Source: Reischauer, E. , & Jansen, M. B. (1995). The Japanese Today (pp. 159 -174). Belknap Harvard.

Chapter 16

The Individual

We should not stress group orientation, relativistic ethics, and hierarchical structure of Japanese society too much. To do so would be to suggest that Japan is made up of a uniform race of pliant, obedient robots, meekly conforming to ridgid social rules and endlessly repeating the established patterns of their society. This is a concept widely held in the West, but all Japanese history contradicts it. The Japanese have shown themselves to be extremely dynamic and capable of rapid and purposeful change. Their art reveals them to be both very sensitive and creative. Their literature shows them as painfully selfconscious individuals. There clearly is another side to the picture. Although the Japanese subordinates his individualism to the group more than the Westerner does, or at least thinks he does, he retains a very strong self-identity in other ways. He is devoted to emotional self-expression, even if he channels it more than does the Westerner. Most importantly, he appears to develop at least as much individual drive and ambition.

The clash between personal self-expression and social conformity naturally exists in Japan as elsewhere in the world. In fact, the greater uniformity and strictness of Japanese social patterns leads to a widespread sense of malaise, especially among the young, and sometimes to open revolt. It takes more daring and determination to be a social rebel in Japan than in a society of looser weave, and the result is thus likely to be more violent, as in the political assassinations by young military officers in the 1930s, the explosiveness of the student movement in the late 1960s, and the atrocities of the Red Army (Sekigun) and other small terrorist bands of young people in the 1970s--though it should be noted that even the rebel against society is usually a member of his own closely knit little group and not a lone operator or individual eccentric.

Below the level of open revolt, there is a general restiveness. Young men express their nonconformity by forming motorcycle gangs, and groups of young people, predominantly girls, organize dancing groups that meet in public in outlandish costumes and perform their own special dances with blaring electronic music but utter solemnity. The park outside the entrance to the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo is a favorite place on Sunday afternoons for these rites of rebellious youth. The 1980s have witnessed a sharp increase in schoolboy delinquency, leading to physical harassment of unpopular children and occasional acts of violence against teachers. Such conduct deeply disturbs adults even though it is milder and less frequent than school delinquency in the United States. Young Japanese in general seem to be seeking for ways to break out of the strict molds of Japanese society. They often feel that they must get out of Japan at least once in their lives to savor the supposedly fresher atmosphere of the outside world. They freely express resentment at the limitations imposed on their lives by a tightly organized educational and employment system. In fact, public opinion surveys often show Japanese young people as ranking highest among the industrialized nations in their avowed dissatisfaction with the way their society works, though it seems probable that this is in part just a conventional group reaction that is contradicted by the obvious satisfaction they show for most aspects of their society.

Still, a pervasive restiveness and constant straining for change do characterize Japanese youth, making the older generation fear that the young are losing their Japaneseness. Such conditions go back at least to the 1920s, though they have become much more marked since the end of World War II. As elsewhere in the world, there is a gap between generations that makes true communication between them difficult, though this situation is often concealed in Japan by outward social conformity and a discreet silence on matters of consequence. The university student may eat breakfast quietly with his parents before setting out with his comrades to destroy his university.

Despite the search for individual self-expression and freedom from social restraints, the word "individualism" (kojin-shugi) itself has always been in ill repute in Japan. It suggests to the Japanese selfishness rather than personal responsibility. As a consequence, they have tended to avoid it by using other terms. For a while students used the word "subjectivity" (shutaisei) in the sense of one's being the active subject rather than passive object in one's life. Another popular phrase was my-home-ism" (mai-homu-shugi), expressing the passionate desire of young Japanese to own their own homes--by no means an easy thing to do where land values are so high and to lead their own private lives, free of family or group pressures.

Despite these various efforts to avoid conformity, even the relatively free and spontaneous younger Japanese of today seem extraordinarily conformist to Westerners. The American cliche of the college radical becoming in time the corporate executive in a three-piece suit is even truer of Japan, where the businessman's white shirt and blue suit become almost a uniform for adult men. The great majority of Japanese pass smoothly from permissive childhood through rebellious youth to conformist maturity. They retain, however, their strong desires for self identity, and a certain number always continue to reject the accepted norms of society and seek freer life styles.

Among the nonconformists one would probably include everyone in the whole world of entertainment, especially what is called the mizu-skobai, or "the water trade." This curious name refers to the precarious nature of enterprises depending on sexual attraction, from the mild flirtations of bar girls to various forms of prostitution, which officially has been illegal since the war. Certain amusement areas have a great number and bewildering variety of bars, including miniature discos and places with floor shows or "sing-along" programs. Facilities for more open sexual activities' from "love hotels," where couples can rent a small room for a few hours, to so-called Turkish baths (a term now avoided because of Turkish objections), exist in almost comparable profusion.

Another group of nonconformists is the criminal element, often organized into powerful gangs known as yakuza. These are closely linked with the shadier aspects of the mizu-shobai, run protection rackets, and engage in illegal gambling and loan-sharking. The yakuza pretend to a romantic heritage from similar groups in feudal times, and they try to imitate, at least in clothes and mannerisms, Hollywood's image of American gangsters. This posturing, grossly exaggerated, has become a genre of films and television shows, but in reality yakuza are a far cry from the Mafia or American gangsters. Strict controls make firearms rarities; crime rates are much lower than those in most other industrial countries; and the yakuza often cooperate with the police on police terms.

At one time, political wire-pullers, known as kuromaku, often based their influence on yakuza gangs. A few such men, essentially survivors from prewar days still attempt to influence political decisions through their connections, their doubtfully acquired wealth, and even the veiled threat of violence by their yakuza henchmen, but such efforts are far less common or effective than is commonly supposed. Bureaucrats are beyond their reach, and politicians, though always in need of money, depend on votes from a public that is outraged at the whole concept of wire-pullers. Such figures are a fading feature of Japanese life and may soon disappear entirely.

Still another category of nonconformists are the denizens of occasional skid rows and the residents of a few slum areas, of which Sanya in Tokyo is the best known. These are people who because of adversity or personal shortcomings have been unable to achieve normal Japanese standards of life. Their most remarkable feature is their scarcity. Only a tiny fraction of the population has failed to find a respectable place in society. There are no vast blighted urban areas nor is there any shamefully large underclass, as in the United States.

The nonconformist groups are all vestiges of similar groups from the even more rigidly regulated feudal age. Thus they represent perhaps a natural reverse side of the coin of standard Japanese life. While they are much smaller in number or influence than in most other modern countries, in recent years they have attracted a great deal of attention, particularly among Westerners. This may be because Westerners, surfeited by the homogeneity of Japanese society, the self-satisfaction of most Japanese, and the loud acclaim of foreigners for the Japanese "miracle," are attracted by the seamier side of Japanese life in order to make so much success less cloying.

The great majority of Japanese do adhere to established norms, but even within this firm crust of custom, they are not just human ants. They earnestly cultivate their own individuality, though in ways that are socially acceptable. Many Japanese find a sort of refuge from society and a means of personal fulfillment through identification with the beauties and processes of nature. This is all the more important to them because of their great love of nature.

The press of population and rampant economic growth in recent years have made the Japanese among the worst despoilers of nature, but they retain a passion for it, though often this can be expressed only in miniaturized form. They love outings and hiking, but few can have extensive gardens or wild acres of their own. Instead they cultivate tiny landscape gardens, designed to represent in miniature the grandeur of nature as a whole. They love to paint vignettes of nature and dote on dwarf potted trees (bonsai). Some women cultivate the minor arts of tray landscapes made of colored clay (bonkei) or sand (bonseki), and many more are devoted to the art of flower arranging (ikebana), in which a few carefully shaped and placed flowers and sprigs are used, instead of the massed bunches of flowers popular in the West. Some aspects of this cult of the little, such as landscape gardening and flower arrangement, have had a great impact on the West in recent years.

The whole field of literature also provides a broad area for self expression, or at least for vicarious participation in the individualistic self-expression of others. From the time of its strong resurgence around the turn of the century, Japanese literature has been characterized by the search for self-identity. Much of this has been concerned with the survival of a Japanese identity in the tidal wave of Western cultural influences, but another aspect of this search has been for personal identity within a stiflingly compact society. The Japanese writer has particularly favored what the Japanese call the "I novel"--the introspective, almost embarrassingly frank examination of the writer's personal feelings in a basically hostile environment. Such works usually look at Japanese society from so restricted and individualized an angle as to give only a very incomplete and distorted view of society itself, but they are revealing about the subtleties and vagaries of the individual human spirit, and that is what the Japanese reader is interested in. This same interest probably accounts for the great popularity of prerevolutionary Russian literature in Japan. Although Japanese and Russian personalities and societies are very different, the Russian portrayal of the clash of the individual spirit with an oppressive society and the search for self-expression has obviously struck a deep chord in the Japanese soul.

Not many people can be successful authors, but millions of Japanese find self-expression in writing in one form or another, whether by keeping diaries or by efforts at poetic composition. Both the classical thirty one-syllable tanka and the more modern seventeen-syllable haiku are very restricted poetic forms, even further limited by countless traditional poetic restraints, but nonetheless huge numbers of Japanese find satisfying self-expression through them. Poetry magazines and study groups abound, and there is an annual national tanka contest on a set theme, with the winning poems read in the presence of the emperor, who himself contributes a poem.

Millions of Japanese also find self-expression through traditional dancing, music, and other art forms. The various types of dance associated with the premodern theater and with geisha are the focus for numerous well-organized schools of instruction, each with its ardent group of devotees. The same is true of all types of traditional music, and many more people acquire skills in the various instruments and forms of Western music. The Suzuki technique of starting young violinists at the age of two or three, often in large groups, is world famous. All the traditional forms of painting and pottery making have their proliferating schools, as do also the various Western art forms and the traditional arts of tea ceremony, flower arrangement, and the like. Judo, karate, and the other martial arts are also part of this tradition of the cultivation of individual skills.

Each of these schools of instruction forms a sort of in-group for those who participate in it, but the important point in the present context is that most Japanese do have their own personal literary, artistic, or performing skill, and this is not only a means of emotional self-expression but also a treasured element of self-identity. Only in recent years has the United States begun to see anything like this sort of huge popular artistic endeavor that Japan has had for long, and here too it may in part be the product of the need for self-expression and self-identification in a crowded, constraining social environment.

We tend to dismiss such activities rather lightly as hobbies, but the Japanese value them as shumi, or "tastes," which help establish their identity and commonly become of increasing importance to them as they grow old. The individual Japanese takes pleasure in displaying at parties his particular skill-say, chanting in the No manner. In fact at such parties each Japanese may perform in turn, while the foreign participant, in embarrassment over his lack of any appropriate ability, settles for trying to sing his half-forgotten college song. The ardent pursuit of a hobby is almost necessary for self-respect in Japan. I know that on many occasions when I have lamely had to explain to interviewers that I lacked hobbies, since my work was also my hobby, I felt that I was making a damaging admission of spiritual incompleteness.

The Japanese cherishes and flaunts his hobby, even if it may be only the traditional one a person in his position is expected to have. The big businessman feels that, as a big businessman, he must make a fetish of his interest in golf and prattle endlessly about handicaps. A more sporting type may perform feats of incredible endurance to cram eight hours on a distant ski slope into a day-and-a-half weekend. All this is somewhat familiar in American life too, and possibly for some of the same reasons. Still, personal skills and hobbies are probably a bigger aspect of self-identity in Japan than in the United States.

A look at the ways Japanese develop personal skills also reveals how the Japanese nurture their individuality. The traditional skills in particular are learned not so much by analysis and verbal explanation as by personal transmission from master to disciple through example and imitation. The teacher-disciple bond is a very important one and accords with the whole group orientation of the Japanese, but of equal importance is the fact that learning is more an intuitive than a rational process. The individual is supposed to learn to merge with the skill until his mastery of it has become effortless. He does not establish intellectual control over it so much as spiritual oneness with it. We are reminded of the original Buddhist concept of losing one's identity by merging with the cosmos through enlightenment. The significant point, however, is that acquiring a skill is essentially an act of will-of self-control and self- discipline. The teacher of archery emphasizes control over one's stomach-that is, the emotions--rather than sharpness of eye or deftness of hand. Mastery of a skill is seen as more a matter of developing one's inner self rather than one's outer muscle. Here is an important area of individual self-development that is not only socially approved but is very much encouraged.

When we look beyond these traditional arts to the art of living, we see that the same approach applies. Ideally the cooperative, relativistic, group-oriented Japanese is not just the bland product of a social conditioning that has worn off all individualistic corners but is rather the product of firm inner self-control that has made him master of his less rational and more antisocial instincts. He is not a weak-willed yes-man but the possessor of great self-discipline. In contrast to normal Western perceptions, social conformity to the Japanese is no sign of weakness but rather the proud, tempered product of inner strength.

No people has been more concerned than the Japanese with self discipline. Austere practices of mortification of the flesh, such as frigid baths in winter, were and sometimes still are performed not for the reasons of the Western or Indian mystic but to develop will power. Since medieval times Zen meditation has been popular but often less for the original reason of achieving transcendental enlightenment than for the cultivation of self-discipline. This same reason may well explain the recent appeal of such practices to some Western youths, who are unconsciously groping for a new form of self-control.

The Japanese commonly make a fetish of self-discipline and the cultivation of will power. They regard these as essential for the proper performance of one's duties in life. They strive for inner calm and the selfless blending of right thought and right action into instantaneous and forceful performance. Their constant preachments show clearly that they do not regard social conformity or the fulfillment of one's role in the world as coming naturally but as being hard learned skills. In earlier days they talked about the heavy burdens incurred from the benevolence (on) of parents, feudal lords, or the emperor. Even today they are sharply aware of the need for great effort to live up to the rigid requirements of society.

Many Japanese seem overburdened by the demands of duty--to family, to associates, and to society at large. This sense of duty, usually called gimu, is so onerous as to have produced the underlying restiveness among the young, but it is a clear continuity from premodern times, when the word used was giri. Giri incurred in a thousand ways could not be allowed to be submerged by the personal human feelings, known 'as ninjo, that come spontaneously and can lead to social turmoil and disaster. A favorite theme in traditional literature was the conflict of ninjo, in the form of some illicit love, with the giri of family responsibilities and broader social duties--a conflict that was commonly resolved, at least in literature, by the suicide of the ill-starred lovers.

Something should be said in passing about the role of suicide in Japan, simply because it looms large in the minds of Japanese and others as a very special characteristic of Japanese society. In its traditional form of seppuku it was very much part of the cult of Bushido, the "Way of the Warrior," and even today suicide is looked on as an acceptable or even honorable way out of a hopeless dilemma, though in actual society, as opposed to popular imagination, suicide is statistically no more prevalent than in the Occident. Seppuku remains a favorite theme in dramas and movies but has virtually disappeared from real life. Except for a rash of such suicides by prominent personages, mostly military, at the end of World War II-and these were perfectly understandable even from a Western point of view-the last notable case of genuine seppuku this was that of the Russo-Japanese War hero, General Nogi Maresuke, and his wife in 1912 to follow the Meiji emperor in death. The spectacular seppuku of the great novelist Mishima Yukio in 1970 was more a matter of dramatic posturing than an act of duty or valid political protest, and it left the Japanese public, though thrilled by the drama, somewhat puzzled and contemptuous. The large number of prominent literary figures who have taken their own lives, though in more prosaic ways, is more a commentary on the introspective nature of modern Japanese literature than a sign of the prevalence of suicide in Japanese society.

Most suicides in contemporary Japan occur for reasons much like those in other countries, and by similar means. As in some other East Asian countries, the rate for women is closer to that for men than it is in the West, perhaps reflecting greater social pressures on women in East Asia; and rates for students are much higher, probably reflecting the greater pressures of the educational system, though in this statistic the West is beginning to approach Japan. What is more significant is that suicide rates in modern times have fluctuated widely with political tensions and economic conditions in society as a whole and today are very , close to those of the United States and lower than the rates in several European countries. The Japanese, however, continue to be fascinated by suicides and to make a great deal of them in their news and literature, just as Americans are fascinated by murders.

To return to the theme of self-discipline and ambition, it must be admitted that insistent preaching does not necessarily produce prevailing characteristics in a society. In fact, they sometimes seem almost like miror contrasts. But in the Japanese case there appears to be considerable correlation between the two. The Japanese on the whole do have a pronounced toughness of character. An extreme example of this is the persistence for a quarter of a century of a Lieutenant Onoda in his solitary war with the United States on a jungle island in the Philippines. The Japanese high command in World War II assumed that greater will power on the part of their people, which they took for granted, would provide the margin of victory over a United States that everyone knew was vastly superior in natural resources. The Japanese often seem convinced that any obstacle can be overcome so long as one has enough will power and tries hard enough. Older Japanese often feel that these char acteristics are breaking down in this more affluent and relaxed age, and this may be true to some extent, but beneath their surface shyness and cooperativeness the Japanese on the whole do continue to have a relatively high quotient of firmness of character.

Many observers have noted that the emphasis on hard work, individual drive, and economic achievement, pridefully described as the "Protestant ethic" in the West, is even more characteristic of the Japanese, who have no Christianity, let alone Protestantism, in their background. These traits, in fact, are strongly characteristic of all the peoples of East Asia-the Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese as well as the Japanese- who derive their underlying culture from ancient China and its Confucian attitudes. This work ethic is unquestionably associated with the drive for education all these people share, as well as with the cold climate of most of the area. It also seems to have been strengthened by the group orientation of the Japanese. A good group cooperator is also a good worker, and the camaraderie of group work can be a positive pleasure, even when the artisan's pride in individual work has been replaced by more routine machine production in modern times. Diligence (kimbensei) is generally recognized by the Japanese themselves as one of their most outstanding virtues. The primary identification of the individual Japanese with his work group and his enthusiastic, even joyous, participation in its activities explain why the Japanese work ethic even today seems far less eroded than in countries of the vaunted Protestant heritage.

A group society made up of self-disciplined, strong-willed individuals can produce suffficient tensions to explain all the drive and ambition the Japanese show. Beneath the surface of harmonious conformity have always seethed great pressures. The premodern Japanese was deeply concerned with honor and face--attitudes that still linger on in the Japanese consciousness. The watchword of the Meiji period was shusse, or "success in life." Ambitious personal success was what was meant. William S. Clark, a president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College (later the University of Massachusetts), who was in Japan briefly in 1876 to set up an agricultural school (the future Hokkaido University), is still widely remembered for his parting injunction to his students: "Boys, be ambitious." The dependent child may be compulsively driven by his mother's expectations of him. One hears overtones of the traditional "Jewish mother" in her Japanese counterpart.

All in all, the modern Japanese seems as much motivated by personal ambition and drive as any Westerner. It may puzzle Westerners to find these characteristics in such a group-oriented people, but the Japanese in fact are often quite unrealistically ambitious. It is diffficult to measure such traits, but the record of Japanese-Americans affords some comparative data. Though handicapped by a very different cultural and linguistic background and long subjected to severe prejudice and discrimination, Americans of Japanese ancestry have within two or three generations risen to levels of education, income, and status that are at or near the top of all ethnic groups, including WASPs and Jews. Surviving Japanese traits are all that can account for this record.

If there are parallels between Japanese characteristics and the Protestant ethic of the West, they may lie in the fact that the latter appeared in a West still divided by recent feudal conditions into classes or estates, in which merchants and peasants, denied the possibility of feudal political power, made economic achievement a goal in itself. This certainly happened in Tokugawa Japan, where merchants and peasants, completely barred from participation in politics, developed a philosophy justifying economic success as a service to society comparable to the political service of the samurai class. Such attitudes probably help explain why former peasants and merchants moved easily into various types of leadership roles in Meiji times and why samurai shifted with even greater ease to business enterprise as a legitimate and worthy field of endeavor. In countries such as China and Korea, the lesser barriers between functional classes meant that economic success commonly led to an attempt to gain political status and was therefore not justified as an end in itself. If this analysis is correct, the class divisions surviving from feudalism, rather than Protestantism, may be the determining factor behind this aspect of the Protestant ethic. But the main point is that the individual ambition and drive of the Japanese people,instead of being an anomaly in this group society, is an old and basic part of it.

Westerners commonly overlook the hard core of the individual Japanese and his society and instead, struck by the amalgam of what is familiar and what seems exotic, wonder if the Japanese are not a confused people, embodying a sort of schizophrenia between East and West. The same doubts have frequently been expressed by the Japanese themselves. This dichotomy no doubt did exist for many in the past, but for contemporary Japanese it lies more in the eyes of the beholder than in the minds of the Japanese. In any fast-changing society there are curious and sometimes uncomfortable contrasts between traditions inherited from the past and new characteristics produced by new technologies and conditions. Japan, having moved faster and farther than any other country during the past century, may be subject to particularly severe strains of this sort, but they are not different in kind-only in degree--from what the West itself experiences.

Japan has not been Westernized, as is commonly asserted. Nothing is more central to traditional Western culture than Christianity, but less than 2 percent of the Japanese population have embraced this religion. What the Japanese have taken over are the modern aspects of Western culture, which for the most part the West too has only recently developed in response to modern technology-things like railroads, factories, mass education, newspapers, television, and mass democracy. In this sense Japan has become modernized, not Westernized, and the process of modernization has taken place on the foundation of Japan's own traditional culture, just as happened in the West, with the same sort of resulting contrasts and strains.

A head start in the West of four decades in railroading and of a few years in television did not make these features of modern life distinctively Western as opposed to Japanese. Japanese are every bit as much at home with them as are Americans. Tea, an East Asian drink, coffee from the Middle East, kimonolike dressing gowns, or African rhythms in music, lunch in a sushi bar, a workout in the art of karate, or a session of ikebana-style flower arranging have not produced traumas or schizophrenia in the West. Why should Western foods, dress, or music have this effect on Japanese? Brahms and Beethoven now belong as much to Japanese as to Americans or even Germans. "Happy Birthday," sung always in English, and "Auld Lang Syne," sung always in Japanese, are as solid and natural parts of Japanese folk culture as of American. Shakespeare, Goethe, or Dostoevsky are as much a part of literature in their minds and are probably as well known as The Tale of Genji. History to them means ancient Greece and Rome and the great dynasties of China as much as the periods of their own past.

Only older ladies and some wealthy women commonly wear Japanese kimonos, while most other women reserve them for only very festive occasions, such as university graduation ceremonies, if they can afford them at all. The Japanese find nothing incongruous in the contrast between the traditional Japanese garb of brides at Shinto wedding ceremonies and the traditional Western white they usually wear at civil ceremonies or Christian weddings, which are popular even for nonbelievers. Grooms are almost always dressed in Western style, specifically in cutaways in more affluent circles, a costume that is much used for formal occasions in Japan and is called moningu, from "morning coat." Hardly any men ever wear traditional garb of any sort in public. Neither did their fathers or many of their grandfathers, and they would feel almost as self-conscious in a traditional Japanese costume as an American dressed as a Pilgrim Father. Cultural schizophrenia, which may seem obvious to the untutored Western eye, simply does not exist for the Japanese, except possibly for some self-conscious intellectuals.

The Japanese live in a society that, despite its rapid changes, is to them a well-ordered, coherent whole. It is remarkable for its homogeneity and strict adherence to patterns of conduct. Though constantly changing, it remains thoroughly and most distinctively Japanese. It is almost monotonously uniform. It is, if anything, more stable than most Western lands, even though they have become modernized at a more leisurely and less stressful rate. Japanese society is rent by no sharp cleavages. There is virtually no great inherited wealth and very little degrading poverty. The social center of gravity is the huge stratum known by the Japanese-English term "salary-man" (sarariman) - a more accurate description than our own "white-collar worker." Above these are only a handful of top executives and below them farmers and manual wage laborers, who aspire to and often approach sarariman norms of life.

On the surface Japan gives all the appearances of a happy society and probably deserves this evaluation as much as any other country. Children always seem to be bubbling with good spirit. People everywhere seem cheerful and purposeful. The early retirement age for men and the greater confinement of married women to the home may account for the youthfulness of city crowds, as compared to those in the United States, and the consequent impression of greater energy and vitality. The problems of age may be kept more out of sight.

The Japanese are clearly well satisfied with themselves both as individuals and nationally. Until only a few decades ago they tended to be painfully unsure of themselves, fearing that Westerners might be looking down on them, but in recent years such self-doubts have melted fast in the warmth of affluence and international acclaim. They still remain endlessly critical of their society, but behind such attitudes one can discern a deep self-satisfaction in their achievements. They are proud of their economic success, their technological skills, their well-ordered society, their democratic, egalitarian social and political system, and the high quality of life most of them enjoy. As a group the Japanese have proved a resounding success, but for all their group orientation they are also very self-conscious and proud as individuals.

= end of Chapter 16 , The Individual =

Source: Reischauer, E. , & Jansen, M. B. (1995). The Japanese Today (pp. 159 -184). Belknap Harvard.