- BRIAN
DEER: JAPAN FEELS THE SQUEEZE
Page 2
In
Kanji - the ancient Chinese ideographs which
are Japan's main writing system - there's a two-part
compound character which translates as meaning
"busy". Like thousands more in this
complicated script, it's a compilation of simpler
symbols, joined in a more elaborate idea. On the left
are three strokes that denote the heart. On the right
are three more for "die". To be busy, then,
literally in written Japanese, means dead-hearted.
Not a positive thought.
Since
the genesis of words say a lot about culture, this Kanji
may surprise some westerners. We assume, after all,
that Japan's phenomenal post-war achievements are
somehow rooted in a frenzy of work. Indeed, it is
almost our first assumption about Japanese life - and
that the giant corporate groups - such as Mitsubishi,
Mitsui and Kango - thrive precisely because of this
powerful ethos of toil that more workshy nations
lack.
Nobody
can doubt that in the manufacturing sector there is
discipline, dedication and effort. And Japan's
pre-university education system entails one of the
most gruelling learning-curves anywhere. Elsewhere,
however, the opposite is true: there's a prevailing
sense of "nothing doing". Although company
employees may quickly rally to urgent tasks, in the
white-collar sector especially, the semi-idle
atmosphere can be amazing to behold. Hundreds of
thousands in unskilled work, moreover, are employed
in jobs that don't need doing.
They
do them, however, with a loyalty and dedication that
would be hard to match in the West. A combination of
unique ancient forces have come together in the
twentieth century to make the Japanese company the
prime psychological unit. White-collar
"salarymen", who set the benchmark for
appropriate behaviour, will think nothing of staying
in the office until midnight, of sleeping under their
desks, and of taking only three or four days annual
leave.
But
these same people spent much of last month watching
the national sumo basho live from Nagoya when
they were theoretically supposed to be working. They
love to go to work, but in a spirit of recreation.
Work is where you live. Rather than pushing paper,
holding business meetings, or taking decisions, many
get through much of the day reading comics, chatting
to pals or booing the Hawaiian Ozeki
Musashimaru as he stormed through the wrestling
bouts. This relationship to employment - part of what
is described as "Japanese group mentality"
- lies somewhere near to the living heart of the
world's economic number two.
This
"groupism" is as well accepted among the
people I spoke to as is any trait nations admit of
themselves. When a Japanese doctor, Masao Miyamato,
recently returned from abroad and wrote a book
caricaturing the domestic workplace as a bed of
ludicrous idleness, it sold half a million copies and
made him a star. "The Japanese group mentality
has a very great deal in common with Communism,"
he explained to me. "In Japan, everybody stays
late and they don't take vacations, as an act of
saying: 'We are the comrades'."
The
spin-offs from this trait, however, are not all as
bad. There is much to be said for Japanese life.
There is little crime (apart from high-level
corruption and police-supervised gangsterism), not
much drug misuse and next to no teenage vandalism.
Lose your wallet or handbag in Tokyo and you can be
fairly sure it will be handed-in without as much as
being rooted-through. Even in the concrete jungle of
Tokyo, there's an ordered courtesy to human relations
that is barely a memory in small Western towns.
Take
this summer, where a serious social problem erupted
in the capital. Such a storm was raised about young
people joy-riding on Tokyo's Oi pier, that riot
police were drafted in to put a stop to it. Sometimes
more than 100 cars were involved, speeding through
the streets and throwing on the brakes to put them
into a skid. This is familiar in the West - perhaps a
sign of convergence - but what we might find it hard
to get our heads round is that the kids drive their
own vehicles in these dangerous pursuits. They don't
steal other people's.
*****
At
least since the Reagan-Thatcher era, it has been an
unquestionable axiom among western leaders that there
is just one way to promote prosperity: the
Anglo-American way. And with Japan more than ever in
conflict with the American economic model, the time
is approaching when the West expects some figure like
Murayama to step up and foster real, not karaoke,
change.
Many
Japanese accept the need for reforms, but whether
those reforms mean ending its planned economy,
throwing hundreds of thousands out of work and
accepting the accompanying social alienation, looks
less likely to me in Tokyo than it might from
Washington. Although some in the West argue that the
country's success is based on American generosity
during the 1950s and 1960s, followed by a
mean-spirited protectionism from thence to today,
this society has its roots too deep in history to be
the subject of easy alteration.
The
first obstacle to a swift about-face is that crucial
"group mentality". Accompanying the
laid-back life of the salarymen, hanging-out with his
friends in the playroom office, is a lack of what we
might think of as individual initiative or discontent
to trigger change. With the company as family and the
workplace as life's focus, this is a society that
wouldn't agonise over a prime ministerial
appointment, if it were Tomiichi Murayama or a
monkey.
It
would take more than a few social shake-ups to change
that mentality - more like a cultural tsunami.
Groupism is inherited from this society's first base:
the conditions once needed to grow rice. Only 16% of
these islands is open to agriculture, which more than
anything demands communal water and the social
relations to secure its supply. Upset the village, or
fall foul of a feud and to survive you used to sell
your daughter to the geisha house and have your next
baby killed.
The
next obstacle to reform that would need to be
overcome is the legacy of totalitarian regimes. Until
1945, when emperor Hirohito finally owned-up that he
wasn't a god, Japan had never known a government that
wasn't brutal, arbitrary and absolute. In particular,
under the fearsome shoguns, who ruled for 250 years
from 1603, the general public was liable to execution
for displaying the slightest sign of attitude.
Villages were divided by local Samurai into
disciplinary sub-units, each of which could be
collectively punished for the transgressions of
individual members.
A
third obstruction lies in Japanese family relations,
deeply rooted in its unique psychology. While the
Western tradition of Homer et al boasts hero legends
symbolising separation of a child from its mother,
Japanese culture stresses retaining that bond as part
of what makes it strong. Boys commonly sleep close to
their mothers until they are three or older and often
sustain a powerful attachment throughout their adult
years. This creates what Japanese psychologists call amae,
a deep-seated and lifelong need to be dependent -
which can attach to the group, the company, or even
the state.
And
if all of this is not enough to inhibit western-style
change, there is also the influence of kanji.
To master the basics of this writing system (and
there are four others in use, including English),
children are taught more than 7,000 characters -
inevitably crowding-out opportunities to question
with a need to get a grip on hard fact. And where
those ideographs build up to more complex meanings,
ancient cultural assumptions may be absorbed. Every
Japanese, for example, has been drilled at school to
think of "busy" as "heart" and
"die".
*****
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