- BRIAN
DEER: JAPAN FEELS THE SQUEEZE
Page 3
Another
revealing dip into the language of this country
retrieves the expression sodai gomi.
Literally, it means "large garbage" and
refers to big items of domestic waste, such as broken
furniture, worn-out futons and old TV sets. But a
different, colloquial, usage of the words is a
self-reference by Japanese men. In this context, sodai
gomi means the sad identity they feel obliged to
assume when they finally leave their beloved
workplace and go home to their wives and kids.
Despite
amae, the family (at least in the way that we
know it) is poorly-developed and the source of much
discontent. In the homes of men who spend their
waking lives at work, women commonly bring up
children more or less in the style of lone parents.
Marriages often seem emotionally empty (about one
quarter are still arranged by parents) and the
traditional roles of cook and child-rearer weigh
overwhelmingly on one sex. This may sound familiar,
but in Japan it's extreme: the wife is meant to
behave something like a hotel-keeper, serving an
honoured guest.
At
face value, the economic downturn has made this
problem worse. Although the country has not yet
experienced a recession in the Western sense, poor
growth has put large numbers of women out of work and
stopped many more from getting in. Here, too, Japan
seems locked tight, without any relief from stress.
Two weeks back, there was a protest in Tokyo by
female graduates demanding more access to jobs. But
the turnout was in dozens, rather than in thousands,
another sign of the Japanese way.
But
here is a further example of how appearance can
sometime prove an illusion. Just as the rise of
Murayama to the prime ministership appears to signal
change but is actually a sign of constancy, so the
position of women looks hopelessly stuck while in
reality it's surging ahead. Far from tiptoeing three
paces behind their husbands and tittering behind
their fingers, wives and mothers are increasingly
educated, worldly - and openly critical. Always the
hinge in the folding fan of the family, they are now
using this fulcrum to become a social force for the sodai
gomi to reckon with.
This
force is arguably pressing for change more powerfully
than anything else. In the face of a political vacuum
at the heart of the state, an immovable bureaucracy
guiding national affairs, great dependency-creating
corporations and a male populace idling at work,
women have emerged with the competitive buzzword for
efficiency and progress: choice. Despite
inequality more blatant than in other advanced
economies - and without even an organised movement in
the sense that many Western women would recognise -
they are gracefully taking to the stage to help shape
Japan's social and economic affairs.
Their
advance is occurring everywhere, from politics to
space research. Among Murayama's cohort of
conservative cabinet appointments was Makiko Tanaka,
who was immediately tipped herself as set to become a
potential future prime minister. And among her first
public duties last month was to welcome the return on
the Shuttle Columbia of a Japanese woman astronaut.
These are taken as potent symbols of social progress,
shedding the kimono image for good.
"A
change among mothers creates change within the whole
family," Sumiko Iwao, professor of psychology at
Keio University, explained to me. "When I was
growing up, mother always said nice things about
father in the front of the children - how he should
be respected and so on. Now women are so highly
educated that they will critique their husbands
bitterly - and the children are listening and
learning from those remarks."
Such
a change, moreover, is not just of consequence for
private domestic lives, but feeds through economics
and world affairs. By undermining the salaryman's
lifestyle (and convincing their children to do the
same), women threaten to provoke a profound and
potentially transforming shift in the culture. If
they have their way, the office may soon be seen as a
place of work, not primarily an emotional refuge. As
a consequence, love of the big corporation might wane
- and men might go home for leisure.
In an
economy dominated by the voice of producers, this
change would could prove overwhelming. An increased
demand for leisure inevitably sparks consumer
awareness, forcing more price competition and demand
for imported goods. More imports will change the
trade balance and take pressure off the yen. And was
it not western anxieties about the strength of the
currency where those deep earth rumblings began?
Of
course, it would need a lot of imports to keep
America smiling. Its huge deficits with Japan are
caused less by cheating - which is what US
negotiators claimed last week - than by the same
bureaucratic and laid-back arrangements by which this
society runs more generally. And no increased volume
of Detroit's automobiles (currently grabbing a puny
0.6% of the Japanese market), or Louisiana's rice
sales will quell Washington's implicit assumption
that the world economy ought to run in a uniform way.
But
whatever mountains of consumption Japan might scale,
responding to the current stresses is a test of the
nation's spirit. The offshore drift of capital will
not be stemmed much by a boost in holidays and TV
dinners, and poses crucial challenges for political
life. Will changes in the bureaucrat's Confucian
code, the nation's group mentality and the
aspirations of women see the proceeds of overseas
investment enjoyed more widely by everybody at home?
If so, then change could spell a remarkable era of
calm and prosperity.
Success,
moreover, could mean emulation among Japan's East
Asian neighbours. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore,
Vietnam and even mighty China all look anxiously
towards Japan for ideas about how to proceed. If the
land of the rising yen can ease the pressures and
achieve some modest rearrangement, there may be new
choices for other nations. And as a new millennium
begins - a post-industrial, information, era - it may
be that we have a lot to learn from life lived the
Japanese way.
There
are, however, other routes for the country - which
need no involvement of women. When Murayama stepped
up to the karaoke mike, the song the
bureaucrats had chosen for him to croon was selected
with a chorus of nationalism to every verse.
Appearances, may be deceiving, but his talk of armed
forces, the song and the flag were not-too-difficult
codes. It could be that Japan will not move forward,
but will seek to withstand the strain.
The
great plates that shift underneath the Pacific touch
East and West alike. There are jolts here, tremors
there every day of the year. But if Japan stays
locked, when it finally gives, the convulsions could
rock the world.
Read another
Culture Essay by Brian Deer, The Life & Death of
Leisure, on "Athens without the
slaves"
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