Japan searches for its own identity

Japan searches for its own identity

By Ignas Kleden

JAKARTA (JP): Most of the success of Japanese development is
usually attributed to the fondness, ability and discipline of the
Japanese people to imitate everything they consider good for
their country and themselves. Without much pretense of
creativity, they take the good things from outside, assimilate
them and produce a better product than the original.

What is so outstanding is not the special talents of the
Japanese, but the unrelenting willingness and determination to
learn. In a Sisyphean manner in which one rolls a big stone
uphill knowing that it will surely roll downhill again, they keep
on doing it over and over again without ever giving up.

Being deeply enmeshed in Chinese characters means, for the
Japanese, being deeply enmeshed in Chinese cosmology, as every
kanji-character does not merely signify a sound, but rather
describes the world. Nevertheless, Japan turned out not to be
another China.

The same thing can be said of its Western-oriented policy
since the Meiji Restoration. A striking development in Japan's
Western outlook is that it successfully absorbed most western
science and technology, classical art and music, literature, and
even jurisprudence and philosophy without being taken over by
western Christianity.

Despite much active missionary effort since the end of the
16th century, the number of Catholics in Japan for example is no
more than 400,000, or 0.31 percent of the 127 million population.

There are various theories which try to account for the
failure of Christian missionaries in Japan. One is political; it
says that the Tokugawa shogunate feared the potential power of
belief in an alien Lord, even though it was only in heaven. The
intolerance of the Tokugawa police state toward other competing
political rivals was well-known.

The second theory is more cultural. Prof. Tamotsu Aoki from
the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at Tokyo
University once told me during a discussion that as far as their
spiritual needs are concerned, the Japanese have been self-
sufficient since before the advent of Western influences. The
three local religions which have been present for centuries have
satisfactorily served the religious needs of the Japanese.

Shintoism, according to Prof. Aoki, teaches the Japanese how
to live. Buddhism teaches them how to die and Confucianism
provides them with the art of behaving. So why take on board
another world religion which might teach the same thing?

When Japan turned from Europe to the United States after World
War II, it did so earnestly, welcoming the victors who had just
devastated their country with atom bombs. The American soldiers
who landed were astonished how the people, who just a few months
previously had been the frightening and mysterious enemy,
extended their hands to accept them. America-Japan societies have
mushroomed ever since, and the name "America" became a synonym
for hope and future.

The exposure to America and American culture, however, does
not make Japan more American than before. Just as the Japanese
did not assimilate Christianity from Europe after the Meiji
Restoration, they now do not use American English as their
language. They use Japanese with a lot of English words, having
first given them a Japanese form.

What they were looking for in the States was, and still is,
the strategy of American industry and business, which they
promptly took over and gave it the Japanese collective spirit.

Prof. Hamashita, the Director of the Center for Oriental
Studies at Tokyo University, and possibly the most influential
practicing Japanese historian, has, over the last ten years,
striven forcefully against the mainstream of Japan's
understanding of the nature of the Meiji Restoration.

Before Hamashita's study the Meiji Restoration was usually
understood as Japan's national effort to catch up with the West.
However, according to Japanese and Chinese historical sources,
Hamashita demonstrated convincingly that the Meiji Restoration
was a national effort by Japan to emancipate itself from the
deep-seated cultural domination of China. Catching up with the
West was merely a strategy to divert the traditional cultural
attention away from China.

In the same vein, it might be further argued, the
reorientation toward the United States was a national effort by
Japan to emancipate itself from the cultural domination of
Europe, while Japan's current gravitation toward Southeast and
South Asian countries, demonstrates a new effort to define its
position as a country belonging to Asia.

"Does the new interest in Southeast Asian countries mean a new
effort by Japan to emancipate itself from the hegemony of the
United States?" I asked people at the Asia Center/Japan
Foundation in Tokyo. "No!" they said, "it is rather an effort to
create a new balance in Japan's international relations in the
face of recent global developments".

Evidently, one important phenomenon amid the sweeping
globalization is the tendency of neighboring countries to
establish their own regional groupings. Japan now has to redefine
its geopolitical position, not merely as "Japan and Asia" but
rather as "Japan in Asia". No wonder, the so-called Asian values
question has become a subject of heated debate and wide curiosity
in the country. Are there some values which can be seen and
treated as culturally common to Asian countries?

Some Japanese scholars such as Takashi Shiraishi from Kyoto
University do not consider the Asian values debate a serious
matter, and at times see it as almost ridiculous. Asian values
are nothing but the wishful-thinking of some cultural
essentialists, they argue. But if this is the case, can one speak
of "Japaneseness" or the cultural commonalities of regional
groupings such as ASEAN?

In a discussion during a symposium on Southeast Asia in Kyoto
in October last year, a senior technocrat from Thailand said
commonalities, whatever they are supposed to be, must not
necessarily be sought in the past. One has to take into
consideration that Southeast Asian countries are now thinking of
themselves as a political and economic entity, using a language
which can be regarded as common to the whole of ASEAN.

This means that if one cannot find the commonalities in the
past this should not prevent a drive to unity because common
economic interests in the future, common political problems and
even common cultural beliefs can revitalize nation's
individuality on the one hand, while forge closer links on the
other.

In other words, the problem of national identity becomes
increasingly problematic, even for such a stable society like
Japan. From an economic point of view it is stable because it is
supposed to be a classless society, in which 80 percent of the
population makes up the middle class, whereas only 10 percent can
be regarded as upper class, and another 10 percent as lower
class.

However, the question regarding Japaneseness seems to linger
everywhere, not only among Japanese intellectuals, but also among
the critical younger generation. Of course to outsiders
Japaneseness appears to be something quite obvious. It is
introduced to the outside world as nihonjin-ron. Its aim is to
simplify the complex Japanese cultural traits in order to
differentiate them from standardized western cultural patterns.

Among the many characteristics usually regarded as being the
constituent parts of nihonjin-ron, I would like to mention three.
The first is the taciturnity of the Japanese people as opposed to
any pompous verbosity.

This underlying philosophy is that nonverbal communication is
more reliable than the exchange of words, and that what goes
unspoken might be more true and more important than that which is
being said explicitly.

Secondly, the Japanese people are regarded as emphasizers of
intra-group solidarity as opposed to class solidarity, and orient
themselves toward hierarchism rather than toward individual
achievement. This means, in Japanese business companies, one is
supposed to think first of the growth and progress of the whole
company and then of one's own situation as a small part of it. It
is the company which should grow and become stronger and not the
individual.

Thirdly, the Japanese people are usually seen as racially
homogeneous in contrast to the multiracial heterogeneity
prevalent in many other countries.

A British-trained sociologist from the Department of Sociology
at Tokyo University, Dr. Kosaku Yoshino, once pointed out in a
discussion that nihonjin-ron is in fact the result of cultural
reductionism, which is disseminated all over the world through
business manuals written mostly in English.

It is meant to give a simplified picture of Japanese culture
to foreign businesspeople after one or two days reading. The
writing of these manuals is obviously intended to support
business purposes, by means of explaining the basic cultural
traits of Japanese society in a popular and simplified manner.
The business manuals have, over time however, assumed the role of
cross-cultural manuals.

The impact of these manuals turned out to be greater than ever
imagined. They bring out a cultural representation to help
foreigners understand Japanese culture more easily. Thereafter
the expectations of outsiders which emerge in their speedy
perusal of those manuals impinges back upon the Japanese
themselves, who are confronted with something not always
compatible with their self-understanding.

However, the dissemination of nihonjin-ron goes on regardless
of whether the Japanese like it or not. At the present juncture
it is necessitated by the expansion of Japanese business, whereby
the interaction with non-Japanese foreigners becomes increasingly
inevitable.

The question posed by Dr. Kosaku Yoshino is: are the advocates
of nihonjin-ron to be regarded as nationalists or
internationalists? Are the business manuals or cross-cultural
manuals to serve the purpose of business expansion or are they
becoming an autonomous industry, the so-called cross-cultural
industry, where the packages of simplified and fixed-made parts
of cultural quintessence are offered to those who are fascinated
by the exotic culture of Japanese society?

After the discussion, a Japanese participant asked me whether
there is something comparable to Japanese nihonjin-ron in
Indonesia. I was dumbfounded. An essentialist approach to
cultural affairs is contrary to my academic perspective and very
dubious in my personal consideration. I would have mentioned
something like gotong-royong (mutual help), harmony or Indonesian
finesse, but unfortunately I could not force myself to speak
about them.

The writer was an Indonesian participant at the Asia
Leadership Fellow Program at the International House of Japan,
Tokyo, from October to November 1996.