Posted on 03/15/2011 1:14:59 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Foreign observers are noting with curiosity and wonder that the Japanese people in disaster-plagued areas are not looting for desperately-needed supplies like bottled water. This behavior contrasts sharply with what has so often happened in the wake of catastrophes elsewhere, such as Haiti, New Orleans, Chile, and the UK, to name only a few. Most people chalk up the extraordinary good behavior to Japanese culture, noting the legendary politeness of Japanese people in everyday life.
Culture does play a role, but it is not an adequate explanation. After all, in the right circumstances, Japanese mass behavior can rank with the worst humanity has to offer, as in the Rape of Nanking. There are clearly other factors at work determining mass outbreaks of good and bad behavior among the Japanese, and for that matter, anyone else.
There are, in fact, lessons to be learned from the Japanese good behavior by their friends overseas, lessons which do not require wholesale adoption of Japanese culture, from eating sushi to sleeping on tatami mats. It is more a matter of social structure than culture keeping the Japanese victims of catastrophe acting in the civilized and enlightened manner they have displayed over the past few days.
The Cruise Ship and the Ferryboat
Many years ago, a worldly and insightful Japanese business executive offered me an analogy that gets to heart of the forces keeping the Japanese in line, that has nothing to do with culture. "Japanese people," he told me, "are like passengers on a cruise ship. They know that they are stuck with the same people around them for the foreseeable future, so they are polite, and behave in ways that don't make enemies, and keep everything on a friendly and gracious basis."
"Americans," he said, "are like ferryboat passengers. They know that at the end of a short voyage they will get off and may never see each other again. So if they push ahead of others to get off first, there are no real consequences to face. It is every man for himself."
Despite the existence of massive cities like Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, people in their neighborhoods are well known to those around them. There is little urban anonymity. When I first lived in Japan on a work visa and had my own apartment in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo, in 1971, I was paid a friendly visit by a local policeman. It was a completely routine matter: police are required to keep track of every resident of their beats, and they want to know the basics, such as your work, your age, and your living circumstances. In my circumstances, immigration papers were also of concern, but for Japanese, it would be the koseki, a mandatory official family record kept on a household basis, reporting births, acknowledgements of paternity, adoptions, disruptions of adoptions, deaths, marriages and divorces. Every Japanese is not just an individual, he or she is officially is a member of a household (ie), and the state keeps track.
Following the gathering of my information, the policeman no doubt returned to his local substation (koban), which are found every few blocks in urban areas, to record the information for his colleagues. To an American it seemed quite extraordinary, a violation of privacy. But in Japan a lack of anonymity is the norm.
Soon after the beat cop's visit to me, local merchants began nodding to me as I walked to and from the train station, as if they knew me and acknowledged me. I was fairly certain the word had gone out via omawari san (literally, the honorable gentleman who walks around, a polite colloquial euphemism for the police) that I was a Japanese-speaking American in Japan on legitimate, respectable grounds. For a year or so, I was a member of the community.
The Tohoku Region (literally: the Northeast, in practice, the island of Honshu north of Tokyo) where the earthquake and tsunami hit hardest, is far less urbanized than the rest of the main island of Honshu, and has for many decades seen an exodus of young people to the big cities elsewhere in Japan. Going back to the feudal era (i.e., pre-1868), Tohoku was poorer than the other regions of Japan because its northern climate can support only one crop of rice per year, rather than the two (and in the warmest places, even three) which were cultivated in the rest of Japan. Since Japan's industrialization, Tohoku's relative poverty has diminished, but it is still less economically developed and more rural than its neighbors to the south and west in Japan, and has relatively little in-migration from other parts of Japan.
The main city of Tohoku, the green and (once) lovely city of Sendai, had a million people and a state of the art subway, but is a city of neighborhoods with little anonymity. In the smaller cities and villages, it is almost impossible to misbehave and not be recognized by one's neighbors.
Anthropologists speak of Japan as a "shame culture," as opposed to a "guilt culture," meaning that people are constrained to behave themselves properly by an aversion to being judged negatively by those around them, rather than internalizing a moral imperative. Broadly speaking, that is true today. But it is also true that most contemporary Japanese have internalized a deep respect for private property, that is manifested in a ritual of modern life for children, one which we might do well to emulate. When a child finds a small item belonging to another person, even a one yen coin, a parent takes the child to the local koban and reports lost property. As chronicled by T.R. Reid in his wonderful book about living in Tokyo, Confucius Lives Next Door, the police do not resent this as a waste of time but rather see it as part of moral education, solemnly filling out the appropriate forms, thanking the child and telling him or her if the owner does not appear to claim the item, it will revert to the finder after a certain period of time.
Perhaps more successfully than any other people of the world, the Japanese have evolved a social system capable of ensuring order and good behavior. The vast reservoir of social strength brought Japan through the devastation of World War II, compared to which even the massive problems currently afflicting it, are relatively small. Japan has sustained a major blow, but its robust social order will endure, and ultimately thrive.
Tokyo? That weather girl on NHK is hot
It’s because we’re flooding the nation with too many immigrants and not giving enough time for them to absorb our culture so unknowingly our culture absorbs some of theirs and not all of it good.
Lots of hot girls in Tokyo! Why do you think I came here?
If every American citizen were subject to the scrutiny of law enforcement as a matter of routine as described in the article, the screams of government intrusion into our private lives would be deafening.
Oh well, I am “retired”, but every word you say is TRUE!! ;-)
Uhhhh, I don’t get it....the author first states that it is not cultural, but then goes on to explain that it’s entirely cultural.
I was talking to a bartender in Hawaii, about 20 years ago, about the japanese. He said that when a group of japanese travelers walked up to the bar, if the first guy ordered, he could pretty much plan on making the same number of that exact drink as there were people in that group. It is as though the concept of the individual is virtually foreign to them.
But if you are not one of them, it is, uh, different. If they defeat you in war, you are lower than their pets. Which is what allows them to perform the acts of brutality they are known for.
They are like klingons, completely foreign to the American culture, and contrary to the author’s claim, his own article provides all the evidence necessary to point to culture as the cause of their behavior. They may not loot their home town, but...
I told the spouse that the day I stop looking, she can shovel me in a hole and fill it in.
Yeah but it's been so long now since they have had or won a war and now new generations. Do you think if, for example, North Korea attacked them and somehow Japan won the war... do you think there would be the same torture and treating them as a dog as you mentioned? (of course I know it's unlikely Japan would beat N. Korea - but just an example)
Or do you think they are more civilized now?
How is Tokyon compared to Hong Kong? Ever been to Bangkok or Saigon?
Tokyo is ultra-modern, highly sophisticated, extremely clean and very crowded. I haven’t been to Hong Kong since the 1970s, but I would imagine it is much closer to HK than Bangkok.
I love Bangkok as well, but it’s nowhere near Tokyo’s league as for as cleanliness, sanitation and safety is concerned.
Never been to Saigon.
Northerners and Southerners in Italy can’t stand each other, and they all hate the Sicilians. The far northern reaches of the country are much like Switzerland and Germany, and think of the southerners as swarthy, shiftless grifters one step up from a Gypsy.
“The United States was very much like that when everyone carried a firearm, everywhere.”
It was also pretty much like that before hyphenated, multicultural diversity pc crap.
Don’t you all remember in Louisianna everybody was looting, even law enforcement had a hand in it. The animals were raping and pillaging to streets; remember the famous picture of the black guy walking through the water with stolen beer with a huge grin on his face?
It’s about the propensity of one’s DNA notwithstanding the fact that all “cultures” have proven their unique abilities to commit the greatest of atrocities.
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