In Tsunami’s Trail—Jishuku

A fascinating article in the NYT today carries the headline “In Deference to Crisis, a New Obsession Sweeps Japan: Self-Restraint.” Now those who write the stories don’t usually write the headlines, and here we have a case to show it. The headline writer used the word obsession—a word that carries a negative connotation—whereas the story itself is altogether more serious and hints at cultural depths. The essence of the story is that the Japanese are almost uniformly restraining their behavior to conserve resources and energy, not least loud and aggressive behavior in advertising and in politics.

What fascinates me about the story is the mysterious underlying element in culture which, in Japan, now manifests as jishuku, their word for self-restraint. Something like that, to be sure, is present at least among an element of the population whenever great disasters visit us—but by no means uniformly. My memories go back to 9/11 and its immediate aftermath, a time in which I was quite aware of greater seriousness and sobriety open to my view—but absent in the media. It awakened most of us in the street to the serious aspects and dimensions of life. Not everyone, and not at every level. Now it is present in Japan to a degree that the headline writer (who presumably read the article) labels it obsessive.

It is customary to explain such behavior by saying that the Japanese are very disciplined, formal, courteous, hierarchical, etc. And, yes, they are. I’ve seen it. I was in a large hotel in Japan decades ago when a national holiday occasioned families to meet at the hotel for lunch—and I mean big, extended families—from grandma down to toddler. And each family lined up, age facing age, youth youth. And they bowed to each other formally once, twice, three times—before, paired by age, they entered the dining room in proper order. And everything in Japan was like that. But the interesting question for me is what lies beneath this? Discipline, formality, courtesy, hierarchy—all these are symptoms of something else. Is Japanese culture more coherent, orderly—and orderly in a complex way? Is Japanese culture more cohesive? And is that state a kind of ordered unity? And if so, what lies beneath that?

Such questions are too, too rarely asked—and only when the issue is sharpened to a very fine point, as it is in this case (monstrous troubles, natural, nuclear—yet self-restraint) that genuine cultural difference, and the fact that they matter—are even noticed. (And labeled obsessional?) I happen to be keenly aware of such underlying mysteries, hence I find much of the media’s commentary on international matters very near-sighted. One example is the notion that, for example, the revolts in North Africa and the Near East are upwelling of secular culture—as if, at last, a culture roughly 1,400 years old would suddenly vanish because people have I-Pods and chat on Facebook.

Cultural cohesion invariably arises from a correct view of relationships, including obligations, horizontally (other people) and vertically (eternal values). I’ve long thought of the Japanese as a relatively young culture—where a laudably correct cohesion is still strongly present. The real values in our culture really arise from the ever-fracturing consensus that we hammered out together during the centuries of Christendom. But except as legal rigidities, these are almost indiscernible in our public life today—although still present, spottily, on the street.

Feudal and Capitalist Economies

Early last year I wrote about “Types of Economies” (here) and contrasted what I called “marketshare economies” and “capitalist economies.” I characterized the first as “feudal” because it tends on the whole to optimize in favor of large “tribal” aggregates, communities—and the other as “detached from the community.” I use the word marketshare because any economy organized to secure and hold share in a market, very often at the cost of foregoing maximal profitability, tends on the whole to benefit its stakeholders—its employees and its suppliers. Marketshare economies aim at control and stability. Capitalist economies aim at maximum profit; they enter and leave markets based on gains to be realized, not to produce values in the long run.

I come back to this subject today thanks to Monique Magee’s nice hat tip. She sent me a link to a chart published initially by Deutsche Bank (here) and republished by Clusterstocks. It shows in striking overlay the performance of two different economies during two different recessions. The first is Japan’s which I’ve always considered to be the “good” kind; and the other one is ours, which I’ve viewed as the “defective” kind. My favorite scholar on this subject, the Frenchman Fernand Braudel, spends three volumes (see reference above) on showing that the word “capitalism,” strictly speaking, should only be applied to the “defective” kind of economic organization of the world. But let’s move on to the chart. A comment then follows.

Ignore, for a moment, Deutsche Bank’s laudatory characterization of the American economy above the chart. This graphic shows the unemployment rate, hence we can also view it through the eyes of the laboring masses—the members of the wider community. The years for Japan extend from 1989 through 1995; the years plotted for the United States are for 2006 through 2010. The recessionary period in both is marked by the grey bars. Now here is a striking snapshot of the two kinds of economies I have in mind. In one the culture powerfully motivates the economic sector to maintain jobs and thus to serve the entire community. In the other the unemployment rate is much higher to begin with, and at the first sign of a turn-down, it sheds jobs without, seemingly, even thinking about alternatives.

It’s the culture, stupid, as I keep repeating monotonously…

Straws

In ordinary life people make distinctions between the practical and the philosophical. I hear people say: “Well, let’s not get too philosophical about that.” This stance puts philosophy into an airy-fairy region of reality and suggests that it has no practical bearing, thus that it isn’t real. I note here that one does not encounter this attitude uniformly across the globe. It is the product of a culture. For a while, about fifteen years ago, I had frequent dealings with a number of Russian immigrants. These were ordinary people, not intellectuals. They tended to come alive precisely when “things got philosophical”; they valued that mode of thought; it stimulated them; they could and did participate.

Philosophy is one straw in the wind. The notion of honor is another. In our culture honor is largely associated with backwardness and tribalism. Its high forms—and the high development of self that these represent—have become incomprehensible. Honor survives in diluted form only as sportsmanship, but the ingestion of steroids by some of our leading athletes indicates that honor is fading even in sports.

Manners? What manners? you might ask. Courtesy to women as I was taught it as a boy has become the negative of sexist behavior. Elderly women accept such minor gallantry as opening doors for them—if, sometimes, with a look of surprise or anxious suspicion. Men were supposed to honor women once (that word again) and, by courtesy, to communicate that attitude. The elderly were also supposed to have been honored, but today, curiously defying reality, we are supposed to pretend that aging doesn’t happen. The young therefore don’t invariably and spontaneously yield a seat to the aged. It still happens. Virtue flowers naturally in the human soul. But the new training seems to reach most.

Worst of all—and here is the confessional part—the culture is such that I find myself behaving in the modern mode time and time again. And it’s always only afterwards, on the way out to the car or on the way home, that I realize with a start what a slob I have become. When the whole culture acts in a certain way, it helps the individual. I still keenly remember how careful I became, years ago, during a trip to Japan—realizing there that a much higher standard prevailed. And I hastened to conform.

What all this signifies is that comprehensive understanding of reality, coherence between vast structures, and complexity are being lost. Philosophy is practical. Honor is superior to mere mutual advantage. Women really are different from men—and vive la différence. Recognizing that difference—and where it applies and where it does not—testifies to a power of differentiation. The elderly deserve special courtesies because they are weaker, because knowledge and experience are valuable and should be honored (and in courtesy acknowledged even if not present in every instance). Honor and courtesy arise from a well-developed understanding of values—and a recognition that values by their very nature are hierarchically arranged.

Another straw in the wind and I will go indoors. Our highest leaders leave office and then convert their fame into vast sums of money. Whatever happened to towering figures like Robert E. Lee who never used the word “enemy” but contented himself with saying “those people,” and who, after he retired, with barely any assets at all, resolutely avoided any hint of cashing in? It also troubles me to think—having learned that lots of people have never heard of the Battle of Gettysburg—that there are masses of people out there who may not recognize Lee's name, never mind his splendid example.