Japan searches for its own identity<\/p>\n
By Ignas Kleden<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Most of the success of Japanese development is
\nusually attributed to the fondness, ability and discipline of the
\nJapanese people to imitate everything they consider good for
\ntheir country and themselves. Without much pretense of
\ncreativity, they take the good things from outside, assimilate
\nthem and produce a better product than the original.<\/p>\n
What is so outstanding is not the special talents of the
\nJapanese, but the unrelenting willingness and determination to
\nlearn. In a Sisyphean manner in which one rolls a big stone
\nuphill knowing that it will surely roll downhill again, they keep
\non doing it over and over again without ever giving up.<\/p>\n
Being deeply enmeshed in Chinese characters means, for the
\nJapanese, being deeply enmeshed in Chinese cosmology, as every
\nkanji-character does not merely signify a sound, but rather
\ndescribes the world. Nevertheless, Japan turned out not to be
\nanother China.<\/p>\n
The same thing can be said of its Western-oriented policy
\nsince the Meiji Restoration. A striking development in Japan's
\nWestern outlook is that it successfully absorbed most western
\nscience and technology, classical art and music, literature, and
\neven jurisprudence and philosophy without being taken over by
\nwestern Christianity.<\/p>\n
Despite much active missionary effort since the end of the
\n16th century, the number of Catholics in Japan for example is no
\nmore than 400,000, or 0.31 percent of the 127 million population.<\/p>\n
There are various theories which try to account for the
\nfailure of Christian missionaries in Japan. One is political; it
\nsays that the Tokugawa shogunate feared the potential power of
\nbelief in an alien Lord, even though it was only in heaven. The
\nintolerance of the Tokugawa police state toward other competing
\npolitical rivals was well-known.<\/p>\n
The second theory is more cultural. Prof. Tamotsu Aoki from
\nthe Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at Tokyo
\nUniversity once told me during a discussion that as far as their
\nspiritual needs are concerned, the Japanese have been self-
\nsufficient since before the advent of Western influences. The
\nthree local religions which have been present for centuries have
\nsatisfactorily served the religious needs of the Japanese.<\/p>\n
Shintoism, according to Prof. Aoki, teaches the Japanese how
\nto live. Buddhism teaches them how to die and Confucianism
\nprovides them with the art of behaving. So why take on board
\nanother world religion which might teach the same thing?<\/p>\n
When Japan turned from Europe to the United States after World
\nWar II, it did so earnestly, welcoming the victors who had just
\ndevastated their country with atom bombs. The American soldiers
\nwho landed were astonished how the people, who just a few months
\npreviously had been the frightening and mysterious enemy,
\nextended their hands to accept them. America-Japan societies have
\nmushroomed ever since, and the name \"America\" became a synonym
\nfor hope and future.<\/p>\n
The exposure to America and American culture, however, does
\nnot make Japan more American than before. Just as the Japanese
\ndid not assimilate Christianity from Europe after the Meiji
\nRestoration, they now do not use American English as their
\nlanguage. They use Japanese with a lot of English words, having
\nfirst given them a Japanese form.<\/p>\n
What they were looking for in the States was, and still is,
\nthe strategy of American industry and business, which they
\npromptly took over and gave it the Japanese collective spirit.<\/p>\n
Prof. Hamashita, the Director of the Center for Oriental
\nStudies at Tokyo University, and possibly the most influential
\npracticing Japanese historian, has, over the last ten years,
\nstriven forcefully against the mainstream of Japan's
\nunderstanding of the nature of the Meiji Restoration.<\/p>\n
Before Hamashita's study the Meiji Restoration was usually
\nunderstood as Japan's national effort to catch up with the West.
\nHowever, according to Japanese and Chinese historical sources,
\nHamashita demonstrated convincingly that the Meiji Restoration
\nwas a national effort by Japan to emancipate itself from the
\ndeep-seated cultural domination of China. Catching up with the
\nWest was merely a strategy to divert the traditional cultural
\nattention away from China.<\/p>\n
In the same vein, it might be further argued, the
\nreorientation toward the United States was a national effort by
\nJapan to emancipate itself from the cultural domination of
\nEurope, while Japan's current gravitation toward Southeast and
\nSouth Asian countries, demonstrates a new effort to define its
\nposition as a country belonging to Asia.<\/p>\n
\"Does the new interest in Southeast Asian countries mean a new
\neffort by Japan to emancipate itself from the hegemony of the
\nUnited States?\" I asked people at the Asia Center\/Japan
\nFoundation in Tokyo. \"No!\" they said, \"it is rather an effort to
\ncreate a new balance in Japan's international relations in the
\nface of recent global developments\".<\/p>\n
Evidently, one important phenomenon amid the sweeping
\nglobalization is the tendency of neighboring countries to
\nestablish their own regional groupings. Japan now has to redefine
\nits geopolitical position, not merely as \"Japan and Asia\" but
\nrather as \"Japan in Asia\". No wonder, the so-called Asian values
\nquestion has become a subject of heated debate and wide curiosity
\nin the country. Are there some values which can be seen and
\ntreated as culturally common to Asian countries?<\/p>\n
Some Japanese scholars such as Takashi Shiraishi from Kyoto
\nUniversity do not consider the Asian values debate a serious
\nmatter, and at times see it as almost ridiculous. Asian values
\nare nothing but the wishful-thinking of some cultural
\nessentialists, they argue. But if this is the case, can one speak
\nof \"Japaneseness\" or the cultural commonalities of regional
\ngroupings such as ASEAN?<\/p>\n
In a discussion during a symposium on Southeast Asia in Kyoto
\nin October last year, a senior technocrat from Thailand said
\ncommonalities, whatever they are supposed to be, must not
\nnecessarily be sought in the past. One has to take into
\nconsideration that Southeast Asian countries are now thinking of
\nthemselves as a political and economic entity, using a language
\nwhich can be regarded as common to the whole of ASEAN.<\/p>\n
This means that if one cannot find the commonalities in the
\npast this should not prevent a drive to unity because common
\neconomic interests in the future, common political problems and
\neven common cultural beliefs can revitalize nation's
\nindividuality on the one hand, while forge closer links on the
\nother.<\/p>\n
In other words, the problem of national identity becomes
\nincreasingly problematic, even for such a stable society like
\nJapan. From an economic point of view it is stable because it is
\nsupposed to be a classless society, in which 80 percent of the
\npopulation makes up the middle class, whereas only 10 percent can
\nbe regarded as upper class, and another 10 percent as lower
\nclass.<\/p>\n
However, the question regarding Japaneseness seems to linger
\neverywhere, not only among Japanese intellectuals, but also among
\nthe critical younger generation. Of course to outsiders
\nJapaneseness appears to be something quite obvious. It is
\nintroduced to the outside world as nihonjin-ron. Its aim is to
\nsimplify the complex Japanese cultural traits in order to
\ndifferentiate them from standardized western cultural patterns.<\/p>\n
Among the many characteristics usually regarded as being the
\nconstituent parts of nihonjin-ron, I would like to mention three.
\nThe first is the taciturnity of the Japanese people as opposed to
\nany pompous verbosity.<\/p>\n
This underlying philosophy is that nonverbal communication is
\nmore reliable than the exchange of words, and that what goes
\nunspoken might be more true and more important than that which is
\nbeing said explicitly.<\/p>\n
Secondly, the Japanese people are regarded as emphasizers of
\nintra-group solidarity as opposed to class solidarity, and orient
\nthemselves toward hierarchism rather than toward individual
\nachievement. This means, in Japanese business companies, one is
\nsupposed to think first of the growth and progress of the whole
\ncompany and then of one's own situation as a small part of it. It
\nis the company which should grow and become stronger and not the
\nindividual.<\/p>\n
Thirdly, the Japanese people are usually seen as racially
\nhomogeneous in contrast to the multiracial heterogeneity
\nprevalent in many other countries.<\/p>\n
A British-trained sociologist from the Department of Sociology
\nat Tokyo University, Dr. Kosaku Yoshino, once pointed out in a
\ndiscussion that nihonjin-ron is in fact the result of cultural
\nreductionism, which is disseminated all over the world through
\nbusiness manuals written mostly in English.<\/p>\n
It is meant to give a simplified picture of Japanese culture
\nto foreign businesspeople after one or two days reading. The
\nwriting of these manuals is obviously intended to support
\nbusiness purposes, by means of explaining the basic cultural
\ntraits of Japanese society in a popular and simplified manner.
\nThe business manuals have, over time however, assumed the role of
\ncross-cultural manuals.<\/p>\n
The impact of these manuals turned out to be greater than ever
\nimagined. They bring out a cultural representation to help
\nforeigners understand Japanese culture more easily. Thereafter
\nthe expectations of outsiders which emerge in their speedy
\nperusal of those manuals impinges back upon the Japanese
\nthemselves, who are confronted with something not always
\ncompatible with their self-understanding.<\/p>\n
However, the dissemination of nihonjin-ron goes on regardless
\nof whether the Japanese like it or not. At the present juncture
\nit is necessitated by the expansion of Japanese business, whereby
\nthe interaction with non-Japanese foreigners becomes increasingly
\ninevitable.<\/p>\n
The question posed by Dr. Kosaku Yoshino is: are the advocates
\nof nihonjin-ron to be regarded as nationalists or
\ninternationalists? Are the business manuals or cross-cultural
\nmanuals to serve the purpose of business expansion or are they
\nbecoming an autonomous industry, the so-called cross-cultural
\nindustry, where the packages of simplified and fixed-made parts
\nof cultural quintessence are offered to those who are fascinated
\nby the exotic culture of Japanese society?<\/p>\n
After the discussion, a Japanese participant asked me whether
\nthere is something comparable to Japanese nihonjin-ron in
\nIndonesia. I was dumbfounded. An essentialist approach to
\ncultural affairs is contrary to my academic perspective and very
\ndubious in my personal consideration. I would have mentioned
\nsomething like gotong-royong (mutual help), harmony or Indonesian
\nfinesse, but unfortunately I could not force myself to speak
\nabout them.<\/p>\n
The writer was an Indonesian participant at the Asia
\nLeadership Fellow Program at the International House of Japan,
\nTokyo, from October to November 1996.<\/p>",
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