Notes on Japanese Culture

Notes on Japan from many sources: updated end August 2016. What are the main characteristics of Japanese culture today and yesterday? Ethno-centric or racist stereotype? Why? Insular and resistant to immigrants Japan and Japanese-centred (borrowing Japan-centred myths from Chinese? NIHONJINRON = treatise on what makes Japan separate Benevolence and respect (omotenashi) Apparently (from our point of view) robotic but PERFECTIBILITY seen in their passion for their hobbies Hard working (longer working hours but perhaps lower corporate productivity as a result?) Resilient, stoic and community minded (eg world cup in Brazil?) Compliance with rules Extremely conservative (tattoos banned due to Yakuzi) and side-effects: paedophilia, attitudes to sex etc. 'capitalising on Japanese fantasies' Blend of Ancient and Modern Hierarchical and extremely Masculine (side effects are drastically diminishing population) Silent with a different style of communication (yes means I heard what you said) Like the Chinese like to invest in luxury goods/brands collect popular cult objects (e.g. shaun the sheep, ...) Hard to find culprit when things go wrong Communitarianism (group first individual second to group)- counter-balanced by attitude to hobbies- perfectionism (perfectibility) Communitarianism -Businesses reluctant to lay off workers - "Japan has a far lower jobless rate than many other countries- about 4%. That means the state pays less in unemployment benefits and society pays less in social side effects of long-term unemployment, such as higher crime or illness. Calisthenics in Japanese companies - workers gather at construction sights for morning group exercises. JAPANESE TYPE OF CAPITALISM - (a "gentler form of capitalism" a passing culture? a myth?) Japanese financial savings are high but counter-balanced by huge government debt Honesty and Ethics in Japan - No tips in Japan Not much theft or criminality (proportionally) DEMOCRACY -TYPE OF GOVERNANCE: They have the YAKUZA but they help the common man (Kobe earthquake) imports all raw materials, exports engineering and technology "Perfectibility": attention to small details (when it rains there is sometimes even a machine at the department store to seal your wet umbrella "Only in Japan will you regularly observe people cleaning the grout between tiles with a toothbrush". Benevolence and respect (omotenashi) "I gained an appreciation for small considerate gestures. My teacher had told me for example that it was rude in a business conversation to say that you were busy, since this might imply that you were more in demand than the person to whom you were speaking. Perfectibility: I liked that even cheap restaurants handed out a hot hand towel before you ate and that, when it rained, there was a machine at the department store to seal your wet umbrella in a plastic cover." Bending Adversity (negative master to pupil relationship- it takes too long for the Japanese youth to learn a new skill- so they leave the country) Origins of culture - geography pg 9 of the Paradox of Harmony "Japan's history as an island nation also influenced the development of its cultures. Surrounded by harsh seas, it was more ethnically homogenous than many other countries. (...much coastline so had to be on guard against foreign intrusion) Origins of culture- history Two massive invasion attempts in the 13th century by Mongol forces with superior weaponry left their mark. Though the invasions failed, their centuries-long legacy was a deep suspicion of foreigners, including of the growing number of Christian missionaries, who, it was feared, were paving the way for a European invasion; ... (early 17th c. Christian rebellion in Nagasaki against the regional gvt... conversions of Japanese to Christianity added to suspicion) 1853-Commodore Matthew Perry of the US arrived in J. with 4 gunboats. Gives Japan a year to open up to outside world threatening force (the US would force them to do so). Perry returned in 1854. The Japanese agreed to open their doors and this was the beginning of Japan's engagement with the wider world. First westerners were the Portuguese in 1543 - Developed very active merchant trade in Nagasaki. 1600, the Spanish merchants came in. Some years after that, around 1609, Dutch merchants came in. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555 Toyotomi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result. The Dutch also engaged in piracy and naval combat to weaken Portuguese and Spanish shipping in the Pacific, and ultimately became the only westerners to be allowed access to Japan from the small enclave of Dejima after 1638 and for the next two centuries. And a few years after that, around 1613, English merchants began to come in. In 1542, Japan had its first contact with Europe when 3 Portuguese on a Chinese junk were shipwrecked in Japan. 7 years later, the Jesuit Francis Xavier arrived in Kyūshū, Japan’s westernmost island, and began to win converts to Catholicism among the samurai elite. Portuguese merchants followed in his wake and, despite some competition, dominated European-Japanese trade for nearly a century. Jesuits dominate till 1600 then different Catholic orders arrive (Franciscan and Dominican). Then Protestants. A lot of back-biting among the missionaries + the trade-slave = background to what are known, in Japan, as the Seclusion Edicts. These are exclusion edicts, beginning 1585, ending 1635. Both Japanese government & the samurai warrior leaders issue a series of the edicts against Christianity, against foreign trade, and finally exclude all foreigners from Japan. This is the closed country that Commodore Perry will return to over two centuries later and try to get to open. Because the Portuguese came to Japan from their colonial outposts in Java, the Japanese called them the “Southern Barbarians.” THE NANBAN The Japanese were fascinated by these monstrously tall foreigners with enormous noses and bizarre costumes. From the late 16th to the mid-17th century, large-scale screen paintings depicting the Portuguese arriving in port were much in vogue. The typical composition portrays the Japanese shore on the right and the ocean on the left. In one such painting, Japanese men and women look on as the ship captain and his entourage make their way into town, while on the left, two high-decked ships ply the waves. One fanciful note is that the more distant ship carries female passengers. In fact, foreign women were forbidden to disembark in Japan—a policy designed to discourage foreigners from settling in for the long term. This artist imagines a bevy of European women, but since neither he nor any other Japanese had ever seen one, he depicts them with Chinese-style costumes and coiffures. Japan- The Paradox of Harmony by Keiko Hirata and Mark Warschauer BENDING ADVERSITY JAPAN AND THE ART OF SURVIVING by DAVID Pilling Penguin 25% of Japan's population made up of elderly. "Market analysts told CNBC that adult diapers are expected to outsell baby nappies for the first time in 2014" (Japan the paradox of Harmony) SAKOKU OR SELF-IMPOSED ISOLATION These fears led to the drastic policy of sakoku (self-imposed isolation) in the 1630s. For 2 centuries, no foreigners (apart from Chinese and Dutch merchants) were allowed to enter Japan beyond the small artificial island of Nagasaki and nor could any Japanese leave the country on pain of death. Japan finally opened up in the 1850s, but only in response to treaties forced on the country by gunboat after US Navy Commodore Mathew Perry arrived in the Uraga Channel with warships and threatened Japan with cannon (cañon). The US, Russia, the Netherlands, Britain and France all forced unequal trade agreements on Japan rapidly. (Perry's arrival -wake up call to Japanese leaders..) MEIJI RESTORATION!! Imposition of trade treaties .... galvanised a revolutionary movement led by samurai in SW Japan. The samurai overthrew the TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE and established a modern imperial system along with a professional army. The revolution came to be known as the MEIJI RESTORATION since the emperor (Meiji) was restored to power, even though the revolutionary leaders, who then became oligarchs, actually dominated politics in the Meiji period. Reversing the isolation of the sakoku period, the Meiji oligarchy reached out to the world aggressively. They invited foreign advisors to teach Japanese leaders Western science, culture and languages and sent large numbers of Japanese officials and students abroad. However, continued fears of 'the other' dominated their policies. Their national slogans were 'Enrich the Nation, Strengthen the Military' and 'Japanese spirit with Western Technology" pg 10 within a few decades, the Meiji oligarchy successfully transformed Japan from a feudal into an industrial society. .... country's growing economic and military strength led to a series of conflicts .... from 1890s all the way through the 2nd WW. Japanese resistance to immigrants Japan's colonisation In East Asia also brought more foreigners to Japan, especially Koreans and Chinese. This too, resulted in conflict. eg following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923- a quake of 8.3 on the Richter Scale, accompanied by a 40 foot high tsunami.... Japanese people pulled together in social solidarity ... this solidarity did not extend to residents of other nationalities. In the aftermath of the tragedy, rumours spread that Korean immigrants were poisoning wells and plotting to overthrow the weakened Japanese gvt. Vigilant groups set up road blocks and killed 1000s of ethnic Koreans and 100s of Chinese and Okinawans and even Japanese speakers of regional dialects who were mistaken for Koreans. Once more, harmony among Japanese was accompanied by fear and hostility toward 'the other". pg 123 of Japan the Paradox of Harmony: The public also shares this anti-immigration sentiment. An Asahi Shimbun newspaper poll in 2012 asked Japanese about accepting immigrants to 'maintain economic vitality': 26% favored the idea while 65% opposed it.... pg 124 Many talented individuals in Japan are the descendants of immigrants brought to Japan (unwillingly) from the Korean Peninsula during Japan's colonial period. These include Masayoshi Son, head of the technology company Softbank and the president of the Lotte group (one of the largest food and shopping groups in South Korea and Japan). Yet Japanese public discourse on immigration focuses largely on the costs. There is not even consensus for bringing foreign professionals into Japan, much less unskilled workers. see pg 111 for the case of the Nikkei Brazilians (Brazilians of Japanese descent) Resilient and stoic Japan's post-world war 2 economic miracle. eg after the world cup in Brazil which has the highest population of Japanese people outside Japan. (see below Japanese fans clean up their section after World Cup match against Ivory Coast) one natural disaster after another bending adversity to their advantage Community-mindedness see below-Japanese fans clean up their section after World Cup match against Ivory Coast courteous, polite, benevolence, self-disciplined low crime rate not only on time but early people stand in line courteously and wait in society everything is thought of see examples of towels and plastic to seal umbrellas even in cheap restaurants - (see BENDING ADVERSITY) foot marks on platform to show people where to stand in the queue- consideration for people punctuality, Japanese post-war economic miracle. However, in the second half of the 1980s, rising stock and real estate prices caused the Japanese economy to overheat in what was later to be known as the Japanese asset price bubble caused by the policy of low interest rate by Bank of Japan. The economic bubble came to an abrupt end as the Tokyo Stock Exchange crashed in 1990–92 and real estate prices peaked in 1991. Growth in Japan throughout the 1990s at 1.5% was slower than growth in other major developed economies, giving rise to the term Lost Decade. Nonetheless, GDP per capita growth from 2001-2010 has still managed to outpace Europe and the United States.[33] ECONOMY saving money, (rice) (world's biggest creditor nation despite government spending facing huge deficit) relying on imports for foodstuffs against research and development THE MYTH THAT JAPAN IS BROKE: 
THE WORLD’S LARGEST “DEBTOR” IS NOW THE WORLD’S LARGEST CREDITOR Ellen Brown
September 5, 2012
www.webofdebt.com/articles/mythjapan.php Japan’s massive government debt conceals massive benefits for the Japanese people, with lessons for the U.S. debt “crisis.” In an April 2012 article in Forbes titled “If Japan Is Broke, How Is It Bailing Out Europe?”, Eamonn Fingleton pointed out the Japanese government was by far the largest single non-eurozone contributor to the latest Euro rescue effort. This, he said, is “the same government that has been going round pretending to be bankrupt (or at least offering no serious rebuttal when benighted American and British commentators portray Japanese public finances as a trainwreck).” Noting that it was also Japan that rescued the IMF system virtually single-handedly at the height of the global panic in 2009, Fingleton asked: How can a nation whose government is supposedly the most overborrowed in the advanced world afford such generosity? . . . The betting is that Japan’s true public finances are far stronger than the Western press has been led to believe. What is undeniable is that the Japanese Ministry of Finance is one of the most opaque in the world . . . . Fingleton acknowledged that the Japanese government’s liabilities are large, but said we also need to look at the asset side of the balance sheet: [T]he Tokyo Finance Ministry is increasingly borrowing from the Japanese public not to finance out-of-control government spending at home but rather abroad. Besides stepping up to the plate to keep the IMF in business, Tokyo has long been the lender of last resort to both the U.S. and British governments. Meanwhile it borrows 10-year money at an interest rate of just 1.0 percent, the second lowest rate of any borrower in the world after the government of Switzerland. It’s a good deal for the Japanese government: it can borrow 10-year money at 1 percent and lend it to the U.S. at 1.6 percent (the going rate on U.S. 10-year bonds), making a tidy spread. Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is nearly 230%, the worst of any major country in the world. Yet Japan remains the world’s largest creditor country, with net foreign assets of $3.19 trillion. In 2010, its GDP per capita was more than that of France, Germany, the U.K. and Italy. And while China’s economy is now larger than Japan’s because of its burgeoning population (1.3 billion versus 128 million), China’s $5,414 GDP per capita is only 12 percent of Japan’s $45,920. How to explain these anomalies? Fully 95 percent of Japan’s national debt is held domestically by the Japanese themselves. Over 20% of the debt is held by Japan Post Bank, the Bank of Japan, and other government entities. Japan Post is the largest holder of domestic savings in the world, and it returns interest to its Japanese customers. Although theoretically privatized in 2007, it has been a political football, and 100% of its stock is still owned by the government. The Bank of Japan is 55% government-owned and 100% government-controlled. Of the remaining debt, over 60% is held by Japanese banks, insurance companies and pension funds. Another chunk is held by individual Japanese savers. Only 5% is held by foreigners, mostly central banks. As noted in a September 2011 article in The New York Times: The Japanese government is in deep debt, but the rest of Japan has ample money to spare. The Japanese government’s debt is the people’s money. They own each other, and they collectively reap the benefits. JAPANESE TYPE OF CAPITALISM Myths of the Japanese Debt-to-GDP Ratio Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio looks bad. But as economist Hazel Henderson notes, this is just a matter of accounting practice—a practice that she and other experts contend is misleading. Japan leads globally in most areas of high-tech manufacturing, including aerospace. The debt on the other side of its balance sheet represents the payoffs from all this productivity to the Japanese people. According to Gary Shilling, writing on Bloomberg in June 2012, more than half of Japanese public spending goes for debt service and social security payments. Debt service is paid as interest to Japanese “savers.” Social security and interest on the national debt are not included in GDP, but these are actually the social safety net and public dividends of a highly productive economy. These, more than the military weapons and “financial products” that compose a major portion of U.S. GDP, are the real fruits of a nation’s industry. For Japan, they represent the enjoyment by the people of the enormous output of their high-tech industrial base. Shilling writes: Government deficits are supposed to stimulate the economy, yet the composition of Japanese public spending isn’t particularly helpful. Debt service and social-security payments -- generally non-stimulative -- are expected to consume 53.5 percent of total outlays for 2012 . . . . So says conventional theory, but social security and interest paid to domestic savers actually do stimulate the economy. They do it by getting money into the pockets of the people, increasing “demand.” Consumers with money to spend then fill the shopping malls, increasing orders for more products, driving up manufacturing and employment. Myths About Quantitative Easing Some of the money for these government expenditures has come directly from “money printing” by the central bank, also known as “quantitative easing.” For over a decade, the Bank of Japan has been engaged in this practice; yet the hyperinflation that deficit hawks said it would trigger has not occurred. To the contrary, as noted by Wolf Richter in a May 9, 2012 article: [T]he Japanese [are] in fact among the few people in the world enjoying actual price stability, with interchanging periods of minor inflation and minor deflation—as opposed to the 27% inflation per decade that the Fed has conjured up and continues to call, moronically, “price stability.” He cites as evidence the following graph from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs: How is that possible? It all depends on where the money generated by quantitative easing ends up. In Japan, the money borrowed by the government has found its way back into the pockets of the Japanese people in the form of social security and interest on their savings. Money in consumer bank accounts stimulates demand, stimulating the production of goods and services, increasing supply; and when supply and demand rise together, prices remain stable. Myths About the “Lost Decade” Japan’s finances have long been shrouded in secrecy, perhaps because when the country was more open about printing money and using it to support its industries, it got embroiled in World War II. In his 2008 book In the Jaws of the Dragon, Fingleton suggests that Japan feigned insolvency in the “lost decade” of the 1990s to avoid drawing the ire of protectionist Americans for its booming export trade in automobiles and other products. Belying the weak reported statistics, Japanese exports increased by 73% during that decade, foreign assets increased, and electricity use increased by 30%, a tell-tale indicator of a flourishing industrial sector. By 2006, Japan’s exports were three times what they were in 1989. The Japanese government has maintained the façade of complying with international banking regulations by “borrowing” money rather than “printing” it outright. But borrowing money issued by the government’s own central bank is the functional equivalent of the government printing it, particularly when the debt is just carried on the books and never paid back. Implications for the “Fiscal Cliff” All of this has implications for Americans concerned with an out-of-control national debt. Properly managed and directed, it seems, the debt need be nothing to fear. Like Japan, and unlike Greece and other Eurozone countries, the U.S. is the sovereign issuer of its own currency. If it wished, Congress could fund its budget without resorting to foreign creditors or private banks. It could do this either by issuing the money directly or by borrowing from its own central bank, effectively interest-free, since the Fed rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs. A little quantitative easing can be a good thing, if the money winds up with the government and the people rather than simply in the reserve accounts of banks. The national debt can also be a good thing. As Federal Reserve Board Chairman Marriner Eccles testified in hearings before the House Committee on Banking and Currency in 1941, government credit (or debt) “is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.” Properly directed, the national debt becomes the spending money of the people. It stimulates demand, stimulating productivity. To keep the system stable and sustainable, the money just needs to come from the nation’s own government and its own people, and needs to return to the government and people. Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com. BENDING ADVERSITY pg 117 But Japan public debt remains a daunting task for the Japanese government due to excessive borrowing, social welfare spending with an aging society and lack of economic/industrial growth in recent years to contribute to the tax revenue. Japan had recently embraced the new strategy of economic growth with such goals to be achieved in 2020 as expected.[34] The modern ICT industry has generated the major outputs to the Japanese economy.[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] Japan is the second largest music market in the world (for more, see Japan Hot 100).[45] With fewer children in the aging Japan, Japanese Anime industry is facing growing Chinese competition in the targeted Chinese market.[46] Japanese Manga industry (from the Japanese Manga (and anime) profession [47][48]) enjoys popularity in most of the Asian markets.[49] A mountainous, volcanic island country, Japan has inadequate natural resources to support its growing economy and large population, and therefore exports goods in which it has a comparative advantage such as engineering-oriented, Research and Development-led industrial products in exchange for the import of raw materials and petroleum. Japan is among the top-three importers for agricultural products in the world next to the European Union and United States in total volume for covering of its own domestic agricultural consumption.[50] Japan is the world’s largest single national importer of fish and fishery products.[51][52][53][54][55] Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market [56][57] is the largest wholesale market for primary products in Japan, including the renowned Tsukiji fish market.[58][59] Japanese whaling, ostensibly for research purposes, has been challenged as illegal under international law. Although many kinds of minerals were extracted throughout the country, most mineral resources had to be imported in the postwar era. Local deposits of metal-bearing ores were difficult to process because they were low grade. The nation's large and varied forest resources, which covered 70% of the country in the late 1980s, were not utilized extensively. Because of political decisions on local, prefectural, and national levels, Japan decided not to exploit its forest resources for economic gain. Domestic sources only supplied between 25 & 30 % of the nation's timber needs. Agriculture and fishing were the best developed resources, but only through years of painstaking investment and toil. The nation therefore built up the manufacturing and processing industries to convert raw materials imported from abroad. This strategy of economic development necessitated the establishment of a strong economic infrastructure to provide the needed energy, transportation, communications, and technological know-how. Deposits of gold, magnesium, and silver meet current industrial demands, but Japan is dependent on foreign sources for many of the minerals essential to modern industry. Iron ore, copper, bauxite, and alumina must be imported, as well as many forest products. The economy of Japan is the third largest in the world by nominal GDP,[11][12] the fourth largest by purchasing power parity [13] and is the world's second largest developed economy.[14] According to the International Monetary Fund, the country's per capita GDP (PPP) was at $36,899 or the 22nd highest in 2013.[15] Japan is a member of Group of Eight. The Japanese economy is forecasted by the Quarterly Tankan survey of business sentiment conducted by the Bank of Japan.[16] Japan is the world's third largest automobile manufacturing country,[17] has the largest electronics goods industry, and is often ranked among the world's most innovative countries leading several measures of global patent filings.[18] Facing increasing competition from China and South Korea,[19] manufacturing in Japan today now focuses primarily on high-tech and precision goods, such as optical instruments, hybrid vehicles, and robotics. Beside the Kantō region,[20][21][22][23] the Kansai region is one of the leading industrial clusters and the manufacturing center for the Japanese economy.[24] Japan is the world's largest creditor nation,[25][26] generally running an annual trade surplus and having a considerable net international investment surplus. As of 2010, Japan possesses 13.7% of the world's private financial assets (the second largest in the world) at an estimated $14.6 trillion.[27] As of 2013, 62 of the Fortune Global 500 companies are based in Japan.[28]  Tokyo hosts 51 of the Fortune Global 500 companies, the highest number of any city.[9]  ECONOMY CONTINUED DAVID Pilling Penguin BENDING ADVERSITY pg xx pg xx the (Fukushima) disaster revealed too, if only for an instant, Japan's continuing relevance to the world. Even most Japanese were unaware that the northeast of their country, where the tsunami hit, produced anything other than rice, fish and sake. Though hardly Japan's industrial heartland, the north-eastern Tohoku region turned out to be a vital link in the global supply chain. One factory alone produced 40% of the world's micro-controllers, the 'little brains" that run power steering in cars and the images on flat-screen televisions. After the tsunami destroyed the plant that makes them, halfway round the world in Louisiana, General Motors was forced to suspend vehicle production. Likewise, because of electricity shortages after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, Japan- already the world's biggest importer of liquefied natural gas- stepped up its purchase of LNG oil and subsequent coal, becoming an important swing factor in global energy demand. What the Japanese call 'Japan bashing' stems partly from the country's continued importance to the global economy. No one bothers much to bash Switzerland, which grew at approximately 1% a year in the 1990s, thus suffering by the Japanese yardstick, its own 'lost decade'. But Switzerland, though an important financial centre, is a smallish economy. Japan has shrunk in relative terms, but still accounts for 8% of global output against 3.4% for Britain and 20% for the US. Japan is the world's biggest creditor nation, not its biggest debtor as is sometimes supposed. It has the second highest foreign exchange reserves and by 2012 was again vying with China to the the biggest holder of US debt. The tsunami briefly reminded people of these neglected facts. It was ironic that in the midst of its crisis, some people should be reminded of how important Japan still was. Of course the crisis also revealed much weakness. ... the tsunami which destroyed factories, roads and other infrastructure worth an astonishing 10% of GDP, would be the final nail in Japan's economic coffin. If nothing else it would accelerate what was already the slow exodus of manufacturing to China and other cheaper production bases. Even worse than Japan's economic vulnerability was evidence of a rotten body politic. The crisis at Fukushima exposed an official culture riddled with paternalism, complacency and deceit. The risks of a nuclear catastrophe in the most seismically unstable country on earth ought to have been foreseeable....In other ways too, the Japanese state was shown to be unprepared. Though Japan's response may have been far better than that of the US in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, ...it left much to be desired. pg xxiv BENDING ADVERSITY In Kanazawa, I learned to love the routine of living on tatami, the traditional rush-mat flooring. One removed one's shoes at the house entrance known as the genkan, knelt on the floor to watch TV and unrolled one's futon at night. .... Bathing was in a square upright tub, in which you sat only after a thorough scrub in a separate shower area. Sometimes we would walk to the local public bath with its old-fashioned municipal tiles. It had outdoor communal pools of cold, warm and hot sulfurous ater and vibrating massage chairs of worn leather in the changing room. I loved that Japanese people always put their hands together to thank their food before they ate it, and the way they apologized before they asked for money in a shop as though payment sullied the otherwise pleasant human interaction. I learned the correct place at which guests should sit at a table- furthest from the door, a position in former times that was safest from surprise attack. I gained an appreciation for small considerate gestures. My teacher had told me for example that it was rude in a business conversation to say that you were busy, since this might imply that you were more in demand than the person to whom you were speaking. I liked that even cheap restaurants handed out a hot hand towel before you ate and that, when it rained, there was a machine at the department store to seal your wet umbrella in a plastic cover. I marvelled at how social convention trumped laws. The streets were entirely litter-free. No one would dream of answering their mobile phone on the train or in a lift, not because it was illegal but because consideration was expected. Even in the street, people cupped their hands over mouth and phone to muffle the sound of their voice. When I got to Tokyo to start my job, I was enthralled all over again... in the great metropolis of (population) 36 million people. Yet Tokyo was anything but the faceless conurbation I had imagined. Most big cities have been described as a collection of villages. But Tokyo, more than any other, deserves that description. City neighbourhoods, including the one I moved to in Higashi Kitazawa, are still organised into village-sized units. At festival times, bankers and bricklayers gather to pound rice into soft mochi cakes. At night, they dress in short cotton indigo happi coats, with bare legs and sandals, and heave the local shrine like a palanquin through the narrow paper-lantern-lit streets. Tokyo is a maze of hundreds of shotengai, crowded little shopping streets with tiny, almost shack-like shops offering homemade tofu, traditional sweets, flowers, sushi, fruit or sacks of rice. The back streets are so narrow they are difficult if not impossible to access by car. The city does not have enough parks but the back alleys are a jumble of potted plants and greenery sprouting out of every crack and crevice. Tokyo feels surprisingly close to nature as thought the buildings could, at any point, fall back into the soil. In the summer, the deafening trill of cicadas drowns out the traffic. Some restaurants turn off the lights and let loose fireflies so customers can watch them flash in the night air. There are little shrines to foxes and fish and even one to eels. One of my most abiding memories is the sight of 3 blue-uniformed policemen standing outside Shinjuku Gyoen park in springtime, staring in deadly earnest at the petals of a single cherry blossom. With a scandalous lack of crime to go around, they were examining the tiny pink flower with as much intensity as if they had chanced upon a corpse and a blood-stained knife. pg xxvi many people told me that if I wanted hardship, I should leave the Tokyo bubble and visit the poor provincial towns or isolated rural communities abandoned by all but the very old. In my subsequent travels around the country... nearly all of Japan's 47 prefectures, I certainly came upon pockets of misery, a general foreboding about the future and even outright poverty. There were shuttered high streets and depressed industries and villages full of octogenarians struggling on without much outside help. Some people, especially the young seemed to be drifting and directionless pg xxvii But in most places, I found a society largely intact and comfortable in its assumptions, albeit one struggling to adapt to new circumstances. pg xxvii Japan we are told is unable to rejuvenate and so must continue to sink. Its industry is dying, its women are suppressed, its people are suicidal, its society closed and its debt unpayable. There is an element of truth to much of this, but it does not tell the whole story. SOme have sought to present a picture of Japan as almost psychologically sick based on accounts of its infantile obsessions and hoards of ' shut-in' teenagers who never leave the house. That would be like depicting the US solely as a country of mass shootings, drug addiction and urban segregation.... For all its problems, Japan remains a resilient, adaptive society. Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, once told Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong's right hand man, that he thought Japan's 'tribal outlook' made it capable of rapid change. Like other nations convinced of their own exceptionalism, including the US, Japan's historical ability to transform and rejuvenate in radical ways is rooted in a strong sense of itself. "Japan believes that their society is so different that they can adjust to anything and preserve their national essence" Kissinger said. "Therefore the Japanese are capable of sudden explosive changes. They went from feudalism to emperor worship in two to three years. They went from emperor worship to democracy in 3 months". pg xxviii Yoshio Sugimoto, a Japanese sociologist says analysts are 'tempted to join either a Japan-admiring camp or a Japan-bashing camp and to portray its society in simplistic black and white terms". ...The two views are hardly irreconcilable. Sugimoto recommends a trade-off model which focuses on the ways in which "both desirable and undesirable elements are interlinked". MASTER-PUPIL TRADITION Let's take one tiny example. We may admire the fact that an apprentice of bunraku puppetry - in which 3 puppeteers manipulate a single doll - takes 30 years to learn his trade. First he must work the legs of the puppet for 10 years before being allowed to take charge of the left arm. Only after a further 10 years is he considered a true master. In some performances, the face of the main puppeteer is visible to the audience, a sign of his accomplishment, while the heads of his 2 junior accomplices are covered in black hoods so as not to distract the audience from the action. Such fastidiousness is seen in almost all walks of life. Some sushi masters will not let their apprentices handle fish for years. A bonsai master told me he spent 3 years without pay, before his teacher would allow him to prune a tree. Such obsessive respect for detail and decorum helps explain the exquisite standards encountered throughout Japan from restaurant kitchen to factory floor. Only in Japan will you regularly observe people cleaning the grout between the tiles with a toothbrush. And yet, we may observe how stifling of innovation and crushing of spirit it is to insist on such mind-numbing discipline, born of the outmoded idea of an apprentice absorbing received wisdom from an infallible master. .... It is hard ... to reconcile our admiration for the products of Japanese society with qualms about how they are produced. To take another small example, we may mock morning calisthenics at Japanese companies as ridiculous, and evidence of 'groupthink'. In Tokyo, I often looked out amusedly as construction workers in their matching uniforms gathered at a building site for morning group exercises. At the same time (my)....admiration for a practice that undoubtedly contributed to the health and well-being of the Japanese - many of whom remain enviable lean and agile into advanced age - and which democratised exercise by removing it from the ghetto of the private fitness club. In Business, for example, Japanese companies are often criticized for being too reluctant to lay off workers and improve efficiency. This harms shareholders, whose returns are suppressed because a company's prime concern is not increasing profits. Such practices also cushion the forces of destruction through which dynamic economies such as the US are constantly shifting labour and resources to more productive areas, breaking down old industries to build up new ones. On the other hand, Japan has a far lower jobless rate than many other countries - about 4%. That means the state pays less in unemployment benefits and society pays less in the social side effects of long-term unemployment, such as higher crime or illness. pg 5 EARTHQUAKES AND JAPANESE MYTHOLOGY (CATFISH) The Japanese have long been accustomed to earthquakes. In years gone by they blamed these periodic events on ONAMAZU, a giant catfish on whose back the Japanese islands were said to rest. Usually, the catfish was pinned beneath the mud by a mammoth slab of rock held in place by the powerful Shinto god of the earth, KASHIMA. But when Kashima let down his guard, ONAMAZU would twist free and thrash about causing the earth to heave and shake. pg 6 Within days of the great Ansei earthquake in 1854.. woodblock prints of catfish went on sale in the capital. The Japanese also live with constant reminders of the tsunamis that frequently follow large earthquakes. The monumental bronze Buddha at Kamakura sits open to the elements, the hall in which it was once housed washed away by a giant wave in 1498. Japan's coastline is dotted with gnarled stone tablets, the size of mini-tombstones, warning future generations to build their houses further from the shore.... an Irish greek who spent 15 years in Japan in the late 19th century, described it as a 'land of impermanence (where) rivers shift their courses, coasts their outline, plains their level." One Japanese seismologist calculated that since the 5th century the archipelago had been subjected to some 220 earthquakes of catastrophic force. In modern times, the Japanese learned that the islands on which their ancestors had settled are in fact located on the most unstable section of the earth's crust, at a confluence of several tectonic plates along what is termed the Pacific Ring of Fire. Nine out of every 10 earthquakes occur along this volatile section of Earth, making Japan the single most vulnerable nation to such disasters. On most days of the year some part of Japan suffers a minor tremor. So used are people to these distractions that short earthquakes, ... barely elicit a pause in conversation. Fukushima - But the earthquake on 11th March 2011 measuring 9 on the Richter scale... pg 7 In an instant, parts of the Japanese archipelago shifted as much as 13 feet to the east..... In Tokyo, the modern skyscrapers, many built on rubberized or fluid-filled foundations, lurched towards each other like bamboo in the wind. The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai's most famous print October 31, 1760 (exact date questionable) – May 10, 1849) was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period.[1] ___________________________________________ IMPORTANCE OF SAVING UP IN JAPAN (links) Fumio Hayashi, Osaka University, Japan: The purpose of this article is to explore possible factors that contribute to Japan's high saving rate. That Japan's saving rate is high by inter- national standards has been recognized in Japan for more than two decades, yet the reason for it is poorly understood: I quote the last sentence of a recent survey in the Japanese literature. "In any event ... Japan's high personal saving rate remains a mystery to be resolved."   STOICISM, COMMUNITIY SPIRIT, RESILIENCE On Yahoo sports- Japanese fans clean up their section after World Cup match against Ivory Coast By Brooks Peck June 15, 2014 The Ivory Coast came from behind to beat Japan 2-1 in their first 2014 World Cup match, but despite the tough loss, the Japanese fans in attendance at the Arena Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil still made time after the final whistle to clean up after themselves. As the stadium emptied, some Blue Samurai supporters walked up and down the aisles filling trash bags. Though this is a customary practice at Japanese sporting events that has been carried over to previous World Cups, it's still something most fans from other parts of the world wouldn't even consider doing.But the respectfulness wasn't just limited to the fans. Before the clean-up began, the Japanese players lined up and bowed to their loyal supporters. Though players often applaud their fans after a match, the world would be a slightly better place if more people felt the desire to pick up after their neighbor and do the occasional group bow. >>Benevolence, hospitality, perfectibility - OMOTENASHI The word ‘Omotenashi’ in Japanese comes from omote (surface) and nashi (less), which means “single-hearted”, and also mote (carry) and nashi (accomplish), which means “to achieve”. Therefore, Omotenashi has two meanings, which include offering a service without expectation of any returned favour, and the ability to actualise that idea into an action. ‘Service’ in English is a term that is more likely to suggest a hierarchy between server and customer, and suggests a business relationship. ‘Hospitality’ in English means to make one happy, or to serve one. ‘Omotenashi’ has a similar meaning, but it suggests deeper part of the human consciousness. A few hundreds years ago in China and Europe, people in the upper classes regarded serving their guests the best food and wine as the highest form of “entertainment”. Was there the same spirit of Japanese Omotenashi in the nobilities? I don’t think so. Because the people who cooked and served the food to the table were servants who were working for their boss, and it suggests a hierarchy in their relationships: the servants were merely doing their job. Thanks to this working history, “service” is now a profession, and high-end hotels like The Ritz and The Savoy regard it as their most important duty to fulfill any requests from their guests.   One of Japan’s biggest assets is its hospitality and the quality of service. Japanese people’s meticulousness and proactive ideas are surely a source of Japan Inc.’s promising brand. In fact, this philosophy is transcended and submerged to a course of day-to-day activities in Japan.   Martin Jacques When China rules the world. Pag 55 JAPAN - MODERN BUT HARDLY WESTERN CROSSING a road in Tokyo is a special experience. Everyone waits till the light turns green All schoolchildren wear the same uniforms, irrespective of school or city According to... teen magazine Cawaii, once 5% of teenage girls take a liking to something, 60% will jump on the bandwagon within a month. .... pg 56... at Keio University, "you can leave your car outside in the street unlocked and it will still be there in the morning. People keep their promises.... on delivery and will phone you if your delivery arrives early. 9/10 times your delivery arrives early. You never see any litter (desorden) anywhere, not even in Tokyo's Shinjuku station (largest). The Japanese are exquisitely polite. People greet you with a pleasant acknowledgement and a gentle bow (reverencia). When you arrive in the supermarket, there will be so at the entrance to welcome you. There is no surly (hosco) behaviour or rudeness. Your space is respected, whether you are queuing or leaving a lift. This idea of inclusivity extends to social attitudes more widely. Nakane, a famous Japanese sociologist: "Unemployment is not a problem for the unemployed, it is a problem for the whole of society.” Japan believes in taking care of the individual. At Tokyo's Narita Airport, a uniformed attendant will politely beckon you to the appropriate queue, and on the ground, you will find a pair of footprints, just in case you are in any doubt as to where you should stand. (google: footprints for queuing in Japan) The Japanese are punctilious in providing directions. At a metro station, the train indicator includes not only when the next train is due but when it will arrive at every single station until it reaches the terminus. And it is invariably on time... One could safely set one's watch by a Japanese train. Japan is outwardly Western, but inwardly Japanese. Japan was the only Asian country to begin industrialisation in the 19th c. the only member of an otherwise exclusively Western club. It was phenomenally successful in its attempt to emulate the West, industrializing rapidly prior to 1914, and then again before 1939; it had colonized a large part of East Asia by 1945, and overtook much of the West in GDP per head by the 1980s. Not surprisingly Japan served as an influential economic model when the East Asian tigers began their economic take-off from the late 1950s. If we want to understand the nature of Asian modernity, Japan is the best place to start because it was first and because it remains easily the most developed example. Just because Japan is part of East Asia, however, does not mean that it is representative of the region: on the contrary, Japan, is, as we shall see, in many respects, unique. PG 57- WHERE DOES JAPAN COME FROM? Vip Japan has been shaped by 2 momentous engagements with the most advanced civilizations of their time: China in the 5th and 6th centuries and the West in the 19th and 20th Cs. Japan's early history was influenced by its proximity to China, which was a far more advanced and sophisticated country. Prior to its engagement with China, Japan had no writing system of its own, but subsequently adopted and Japanized many Chinese characters and blended them with its own invented writing system. This was an extremely difficult process because the two languages were completely different and unrelated. In the process, the Chinese literary tradition became one of the foundation stones of Japanese culture, Taoism. pg 58 Buddhism and Confucianism were to enter Japan from China via Korea more or less simultaneously around the 6th century. Taoism melded with Japanese animist traditions and mutated into SHINTOISM, while Confucianism became, as in China, the dominant intellectual influence, especially among the elite, and even today, in its Japanese form, still dominates the ideology of governance. Confucianism was one of the most sophisticated philosophies of its time, a complex system of moral, social, political and quasi-religious thought, its greatest achievement perhaps being to widen access to education and culture, which previously had been confined to the aristocracy. The Chinese influence was to continue for many centuries, only finally being displaced by that of the West with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Japan thus lived in the shadow of China for some 14 centuries, for most of that time as one of its tributary states, paying tribute to the Chinese emperor and acknowledging the superiority of Chinese civilization. This left a deep imprint on the Japanese psyche and nurtured an underlying sense of inferiority together with a defensive, and incipiently militant, nationalism. Though Chinese influence was profound, it was refracted through and shaped by Japan's own experience and traditions. Japanese Confucianism differed markedly in various respects from Chinese Confucianism. While the latter explicitly included benevolence amongst its core values, the Japanese instead laid much greater emphasis on loyalty, a difference that was to become more pronounced with the passage of time. Loyalty, together with filial piety and a duty to one's seniors - based on authority, blood and age - were amongst the key defining characteristics of the hierarchical relationships that informed Japanese culture. China and Japan were both ruled by an imperial family; there were however 2 crucial differences between them. First, in China, a dynasty could be removed and the mandate of heaven withdrawn: there have been 36 dynasties in Chinese history. In contrast, the Japanese imperial family was regarded as sacred: the same family has occupied the imperial seat throughout its 1,700-year recorded history. Second, while a Chinese dynasty enjoyed absolute power, the Japanese imperial family did not. For only a third of its history has the Japanese imperial family ruled in both name and reality. For much of Japanese history, there has been dual or even triple government, with the emperor, in practice at least, obliged to share power. The most typical form was dual government, with political power effectively controlled either by shoguns (the military chiefs), or by prime ministers or chief advisers backed by military power. The price of eternity, in other words, has been a greatly diminished political role. During the TOKUGAWA era (1603-1867) real political power was exercised by the military in the person of the shogun. The emperor enjoyed little more than symbolic and ceremonial significance, although formally the shogun remained answerable to him. Ruth Benedict, in her THe Chrysanthemum and the Sword, makes the interesting observation that: "Japan's conception of her Emperor is one that is found over and over among the islands of the Pacific". He is the Sacred Chief who may or may not take part in administrations. In some Pacific Islands he did and in some he delegated his authority. But always his person was sacred. To understand Japan we need to see it in its Pacific as well as East Asian context. The TOKUGAWA era, the 250-year period prior to the Meiji Restoration, saw the creation of a highly centralized and formalized feudal system. Beneath the imperial family and the lords (daimyo), society was organized into 4 levels in such strict hierarchy that it possessed a caste-like quality: these were the warriors (samurai), the farmers, the artisans and the merchants respectively. One should also, strictly speaking, include the burakumin, Japan's outcasts or untouchables - descended from those who worked in occupations associated with death, such as undertakers, buriers of the executed, skinners of dead animals-who were regarded and treated as invisible, just as they still are today, the exception (along with those of Chinese and Korean ancestry) to the social inclusivity described earlier. One's rank was determined by inheritance and set in stone. The head of every family was required to post on his doorway his class position and the details of his hereditary status. His birth right determined the clothes he could wear, the food he could buy and the type of house he could live in. The daimyo took a portion of his farmers' rice every year and out of that, apart from catering for his own needs, he paid his samurai. pg 60 The samurai possessed no land: their formal function was to defend the daimyo his land and property. They were the only members of society allowed to carry a sword and enjoyed wide arbitrary power over the lower classes. During the TOKUGAWA era, the daimyo were answerable to the SHOGUN who in turn was at least formally accountable to the emperor in his seclusion (reclusion) in Kyoto. Unlike Chinese Confucianism which valued educational excellence above all (the MANDARINS being products of a highly competitive examination system), the Japanese, in giving pre-eminence to the SAMURAI and indeed the SHOGUNATE, extolled martial qualities. During the TOKUGAWA period, China was in effect a civilian Confucian country and Japan, a military Confucian country. Not long after the Tokugawa family began their SHOGUNATE at the beginning of the 17th century, they closed Japan off to the outside world and suppressed Christianity, rejecting foreign influences in favour of Japanese customs and religious traditions. No European ships were allowed to use Japanese ports, with the exception of the Dutch, who were permitted to use the small island of Deshima in Nagasaki. The Japanese were forbidden from sailing in larger boats - it became an offence to build or operate a boat over a certain size - thereby bringing to an end extensive trading activity along the Japanese coast. The reasons appear to have been a desire to limit the activities of merchants together with a fear of outside influences, and especially the import of European firearms, which it was believed might serve to destabilize the delicate balance of power between the various provinces and the SHOGUN. Notwithstanding this retreat (retiro) into autarchy, the Tokugawa era saw many dynamic changes. Japan became an increasingly unified community, standardizing its language, engendering similar ways of thinking and behaving between different provinces, and evolving a common set of rules and customs. As a result, the conditions for the emergence of a modern nation-state began to take shape. Castle towns were built along a newly constructed road network, which served to further unify the country, with these towns at the centre of what became a vibrant trade. By the end of the TOKUGAWA period, Edo, as Tokyo was then known, was as big as London, with a population of more than a million, while Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and Kanazawa also had a sizeable population...In 1800 Japan's economy compared favourably with that of North West Europe, although it suffered from the same intensifying resource constraints as China and Europe. Like China, Japan could not look to colonies as a source of relief, though food and fertilizer from long-distance fishing expeditions & the import of commodity-intensive products from its more sparsely populated regions, provided Japan with rather greater amelioration than was the case with China. On the eve of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan was able to possess many of the preconditions for economic take off apart, that is, from a government committed to that goal. PG 61 One final point should detain us: the changing role and nature of the samurai. Although their original purpose had been to defend the interests of the daimyo, their role steadily broadened as they assumed growing responsibility for the administration and stewardship of their daimyo estates, as well as for protocol and negotiations with other daimyo and the shogun. On the eve of the Meiji Restoration they had, in effect, been transformed from a military caste into a key administrative class within Japanese society. Although steeped in the Confucian tradition of efficient administration, their knowledge and predisposition were essentially military, scientific and technological rather than literary and scholastic, as was the case with their Chinese counterparts: this orientation and inclination was to have a profound impact on the nature and character of the post-1868 era. THE MEIJI RESTORATION In 1853 the relative peace and stability of the TOKUGAWA era was rudely interrupted by.... appearance in Tokyo Bay of Commodore Perry, an American naval officer, at the head of a fleet of black ships, demanding on behalf of the US, along with various European powers, notably Britain, that Japan should open itself up to trade. Japan's long period of isolation could no longer be sustained: like so much of the rest of the world in the 19th c, Japan could not ignore the West and its metamorphosis into such an expansive and predatory player. In 1858, faced with the continuing threat of invasion, Japan signed a series of unequal treaties which opened the country up to trade on extremely unfavourable terms. In 1859, Japan had to lift its ban on Christianity imposed over 300 years earlier. pg 62 The intervention of the Western nations, with the British, American French and Dutch fleets actively involved, was bitterly resented & led to a huge wave of anti-foreign (or anti-barbarian, as Westerners were known) sentiment. ... End of TOKUGAWA regime... During a 2 year process, culminating in 1868, the shogunate was overthrown by the combined forces of the Satsuma and Choshu clans and a new government, dominated by former samurai installed. The samurai were the prime movers in the fall of the shogunate and the chief instigators of the Meiji regime (named after the emperor who reigned between 1868 and 1912 ). Part of the price the samurai paid for their new found power and prominence in a gvt committed to the building of a modern state was the forfeiture of (confiscacion) their old feudal-style privileges, namely their monopoly of the right to bear arms and their previous payments in kind- with the payments being commuted to cash and rapidly diminishing in value. pg 62 dramatic political change bringing to an end 2.5 centuries of shogunate rule... early stages anti-Western sentiment. Gradually, growing section of ruling elite realises that isolation is no longer an option. A modern imperial state implemented with a chief minister 'advising" the emperor, but with effective power concentrated in the former's hands. pg 63 By 1869, universal freedom of choice was introduced in marriage and occupation. By 1871, the feudal order had effectively been disbanded. In 1873, universal conscription was decreed, rendering the old samurai privilege to bear arms redundant (out of work). Almost immediately, the gvt started to establish factories run mainly by former samurai, thereby ushering in a new and very different economic era. During 2 decades, Japan drew on Western experience in the construction of a range of new institutions. It sent envoys / missions to Europe and to the US in order to study what might be learnt/borrowed & assimilated. This was done in a highly systematic way. Education system introduced in 1873 was modelled on the French system of school districts. Navy was based on Britain's, the army on France's and the on Germany's. railways followed the British example, but universities the American.... a capitalist class was created: the gvt began to sell off its newly created factories. Gvt gave samurai bonds to set up factories, bonds which had replaced the monetary stipends that the samurai had previously received which in turn had replaced their former feudal payments in kind. From the outset, the new capitalistic owners had 2 characteristics which have remained a hallmark of post-Meiji Japan to this day: 1st they owed their existence to the government's largesse and patronage, thus creating a powerful bond of obligation, and 2nd) the new owners by background, training and temperament were administrators rather than entrepreneurs. Although the Meiji restoration was a true revolution, it was not the merchants who had instigated it since they had not come into conflict with the ruling power... The Restoration was led by the ruling elite, namely the warrior class (shift in class from daimyo which did not comprise the ruling elite here to the warrior class) It was a coup by the elite rather than a popular rising from below. Japan is a deeply conservative country in which the lines of continuity are far stronger than the lines of discontinuity. Even when discontinuity was needed, as in 1868, it was instituted, unlike in France and China - both notable exponents of revolution- by the elite, who, mindful of the need for radical change, nonetheless sought to preserve as much as possible of the old order. It is not surprising therefore, that the Restoration was relatively bloodless.!! Furthermore, the ruling elite was to succeed in maintaining the way of life, traditions, customs, family structure, relationships and hierarchy of Japan to a remarkable extent. The Meiji Restoration is testimony to the resilience, inner strength and adaptability of the Japanese ruling elite and its ability to change course when the situation urgently demanded it. pg 65 There is one other fundamental difference between the major revolutions in Europe and the Meiji Restoration. The French Revolution was, amongst other things, a response to an internal development - the rise of the bourgeoisie - whereas the Meiji Restoration was a response to an external threat, that of an expansionist West. .... the Restoration was instigated by a section of the elite rather than a rising antagonistic group: what obliged Japan to change course was NOT the rise of the merchant class but the external threat from the West. THE LINES OF CONTINUITY A country whose existing elite made a voluntary and calculated decision to Westernise in order to preserve what it perceived to be the nation's essence. This willingness to absorb foreign approaches (going back to the 5th and 6th century influence of the Chinese) as and when it has been necessary, has been an underlying strength of Japanese society. Instead of an outright rejection of foreign ideas, the desire to preserve the Japanese 'essence' has instead been expressed by attempting to delineate what the Japanese writer, Kosaku Yoshino has described as 'our realm'. The distinctiveness of Japan- as with other countries, indeed - lies precisely in the stuff of the everyday and the easily overlooked, from the nature of relationships to the values that inform people's behaviour. Japanese relationships operate according to a strict hierarchy based on class, gender and age.... Japanese conventions require not only a respect for hierarchy but also an onerous and complex system of obligations. There are 2 kinds of obligation: or on: the gimu which is limitless and lifelong and which one owes to one's parents for example, and the giri which is finite. These obligations lie at the heart of Japanese society: virtuousness is defined in terms of meeting one's obligations rather than money, which has become the typical measure of virtue in Western society. If one fails to meet one's giri, one feels a sense of shame.... pg 69 Lifetime employment, which still predominates in the large corporations, embodies a conception of obligation on the part of both the company and the employee that is quite different from the narrowly contractual - and often short term- nature of employment in the Anglo-American tradition. The firm is seen akin to a family... women still play a relatively peripheral role in the labour force compared with the West. The seniority system, widely practised in Japanese companies, where one steadily climbs the company ladder as one gets older and enjoys a rising income and growing authority, rather than being dispensed with in the manner of Western firms reflects the age-hierarchy of Japanese society. pg 69/70- ....Japanese attitude towards and the conduct of institutions. The Japanese, for example are profoundly adverse to the use of the law, primarily because of a desire to avoid the kind of confrontation that characterizes the process of litigation. As a consequence, Japan does not have enough lawyers to support even a fraction of the litigation that takes place in Europe, let alone the US. Virtually all cases of civil conflict are settled by conciliation, either out of court or before any legal judgement is made. According to statistics shown by Dentsu Institute for Human Studies. only 5.8% of Japanese asked feel that there are opportunities for promotion. whereas in India: 63.6%; US 66.2%; UK 45.4% and France 45.1% other questions - It's all right to break the rules depending on the circumstances. and attitudes towards gender roles ??? .... pg 72- The fact that the samurai, formed the core of the new ruling group, moreover, meant that they carried some of the long-established values of their class into Meiji Japan and onwards through subsequent history. Post-war Japan-like post-Restoration Japan - has been governed by an administrative class who are the direct descendants of the samurai: they, rather than entrepreneurs run the large companies; they have dominated the Liberal Democratic Party; former administrators have tended to be preponderant in the cabinet; and by definition... they constitute the bureaucracy which remains the key institute in Japanese governance, as it has been for well over a century and in many respects for much longer... Not surprisingly, the nature of governance in similar fashion still strongly bears the imprint of the past. Throughout most of Japan's recorded history, power has been divided between two or more centres, and that remains true today pg 73 The emperor is now of ceremonials and symbolic significance. The Diet, the Japanese parliament- enjoys little real authority. The PM is far weaker, relatively speaking than any other PM of a major developed nation and normally enjoys only a relatively brief tenure in office before being replaced. Between 2007 and 2011, Japan had no less than 6 PMs. Cabinet meetings are largely ceremonial, lasting less than a quarter of an hour. Although formally Japan has a multi party system, the Liberal Democrats, (until their defeat by the Democratic Party in 2009) were in office almost continuously from the mid 1950s and during this period, its factions were in practice of greater importance than the various other parties. Power is therefore dispersed across a range of different institutions, although the bureaucracy in traditional Confucian style, is by far the single most important Chapter 3 SHIMAGUNI pg 31 of Bending Adversity by David Pilling Japan is an island nation= shimaguni. In Japanese: Island =shima, country = kuni = island nation shimaguni = pg 31 Before it was opened up by American warships in the 1850s, Japan spent long stretches of its history mostly shut off from western, if not Asian, influence. Both Japan and China, at one stage in their history, banned the construction of seafaring vessels capable of sailing far from land. In Japan's case, that was largely to preserve its people from being poisoned by foreign ideas, whether those were Christianity or rebellion against the shogun who topped the feudal order. Thus for a quarter of a millennium, until the country was prised open like a shell, the Japanese government forbade most people from entering or leaving Japan on pain of death. pg 32 Under the system of SAKOKU, or closed country, which operated from the early 17th c, only minimal contact was permitted with traders from Korea, China and Holl and. Dutch vessels were restricted to the tiny man-made island of Dejima. Built in the shape of a fan off the coast of Nagasaki in Japan southwest, it was as much a prison as a port of entry. Even before the period of SAKOKU, the waters that separated the Japanese archipelago from the Asian continent diluted the cultural influence exerted by China over Japan. At its closest point, roughly where the modern day city city of Fukuoka is located on the island of KYUSHU, Japan lies 120 miles (180 kms) from the Korean peninsula. That is nearly 6 times further than the mere 21 mile waters that divides Britain from continental Europe. China, the ancient civilisation from which so much Japanese culture derived, is some 500 miles (750 kms) away, a formidable distance in centuries past. ... pg 32 Japan's location -Jared Diamond...(American) who has written extensively about the effects that geography can have on a nation's development argues that Japan's location.... 100 miles from the nearest continent- has had a distinct bearing on its culture. Despite what many British like to think the islands that form the UK have been closely integrated with the continental landmass for 100s of years. There has not been a single century in the last 10 in which British armies have been absent from the European continent. Britain itself has been invaded by Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. By contrast, Japanese armies have ventured onto the Asian mainland only twice, in the 1590s when the newly unified country invaded the Korean peninsula, and in the late 19th & 20th century when Japan annexed Korea and attacked China. Conversely, apart from what may have been a large influx of Koreans 2,300 years ago, Japan has escaped the military conquests that have shaped other nations. The Mongols twice failed to invade, in 1274 and 1281. On the 2nd occasion, the ships of Kublai Khan were wrecked by a typhoon, the 'divine wind' or kamikaze, from which the name of Japan's suicide pilots was later taken. pg 32 Even after its defeat in the 2nd WW, Japan was spared full colonisation. The Americans under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, pg 33 stayed only 7 years and ran the country at arm's length through a local bureaucracy. That was not even long enough to leave a strong tradition of proficiency in the English language. Even today, Japan scores worse in English tests than almost all other Asian nations. When the Dalai Lama visits Japan, he is sometimes asked what would most benefit the country. Tibet's spiritual leader never fails to disappoint his audience. Instead of philosophy or religion, he has more practical advice on how J. can better integrate with the world. "Learn English", he says. Japan's position on the extreme east of the Eurasian continent made it a backwater in which concepts developed on the mainland, came late and took on their own forms... From China, often via the Korean peninsula, came new ideas: written language, Confucianism, Buddhism, architecture, metallurgy and poetry. But once these concepts arrived, they fused with Japan's nativist traditions to undergo a subtle transformation. Undisturbed by a constant back and forth across land borders, ideas took their own course. In religion, Buddhism melded with animism, ancestor veneration and Shinto beliefs. Today, shrines dedicated to foxes sit alongside temples devoted to the Buddha. Acknowledging their religious syncretism, the Japanese like to say they are born Shinto, marry Christian and die Buddhist. In surveys, most describe themselves as atheists. In language too, Japan absorbed Chinese characters developed on the mainland several 1000 years ago. By the late Shang Dynasty (1600-1029 BC) the Chinese were scratching characters on the back of turtle shells as part of royal divination ceremonies. Many 100s of year later, Japan which had no native writing systems, adapted the same characters to their own entirely distinct language (kanji). Partly because the fit was imperfect, the Japanese created 2 more phonetic alphabets known as kana. Today's written Japanese is a mixture of the 3 scripts, one Chinese and 2 home-grown. The cultural appropriation and subtle subversion of outside influence is hardly unique to Japan. But the distance between Japan and the outside world both physical and psychological, perhaps exaggerated the phenomenon. ...The J. adapt what comes from outside. They mix strips of seaweed or sea urchin in their pasta. They use the term sebiro to mean suit, mostly unaware that the word is a distortion of Savile Row (pg 33 end), a London street famed for its men's tailors. More recently, they have taken western technology and modified it. In the inventive hands of Japanese engineers, trains become bullet trains and mobile phones morphed into powerful computers (& electronic wallets) well before the onset of Apple's iPhone. Even the humblest western toilet, adapted to the Japanese mania for cleanliness, became a high-tech contraption of sprays, massage nozzles and hot-air dryers. Yet, the modern rarely supplants the old entirely. In many public lavatories, these lavatorial wonders sit alongside old-fashioned squat toilets just one up from a hole in the ground. The oceans around Japan are not merely shock absorbers that break the intensity of foreign influence. The sea itself has become a part of Japanese culture...still the country's main source of protein despite the relatively recent encroachment of milk and meat.... a lackey or sidekick is a 'gold fish poo'. What we would call a 'spike' in English (= increase) say in the price of gold, is unagi nobori or 'surging eel'. pg 34 Prime Ministers have been known to compare themselves to fish: one likened himself to a loach, an unflashy bottom-dwelling creature well suited, he said, to muddy politics. ...A mother who witnessed the atomic mushroom cloud spreading malevolently over Hiroshima mouthed in terror: "it moves like a sea slug". pg 35 Japan is not a single island, but an archipelago. Its 4 main islands HOKKAIDO, HONSHU, SHIKOKU and KYUSHU, stretch 1,200 miles from the northeast to the southwest, forming an apostrophe on the edge of the Eurasian landmass. That makes Japan roughly the same length as the east coast of America, though its total area is no bigger than the state of Montana. Even then, over 2 thirds of J. territory comprises steep mountains that are virtually uninhabitable, while only 17% of its land is arable. Thus, the country's 127 million inhabitants are squeezed into an area about the same size as Bulgaria. In other ways, though Japan is not small at all. If it were in western Europe, it would be the continent's most populous nation by far, with more people in Britain and Italy combined. Economically, notwithstanding 2 supposedly 'lost decades', it remains a giant with an output half as big again as Germany. Japan's island status has helped foster the idea that it is somehow unique among civilisations. (Not the only country to think it is unique - Mitt Romney... He put his faith in 'that special nature of being American'. Still the idea of Japan's separateness from other cultures has gained currency among both foreigners and Japanese themselves, though many, as we shall see, vigorously and properly contest the notion. Samuel Hungtington's 1996 book the clash of civilisations divides the world into 7 categories, of which Japan alone- has a category of its own. In Japan "obsession with the idea of Japan's supposedly uniquely homogeneous, group-oriented society” has become a fetish. It is not only the Japanese that have laboured the continent's supposed uniqueness. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, written in 1946 by Ruth Benedict, an American anthropologist, painted a picture of the Japanese as 'the most alien enemy the US has every fought in an all-out-struggle'. .... After the war, the success of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword helped breathe life into an entire genre of writing called Nihonjinron or treatise on what makes Japan separate . The form had its origins as far back as the 17th century but reached an apogee in more modern times. In 1977, Joji MORI, a poet and English teacher, wrote a treatise on Japan's group-oriented society called The Shell-less Egg. The book postulated that Europeans and Americans were like eggs with their own shell, self-contained individuals. The Japanese by contrast were shell-less -sticky rather than hard- amorphous rather than rigid. They did not - the book argued- conceive of themselves as individual human beings unless defined in relation to family, village, workplace, superiors and inferiors, insiders and outsiders. By the 1980s (when the Japanese became convinced they would outdo (exceed) Americans economically) whole sections of bookshops were devoted to these self-absorbed tracts. NIHONJINRON builds on the phoney (fake) concept of a racially homogenous society. One only has to look at the faces on a Tokyo or Osaka subway to realize that the Japanese originated from many different parts of Asia. Nevertheless the idea of a pure Japanese essence persists. This would have it that the Japanese are cooperative sedentary rice farmers, not garrulous mobile hunter-gatherers; that they have a unique sensitivity to nature, that they communicate without language through a sort of social telepathy; that they use instinct and heart rather than cold logic and that they have a rarefied artistic awareness. Much emphasis is placed on the advantages of an harmonious society. pg 36 TAIICHI ONO, considered the father of the 'just-in-time' manufacturing method that revolutionised Japanese productivity after the war, cheerily told a documentary filmmaker, "With a racially homogenous workforce, it's much easier to discuss things. In fact it is perfectly natural for us to have a unanimous agreement in whatever we undertake." pg 37 my notes: In 2005, Masahiko Fujiwara published Dignity of the Nation... best sold book after translation of Harry Potter- David Pilling author of Bending Adversity lunches with Fujiwara - pg 38 "The first course of our exquisitely presented set lunch was a single prawn, with a few meticulously arranged chickpeas". My notes: fujiwara harks back to bushido to the Edo period (1603 to 1869) and criticised the bad influence of the west on Japan.... pg 39 My notes: In England people drink tea from cracked mugs "In Japan we have the tea ceremony. Everything we make into art". pg 40 "He explained another familiar and related concept mono no aware sometimes translated as the "pathos of things", but can also mean "sensitivity to the ephemeral".... The Japanese love cherry blossom, "precisely because its bloom is so fleeting before it gently flutters to earth". "If cherry blossoms were in full bloom for six months, no Japanese would love them", he said. It is beautiful because it dies within a week. pg 44 "I often forget that when Japanese people refer to themselves, they point not to their heart but to their nose.", when they hand over a business card or a yen note, they always rotate it so that it is facing the recipient". Linguistically, the Japanese revel in ambiguity, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person often blend into one". The phrase I love you contains neither the word I nor you.... "the word san, a polite apendage usually translated as Mr. or Mrs. is also used for animals. Did you see Mr. Elephant at the zoo?" pg 44 One should not however make too much of such differences... "Japan had no heaven or hell against which to benchmark its worldly actions. 'Japan rejected the philosophical idea of another separate world of the ideal and the good, a world of spirit separate from man and nature, against which we judge our actions and direct our attempts at salvation". A retired geisha in Kyoto, whose life provided some of the material for Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, once spoke to me in similar terms; ' I have read the Bible ' she said disapprovingly. 'In comparison, our gods won't test us to see whether we are bad or whether we are good' Out of interest, I asked several Japanese friends how, if at all, they conceived of god. One young woman, who worked as a telephone sales clerk, said she immediately thought of her dead grandmother, not an answer I imagine I would imagine hearing in the west. Another, Akira Chiba, a friend who works for the foreign ministry said "I don't know much about Christianity, but seen from the outside, it looks as though there's a difference between your role and god's role, your terrain and god's terrain. In Japan, gods are floating around and they're together, with the people. Essentially, we live together with the gods". ... found art everywhere, i the exquisite arrangement of flowers, food laid out on lacquerware or ceramic, even in the movements, passed down the generations, with which people slice fish or swept a stone garden. The haiku a poem of just 17 syllables that includes an obligatory allusion to the season, supports the idea that little in Japan makes sense without reference to something else...." pg 46- "A master of wine who is also an expert on sake once told me that the most elegant Japanese rice wines are defined by the absence of taste, the reverse of what one looks for in a claret or Chardonnay. 'Sake is about what's not there'. In wine it is about what is there, like in speech. The pauses and the silences, the things that aren't there give a hint of the meaning. The most elegant sakes are barely there at all". pg 45 my notes on Japanese nationalism (superior race belief) and origins of this. (the creation of the imperial cult for political aims) "Those feelings that Japan moves to rhythms incomprehensible to most outsiders have reinforced an almost morbid sense of separateness. The Australian academic Gavan Mc Cormack sees Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword as 'one of the great propaganda coups of the century'. In stoking Japanese fantasies about their own separate identity, he says, the book helped sever (cortar) Japan's psychological ties with its Asian's neighbours in the years after the war, making it more dependent on the US. If we look close, this sense that Japanese have a "supposed essence" is a "relatively modern distillation". 19th c. nationalist leaders found it to be useful to create emperor-centred myths around which a new post-feudal nation could rally (manifest)". They elevated SHINTO, an animist set of folkloric beliefs to the status of national religion. The various strands of Shintoism were united under the banner of the emperor. Amaterasu, the sun goddess from which the imperial line supposedly sprang, was placed at its centre. From the 1880s, history textbooks in school began not with Stone Age man but with the birth of the Sun Goddess and the start of the imperial line. In other words, much of Japanese uniqueness is propaganda. Blending nativist animation with the cult of emperor worship was a political artifice. The emperor became so powerful an expression of the Japanese state that even the occupying Americans preserved the institution, exonerating him from any responsibility for the war fought in his name. "All of this left him as the supreme icon of genetic separateness and blood nationalism, the embodiment of an imagined timeless essence that set the Japanese apart from - and superior to- other peoples and cultures It is all too easy to attach cultural explanations to what were, in fact, exercises in the consolidation of political power. It turns out, for example, that the practice of recording dates according to imperial reign is not- as some would have it -an expression of Japan's uniquely cyclical view of time. Rather, it dates back merely to the mid-19th c. when the imperial cult was being created. Of today's nationalist's pining for a supposed Japanese essence, McCormack writes: "What they believed to be ancient tradition was quintessentially modern ideology". JAPANESE TYPE OF CAPITALISM - (a "gentler form of capitalism" a passing culture? a myth?) pg 47 After the war, when the Japanese traded in emperor worship (adoration) for the 'cult of GDP', new notions of what it was to be Japanese arose. Noriko Hama, a professor in Kyoto, ... disputes the common notion that there was anything fundamentally 'Japanese' about Japan's post-war economic model. At the turn of the 20th c., she says, Japan practised an energetic, cutthroat (encarnizado) form of capitalism that had little to do with the communitarian values latr put forward as the secret of its economic miracle. According to Hama, some post-war arrangements, such as lifetime employment and seniority pay, which promotes people according to age not ability, were practical responses to demographics and the need to keep a manufacturing industry supplied with labour. They did not reflect any underlying Japanese proclivity for a gentler form of capitalism. As growth has slowed and society aged, many of the post-war arrangements once hailed as essentially Japanese are fast evaporating. By some measures- eg in the high % of casual labour- Japan now has a more flexible labour force than many western countries. For some, the lifetime employment system and seniority pay had been a modern version of Fujiwara's bushido sensibilities. If that really is the essence of Japan, then such essence is fast vanishing like drops of ink in water. Contrary to the views of existentialists, cultures are not immutable. Like language they evolve and adapt, though they may take generations to do so. To seek to explain the history of a country - let alone its future - on the basis of supposedly fixed national characteristics is to succumb to a deterministic view of the world. We should challenge some of the assumptions that give rise to such opinions. 1