So maybe there might be, somebody might ask me the same question in the US, where it could kind of irk me, but it doesn’t particularly irk me in Japan because contextually speaking, there’s no one like me in…
Jackie: Well, they don’t have a history of having, you know, tremendously large African-American populations in Japan that they’ve just decided to not learn about.
Right? And there is a history, there is a sort of an effacement of American history. That makes me as an educator, political scientist, wondering what they are teaching in the public schools in the United States that the white folks don’t learn about the history of their own country and of the diversity of that country and of how to learn it, understand the violations of liberty that have happened.
And then how do you make sure that we’re making sure our generations are learning from those mistakes and not repeating so that we’re not having to live again and again, and again, dealing of course in 2020 and 21 with the BLM movements, having to put, again, these issues back on the spotlight. Why have they not been dealt with and solved at a very institutional, political institutional, high, powerful as well as mainstream throughout public education, is the question that I want to be asking, you know, that baffles the mind that there can be such a disconnect that the population wouldn’t know itself.
Because I think you can’t really go out and sort of proselytize liberty, if you don’t even practice it genuinely at home within your own diverse population base and have that celebration of diversity and diverse expressions of freedom and diverse identities. It seems to me that project of, I think the American dream is a project and it’s exciting, but I think it needs to be more amply practiced genuinely at home.
Tia: I think it’s also, going back to diversity, I don’t think there is a collaboration of different points of thinking and different people, educators who have an interest in certain priorities. I mean, there’s this whole, do we teach this part of science or not? Do we teach this part of history or not? Well, many historians, if there are enough historians who have different backgrounds and who have different focuses and genres, focuses in areas of history that they specialize in, my sister’s going to be so disappointed cause she’s a historian, come together and say, hey, what can we prioritize for teaching history in the, you know, American history to our students.
And it just really isn’t. The way that it works, at least I can say this for an example it’s a capitalist system in the sense of whoever, whichever state has the biggest numbers, there’s a production of textbooks based on the state with the biggest number, and the state with the biggest number is good old Texas.
So Texas nine times out of 10 is focused on preserving America in a positive light and not so much talking about the ugliness of American history. Therefore they’re going to prioritize, or they have, I should say, have prioritized the higher points of American history. And because those school districts in that state are so big, the publishing companies for those textbooks produce based off of what Texas prioritizes. It’s really detrimental.
And you lose out on learning so much about America because it has such a rich history in its short time-span.
Jackie: Right. Well, and you sort of think, I mean, there’s a fine line, and not to bring this too close to home here in Japan, but certainly, you know, there’s, there’s ongoing efforts to also diversify the curriculum in the public school education in Japan to be a little bit more cognizant of different parts of Japanese history that have been sort of not fully covered in detail and not fully taught and particularly around colonization of different countries in Asia and then the diaspora communities that remain in Japan post colonization that then live with similar underground racism and race politics that are not solved yet here.
But they aren’t really talked about because it’s not really taught in schools. And so there’s an assumption that we’ve achieved you know, post-World War II, equality dream land, where there are no race politics. There are no gender politics. Everything is just the new constitution waves the magic wand, and voila, we are all equal.
And, and that’s not necessarily the dynamics. So if we can’t have, sort of, more honest conversations about our histories, then how do we then bring those questions to light and deal with them in a very sort of honest and transparent way. So we can move forward to really build a more inclusive context.
I’m going back to your, if I could, go back to your, your high school experience where you, you mentioned, and maybe it was even before high school, but that you were growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood, but that you went to a predominantly white school. Was that again, around the class dynamics and race politics, that the predominantly white school had better academic performance or better offerings?
And what is the institutional level of racism that that expresses, right? I mean, ultimately that your choice is to really uproot to a different neighborhood, to find the higher quality education opportunity whether, but then that means inserting yourself into a majority minority dynamic to do that.
Tia: Yeah. So my mom was a teacher and she knew the schools that were the high performing school. She knew the schools, with certain programs, she was a dance teacher. So she’s going to teach at the school with the dance programs. And she wanted us to go to the schools with the highest reading and writing test scores.
So, when I was in middle school, the school with the highest reading, writing test scores, was two towns away. So we would literally wake up, four in the morning, drive to the bus stop, and then ride an hour bus trip to that school. And, this is before the choice plan, the choice plan, we couldn’t do that anymore, but before the choice plan came in, we could travel two towns to school, but I think choice plan came in in 2003.
And so we were limited to the school in our neighborhood. So my mom had to get a loan and get a house, in the neighborhood of this school district of the school that had the highest reading and math test scores for high schoolers, when we graduated junior high school. So, that was something that my mom was really, really adamant.
Jackie: She was committed.
Tia: She was committed. She was waking us up in the early morning. And then buying a house in the area, so we could go to school. My mom was really serious about education.
Jackie: And that’s fabulous. Right. Honestly, how important is that? And then the commitment and dedication to, and that you also, you know, went along with getting up at four in the morning.
Tia: When you’re 12, you don’t have a choice, you just get up.
Jackie: If you know what’s good for you, you get up. Oh, wow. And so then I think, you know, we’ve spoken in the past, how, in some ways you developed a knack for, I think you called it code switching, and knowing which way to speak when you’re within your own home communities and which way to speak maybe differently when you’re in the school community.
I think there are obviously multiple degrees of code switching that people do across class and education in terms of how, if you feel like you’re walking into certain environments, there’s a pressure right? To sound educated or there’s a pressure to sound knowledgeable about certain topics.
But there’s also just day-to-day, you know, what are the common expressions, what are the ways in which we speak the English language that builds diversity into the way we’re talking and within our communities and within different communities. How did that serve you or disserve you?
Tia: Well, it served me quite well because I didn’t get bullied by people who thought I had spoken improper, but there were moments where if I didn’t time it right, or if I used the wrong code in the wrong environment, um, you know, you get called up on both ends. So if I’m speaking very proper in the neighborhood, then, you know, people ask, why are you speaking white?
And, uh, if, if I’m using a little bit too much slang in my, you know, science class and people, you know, tend to call, call me out, you know, in that way. So I don’t really do it at all anymore. I speak in the way that I want to speak and feel comfortable speaking. Um, of course we live in a world or we live in a country where code switching is the norm and you have different, uh, grammar tenses for certain situations. So you have your keigo when you’re in a formal situation or your business and you have your casual, but then you have your honorific and humble form. So, I mean the whole Japanese language is rooted in code switching.
Jackie: It really is. And sort of how did that map onto hierarchies of gender, of race, of age, right? Differential for age, but also status hierarchy, depending on what your business card says. The language politics and looking at the politics of language. So it’s really fascinating because so much gets revealed through those different levels of code switching that I think we’re, we’re inevitably socialized into.
When I first came to Northern Nagano, 22 odd years ago, I think it was 24 years ago. I was working at city hall and I was the only foreigner, right? I was there to bring internationalization to the city as this big lofty goal for one little 22 year old from Canada, a big goal.
But I just remember thinking wow, I want to speak in a way that’s performing and performative of equality in terms of interpersonal relationships. How do I do that in the Japanese language without being dismissed as oh, it’s because she’s a gaijin and she doesn’t really understand keigo. And I was like, no, no, I just spent seven years learning Japanese, you know?
And at McGill University, trust me, we did all the different forms, but I, in principle, wanted to try and be in the workplace and not have to always be either raising everyone who’s above, everyone’s above me. I’m the bottom of the totem pole in that, right? City hall and the last hire. So everyone is literally above.
But I don’t want to disrespect either by using the wrong tense form that isn’t being as using the keigo as I normally should be. And I also didn’t want to be the deferential girl, the differential feminine speak that you’re taught that girls have to speak more politely.
We have to enunciate. We need to make sure that we’re raising the tone of our voice. There’s all these nuances around performance femininity and Japanese, right? And so I experimented for a while with just using a, you know, “Shite moraimasuka?” kind of a flat neutral as I can possibly be just to see what would happen.
And this was maybe two years in, so they already knew me and they kind of knew I was weird and sort of a bit of a, you know, uh, very much into equality and, and, um, those, those issues, right? So they humored me, but there is a point at which being a “Shakaijin” being like an adult, is to know when to code switch into keigo and into which dynamics of spoken language in Japan.
And it is a sign of, you are a mature adult now. You know how to do, this is a level of professionalism and also a level of education and a level of you’re a mature person fitting into your socialized roles. And it’s hard to negotiate those towards more equality in the Japanese language, right? And I know that when you were, I mean, do you face this now?
You’ve been in Japan, obviously since 2012, I think I want to say, 2011. Maybe we can go there and just think about how you paid forward those code switching skills you had and then tackle, you know, your integration into Japan. How did that build your insight? Because in some ways you already had these insights into how the socialization might play out for you in this new culture. And then how to navigate that. I mean, there are some real skills and survival skills that come of being minority minority. You learn, you learn survival skills, right? You learn how to protect and self-defend so that you’re not lambasted by the majority, in any context of majority minority dynamics that you’re in.
And it’s a privileged position of knowing both the minority position and knowing what the majority thinks, that often the majority doesn’t have both insights often, right? The majority only is in this privileged, we are the world, isn’t our truth, like, universal? And they’re kind of right. They’re, kind of, in their own little Universalist bubble, isn’t it?
You know, but that’s kind of this quintessential privilege, to not have to know how minority people feel and experience the world or to empathize with that. Whereas the minority side experiences, you have to learn both, and you have to understand how to navigate both for survival. So in Japan, obviously Japan was kind of your safe escapism maybe. Is that what ultimately made you want to come back to then live and work?
Tia: Yeah. I wanted to just come, so first of all, let me back up. So I was, a long time ago, I wanted to be a lawyer and I took the LSAT and I applied to law schools. And that was, that was the goal, but I wasn’t quite ready to, to get to that point.
So me being in Japan for a year or two years was kind of like a gap, you know, space of time. I can be again in the environment to build myself up, build my confidence up, come here with a skill, solidify my Japanese. I was pursuing my career as an attorney.
But I just didn’t want to get into the weeds of it yet because all of my sempai who had gone to law school ahead of me, they’re in tears. They’re, you know, neck deep in, in reading and reports and assignments. And I said, look, I want to do it, but I don’t want to do it now. So I’m a do something else for a bit. A typical life in Japan story, you come with the intention of being here temporarily, and then it just drags and drags and drags and drags and drags.
So it’s, it’s still dragging. But, the reason why I wanted to, that’s one reason. But I learned Japanese in college. And so how tenses like keigo and some keigo and, you know, this is different, um, levels of conversation was presented to me was situational. It was never really a sense of like, you must do this, or these are the consequences.
There was no “Bucho” that I had to practice this to, until I came to Japan and the expectation was presented to me. It’s no longer textbook Japanese . Oh, okay, this Bucho has some high expectations of me to use the right Japanese, you know, use teinei not, you know, casual Japanese. It’s going to be teinei all day every day, and it’s going to be keigo to the, uh, customers.
Now, the beautiful thing about working, cause I started my very first job in Japan was I worked at eikaiwa and I graciously got to avoid that kind of messy hierarchy of conversation because you’re supposed to speak English as the English. So I didn’t, that expectation wasn’t too stressful at that point.
But it did start to become a thing when I became a photographer, because now I’m going, no, there’s this, there’s a Soto and Uchi component. And if you’re Soto, you have to speak keigo
Jackie: Yeah. It’s like the customer, so “omotenashi” hospitality towards the person outside the right, the company or the yes.
Tia: Yeah. It’s a thing and even peripheral people are looking and trying to observe how you interact. I remember like my very first year of TOPTIA I was photographing, um, um, I was building a folio for a model. Um, so he wanted to be a model and a professional model and he needed a portfolio. So we’re in the studio.
His girlfriend comes and his girlfriend is in marketing and she’s looking at everything. She’s looking at how I’m communicating with him and she’s just like, Nope, Nope, Nope. That’s not good. And I’m, of course, I’m just like really hyperventilating here, trying to photograph this guy.
And so she, uh, the, the boyfriend, when he gets his pictures, he was saying like, yeah, you know, I really had a fun time, but my girlfriend noticed that, you know, you didn’t really talk to me in the way that was appropriate. This is the hierarchy of language. And she was concerned, I should say, about the layout of the studio. Now this isn’t my studio, this is a rented space. So shoganai on that point, really, you know, it really put the fear of God in you as a service provider.
Jackie: Everything reflects on you. It doesn’t matter if it’s your fault, everything is your fault.
Tia: But you know, that, that was my, that was my rough introduction to omotenashi and presenting omotenashi to Japanese clients, whether they are westernized Japanese clients or not. That really helped me really, you know, at least do just a refresher of how to speak with keigo, how to speak with teinei before I meet with a Japanese client.
And, um, I mean, now this year I photographed, um, some really high level executives and, you know, you’re in your mind, you’re you’re going through, okay, make sure your business card’s ready. It makes you treat, makes you do that meishi koukan you know, like the way it’s supposed to be done, make sure you use, you know, teinei and keigo but don’t make it too fake sounding because if you use too much, it sounds like you’re being insincere.
All of these things. I mean, down to where somebody is sitting, you know, make sure you sit near the door, don’t sit near the window.
Jackie: So many rituals of code switching and hierarchy and relationality, right? High context, relationship and relationality of what hat are you wearing. And always being mindful of that hat is on while that hat is on, I need to do X, Y, and Z. When I take off the hat, then I can talk in ABC. But while I’ve got that hat on, I need to be in, you know, X, Y, Z. It’s a lot to manage.
Tia: Yeah, it is. But to me, it became this fun thing that I enjoy doing. I enjoyed showing, hey, even though I’m a foreigner, I’m here in your space, respecting your space and your culture.
I understand your culture. Jumping those hoops is a lot different than jumping code switching hoops back in the US. Because now the code switching hoops is the way you look, your hair. My grandmother, I remember this, she was furious, that my mother let me get locks because she, you know, in her mind, locks is an unprofessional hairstyle.
If you want to be taken seriously, you need straight, you know, hair that’s not a distraction in the office.
Jackie: So much hair politics in the states.
Tia: Oh man, don’t even get me started on the hair politics in the States.
Jackie: And it goes back to this misrecognition when, I mean, your grandmother’s generation would have been constantly had projected onto them, this idea that a proper professional appearance is not your natural hair, how you would want to put it, to, you know, look the way that you find convenient and professional from within your cultural difference or from within your preference individually, but there is a way to do it and that has to basically match what white hair does, which is ridiculous.
Right? I mean, in terms of like creating norms that are fundamentally only about one positioning in one racial sort of demographic, but the majority has the power to impose that on, you know, whole generations to say this is proper and that’s not. And how do we move beyond that? So in Japan, I think what I hear when you talk about, um, the mastering of the code switching in Japan is like a, it’s almost like a fun challenge because it’s disruptive of the stereotype and it’s disruptive in an empowering way.
Tia: It’s like a, I don’t want to trivialize this. It’s like, it’s like a game, you know?
Jackie: You can surprise them.
Tia: You do. And it’s an opportunity to impress, you know, whereas back in the states, it, the opportunity is to get through the door and to disprove…
Jackie: Disprove the negative.
Right. So much, so much of it is there’s a whole bunch of derogatory assumptions that are imposed on you or projected that aren’t true to begin with that are all othering strategies that denigrate, right? Based on difference. And then having to just say, how do I come up to just, can you see me as an equal because I’m actually not all of those things you’re projecting onto me.
And those projections aren’t even accurate of most of the black community anyhow. So can we dispense with basically those racisms. I mean, they’re really just racial sentiments that are stereotypes that other, that other and denigrate in a way that gives power to the majority white folk in a way that supports them having more advantage and more privilege as a chronic system.
And there’s a complicity, right, in that.
Tia: Yeah, um, and not to, and not to let my experience give Japan a pass, because there are definitely some grievances that Japan has. But one of the things, you know, in, for women is, is like something as simple as asking a question, people who genuinely have a question, and if you’re a minority, oftentimes don’t ask the question because then they’re perceived as ignorant or they’re perceived as inadequate.
And so you get a lot of people who should be encouraging conversations or should be overcoming something as simple as getting clear information because they want to disprove a certain stereotype or disprove a certain assumption. So just normalizing being able to be vocal, normalizing being able to ask a question, even in a Japanese space.
I think it’s fun for me as a foreigner to jump these hoops. But for somebody who is a native to Japan, you know, the hoops might not be as enjoyable as it is for me. I’m American. I’m pretty privileged in that.
Jackie: Right. And in some ways there’s an assumption that you get a pass as a foreigner because their assumption is that you couldn’t possibly know or why would you know?
Or if you do know then, whoa, aren’t you amazing. And it’s like a super power if you do know how to fit in. Whereas I think, yeah, you’re right, Japanese nationals just have this constant pressure of why don’t you, you should know this. And if you don’t know this, there’s a problem. So you need to figure that out before you show up, because when you show up, you need to know what’s going on.
And of course it means there’s this culture of not being able to ask questions or raise different ideas or views, orthinking through out loud. And that’s why the thought partnering out loud, this is really saying we are going to get it out all on the table and talk it out. And if there’s things we need to work through, then let’s at least give the benefit of us learning from each other.
And everyone else can follow along and listen passively in a safe space, right? They can listen from the safety of their homes and learn about these issues safely without having to be in the conversation directly. But I think again, so much of, how do we build in a society room for multiple norms to be normalized, multiple cultures, to be normal so that we can not have these majority, everyone does it this way, group think dominate the space, dominate the public space, dominate the private space, dominate the national politics or dominate the histories. We’re trying to figure that out. So in your photography, I know that you’ve been building TOPTIA now for how many years and in your work, maybe you can tell us about how you bring your creative voice.
And certainly I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with you as a photographer twice, once for my, it was for enjoi, for my business. And then that was so fun just to be, you know, out on the streets and taking all of these funky photos with you. And, and then of course, once, up here in Northern Nagano doing the whole, Shichi Go San, coming of age day for my son, in his five-year-old, commemorative outfits and kimonos, and how you engaged with us was so beautiful.
So I certainly am so impressed about how you show up as a photographer and make the customer, or the client feel really empowered to bring their selves and their interests and what they want in those photos to shine. And you really carve out space for that. Even when it’s children who are complicated.
Tia: I love you. I love your kids. They’re hilarious. I still have the drawings, they did for us, it’s hanging up on my shelf. Going through what I was saying earlier as somebody who’s trying to build her own self-esteem and self-worth in an environment that’s not conducive towards that, I want my sessions to be these mini environments where the person I’m photographing, all of their inhibitions of, they don’t look the part, they can’t do the part, they can’t, you know, can’t can’t, can’t can’t can’t. I hear so many times, I’m not good at taking photos.
This isn’t something I normally do, this isn’t something I want to do. And so just taking that energy and converting it into something that’s fun, something that’s empowering, something that they would want to do again, because taking a photo should not be the equivalent of going to the dentist. It should be something that people are really excited about getting ready to do.
And just going through what I went through, um, growing up, trying to find that environment where I could grow, where I could thrive, recreating that in one hour to five-hour photo sessions, for people who, you know, maybe they’re in a similar circumstance where their self-worth isn’t, you know, where it should…
Jackie: Being supported. It’s not being supported enough.
Tia: Yeah, exactly. And so for the shoot to after the shoot, that’s my job. My job is to make you get excited about being photographed, enjoy being photographed, and then look at the amazing work that that person did, during the shoot. And a lot of times people say, oh, it’s all you, you know, you’re, you’re a great photographer and, oh, it’s the camera.
And I was like, no, it’s a collaboration. And it’s because, you know, I’m not you. So somebody’s in that photo, and it’s not me. It’s the person, you know, in the photo who, who I photograph.
Jackie: But you’re really curating a space of psychological safety and where they, in some ways, encourage them to really let out their individuality to be seen by the camera and by you to capture it.
Right. And so I think you said to me, oh, you know, when we’re doing the photos with your kids, I’ll deal with the kids. So you just, you and Mits just keep smiling and just worry about yourselves, because if you’re tense, because the kids aren’t smiling or looking how you think, they’re not listening, or whatever, then it’ll show on your faces, I need you to just tune out and I’ll deal with, right?
And it’s true that you’re, in some ways, the insider outsider, right? You can see what the final product needs to be, but to get the other person to relax and just be in the moment and to feel, feel that happiness and to feel the joy of the moment, right? Um, you really have to encourage, and I want to say curate still.
It’s like a curated space, where the individual can relax and just let their hair down and sort of go with the flow. I mean, and I think that’s so exciting to hear you articulate that photography and a photography shoot, I just hear this dedication to creating a safe space in how you approach your photography for these photo shoots.
And that’s exciting, cause I would’ve never thought how important that is for photographers to have this, beyond, you know, the goal of the shoot, it’s also about building this rapport. So the individual can feel that freedom to be themselves. If they’re, particularly if they’re not feeling super happy with who they are or feeling a strong sense of self-worth.
And I think it’s interesting that you tie that back to your experiences of building self-worth and then giving that, that’s like your gift to your clients who show up in your, in your care for the time of the shoot. That’s exciting. And I certainly felt that both times, I certainly felt that sense of caregiving.
Tia: Good, good, good. I’m so glad because like I said, moms are, they’re so selfless in the sense that they, they want the photos of their kids and, and they’re focused on, you know, their children and their family, but oftentimes nobody’s thinking of mom. And so, you know, for me, it’s like, no mom come in the photo.
No mom, you sit and chill and be beautiful and you know, okay, the kids are playing in the pond. It’s okay. We’ll reassess the damage. We’ll get this beautiful photo of you.
Jackie: Yeah. And you know, you, you meet them at their, at their, for their needs too, like, you know, when getting the, you know, ask of course, getting them to follow with the Simon says. That was beautiful.
Right. I mean, it’s like, that is a game. And then he understands what we’re doing. Okay. There’s a game involved. Okay, fine. I can play the game. Yeah. And so maybe talk to me and give me a highlight if you could, from your TOPTIA photography, a highlight of where in the last years where you felt that you’ve come full circle, maybe around your sense of finding this self-worth is in your entrepreneurial journey in Japan.
And then paying that forward in how you’re building TOPTIA. And how you want to show up as TOPTIA. Is there something that maybe you would want to share with us about that in particular, that journey that you’ve been on?
Tia: The first point in TOPTIA where I felt really inspired, not inspired, uh, I say invigorated, but I felt really confident, was I was doing a photo session, actually it was with Nicola Vote. Oh man. And we were both on the board. We were doing some headshots for her, her company. We were photographing and I just showed her the back of the camera and she just said this big “Wow, that’s me?”.
And that was the moment where I realized, I learned that people, how they see themselves, you know, day in and day out, and when, versus when you see like, how they see themselves in a really, really good photo that you help the person build that, you know, build themselves up to that point, is very different.
And you know, I’m always thinking is, how can I get this person, you know, I can direct you, I can pose you, I can move you and things like that, but how can I get this person, you know, 10 steps ahead of how they see themselves everyday in the mirror? How can I give that wow, you know, from the photo that we take.
And so it just became a constant journey of like, okay, self, how do we boost this person’s, you know, esteem their self value, their ability. How can we create this session around really making this spectacular? I think I took that photo two years ago, two, three years ago.
It’s just been this constant like, journey of like, how can I build this person’s self worth? How can I build this person’s excitement? How can I build this person? Just build this person so that they, you know, can’t wait to show somebody, hey, this is what I did last weekend with Tia.
Hey, this is my new LinkedIn profile. I’ve had, I’m super confident in myself and my business and my skills, uh, starting with the very first thing people see in the LinkedIn profile, which is the photo.
Jackie: It’s like their joy. It’s like you’re unleashing their joy of life and their joy in themselves maybe finally, to come forward, right, and be seen, which is so empowering and exciting.
That’s amazing. And I do want to, 12:57, time just flies. I know there’s so many things that I still want to have you talk about. But I think I’m really grateful for all that you’ve shared. And, and certainly we’re going to have to circle back at some point to why you didn’t become a lawyer, but there’ll be another conversation for another time, but I’m so grateful that you didn’t, because I think what you’re doing and the genius that you’re bringing to the photography space here in Tokyo and in Japan generally, and you’re all over the place going up to Niigata and in serving in different communities in different spaces.
Certainly I think that is much needed in Japan and maybe I can share that, of course, very, very pleased that TOPTIA is now going to be the official photographer for enjoi Diversity and Innovation. So we’re very excited about that. And it just sort of builds, I think, on the existing collaborations we’ve already done, for enjoi and also for my family.
And I love everything that you’ve produced so far and we’re doing another collaboration around a special commemorative 3/11 video interview, live partner, thought partnering, video that we’re gonna release in Golden Week. And of course, TOPTIA is a partner in that production, which is really exciting too. Of course you arrived just after the triple disaster and came to Japan in 2011.
So thankfully you didn’t have to experience it real time, but then also experience the post, the last 10 years in Japan, right? So that’s, I think, an important part of how we can commemorate this 3/11 a little bit together through this, this one special interview with a former governor and a former woman governor of Japan, who will be featured in May.
And I’m not going to say more, I’m going to keep the surprise. And on that note, I would love to thank you for everything that you’ve shared today. Gotta have you back. Have to do another one, finish the next piece of conversation that we didn’t get to, but, thank you for all that you’ve shared today.
And I think hopefully people watching and listening are getting a sense of who you are and certainly what kind of an engagement they can get when they’re looking for amazing, fun, creative, joyful photography experiences here in Japan. Definitely. I’m gonna encourage everyone to search for TOPTIA in the future.
Thank you Tia for joining us today.
Tia: Thank you.