The Disappearance of Self in Japan
huffingtonpost.com
huffingtonpost.com
28 years of living in Japan and the author can't identify Matsumoto Castle (one of the country's most notable) at a glance? Not a good start.
http://www.onbeing.org/program/pico-iyer-the-art-of-stillnes...
From article: ------------ I can't read — I can't — to this day, I can't read or write Japanese. And I'm at the mercy of things around me. I can't have the illusion that I'm on top of things. Japan was a place that I had a huge amount to learn from, and I'm still learning it.
reminds me of teens today who feign ignorance of popular music and only listen to classic rock or some other specific genre and love to criticise others' taste in music.
That's a pretty high bar. Newspapers, news magazines and technical materials (economics, poli-sci, math, circuits, algorithms, mechanical designs, chemical processes)are straight forward enough. And enough to consider one functionally literate, I would contend. Enough to participate in day-to-day culture, I would contend.
Japanese literature can be completely different level of challenging.
And they left. Every ~3 years or so.
Even that would kill me. For me, literacy is job one. I never understood how an adult would be - could be - willing to be functionally illiterate as an adult.
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/japan-chubu-reg...
Makes it almost certain the author did not pick this caption at all.
It is worth pointing out that English also lets you omit the subject in some circumstances, namly commands. For example, we consider "clear your room" to be a complete sentence, despite the fact that it omits the subject, "you".
"[You] Gonna eat that pizza?"
"[I'm] Gonna go to the store."
"Where's John?" / "[He's] Eating."
Every country or people have their own ideas about how they are awesome, but I think I noticed it here because I'm an outsider.
To be honest, I'm quite sick of any cultural glorification from any country. But given how Japan never went through a cleansing after their fascism (unlike east/west-germany after '45 and '68) I can understand that there is not a lot of self-awareness in that regard.
In some sense the youth is trying to distance itself from the problematic past by becoming apathetic consumerists.
Every time one of these articles crop up, I feel that someone is viewing Japanese through some heavily rose tinted glasses.
But you'll find most spoken English sentences have I or You or a grammatically empty placeholder ("that is..." without antecedent or "there is...") as subjects. That's why other languages can omit them. It's pretty easy to guess which of those you mean so English could omit them eventually, too, with no loss of specificity.
You're on track with the "gramatically empty placeholder". We have expletive pronouns, like "it" in "it is raining", which one could consider to only serve grammatical purpose—it is only in the sentence precisely because the sentence must have a grammatical subject, not because the sentence has a subject in any semantic sense. There is some disagreement about this, however.
This is absolutely nothing special, there are hundreds of those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-subject_language
Already got a small team of contractors here. Currently working through the paperwork to get my visa and company incorporation sorted here.
P.S. Situation is still notable in its normalcy.
Let me know if you make it to Fukuoka and I'll buy you a coffee.
Seems like a common thread from the author, see yesterday's submission re: Ikiru.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839344
But his pseudo-nihonjinron* is nothing compared to the Traditional European Martial Arts (Which are Much Better Than Japan's Didntchaknow) circlejerk we have going on in sibling comments. If I'm ever at a ren faire I plan to walk around and every few minutes loudly say "dude you should have brought your katana, you'd own everyone so hard" just to watch peoples' heads explode.
This is the huge advantage the Mongols had. They could field 'huge' (relative to population size) and devastatingly effective army's on the cheap. Often Mongols still ended up outnumbered by as much as 10-1, but mobility allowed them to avoid highly defended areas.
PS: I wonder how much the cost of medieval armor contributed to long term economic growth. Sort of the medieval equivalent of modern military innovations (computers, internet, radar, etc.) being useful in peace time.
And while Japanese metallurgy exists today... the secret of Damascus steel has been lost in time. No one knows how to make it anymore.
---------------
With regards to Katanas vs Longswords...
Katanas are almost equivalent to Long Swords. The martial arts between the two styles are relatively similar. Sometimes Katanas were dual-wielded with wakizashi, while Long Swords would sometimes be dual-wielded with a dagger.
Sometimes Katanas are wielded with two hands, but sometimes you switch to one-hand for extra reach. Ditto with Long Swords (being used with "Bastard Sword" style)
------------
In all cases, the fetish with swords is universal across cultures. Polearms were the king of the battlefield in both the West and in the East... and the favored weapons of soldiers, and yet the stories all glorify sword-wielders. Swords were expensive in all cultures, and are therefore associated with the respective nobility class.
European and Japanese fighting styles are also very different, as the katana is made with much more brittle steels [1]. In Japan, the block is not hard and the other blade has to slide along your's to not break the sword.
You use Damascus steel if your steel is of poor quality or you don't have the chemical know how to make good steel. You do what you can with what you have.
Still, swords cost a lot to make and end up as a status symbol. Look at the Japanese officers in WW2 [2].
[0]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044580305...
[1]https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5729/how-do-tama...
[2]https://41.media.tumblr.com/ab40ee35c57c64a56570035045f61c4e...
[1]: http://www.debito.org/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debito_Arudou
If we're using words like 'ad hominem', 'name-calling' and 'unfounded' please note that you labelled my roots "xenophobic, racist, and bigoted" with nothing more than an appeal to authority.
Clearly, you were not arguing seriously and neither was I, but now that you've called me out let's add some substance.
The reddit link others have posted provides some context, though is obviously not a primary source. Here's link that might be somewhat more detailed: http://www.gregoryclark.net/page14/page14.html
The link speaks for itself.
Anyway, here's some arguments: https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/2u8k66/why_is_debito...
He's also amped up the bile level considerably after his (very bitter) divorce and leaving the country -- at last check he was in Hawaii.
His experience (of apparently constantly experiencing outrageous racism) does not really align with many others' here, which suggests that part of it is over-reaction, intentionally or not.
First, sure, Japanese people, as we all still shit from their behinds, work everyday for money and snore when they sleep -- that's not the real point of comparison. But for the average US person for example, the culture, historical legacy and customs of Japan can seem totally foreign [1].
Second, yes, if Japanese people aren't having kids, Japan can be doomed, in the sense of population decline, economic and job issues, etc. They're not that much if favor of integrating immigrants either. It's not like it's unprecedented. Populations have dwindled to the point of it being a major issue for lots of ethnicities/communities worldwide in the past.
[1] and vise versa, although US culture is already familiar to minute detail everywhere to ordinary citizens -- from exposure to tons of US movies, tv series, songs, news programs, websites and books -- Japanese culture outside of Japan not so much, except to Nippofiles and Anime fans, which are far from the majority.
It's no more true for Japan than it is for anywhere. People who get all their information from the western press and then actually go to Japan come away shocked at how normal everything is. It would be like people in other countries forming their opinions on the US based on the Castro district in San Francisco during the '70s.
>Second, yes, if Japanese people aren't having kids, Japan can be doomed, in the sense of population decline, economic and job issues, etc.
There are 127 million people in Japan. If the population shrinks by 35 million or so they'll have about the same number of people they had at the start of WW II. And they'll be a lot better for it, too. Certainly any time you have a pay-go pension scheme there are difficulties with a shrinking population, but it's nothing they can't manage.
As far as taking in immigrants, what Japan is doing makes a lot more sense that what the US or the Europeans are doing. I don't blame people who don't want to have to choose, at age 60, between immersion in a foreign culture and moving from the place they've lived for decades.
That's obviously false. There are places that share far more culturally and in the way of life with one another. Canada or Australia, for an obvious example, will be much more relatable to the average white American that most of Africa or Asia. Belgium will mostly familiar to a French or Dutch. Austria will be far closer to a German than China, etc.
>People who get all their information from the western press and then actually go to Japan come away shocked at how normal everything is.
If by "how normal" this means that people in Japan are also eat, work, sleep, etc, well, this is obvious. People are people. That doesn't mean that other aspects of Japanese society will be equally easy to relate to or accept.
From the mere fact that you can go back and find your laptop you left for a couple of hours in a public square, to attitudes towards work, marriage, parents, individualism, size of the average house, etc., there are lots of things that go beyond the surface commonalities.
>There are 127 million people in Japan. If the population shrinks by 35 million or so they'll have about the same number of people they had at the start of WW II.
That's not how it works. It's not a simple act of deducting people. The demographic changes that would have be in work for decades to make the population shrink by 35 million would also mean that the remaining 90 million million will be much older (in average) than back in the past when they were 90 million again, and this also has effects in society, economy, pension systems, etc.
No it isn't. The culture shock for a westerner is no more than you'd find going to any other country in the far east. Sure, you'll find it less in countries with which you share a cultural heritage. That's sort of obvious and irrelevant. Is Japan any weirder than China, or Vietnam, or Thailand? No.
>From the mere fact that you can go back and find your laptop you left for a couple of hours in a public square...
Not actually true. At least, not true enough that you'd want to chance it in real life.
>...attitudes towards work
Less foreign to me than attitudes in most of Europe.
>...marriage
Not strange at all.
>parents
Only strange if you'd never been anywhere else in Asia.
>individualism
Again, no more foreign to me as much of Europe.
>size of the average house
That's just Tokyo. And London, too, for that matter.
>That's not how it works. It's not a simple act of deducting people. The demographic changes that would have be in work for decades to make the population shrink by 35 million would also mean that the remaining 90 million million will be much older (in average) than back in the past when they were 90 million again, and this also has effects in society, economy, pension systems, etc.
Which I didn't think I had to spell out. Yes, it will cause some difficulties. No, that doesn't mean they can't take it in stride. Again, Japan is a wealthy country, and these are problems that can be papered over with wealth.
Will Japan's GDP be smaller as a result? Sure. Does it matter? No. What matters is GDP per capita.
The problem is I never said it wasn't and that Japan is somehow more shocking that other far east places. You were the one that attempted to trivialize it, saying that the shock would be the same for Japan "as for anywhere". In fact I specifically mentioned several places that would be more foreign to a westerner and some that wouldn't, not just Japan. At least now you seem to concur that Japan would be as foreign as those "far east" places.
>Which I didn't think I had to spell out. Yes, it will cause some difficulties. No, that doesn't mean they can't take it in stride. Again, Japan is a wealthy country, and these are problems that can be papered over with wealth.
You said: "they'll be a lot better for it, too", when in fact there will be ONLY difficulties. What would be better about an aging and shrinking population, plus economic difficulties? More parking space?
That they can "paper over these problems with wealth" (and for a country with a huge national debt and an problematic economy compared to the eighties early nineties), doesn't diminish the problem. It's just another way to say it would be costly. If you mean that they'll survive and still exist, yeah, duh.
Well, if you're agreeing with me we have nothing to argue about. My point was about media and peoples' reaction to it in the west.
Thus they retain some traditional forms that tend to get destroyed when a country is colonized or goes under a Western ideology.
Beyond that, I don't disagree with you but worth keeping in mind.
Sorry but it really is. The continued attitude towards gaijin is pretty ridiculous and going to hurt them. You only have three options to combat an ageing population: (1) have more children, (2) bring in young immigrants or (3) build robots.
Japan seems to think (3) is the solution. They sure as hell aren't doing anything about the other two like every other country on earth.
If the economy shrinks because of less people, then how is that going to doom them? The economy goes up and down all the time.
And (4) cope with the situation. Japan is a first world country with first world resources - they can cope with an aging population without doing any of that.
I agree that Zen is not expressed in every cultural aspect, but by and large it is there.
Look, for example, at the collective reaction to the Fukushima disaster. If that Stoicism isn't an expression of Zen philosophy, I don't know what is.
What are you talking about? Many people in Japan, even in the media, were revolted by the inaction of the government. Stoicism is maybe what you see from outside, but internally it's definitely not the case.
And look at the recent demonstrations in Japan against the change of constitution regarding Japanese military scope. You call that Stoicism ?
Actual words that have been spoken to me by an adult woman with two kids.
By the way, I wouldn't recommend including Ancient China in Japan's history: at least don fire retardant suit, because frankly that sounds like an efficient way to offend Chinese and Japanese people at the same time.
From what I've seen Japanese and Chinese get on well. It's their governments that use the other as a convenient boogeyman 1984-style.
China was the superpower of ancient Asia, exerting significant influence on neighboring regions, and exporting its writing system, as well as science and technology to neighboring regions. As a result, approximately 60% of the words found in a Japanese dictionary are of Chinese origin (this becomes closer to 20% when you weight for usage).
Informatively, the Japanese word for China is 中国, or central country.
Additionally, the nature of the Japanese writing system means that any literate Japanese speaker would recognize the symbols in 中国 (China) mean "middle" and "country", and the symbols in 漢字 (kanji) mean "China" and "character".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan%E2%80%93Korea...
My main point is that there's a significant difference between a civilization adopting parts of other cultures, as opposed to other civilizations suddenly forcing it upon you through conquest.
The original thread I responded to seemed to argue that Japan had no history (read: civilization) before the adoption of kanji.
I'm not suggesting having short history makes Japan inferior or anything like that. It's just a predictable consequence of living on islands across the sea from the culture center. (My own country's history is not much longer, after all.)
Language, architecture, cultural ideas, religion, science, just about everything around you shares Roman origins or influence.
If you think Roman culture is gone, you might consider the Pope, head of the religion started in and promoted by the state whose seat is in Rome (ok, Vatican City is it's own thing, but the Pantheon is like a mile away), who conducts mass in Latin, the language of the empire ... might I go on? ~15% of the world population are Catholic.
Roman influence, sure. Also Arabic, Indic and Chinese influence. Every experience affects us. But would we really be so different without the Roman influence? E.g. Roman sewer systems were used to argue for the design of London's sewers... but only for about 20 years, after which modern sewer design surpassed anything the Romans had done.
> you might consider the Pope, head of the religion started in and promoted by the state whose seat is in Rome
But only adopted in the fading years of the Empire, well after 250AD, and not really a reflection of Roman culture.
> who conducts mass in Latin, the language of the empire
Rarely, and getting rarer.
> ~15% of the world population are Catholic.
Sure. But how many of them know Latin? How many of them have any real influence of the Roman empire?
I think there are many reasons but a large part is the religious aspect... pre approximately 500 AD Egyptian Culture was more or less wiped out during the spread of islam. I dont know how much pre common era egyptian culture was related to ancient egypt culture...
Meanwhile on the european side catholocisms spread only increased the influence of (certain parts of) roman culture. The renaissance which was significantly due to 'italian' culture further served to increase the influence of roman culture (especially in architecture and the arts)
What do you think about the alleged xenophobia?
Personally I'd love to visit Japan sometime.
1) I speak JLPT ~N2 level with almost no accent, but get handed the English menu in a restaurant in Tokyo.
2) I get complimented for being able to eat various Japanese things (natto, umeboshi) or being able to handle chopsticks.
3) I get compliments for being able to read Kanji after talking to someone for the past few hours. How do they think I learned the language? With romaji?
4) Speaking to staff in Japanese, staff answers to my Japanese friends instead of speaking with me.
The last three ones are almost symptomatic for 日本人論, where it is common to think that certain Japanese cultural habits or attributes cannot be mastered or understood by outsiders, thus it is necessary to point them out or try to compensate for them.
Some of these attributes are reasoned to exist because of biological differences (google Japanese Brain), others because of the 'rich' cultural heritage of Japan that was never tainted by other countries (as if China and Korea are not close to Japan...).
Don't take this as me being unhappy to be in Japan. I just wish that people were a bit more self-aware around here. The problem is just that there is not the necessary vocabulary around to address these problems. It's not as if 人種差別 is a popular subject.
for 2 and 3, I think it is because they are actually surprised; there are a lot of (Japanese) people who don't like natto or umeboshi either, and kanji is something they spend hours per week studying for 10 years to be literate in.
4 is a hard one. They assume that a foreigner obviously can't speak Japanese. It can be super annoying.
In my experience, if you stay in Japan for more than a year, you go through several phases.
The first phase is confusion. Why am I being treated differently, even though I'm doing and saying the same things as another Japanese person.
The second phase that quickly follows is anger. This is bullshit! I know my accent and pronunciation is correct! Why are they saying they don't understand me! WTF!
The third is dull acceptance. You're not going to change Japan. They're not like this because they're bad people. They're just inexperienced with foreigners and foreign things, and they're overcompensating and trying to be nice in the way they think is nice.
The final stage is fun. This is the best stage. You understand all the social patterns and why everything is happening, so you just relax and start enjoying it.
When you go into a restaurant and order in Japanese and the waiters response is "I can't speak English! Sorry!" you respond in Japanese "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Is there anyone here who speaks Japanese?"
This often (not always) has the interesting effect of changing the "foreigners cannot speak or understand Japanese" mindset, if only for a moment.
Sounds like you're in between stages two and three. It gets better.
To quickly respond to your list:
1) It's your face. It's nothing personal. They're just trying to be accommodating.
2) My typical response is "I've been using chopsticks since I've been four, since we used to order Chinese takeout. So complimenting me on my chopstick skills feels the same as me complimenting you on your deft fork techniques." This may result in enlightening your Japanese friends as to why it's challenging to be overly grateful for their well-intended compliment.
3) Kanji is hard. They're just impressed that you can read it, since they spent years as kids studying and repeating kanji over and over again. Having said that, my typical response here is "Actually, I think English is much, much harder than Japanese. Sure Japanese is difficult, but it's logical. English is full of exceptions, weird spellings, inconsistent grammar, because it's a mix of languages. If I wasn't born a native speaker, I can't imagine how I'd learn English from scratch."
4) Yep - you're definitely not alone. It can be hard to avoid feeling a bit slighted here. If you haven't seen this already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLt5qSm9U80 I gently correct people here. "Excuse me - since I'm ordering, could you please look at me?"
By the way, thinking of these things as "micro-aggressions" is a terrible way to think. They're not being aggressive. They're often just not very familiar with foreign people, and they're doing their best to be accommodating. Once you get to stage four, this becomes a lot easier.
Good luck, and don't forget to swing by the Hacker News Tokyo Meetups if you're in Tokyo - https://hntokyo.doorkeeper.jp/ - we're just about to announce another one.
Perhaps my problem is not really the experience itself, but that I don't know how to deal with certain situations in a smooth and sociable way. I also have not lived in Japan long enough to really master all social interactions. It's quite easy to forget when you're from another culture how much routine your own culture already has and how different it can be.
So, stage4目指せ!
頑張れ！
The same way as you're abusing it. Maybe they're genuinely happy and proud that you can do it, or are just trying to make you feel better and help you however they can? Normal people call this "being nice" or "compliments".
IMO both are examples of micro-aggressions, regardless of intention.
1. You can walk in the crowd at the shibuya crossing with your wallet sticking out of your back pocket filled with cash and not worry about getting pick pocketed. 2. Everyone carries around a portable ash tray with them when they smoke and never throw cigarette butts on the ground. 3. No one throws any trash on the ground. Garbage cans are hard to find too and everyone just carries their trash with them.
1) Low income inequality / strong welfare system 2) This is actually a counter example. Nothing more socially offensive than second hand smoke. 3) Trash cans disappeared from the streets of Tokyo shortly after the sarin gas subway attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995, and they've never reappeared.
If it were cleaned more regularly people wouldn't litter so much. (Not a defence of people who litter, and it's the one thing I hate most about living here.)
One time last year I had to stay overnight in Japan to reach a connecting flight. The airport allowed people to sleep on the benches (very comfortable with no arm rests), and a police man stands there all night and watches over everyone to keep them and their belongings safe.
To top it all off, there is a sign addressed to people sleeping there that at 3 AM the airport personnel need to polish the floors and they apologize for the noise!
(This was at the old Haneda airport near Tokyo)
I was told this is a relic of the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway.
The only times you will hear this, is out of the mouths of Chinese/Korean nationalists looking to bash the country (their own bigotry), or Gaijin blogs from young white (usually affluent) kids who are/were upset they weren't treated like kings when the got off the plane. They were upset that the girls didn't throw themselves at them and that people didn't rush to attend their every whim.
If you look at actual scientific studies, you'll find Japan is on-par with the rest of the world when it comes to their racism. Japan is actually less racist than France and equal to places like Finland or Germany.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
Asking someone in an unrelated economic experiment something like "Would you mind if your neighbors were black?" is more accurate because it tricks people into revealing their true biases.
Having lived in and around Kyoto I would disagree. There are some minor differences, but it doesn't add up to a major difference.
But orders come from somewhere, no? From some self, no?
I quickly decided that the article was full of crap and closed the tab. I only learned that it was written by one of the authors fullest of shit in a world full of many full of shit authors due to your comment.
I was hoping to get some insight into why you guys have such a negative reaction to this guy. Instead I found out that Google has gotten scary fast at indexing.
Why even bother with the anger?