J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

More and more the Japanese are teaching each other to be American. They're loving it.

 Steven Heine's extensive research has shown that the most robust distinction between Americans and Japanese is that the former are full of it - they praise themselves and others way out of proportion to reality. While American's engage in this linguistic ego massage, which in the USA is said to promote health, wealth and well-being, the Japanese have been, traditionally, if anything, linguistically self-critical. The greatest advantages of being self-critical is that it facilities self-improvement. Japanese reflect upon their own flaws (hansei) and then get ride of them (kaizen).

 Alas, however, such is the hegemony and attraction of Western culture, (the bs, the auto affective self-narrative) that the Japanese are reading and publishing books instructing mothers to take it easy, get into "co-chingu" and above all indulge in praise, since praise is what decides how happy you are going to be. Praise, praise praise.

They are also writing books that trash upon the last bastion of Japanese culture - Japanese industry - since Japanese industry is not nice to young people -- such as for example, Tadashi Yanai (2009) who (rather than "praising") encourages himself and others to forget their successes as soon as they have achieved them.

Soon alas they may forget how to be Japanese, and end up as really low-grade Americans, since however much they practice they are never going to catch up with us. I grew up with people who are centuries ahead in their skill at auto-ego-massage. I think that if the Japanese go down that route, they are going to get right royally shafted. While it has its drawbacks, the only Japanese way forward is to hansei and kaizen.

The other thing that these JapanAmericans are forgetting is that while their words were always self-critical in the past, the Japanese have traditionally loved what they themselves looked like. They were quite positive enough without all the "self-enhancement".

Labels: japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, westernisation, 日本文化, 欧米化

The labels indicate the percentage of first year university students that study (out side of class) in each of the time bands. For example nearly ten percent of Japanese students do not study at all, whereas in the US only 0.3% of students avoid study entirely. More than two thirds (66.8%) of Japanese university students study only 1-5 hours per week --at most an hour per weekday-- whereas this percentage is only about 15% in the US. The above graph is based on data collected by the Central Council for Education of the Japanese Department for Education and Science, as reported on the front page of today's (2012/2/16) Asahi Newspaper.

The newspaper reports that, alarmed at these statistics, the Ministry of Sports Science and Technology intends to implement entrance and exit tests to ensure that university students are studying more, with a view to creating graduates that can be major players on the global stage (グローバルに活躍する人材, Asahi, 2012).

There is nothing new in the these type of comparisons. Brian J. McVeigh's comprehensive, though damning and as yet untranslated, "Japanese Higher Education As Myth," as well as many domestic commentators, have been pointing out that academically, Japanese universities are allow students to concentrate on their part time jobs, their club and social activities rather than ensuring they study academically. As Mc.Veigh points out, Japanese academic has no academic ethos, little awareness of the value of study, so as soon as escalator of entrance exams end, so does the motivation to study.

The Japanese education department indends to extend the escalator, adding stricter assessments at the end of university life, forcing students to study while they are university if they are to go on to graduate and get a job.

They are going to require that Japanese university teachers become stricter in their evaluations and refused to allow students to graduate even though they have a job lined up. And even though the company ready to employ that student is not nearly so concerned, when compared with US companies, with the academic achievement of the students it intends to employ.

Japanese companies do not care so much about whether students have studied academically during their time at university. If a student has invested time and energy into their club or part time job, achieved a position of responsibility, or shown intelligent, practical, creative endeavour in any aspect of their lives (including academically) then they are happy to hire them. Some companies shy away from students who are particularly academic, perhaps with the belief that having too many scholarly types in the office does not make for successful business. Japanese companies stress 'on the job training', and learning by experience so that university graduates start at the bottom and do not come into work situations where they are expected to apply the theories that they have learnt at college.

The education that Japanese universities have provided, therefore, may be argued to be in line with the demands of Japanese society. Theories - which is after all what universities teach - are not as useful, or as lauded in Japan. Providing interesting lectres, opportunities to interact with each other, be stimulated, experience academe and the lifestyle of academics in "seminars," and to gain life experience in part time jobs and clubs, has provided Japanese students with the social skills training required of them in (non-theory based, non-logocentric) Japanese society.

I set a large amount of homework in my English classes especially. I use online testing to force my students to study outside of class. I believe for students to be competative in a declining economy, academic study is important. But at the same time I fear that Japanese universities are by their attempt to mimic Western universities are going to present fewer opportunities for students to obtain the flexibility and social skills that Japanese society still requires.

One of the reasons why Japanese students do part time jobs is because there are few immigrants, or a 'working class' doing them instead. University students are the working class of Japan. The man the pumps, wash the dishes, serve at tables, and work in the fast food restaurants. The same lack of an underclass obviates the need for a university educated elite. Japanese fulfill all roles at different ages of their lives.

The University evolved out of seminaries, training schools for priests. Their original specialisations were theological studies of the Bible and the Koran. Westerners, and those of the "book religions" believe that one can live ones life based upon the advice gained from the pages of a book, by applying theories.

It seems to me that Japanese companies and their employees have been major players on the international stage. So major were their plays that British industry was wiped out by competition from Japan. As Japan mimics the West more and more, and as Japanese university graduates wonder become more and more out of phase with the living tradition of their employers, will the Japanese economic miracle continue to function so well?

I try to encourage my students and colleagues to integrate theoretical learning with practical experience. I have argued that we should be teaching "part-time job theory," and "club theory," and encourage students to research and analyse these areas of their lives. I hope there is a middle path.

Labels: economics, japan, japanese culture, nihobunka, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 欧米化

I am in the process of doing an experiment to find out who is more individualistic, the Japanese Superman or the Japanese Clark Kent. In the West it seems that the post-transformational Super form of superheroes is more individualistic than their "alter ego." In Japan on the other hand, folks like Hino Eii, Philip and the Elvis Hairstyled high school student who transform into Masked Riders are individualistic to the point of being weird. Super sentai too, cooperate more in the heroic rather than pre-transitonal (hennshin mae ) form. To understand the situation in Japan, imagine if Clark Kent, Bruce Banner, were really eccentric and that Superman and the Hulk were really square..

But on the other hand, Japanese superheros tend to have a variety of forms or modes, such as the various super forms of "Kamen Rider Forze" as depicted above. In Japan they are all different, but they are all perhaps more upstandingly harmonious than their "yankee" alter-ego. Imagine if Bruce Banner could transform in any of a Green, Red, Yellow and White Hulk, and all these Hulks were square.

Labels: collectivism, individualism, Masked Riders, nihonbunka, Super-Sentai, superhero, スパー戦隊, 仮面ライダー, 個人主義, 日本文化, 欧米化, 集団主義

The seperation between honne (what people really think) and tatemae (the front that one shows others) is something that I find very difficult to cope with, or even to know which is which. Do the Japanese really want to get rid of violent groups, or do they just want to make a show of doings so?

"Violent Groups" are legal and registered in Japan. And yet their members are portrayed as animals in the rather shocking poster above. Perhaps the police feel that they can get away with this portrayal because they have represented themselves as the Puffer Fish bottom right? In any event, the police legally register violent gang members and then berate them as being like pigs and baboons. Call me old fashioned, or English, but this does not seem fair.

The poster says No! to violent groups, reporting the fact that there are now laws against doing business with them. Now the public must be scared of the groups and the law.

Labels: honne, japanese culture, nihonbunka, tatemae, 建前, 日本文化, 本音, 欧米化

If there is any truth in the assertion that there is something visual rather than verbal, about the way that the Japanese sign, i.e. that Japanese culture leans toward the right hand side of the diagram of Dual Coding Theory, then one might expect them to share some similarities with those deaf that use visual sign systems (ASL and JSL). To investigate this hypothesis I read Oliver Sacks’ “Seeing Voices” an excellent, and even moving, introduction to the world of the deaf, and particularly their ability to communicate using sign language, from the perspective of a neurologist.

First of all, Sacks points out that deaf signers are better at interpreting Chinese characters signed in the air, and it is clear that Japanese people are far better at signing and reading characters in the air (p78) but that maybe the single case in point. Deaf people use Sign (ASL, JSL) which, though visual, has meaning. Japanese use Chinese characters which, though visual, have meaning.

Oliver Sacks points out that there are those that deny even this similarity, since there are those (including Roland Barthes) who deny that the visual can have meaning at all. But even accepting the premise of Sacks’ book, that language can be seen, perhaps the similarity between the deaf and the Japanese starts and ends with a trivial resemblance between Sign and Kanji.

Cutting to the chase, Sacks' book being a book about deaf, rather than a book about the deaf and the Japanese, does little to demonstrate similarities between deaf and Japanese culture. "Seeing Voices" does however, point to some possibilities and perhaps the most tantilising of these lies in Sacks observation that Sign language is not only a language for communicating with others, but also for thinking and for communicating with oneself. He provides clear evidence that the deaf Sign to themselves, and sign in their dreams. I have also noted that Japanese have a tendency to sign to themselves, such as Ichiro's famous baseball bat point, or more particularly the safety oriented pointing checks performed by those working on the Japanese railway system, for example. Sack's goes on assert, as a footnote (26) to page 59, given on page 161 of my version of the book, the use of sign as thought, not only to others but to and about oneself, by application of the Sapir-Whorph hyphotesis, may result in a "hypervisual cognitive style". I believe that this phrase may be appropriate to use about the Japanese as well.

Sacks claims that users of Sign, adept as they are at reading, and making (or is that speaking) visual meaning, often become “visual experts,” adept not just at “a visual language but [having] a special visual sensibility and intelligence as well.” (p84) Alas Sacks does not go into concrete cultural details of deaf visual expertise. Sacks does not mention that the deaf are good at anime, manga, computer games, architecture, manufacturing, visually stunning food preparation, becoming highly attractive idols, or many of the other things at which the Japanese may be argued to excel.

Sacks points out that deaf understanding of facial expressions may be better than that of the hearing. Alas research about Japanese interpretation of gesture is mixed. David Matsumoto points out Japanese inability to read “universal” emotions. Keiko Ishii demonstrates that Japanese can be more sensitive to the degree to which people smile (or at least when smiles disappear).

Most surprisingly, the neurological evidence that Sacks presents seems almost to directly contradict any assertion of similarities between the Japanese and the deaf. Sacks points out that deaf process Sign with their left brain, the same hemisphere that the hearing use to understand speec. He shows that deaf signers pull some seemingly non-linguistic (among hearers) processing, such as the processing of facial expressions, into their left/linguistic brain. Sacks further suggests that the left brain is well adapted to language and argues that there are deficiencies in right brain language. Research on neurological differences between Japanese and Westerners, is still fairly new or controversial, but, it is claimed that Japanese visual signs (Kanji) are processed at least in part by the right brain (E.g. Nakagawa 1993) and that Japanese pull the procession of phonic information (such as the sound of insect noises and music) into their linguistic left brain. If this is the case then, it would suggest that Kanji, processed as they are by the side of the brain not well suited to language, would have a deleterious affect upon Japanese language processing. And even that the Japanese are hyper-phonic, as oppose to hyper visual (like the deaf), since it is sounds that the Japanese process with the ‘linguistically superior,’ left hand side of the brain.

In order to achieve the sort of revolution that Sacks describes, being achieved by the deaf: that they, their visual culture, their Sign is not just a pantomime, but equally meaningful, one would have to go further even that Sacks avows. Sacks demonstrates that the visual and the deaf can be just as good as the oral/hearing, just that they do what they do in a different way. How much more difficult would it be to argue that the right brain is just as good at processing the world, but in a different way? This is not a path that Sacks, a Western neurologist, attempts to follow in this book at least (but see his "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat").

Sacks’ description of the revolution underway in the world of the deaf, of how they are achieving a hard-won cultural autonomy, a reappraisal such that they are now different, rather than diseased was particularly moving. Perhaps I am romanticising Japanese culture too much, but it was in the description of the revolution, or the potential for one, that I found the greatest potential similarity between the deaf and the Japanese. It seems to me that being Japanese is not yet “depathologized” (p120), with commentators and educators in Japan still tending to present the West as being advanced, a model that Japan should still (after all these years) be aiming towards.

Sacks argues that deaf were initially non-receptive to the idea that Sign could be a language, or that it could be analysed, and were self-deprecating with regard to their visual culture (p114-115). I find that mystifying, empty-centred, self-deprecating theories of Japanese culture are still fairly mainstream, at least in academe. Will there one day be a Japanese cultural revolution, such as being experienced by the deaf or will Japan Westernise itself out of existence first? Or is this endeavour itself bogus, the product of another white male mind (my own), since the right brain, or where ever Japanese cultural excellence is situated may have no need of affirmative analysis.

Finally, Sacks makes the point that the deaf are not dumb, both in the sense that they are not stupid and in the sense that they can speak. In other words Sacks saves the deaf from perjorative appraisal, by pointing out that the deaf can in fact speak, in their own language, so they are not dumb -- in any sense but-- but rather different. Sacks writes "..for it is only through language that we enter fully into our human estate and culture, communicate freely with our fellows, aquire and share information. If we cannot do this....we may be so little able to realise our intellectual capabilities as to appear mentally defective. It was for this reason that the congenitally deaf, or "deaf and dumb" were considered "dumb" (stupid) for thousands of years...p8" This all sounds very brave and stirring, and it is, because Sacks succeeds in releasing the deaf from this derogatory appelation. But what of the "dumb"? People who can not speak, who are aphaisic, who do not have language remain in Sacks' view, unable to realise their intellectual capabilities. According to Sacks the dumb remain dumb; those without speech are intellectually impaired because speech is required for intellectual functioning.

This is a shame, and I believe unfair. in Sack's earlier book "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" in the essay "The Presidents' Speech" Sacks describes how even aphaisics, who do not have the ability to understand language, where nevertheless able to understand most of what is going on around them, even a presidential speech, perhaps even more than those that can hear and understand the words. What happened to the possibility that the ability to use language is just another one of many human abilities? Is the mastery of language essential to enter "our human estate" (whatever that may be) and culture? Is the use of a media of interpersonal communication for thought ("self-communication" as if it were not-an oxymoron) an essential prerequisite for thinking? Even assuming that that symbols are necessecessary for thought, is it a given that symbols that are good to think with, are also those that are good to communicate with. If the deaf can manage to think and communicate among themselves using sign and to communicate with the hearing using speech, then perhaps it is possible that the Japanese may be thinking in symbols that the are not using for speaking.

It seems that in the West at least, linguistic ability is considered to be a prerequisite, thinking is regarded as being self-communication using the same linguistic symbols that we use to speak to others, and thus those that can not speak are, even by Oliver Sacks, considered to be unable to think effectively. When reappraising a group that hithertoo been considered inferior, advocates posit the existance of another language (this work), a different voice (Gilligan, 1972 on women), their own words (Meltzer, 1987, on American Blacks) which, when we the outgroup understand it, will allow us to understand their excellence. But perhaps the Japanese do not have another language. Perhaps Japanese excellence is not to be found in any language. All the same the Japanese may be affirmative enough as they are. They just don't talk about it. The may not talk the talk, but they do walk the walk and always have.

The above image containts a cropped version of the cover design of Oliver Sacks' book "Seeing Voices" by Chipp Kidd

Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, manga, nihobunka, nihonbunka, theory, westernisation, 日本文化, 欧米化

About half of the T-shirts on sale in Japan have lettering on them. Of those that do, 99% have English or rather Engrish printed upon them. It is almost impossible to find T-shirts with Japanese language written on them. Imagine if it were impossible to purchase English language T-shirts in the UK, and that all lettering on them were in Bad Japanese. There would be riots.
Perhaps this is not just the effect of Westernization, but also something to do with the way in which Japanese have always imported languages from other nations? Perhaps even if there were no Western influence upon Japan, the Japanese would not wish to write in Japanese upon their own T-shirts. Be that as may, I find the Engrish T-shirts a little more troubling than many of the locals.

At the same time, lately, I have taken to wearing a T-shirt upon which is emblazoned "Do! Something on your own way."

Labels: westernisation, 日本文化, 欧米化