The disasters facing the world's third largest economy has put the spotlight on Japanese culture and the national demeanor during a time of unimaginable crisis. But are the Japanese really unique?
By Kevin Voigt, CNNMarch 25, 2011 -- Updated 0528 GMT (1328 HKT)
A group of tourists watch the sun rise from the top of Japan's iconic Mount Fuji
(CNN) -- As the nuclear crisis mounted in Japan after the one-two punch of earthquake and tsunami, announcements on the public address system at Go Watanabe's Tokyo office last week became increasingly strident.
"The first day it was, 'You may go home'," said Watanabe, a 33-year-old employee at Sumitomo Corp. "On the second day it was, 'You better go home'. By the third day, it was, 'Go home'." Yet Watanabe stayed at the office as late as 2 a.m. each night to finish reports as the March end of the fiscal year loomed.
Watanabe's diligence at his desk in the face of national crisis exemplifies Japan's legendary work ethic. (After all, this is a nation recognizes karoshi -- death by overwork -- as a legal cause of death.) But the three-fold disasters facing the world's third largest economy has put the global spotlight on Japan and its culture, for good and for ill. Underlining much of the coverage seems to be this question: Are the Japanese different?
"The Japanese love to say it themselves -- this Nihonjinron thing, talking about 'we Japanese'," said historian John Dower, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II." "The Japanese are always stressing their uniqueness ... but the very topic is fraught with peril."
Much has been made of the "orderliness" following the quake. The nation's extraordinary readiness for earthquakes and tsunamis has helped keep the death toll of the March 11 disaster -- with 10,035 people confirmed dead, 17, 443 missing as of Friday -- from being far worse. But the ongoing saga at the Fukushima nuclear plant -- and the paucity of accurate, timely information even from the highest levels of government -- points to the Japanese cultural propensity for vague language and reluctance to share damaging information.
Moreover, Japan watchers wonder if the event will catalyze the nation into action -- as extreme events have done so often in Japanese modern history. Aside from the immediate disaster, the country has to tackle some entrenched problems; moribund politics, a huge public debt and an aging population that has seen their nation rise phoenix-like from the ashes of World War II only to slip into a decades-long economic decline.
"Well, the calmness is, of course, an enormous strength in a crisis like this. It's sometimes a problem in the recession, trying to develop a sense of urgency," Sony CEO Howard Stringer told CNN's Fareed Zakaria this week. "And a little part of me says this will now have a sense of urgency and this will kick-start the Japanese economy in ways that maybe nothing else would.
"It's one of the great strengths of the Japanese people -- which one tends to forget because it's a consensus society -- and that can drive you a little crazy every so often and you think, 'Come on, let's get going'," Stringer said.
Culture of conformity
Japan's volcanic geography has helped shape its culture, as limited arable land fostered tight-knit communities. "It's very much ingrained in the Japanese experience to live in close proximity with your neighbors," said Alexandra Harney, author and associate fellow at the Asia Society. "These are the values of a community-based culture; this is not an every man-for-themselves culture."
Watanabe, who often travels abroad for work and has lived in North America and the Middle East, describes Japan this way: "We like rules, we like plans, and we like to make appointments.
"We're famous for Sony, Panasonic and Toyota," he said. The question he's most asked abroad? "Are you a ninja?"
Cultural stereotypes are hard to avoid when reporting on Japan.
"I think there must be a rule at the press club in Tokyo that if you write an article about Japan, somewhere you must include the quote `The nail that sticks out gets hammered down'," said Dower, referring to a Japanese proverb that speaks of the group ethic of the nation. "I rebel against the overemphasis of notions that this is a particularly group-oriented society. There's an awful lot of idiosyncratic, individualistic response to crises over Japan's history."
Still, critics say there are very real cultural barriers that stymie Japan's emergency response to the nuclear disaster, and in its long economic malaise.
"They're not very transparent -- there needs to be a huge change in transparency not just in the nuclear industry, but other industries," said Kei Sugaoka, a former nuclear engineer for GE who personally inspected the Fukushima plant "many, many times" from 1977 to 1997.
When the third generation Japanese-American first traveled to the plant, Sugaoka was impressed by the "Army-like" efficiency of work there. "The daily meetings, the group exercise, the pep talks -- it wasn't like American plants where there was more screwing around," Sugaoka recalled. "When they go to work, they work."
Japan's information problem
But in 1989 Sugaoka was shocked when he was asked to edit a video inspection that showed cracks in a steam pipe, and no service information letter sent on the incident -- a standard operating procedure. Sugaoka later went public with the information, and Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, was found to have falsified inspections, resulting in three top executives stepping down in 2002. And yet safety violations continued at the plant.
The Fukushima plant problems points toward Japan's "information problem ... the unwillingness to openly discuss bad news and to play down, disguise or even lie about unfortunate or embarrassing news," said Alex Kerr, an American who has spent much of his life in Japan. "That has been absolutely endemic in the nuclear industry here, and in other domestic industries.
"There's been a lot in the international press at this point at the lack of clarity (in the Fukushima situation),"said Kerr, a cultural critic and author of "Lost Japan" and "Dogs and Demons," the latter which focused in part on Japan's nuclear problems. "What they may not be aware is its endemic and built into the system -- they simply know no other way."
That sentiment can even be found in Japanese art. "They talk about the shinkei of Mount Fuji," Kerr said. "This is the perfect shape that Mount Fuji should have, the truth, an ideal -- not the actual look of Mount Fuji."
Part of the blame, critics says, lies within the tangled government bureaucracy which holds sway over many of Japan's domestic industries, like nuclear power. This is evident in the aftermath of the quake. Hannah Beech, in an article this week for Time, points to Japan's fondness for red tape choking relief efforts: drugs, logistic companies and helicopter aid were rebuffed for lack of proper licenses.
"In other natural disasters that I've covered, steady streams of local and international aid have usually converged upon the stricken area within four days of the event. This has happened even in developing-world countries with far less infrastructure than Japan has. But in Tohoku, as Japan's northeast is called, aid has trickled in agonizingly slowly," Beech wrote.
Rising from the ashes
Many times during Japan's history, the nation has made dramatic progress. The arrival of U.S. warships led by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 to open trade with Japan led to a crash-program of modernization.
"When you look at Japan in the modern world, since Perry, the country has pulled together in quite remarkable ways in many decisive moments," Dower said. "It responded to Western imperialism and colonialism so successfully it became an imperialistic society itself.
"Less than a half century later, it's knocked off Russia, it's got what we call Taiwan as a colony, Korea as a colony -- by World War I it was one of the world's Big Five Powers," Dower said.
The devastation of the 1923 Kanto earthquake -- so complete, many archival pictures misdate photos from the era as World War II -- led to an incredible boom. "People everywhere were talking about a new Japan, and these energies were coming from every direction: entrepreneurs, skilled labor, artists, filmmakers," Dower said. "But, they also go nuts -- the response to that crisis also led to militarism and expansion overseas, and of course that ends in disaster."
World War II left more than 60 major Japanese cities in ruins, left 10 million homeless and killed an estimated half million civilians. And yet entrepreneurs from the street level to the major corporations turned swords into ploughshares, rocketing the economy to the world's second largest by 1968. Some believed Japan was on pace to overtake the United States until its property bubble burst in the late 1980s, starting a long decline from which the nation has never quite recovered.
Can Japan change?
In Tokyo last week, Watanabe and the rest of Tokyo residents experienced the first planned power cut since World War II. The scenes from the areas of devastation, the run on bottled water in Tokyo and the power outages have shaken Watanabe from his comfortable life living in one of the world's great cities.
"I've traveled to many poor countries, and the earthquake shocked me in a sense that these sort of things shouldn't be taken for granted," Watanabe said. "You may run out of water; you may run out of food."
Want to help in relief effort? Here's how
It's that shock that Sony's Stringer hopes will push the nation as a whole out of its long decline. "This will jolt us out of the complacency which is kind of the love child of all this prosperity," Stringer said. "There's a sense of why would you live anywhere else? We have everything. It's comfortable. Everything works so well that developing -- as I said earlier -- a sense of urgency is critical."
For Watanabe, the calls to curtail power gave him a sense of pride. "I feel a lot of hope if we can stick together," Watanabe said. "I realized we can do something together, that was a light in the darkness. This can be a very good opportunity to awake and to realize we need to start changing."
And then Watanabe hung up the phone -- a short break in the midst of another long night in the office.
Posts: 1365 | Registered: Dec 2010
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Their culture is very advanced. In the face of natural disaster, it is surprising that you hardly hear of an incident of rape, looting, etc... You'd think such an event would bring out the worst in people (it usually does, look at Haiti). It says a lot about how far they have come as a people.
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No, I don't think it's Abaza. He could have software to change his ip but this person is different. He/she usually posts health related stuff in the other forums.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Retarded Liar Exposed: Their culture is very advanced. In the face of natural disaster, it is surprising that you hardly hear of an incident of rape, looting, etc... You'd think such an event would bring out the worst in people (it usually does, look at Haiti). It says a lot about how far they have come as a people.
Yes. Their culture is so advanced, they have vending machines that sell used panties, separate trains for women so they won't be sexually harassed, and legalized child pornography such as magazines that feature kindergarden girls being violated. Not like Hatians or other blacks who are degenerates. Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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I like the Japanese but they have some weird little quirks in their society. One instance is a cannibal serial killer became a celebrity in Japan. He makes apperances on talk shows on Japanese television.
I think the Japanese have alot of weird manga,movies and entertainment to repress sexuality and other animal instincts.
Djehuti, child pornography is illegal in Japan. However, it is legal to draw pornographic manga because its not real people.
Posts: 8675 | From: Tukuler al~Takruri as Ardo since OCT2014 | Registered: Feb 2003
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^^^ Whats wrong with Pornographic manga?? Unlike in the West, Manga in Japan is geared to all audiences not just children. Sexuality in Manga is no different than sexuality in the Movies etc.
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by ausar: Djehuti, child pornography is illegal in Japan. However, it is legal to draw pornographic manga because its not real people.
There was a time when it was legal and you can still purchase them in 'underground' shops. Trust me, I have a friend who visited Japan once and what he saw left him shock, disgusted, and depressed for days.
As for manga/anime. It's true since these aren't real people anything goes, and by anything I mean anything and it is downright grotesque. I mean sexually repressed is one thing, but the degree of perversity is something else.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Newly Homeless in Japan Re-Establish Order Amid Chaos
A makeshift public bath set up near a shelter for those left homeless by the tsunami that hit northeastern Japan two weeks ago. More Photos » By MICHAEL WINES Published: March 25, 2011
RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — Koji Yamaguchi, a 76-year-old survivor of the tsunami that all but eradicated this town on March 11, was unavailable for interviews. He was out walking his dog.
Which would be unsurprising, were Mr. Yamaguchi not an evacuee himself, living on a 9-by-9-foot grass mat in a junior high school gymnasium here with 1,000 other people.
To an outsider, much is striking about Japan’s response to two weeks of serial disasters: the stoicism and self-sacrifice; the quiet bravery in the face of tragedy that seems almost woven into the national character. Just as striking, however, is that evacuees here live in a place that can kennel your dog, charge your cellphone, fix your dentures and even provide that nonnegotiable necessity of Japanese life, a steamy soak in a hot tub of water.
There is a free laundry service, too, although they are still working out clothes-drying kinks.
Just two weeks after this nation’s greatest catastrophe in decades, the citizens at Takada Junior High School No. 1, this town’s largest evacuee center, have managed to fashion a microcosm of the spotlessly organized and efficient Japan they so recently knew.
Theirs is a city where a hand sanitizer sits on every table; where face masks, which Japanese wear the way other people wear sunglasses, are dispensed by the box. It is a place where you do not just trade your muddy shoes for slippers at the front door, but also shed the slippers at the gymnasium door lest you carry a mote of dust from the hallways into the living areas.
“It’s hard to gather these people to live together here,” Tsutomu Nakai, the soft-spoken 61-year-old retiree who manages the center, said on Thursday. “They all have different lifestyles and different personalities. But so far, people have volunteered to help each other, and it works very well.”
None of this is to suggest that Takada Junior High is the Waldorf. There is immense suffering and personal misery here: grieving survivors, financial ruin, smelly bodies, no running water, frigid outdoor toilets, endless boredom and the prospect of sleeping on a hard floor with complete strangers for weeks — even months — to come.
But this, too, seems to be part of the national character: a passion for order and civility so deep-rooted that the chaos and despair of 1,000 strangers somehow is subdued to the level of disarray expected at the monthly meeting of a book-lovers’ club.
The spirit is captured by the hand-drawn signs that adorn the gym: “Let’s be grateful that we are alive”; “Cheer up, Takata”; “Let’s communicate and bond our hearts.”
The messages are lived in simple ways. One expects that 1,000 evacuees would have access to a doctor, and the Japan Red Cross has opened a well-staffed clinic on the first floor. But one might not expect the two dentists next door, who decided on March 17 to volunteer their services and opened shop the next day, treating about 15 patients daily with the help of staff members whose own homes were lost in the tsunami.
“I don’t have any other place to work, because my office washed away,” said Masanori Yoshiday, 60. “We can rebuild the office later.”
The dentists were followed by Shoichi Yanashita, a 66-year-old barber and a fellow evacuee, who was giving free haircuts on Thursday with scissors and a razor borrowed from a friend in a nearby town. “We have to support each other,” he said, “and this is what I know how to do.”
Hair cutting and dentistry joined a long list of services, donated and otherwise: volunteer bicycle-repairing, a shuttle bus ferrying evacuees from center to center, pet cages donated by local veterinarians, free laundering of refugees’ clothes by local high-school students.
Drying remains a problem. “We have to dry the ladies’ underwear where people can’t see it. So we put it in two classrooms on the second floor, and then we lock the doors,” said Mr. Nakai, the evacuee center manager. Classes at the school have been suspended since the disaster.
Asked whether he has had to deal with petty thievery, personality conflicts or any other social ills that beset strangers unwillingly thrown together, Mr. Nakai replied: “Nothing at all. They don’t even argue.”
Not quite true, said Hiroe Sasaki, a 42-year-old evacuee. “We had only one blanket for each person on the first day,” she said. “People did get stressed. Some shouted at each other.”
And now? “They wouldn’t tell me,” she said, “but I know some people aren’t happy that other families have more blankets than they do.”
Ms. Sasaki staffs the help desk in the gymnasium, the urban center of this makeshift town. To the right is the lending library. To the left is a cardboard mailbox where evacuees can deposit postcards — also available at the desk — that are delivered to other centers around town.
Opposite her desk are recycling bins for burnable trash, plastic, glass and metal (subdivided into aluminum and steel). On the desk and adjacent shelves, free for the asking, are batteries, hand and foot warmers, cotton gloves, pens and paper, plastic trash bags and eye drops for the tree pollen that is spreading with the arrival of spring. A small box holds cellphones that have been charged at the power strip behind her chair. Beside the chair is a wireless microphone used to deliver the news through the gymnasium’s sound system, heralded by the four-chime alert often heard in train stations and airports.
This week, Japan’s Self Defense Force soldiers offered a much-coveted new service: two hot tubs for men and women, holding 25 bathers at a time, at a nearby elementary school that also houses evacuees. Now the Takada center offers daily shuttle buses to the tubs, which sit side by side in steam-saturated tents outside the school entrance.
The orderliness extends to the residents, who have assembled the detritus of two weeks on a gym floor — donated clothes, blankets, folding chairs — into neat barriers that provide a modicum of privacy from the neighbors. The gym floor is carved into neighborhoods, each with a representative who carries grievances to higher-ups.
Not that there are any grievances, of course — at least those that people are willing to admit publicly in a culture that prizes the capacity for endurance.
“Some people gather around the space heater at nights because they can’t sleep. The young people, especially, snore really loudly,” said Yukiko Yamaguchi, 73, who lost her home in the tsunami.
“But it’s unconscious,” she added quickly. “You can’t complain about that.”
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Look Japan is no more weird or dirty than any other industrialized country but this nation is a nation that runs on shame rather than guilt..loosing face is every thing here,but the majority of guys are not into pedophilia at least not more so than their western counter parts and bathing at an onsen does carry the same... ah donno state of mind?? as one would interpret of scantily clad women in some traditional village in a large part of the tropical world.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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^ I never said they were more weird in general, however you can't deny that their weirdness seems to be more open than that of the U.S. I agree with Ausar in that every society has their quirks regardless of ethnicity. The Japanese definitely have theirs. The Exposed Idiot wants to make it like Japanese are perfect compared to Haitians and other blacks which is ridiculous. The point is people are people and to idealize one group while denigrating another is stupid.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Afrocentric Liars Exposed: Their culture is very advanced. In the face of natural disaster, it is surprising that you hardly hear of an incident of rape, looting, etc... You'd think such an event would bring out the worst in people (it usually does, look at Haiti). It says a lot about how far they have come as a people.
Again, a population born out of bottlenecks with low diversity and high discrimination gene - my theory anyway.
Japanese are some of the most racist people in the world which also makes them very homogeneous and unified. This is reflected in a very conformed society but also means that their treatment of others can be very uncivil.
Same population is quite capable of a Nanking massacre but then doesn't turn on itself easily.
Populations that have a high amount of diversity are also more susceptible to turning on themselves.
This has been discussed many times and is one of the reason for the high amount of Black on Black crime - simply diversity and a lack of a discrimination gene.
Posts: 4028 | From: NW USA | Registered: May 2005
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On 19 December 1937, Reverend James M. McCallum wrote in his diary:
I know not where to end. Never I have heard or read such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval, there is a bayonet stab or a bullet ... People are hysterical ... Women are being carried off every morning, afternoon and evening. The whole Japanese army seems to be free to go and come as it pleases, and to do whatever it pleases
-------------------- Across the sea of time, there can only be one of you. Make you the best one you can be. Posts: 4028 | From: NW USA | Registered: May 2005
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On December 13, about 30 soldiers came to a Chinese house at #5 Hsing Lu Koo in the southeastern part of Nanking, and demanded entrance. The door was open by the landlord, a Mohammedan named Ha. They killed him immediately with a revolver and also Mrs. Ha, who knelt before them after Ha's death, begging them not to kill anyone else. Mrs. Ha asked them why they killed her husband and they shot her. Mrs. Hsia was dragged out from under a table in the guest hall where she had tried to hide with her 1 year old baby. After being stripped and raped by one or more men, she was bayoneted in the chest, and then had a bottle thrust into her vagina. The baby was killed with a bayonet. Some soldiers then went to the next room, where Mrs. Hsia's parents, aged 76 and 74, and her two daughters aged 16 and 14. They were about to rape the girls when the grandmother tried to protect them. The soldiers killed her with a revolver. The grandfather grasped the body of his wife and was killed. The two girls were then stripped, the elder being raped by 2–3 men, and the younger by 3. The older girl was stabbed afterwards and a cane was rammed in her vagina. The younger girl was bayoneted also but was spared the horrible treatment that had been meted out to her sister and mother. The soldiers then bayoneted another sister of between 7–8, who was also in the room. The last murders in the house were of Ha's two children, aged 4 and 2 respectively. The older was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword.
-------------------- Across the sea of time, there can only be one of you. Make you the best one you can be. Posts: 4028 | From: NW USA | Registered: May 2005
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Should I go on? Are the Japanese any different? No.
-------------------- Across the sea of time, there can only be one of you. Make you the best one you can be. Posts: 4028 | From: NW USA | Registered: May 2005
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Outrageous abuses can be found amongst almost every type of people Vikings used to throw captured babies in the air and caught them with the spears and Europeans were reported to having bayoneted pregnant females in India, lets not forget the horror of recent Liberia and Rwanda, Pol pot regime in Cambodia. so no!! even in their evil they are not special.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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^ indeed. For every step forward man has taken there has been an equal and opposite step backwards. For the rules of our Universe are quite simple - there's an equal and opposite reaction to everything. There is even anti-matter as opposed to matter. Everything is balanced off proportionately and there can be no gains without loses to something or someone.
Posts: 4028 | From: NW USA | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: Outrageous abuses can be found amongst almost every type of people Vikings used to throw captured babies in the air and caught them with the spears and Europeans were reported to having bayoneted pregnant females in India, lets not forget the horror of recent Liberia and Rwanda, Pol pot regime in Cambodia. so no!! even in their evil they are not special.
What is interesting is that Pol pot, Rwanda, and Liberia are actual cases of people turn on each other. These are areas of high diversity.
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