neomarxisme

1. The great put-down of the moment: 「ただのパーティピープル」
2. Very low-key exhibition closing in Shimokitazawa on Friday night, and who pops in: Sato Eriko? Much taller and skinnier than you would imagine. Of course, everyone gets tense when she enters, all talking stopped in bothersome reverence to our social superiors, the store staff starts giving her and her friend free things... Why can't celebrities just let us quietly party on our own?
3. New Cornelius album apparently has "lots of vocals."
4. If you think happoushu is bad in general, the last third of the can is pure poison.

On a tip from the good people at Mutantfrog, I ran across this link to a New York Times Magazine about the the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project's “America Against the World”:

The book’s authors, Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes, also note that “poll after poll finds the Japanese to be the most pessimistic of people, expressing far less satisfaction with their lot in life than might be expected given their relatively high per capita incomes. Yet, compared to other Asians, the Japanese are, like Americans, highly self-reliant and distrustful of government and, like Europeans, secular. It is the Japanese public, not the American public, that is most exceptional in the world.”

Whether it be the myriad sex surveys or recent IT usage data, Japan is quite often totally off the map compared with the rest of the world. Most other countries, despite drastic inherent cultural and religious differences, seem to be facing convergence in economic, social, and technological arrangements, but Japan still moves towards the Globalized Universal at a snail's pace. This is great in the macro - for global cultural diversity and sources of alternative perspective - but perhaps bad in the micro - doesn't Japan deserve to have lower consumer prices and lower work hours in the near future?

The proudly-outlying Japan provides a nice antithesis to Momus' idea of pompous universalism: "the belief that, as Paul McCartney sings in 'Ebony and Ivory,' 'people are the same wherever we go.'" America is the obvious stronghold of pompous universalism, and Momus description of PI-related crimes - "bringing democracy to the Middle East at the point of a gun, market liberalisation to countries with centralised state control, or human rights to China along with a stack of Bibles" - are all pointing a big middle finger to the 50-star flag. So what do we make of Japan's stubborn refusal to believe that anything in its society has much resemblance to anywhere else in the world? Pompous particularism: the belief that cultures are so unique as to exclude oneself from any real global conversation.

Both concepts may be myths, but realities set them up as easy traps to fall into. Americans can turn on the TV to watch humans from all continents lining up to eat prefab fast foods and tear down Communism for blue jeans and rock'n'roll. In the same way, the Japanese do have extremely unique customs and cultural practices, and the linguistic isolation tends to create a very small echo chamber. But both fallacies have led to more bad than good. American transgressions have been destructive and obvious, and Japanese PP has been mainly invoked as a mercantilistic tool that keeps power, information, and profits within the hands of elite cabals.

This is not to say that Japan should throw tradition aside and start eating Taco Bell, but the mass refusal to even put oneself on the same conceptual plane as the rest of human society may get in the way of embracing technological progression. My philosophy has always been that Japan should take on the better parts of modern global society as a way to protect its cultural heritage against the amoral whirlwind of American-style capitalism. Michael Porter's idea is that the most successful Japanese companies already work in the same way as other internationally competitive firms around the globe and that multilayered distribution systems never helped anybody ever. All that "this logistics system is based on Shinto" has always just been an excuse to keep prices high and pockets lined with yen.

I watched the 6 pm NHK news on Saturday night: five minutes on the death of former PM Ryutaro Hashimoto followed by a one-minute story on kids playing soccer in the mud in Saga-ken. Then there was a story on installing bells in rural trainlines up in Aomori. I feel a bit numb to Japanese difference these days, but the provincialism of the newscast suddenly blew my mind: Japan is different. There could be a strong case that the "local news as national news" angle does create good things like social cohesion, but with Japan's GDP guaranteed to shrink in the coming years, the question is whether Japan becoming less and less of a market resembling other nations will make it essentially irrelevant to the rest of the world.

Laugh all you want, but 75% of our admiration with Japan has been a secret obsession with capital. It's not that they have crazy cartoons and fashion: it's because they have the money to go into super original directions. Japan should certainly approach convergence on its own terms, but if the rest of the world moves along in the same direction and our consciousness changes to match the times, we may find ourselves less interested in Japan's version of contemporary culture: the fear that all artistic industries suffer an Orange Range-like descent into hell.

I have been worried about the rise of "Internet culture" in Japan, but the current Japanese You Tube craze thankfully had a mere two or three month lag with the States, compared to three years with the iPod. This is ideal convergence: same technology, different applications. Same with Wikipedia: instead of being a useful online encyclopedia, the Japanese version often acts as a reserve of taboo, secret information. Want to know the Kano sisters' real names? You aren't going to find that in a magazine, but now you can with a computer. (The truth is, however, that these technologies are cracking media cartels and making Japan a bit more like the West, no?)

Almost all of the debate on this blog goes back to this particularism vs. universalism dichotomy: if you believe that Japan is so particular it cannot be changed, then as Momus says, Pompous Universalism becomes "a form of Cultural Imperialism." If you believe in the universality of economic structures and their predictable effects on human behavior (the fundamental belief of both Marxism and Capitalism), then Pompous Particularism is just a protectionist excuse for opening a real dialogue. Japan is different - which global polling now puts this into objective data - and the deviation will probably continue for a long while. But we have to ask, where does embrace of uniqueness stop being a positive source of diversity and start becoming intentional self-isolation?

Here is a Japanese website (with English) that ranks the OECD countries on all sorts of subjects. Some interesting findings:

1) The only people who drink less milk than the Japanese are the Koreans. But the Japanese love eggs.

2) Britian is way more of a tea culture than Japan.

3) Although Japan is closing the gap with Korea in number of computers, they are being outpaced by the rest of the world in internet usage.

4) Japan is #25 in cell phone subscribers. (Wha???)

5) Japan is dead last in TOEFL scores, but third in TOEFL test-takers. (Korea is a strong #2 after Iceland.)

"Big news" harked my young daughter Lenora as I came home from the local tavern, smelling of ales and sausages. My wife explained to me that she had been round the village hall and saw Younger Fitzgerald the Elder wheatpasting a new ordinance up upon the drywall. Upon closer inspection, this was the rumored Colonial Expansion Act, promising land to anyone willing to pull up their stake here in the Old Country and head to the newly discovered island of Catan. After years of famine and a weak sorghum crop, this was the chance I had been waiting for. People also talked about Catan as the end to chronic tooth pain! We set sail two months later.

We arrived in the mild weather of February, but before we could start our settlements, the authorities parceled out villages and cities between three colonial parties. Our "Blue" party - symbolized by the traditional blue peacoats of Smithshire vintage - won the right to choose the first location of our village. After carefully examination of the statistical probabilities of good harvest and good mining, we choose a nice spot near the middle of the island - with ample brick reserves, a lush forest, and great grazing land for sheep. After the other two teams chose the location of their towns and then cities, we were finally allowed to pick the location for our own city, but for some reason, we could not interchange the village location and the city location. Bureaucratic hogwash, if you ask me. By at this time, almost nothing was available but a barren spot with low chances of wheat harvest and ore mining. We were also far from the sea, with little ability to trade.

Things went sour immediately. We dedicated our first cloth and ore to outfit a knight to protect us from barbarian attacks. But he would not work without proper portions of bread. We explained to him that our wheat-production possibilities were low, but he would not budge. We had hoped that our lush forest would give us a surplus of lumber to trade for the wheat, but the Green Bastard would just not produce. From the initial numbers, the forest should have given around lumber 5 times in 36 "rolls" (our slang for the passage of time) but we never saw any harvestable lumber. Meanwhile the other cities had invested in another set of properties with the same probabilities, and yet, they enjoyed an overabundant stream of production.

Just as the barbarians were within site of our fair land, we were able to scrap together four kilos of brick to trade with the Old Country for the bread to feed our knight. (Our local rivals would not come to our aid and make a more reasonable barter!) Finally feeding our knight would protect our city for another year. But just then we heard that the Orange team had suddenly built another city! The pirates had evidently heard the same tale before setting sail and brought sufficient warriors to attack four different cities. Orange, however, failed to provide two knights for their two cities. After a great battle, the barbarians ransacked all cities, except for one of the two Orange ones. At the end of this great holocaust, only Orange still remained a center of civilization able to create commodities like coins from their natural resources.

So, as we scrapped together to rebuild our broken city, the Orange city grew and grew. This growth brought great pain to our small villages. An Orange "diplomat" removed roads that took years to build. Loyal knights suddenly deserted. They even had the audacity to throw a wedding party and ask for resources as presents. (We refused on the principle of being less endowed.) Their road growth was getting out of control and tangling into our territory, so we put a knight in the middle to disrupt their so-called "Longest Road." Then they used some form of intrigue to force that knight away! They also repeatedly sent a robber to stowaway in our forest and steal our lumber. Whatever we tried, we could not win.

Once they hit 17 victory points, everything just kind of ended.

	Motocompo's Dr. Usui Dahlia on the phone YMCK's Midori ready to go on

Lessons for/from a Night Out:

1) If the map to the gallery shows a "Kandagawa," this does not necessarily mean that it is near your house. We ended up biking an hour and a half all the way to Nakaochiai on Saturday night - and then all the way back an hour later. Despite the monotonous repetition of cycling, the bike/walking path along Kandagawa may be one of Tokyo's greatest secret pleasures. Luscious green, old houses with their windows open, beautiful stone bridges, crazy beetle art with light-up eyes.

2) Around six to seven pm, most of the dogs outside are Shiba-ken. Around ten to eleven, most of the dogs are Golden Retrievers.

3) Club Asia in Shibuya fundamentally smells like vomit. I am afraid they will have to tear it down completely to get rid of the odor.

4) I used to see YMCK as some kind of neo-Shibuya-kei spinoff, but watching them last night, the words "Ak*ba-kei" could not help but flash into my head. This should not, however, lead us to undue discrimination! They are God's gift to "Akib*-kei." And now they have 8-bit visuals just as complicated and jazzy as their 8-bit music. They are the Eighth Wonder of the Postmodern World - just not exactly something you would want to listen to every day.

5) Always coordinate your t-shirt choices with dj codomo.

Meet Japan's next Prime Minister, Abe Shinzo: * Calls for pre-emptive strikes against North Korea *Grandson of anti-democratic, Class A war criminal Kishi Nobusuke *Believes that Prime Ministers should worship at Yasukuni Shrine *Believes that Japanese school textbooks must follow the party line *Friend to the Unification Church

Y'all ready for this? (CUE: JOCK JAMS)

One of the key presuppositions of this blog is, "For the last five years, Japanese mainstream pop culture has gotten progressively more boring and less stimulating," to which many answer:

1. Yes! The innovation and spark of the 90s is gone!
2. No! Your head is stuck in the past and you are missing the stunning glory of today!
3. No! You are deluded and have no idea what is actually going on!
4. No! You are looking in the wrong fields. Culture is not just music and street fashion!
5. No! You are a hater!

Every month or so, I start toying with ideas 2-5 and ask my Japanese friends to fill me in on everything I am missing. They never come up with much of anything: they either shrug in resigned apathy or call me later on my cellphone to announce that they are so bored with things that they don't leave the house and I have been talking to thin air the entire time. This gently nudges me towards 1 again. Then I have dinner with my friend and his arty 19 year-old date who tells me "the 90s were the era for me!" which kicks me back into the 1 position.

For a minute at least, let us presume that the "Pop Cultural Decline" idea is at least valid - viewed from a specific subcultural perspective held by many readers of this blog and general non-anime fans of Japanese culture. Some evidence:

1. All cultural industries in totally nosedive, even with increased exports.
2. Koda Kumi - probably the most unattractive, uncharismatic, untalented idol to ever grace the island of Japan. And she is #1, as if all girls decided they wanted to worship stars worse than themselves on every possible criteria other than "fame." Her success proves that Avex has the power to do unnatural, evil things: make rivers flow backwards and turn dogs against their masters.

So far, I have proffered the following explanations for the current malaise:

1. Demographics: smallest percentage of young people in population since WWII (and perhaps, ever?), so companies are moving away from teen-targeted product marketing
2. Economics: decrease of teenage allowances and increase of phone bills has led to reduced spending in the cultural markets of magazines, music, manga, books, and films
3. Information: reduced influence of magazine editors and other "curators" interested in importing "elitist" Western ideas and products into Japan
4. Psychology: a cohort of teenagers who only know economic downturn and have never grasped an interest in consumer spending, which until now, has been the fundamental action of Japanese pop culture
5. Class Dynamics: the rise in income inequality has created the need for middle classes to focus on status-displaying consumer items rather than taste-displaying consumer items

This WaiWai summary of a piece in R25 seems to open up another explanation:

6. Cyclical history: culture moves in (increasingly-shorter) cycles, and Japan is currently stuck worshipping the gaudy, hollow Bubble Era

Those quoted in the article seem to look back fondly upon the Bubble - which they never experienced as adults - because:

1. You were rewarded like a king for just showing up.
2. The job market was unselective and grossly overcompensating.
3. Booze and hostess bars.
4. Anybody with a paycheck got access to "exclusive" clubs.

I can safely say that the cultural artifacts of the Bubble Era account for plus or minus 0 percent of what the rest of the world loves about Japan. Juliana's and "bodicon" and the hack Roppongi demimonde chronicled by K.T. Greenfeld never held much appeal to anyone who did not directly participate. Even our 90s Japanese heroes like Takahashi Jun and Oyamada Keigo spent their Bubble years in underground clubs and small record shops sheltering themselves from the terrible pageant of wealth set to Eurobeat and bad bangs.

If you have the words "Gordon Gekko" tattooed on your lower back in katakana, the Bubble was for you. Otherwise, it was a cultural nightmare, an apocalyptic afterschool special bemoaning the Third Deadly Sin. This was an era of tasteless nobody salarymen flush with cash, nonchalantly ordering $250 bottles of foreign whiskey every single night and then drowning out the executive flavor with ice water. They look back fondly on '89-'91 solely because they can remember the feeling of clutching all that cash, losing up to 100,000 yen a night just because it was hard to eat and hold all those 10,000 yen bills at the same time. Everyone else in the entire world on the Bubble era: *shrug*

So, now we have to deconstruct the Bubble akogare of today's youth. Essentially, they are dissatisfied with:

1. A tight job market.
2. Low salaries.
3. Performance-based pay.
4. Expectations of hard work.

Recession has scarred the psyche into ignoring anything other than the aspiration for a high cash flow. And what would our fair youth do if they had money? Spend it on booze and hired girls.

And here come the bangs!

This Bubble lust also explains why hosts are so such a central part of the popular conscious of the moment: they get to dressed up in awful late 80s fashions and bad tans and make a healthy salary from boozing and chatting with ladies (from the mizu shobai). It's as if the host profession perfectly combines the work and play of the Bubble Era into one lifestyle. If only mom and dad weren't Waseda graduates from Jiyugaoka! If I had moved to Tokyo from some farm village in Saga, I would be host #4 in no time!

No part of this disposition lends itself to "let's celebrate the arts" or "let's use our hard-earned baito money to explore difficult artistic ideas." Much like the Bubble, the more worldly Tokyoites seem to be going back underground, setting up their own subcultural communities, Moodman throwing parties in abandoned hospitals in Chiba. But this group cannot take pride in its permanent outsider legacy. They are not the radicals of the Natural Law Party, but more like the Reform Party in 1996 - an opposition in decline, glory days long past, like fans of Hall and Oates in '92. Success was our greatest curse.

If this is all actually cyclical, the Bubble Revival should end relatively soon, although things feel too early for a real celebration of the 90s. I don't think this is all cyclical though - in five years, broke twenty-somethings are still going to want money for nothing and chicks for free (forgive me, Dire Straits). Maybe their bosses will stop bragging about the "t-backs" at Juliana's though and start talking about how they once saw Ozawa Kenji on the subway.

All in all, one cannot expect much from a population enamored by the greed and banal debauchery of the Bubble Era. I am sure things "were crazy" but they also said that about being at Altamont. Remember: Richie Rich stank like a skunk. You don't get clean in that bath of coins.

Although the Western calendar - ex-AD, now-CE - is becoming more and more standard in Japan, the Imperial Era system of year counting still rules the school on official documents and formal announcements. All you terrible ethnocentric hordes reading this in English probably go around saying the year is 2006 - as if the whole world revolves around the birth of Jesus Christ. Well to the good people of Japan, this year is Heisei 18 (平成壱八) - the 18th year of Emperor Akihito's reign. (By the way, saying Akihito is kind of like addressing God as Yahweh. Or calling Mr. T "Laurence." )

Heisei officially means "peace everywhere" but also connotes something like "becoming flat." (Thanks for jinxing the economy, Era Naming Committee.) Compared to the "Big Justice" of Taisho (大正), Heisei is a bit underwhelming. Apparently, they took it from an ancient Chinese historical text.

When the Showa Emperor died in 1989, scholars offered several candidates for the Era Name, including Shuubun (修文) and Seika (正化). But if these two are romanized, they have the same first letter as Showa, which totally makes the often-used alphabetic abbreviation system worthless. S11 would have been both 1936 and 1999. Heisei worked nicely, because the first letter in English - "H" - is distinct from the "M" of Meiji, "T" of Taisho, and "S" of Showa. (No one really cares about the "K" of Keio.)

So here we have the Japanese state deciding an Imperial Era name for a totally unique, traditional Japanese year system by 1) consulting Chinese texts and 2) worrying about the abbreviation from English romanization. This is the direct descendent of Amaterasu, people! Izanagi did not strike the sword down onto Earth so you could go all "international" to create "Japaneseness."

To be honest, it would be a lot cooler if all the Imperial Era names had the same first letter in English so you had to abbreviate with kanji. What is the point of going to all this trouble if you are just going to use Western letters anyway?

A. Japanese consumer magazines are primarily advertorial.
B. Negative commentary or reviewing directly violates the contract of an advertising buy.

THEREFORE: Japanese magazines cannot take critical stances.

A. Japanese consumer magazines are primarily advertorial.
B. Larger amount of spending leads to larger content outlays.

THEREFORE: Japanese magazine content is decided by the size of advertiser promotion budgets and smaller players will not be able to win media space.

A. Japanese consumer magazines are primarily advertorial.
B. A slight majority of Japanese consumers use magazines as their main guidance for consumption.

THEREFORE: The largest Japanese companies can directly determine major patterns of Japanese consumer behavior.

Sgt. Kurihama: Dr. Ogai! Here is another patient with beriberi.
Patient Yokomizo: I have beriberi.
Sgt. Kurihama: I am no doctor, but I recommend giving him vitamin B1.
Mori Ogai, M.D.: Nonsense!
Patient Yokomizo: I am dead.

---

Ms. Shimizu: Swollen body tissues... looks like another case of beriberi.
Mori Ogai, M.D.: You! Who did you catch this from?
Patient Suzuki: Catch this from? Isn't beriberi a vitamin deficiency?
Mori Ogai, M.D.: Are you mad, son?
Patient Suzuki: I am also dead. I should have gone Navy.

---

Jimmy Westinghouse: Dad, can we get this?
Mr. Westinghouse: Ironic that this box of Berry Berry Kix includes Vitamin B1!
Angry Ghost of Mori Ogai, M.D.: [in Japanese] Why hath you forsaken me?

Upon reading a Mutantfrog post last Friday, I went out and purchased a copy of Fujiwara Masahiko's massive best-seller 「国家の品格」 (Diginity of a Nation) - a book that openly describes itself as "画期的な日本論" (An epoch-making theory of Japan). According to this Time Asia article, this book has sold 2 million copies (now 2,000,001), which is a lot of copies for a book that openly calls for the end of democracy and the return of "warrior ethics." Instead of arguing against imaginary "Nationalist" straw men, we can read this book and critically consider the whether there actually are strong arguments for Japan digging back in its history to find adequate social, economic, and political direction.

Topics include (from the back cover):

* The illusion of capitalism's triumph
* Pride in a civilization based on emotion
* The importance of Japanese and kanji over English
* Knowing the limits of logic
* The revival of bushido (samurai spirit)
* Why foreign aid is unneccesary
* Love of family, love of hometown, love of the fatherland, love of humanity
* Seeking out a "true elite"

So for the next week, let us consider the persuasive arguments of Japan's favorite upper-class, right-wing mathematician. 2 million Japanese readers can't be wrong!

In his JDate profile, right-wing math professor Fujiwara Masahiko would list "Japan, Japanese, bushido, moral education, lifetime employment, decision-making by feeling" in his Likes column and "capitalism, democracy, the United States, stockholders, decision-making by logic, globalization" in his Dislikes column. Thanks to the book's banner, we know all this before even diving into the text. I am assuming we actually go and read the book to find out why these subjective views are not just opinions, but well-argued political positions. 「国家の品格」is a polemical work, attempting to provide arguments for a return to a more "Japanese style" of social organization, and thus we should take the time to consider not only his opinions, but the evidence he uses in support.

Chapter One - 近代的合理精神の限界 - opens things up by looking at the West's world conquest in the Modern Era. And to warm us up for where the argument is going, Fujiwara writes on the third page:

「産業革命の家元イギリスが七つの海を武力によって支配し、その後をアメリカが受け継いだ結果、いま世界中の子供たちが泣きながら英語を勉強している。侵略者の言葉を学ばなければ生きていけないのですから。
もしも私の愛する日本が世界を征服していたら、今ごろ世界中の子供たちが泣きながら、日本語を勉強していたはずです。まことに残念です。」

"England - the head of the Industrial Revolution - ruled the seven seas through military force, and as a result of America inheriting this afterwards, all the world's children are now crying as they learn English. You cannot live without learning the invaders' language.

If the Japan that I love had taken over the world, the world's children would be crying as they learned Japanese. Such a shame."

Before we get confused on the matter, this statement pretty clearly demonstrates that Fujiwara is not against forced cultural imperialism as much as he is upset at who succeeded at world conquest. If only the Japanese had been the ones to take over the world! Also, note his opinion that everyone around the world hates learning English, which I am not sure is the case. I remember Bavarian fifth-graders being extremely enthusiastic about English during my home stay, although their tears may have been saved for our absence. Nevertherless, his association with "study" and "crying" seems to suggest a certain hostility towards foreign language learning in general.

In the next section - entitled "The West Were Savages" - Fujiwara explains that Japan was much more "refined" (洗練された) in olden days than Europe was. Take the year 1500, for example. He stacks up multiple Japanese literary classics against the "only example of literature I can think of" from the West: The Cantebury Tales. And Europe didn't even have unified countries, my friends - compared to Japan, which had been unified since antiquity.

1500 is an interesting time to pick for this comparison, especially seeing that Japan experienced massive and devastating civil war for two hundred years between the mid 15th century to the early 17th century. He also lists England as a "non-unified country" which is only correct if he is using "イギリス" to mean "the United Kingdom." Savages!

This somehow segues into a rant against nuclear proliferation, and then into an anecdote about gun-wielding Belgians who are afraid of Eastern Europeans rolling into town and jetting off with their expensive cars. All advanced countries are facing increases in crime and breakdowns in education and family. What is the cause of this? In Fujiwara's opinion, it is the modern spirit of rationality - the very same one that led to 19th century imperialism. He then directs his ire against the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, which preached "self-determination" for Europe, but not Asia. Fair enough. I know Ho Chi Minh was bummed about that too. But too bad for Ho, communism is also a failure, along with "Competitive Society" and "Meritocratic Society."

Most of this is just exposition without much explanation, so on page 25, I am psyched to hear why exactly "thorough meritocracy is flawed." Here Fujiwara presents the nightmare situation of promotion based on ability: a company where all employees are rivals, senior employees refusing to let younger employees in on know-how, total instability by employees convinced they are surrounded by "enemies." (This explains why Western firms with meritocratic hiring practices do so poorly in the global market.) Fujiwara proudly states, "I am against a thorough meritocracy. I am for a social system based on lifetime employment and aged-based promotion." I guess he doesn't mind that the traditional Japanese stable employment system never applied to 90% of Japan's workers. He does admit, however, that being against meritocracy is seen as "uncool" (かっこ悪い) around the world. And then ends the chapter with, "Extreme competitive society and meritocracy is beastly society." QED, brother.

To end things out with a kick, Fujiwara literally spends the last four pages explaining why stock derivatives are the "time bomb" that will destroy capitalist society.

Overall, Fujiwara makes a lot of points common to liberal positions in the United States: the market cannot solve all social problems, the state should provide a safety net, imperialism is bad, management practices solely considering stockholders are bad. But through associating the entire West with its most extreme political and economic forms - which will be a running theme of the book - he assumes that we need no extra rhetorical step to illucidate why and how the traditional Japanese system - and not a Galbraith-esque state-moderated capitalism, for example - can remedy these problems. We will have to wait until the next chapter for persuasive arguments.

In this installment, I will summarize Fujiwara's arguments in their original order and then add commentary at the end.

Main point: "logic" alone cannot lead to a good society.

Four reasons supporting his thesis:

1) Limits to logic

A. Students at American universities have terrible English. They spell "professor" with two f's. A lot of people were surprised when Dan Quayle made the spelling error with "potatoe" but Fujiwara wasn't. "It reminded me of old times." (懐かしく思いました。）Why is their English so bad? Because instead of learning English, they learn how to type. This is exactly the kind of solution that logic leads to.

B. Elementary school students learn about the stock market in America. "It is not necessary for kids to check the newspaper's financial column." Kids should learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. "They don't need to think about economics and society." This stock learning scheme is also a product of American elite's logical thought process.

C. Japanese elementary school students should not learn English. "If you want to destroy Japan, this is the most sure method." Japanese must learn Japanese to become international citizens. When Fujiwara was at Cambridge University, he was asked by a fellow professor "Is there a connection between the suicide of the teacher in Natsume Soseki's 'Kokoro' and Mishima Yukio's suicide?" The foreign elite will ask Japanese questions like this, so the Japanese must be prepared. A Japanese in the financial sector was asked by his boss, "What was the difference between the two Mongol invasions?"

D. The Japanese lack of English ability used to make them look like quiet types "with something deep in their hearts." All these young kids who speak English destroy the image of the Japanese by having nothing to say. "So much that I want all those who can speak fluently but have nothing to say to shut up when they are overseas." There is no time in the first years of the educational process to learn English. Kids must learn Japanese culture, literature, and history. This makes them "international."

E. The only thing that the public accepts is "one-step" logic. People want to make kids international, so they propose learning English. 86% of the population supports English learning in elementary schools. This is just a logical response to wanting to make people more international. We see the limits to logic in the fact that people keep wanting to wage war, even though every generation realizes how terrible it is. "I think you can call logic a goblin."

2) You cannot explain the most important things with logic.

A. The world cannot be explained in just in mathematical, logical terms. Godel's incompleteness theorems prove this mathematically.

B. You can't prove that murder is bad just through numbers. The old prefecture of Aizu-han taught seven things:

1. You must not disobey the orders of your seniors.
2. You must bow to your seniors.
3. You must not tell a lie.
4. You must not behave in a mean way. (卑怯)
5. You must not bully those weaker than you.
6. You must not eat outside.
7. You must not exchange words with women outside.

Fujiwara thinks these are all right, except for the last one. And written along with these seven lessons is "You must not do what you must not do." This kind of thing cannot be explained with logic.

C. Teachers and parents should push these values onto their kids. "Japanese schools in the post-war have become where they only teach things through logical explanation. It is because they are reflecting upon the excessive teaching of irrational things in the pre-war, like 'The Emperor is a living God' and 'Anglo-Saxon brutes.'" But in a bout of over-reflection, they now fail to teach important things.

"The British-American thought makes everything go through logic. Firmly teaching those parts that cannot be explained by logic is part of Japan's national character and was a great source of the high morality of the Japanese people."

3) The start-off point for logic is crucial.

A. The way you choose hypotheses for a logic chain is through feeling/emotion (情緒) - a word that encompasses religious emotion as well as a person's ability to synthesize (総合力), a person's upbringing, opinion of artworks, and all experiences in love. This determines someone's starting point for logical analysis.

B. For example, if a hungry man steals bread, someone who sees Japan as a nation of law will look upon the that person as a criminal. Someone else may ignore him out of sympathy. These are both decisions dictated by logic, with different starting points and different conclusions.

C. "The Worst is Logical People who Lack Emotional Ability." Even if logical smart people start with a false preconception, their final conclusion will be false. Smart people who cannot use emotion to pick their starting point are frightening.

4) The chain of logic cannot be very long

A. Logic only works if statements are true or false, 0 or 1. But there are no 1s and 0s in real life - not black and whites, only shades of grey. (Omitted from the summary: a page-long argument using an old kotowaza to explain how deduction with percents doesn't work.)

B. Long logic chains are dangerous. For example, everyone wants to make Japanese children into "international people" (国際人) - who will even be respected as humans overseas. So, they believe that if they teach them English, they will learn to speak, and become international. But Fujiwara estimates the chances of becoming international at 10%, as only about 10% of Americans can be called "international." This makes the chance of the whole logic chain to be 0.01%. However, if the logic chain is "Strengthening Japanese teaching at elementary schools --> Enriching people's internal content --> Becoming international," then there is a much greater chance of it working.

C. Why are Indians so good at being software engineers? Because they learn multiplication tables up to 19 x 19 in elementary school - not because they use computers. If you want to make a generation of software engineers, you teach basic math better.

D. A logical person would solve bullying by putting school counselors into schools, but they have done this and it has not helped. The way to stop bullying is to teach the moral idea of 卑怯 - meanness.

If you think you like democracy, freedom, and equality, listen up. This chapter is for you.

1. Freedom (自由) was used in Japan to mean "selfishness, egotism" until the American occupation, where the nuance changed to "human rights." But it still only relates to the "promotion of selfishness" (身勝手の助長). "Thanks to this spectre called 'freedom,' Japan's old morals and traditional forms cultivated by the Japanese for many years have been damaged."

Humans do not have any freedom to begin with - there are legal, moral, ethical, and organizational limits on behavior. The only important freedom is the freedom to criticize power. All other freedoms can be curtailed. "I don't have the freedom to take a whizz on the side of the road." Freedom is nothing more than "fiction" created by the West. The ultimate freedom is the natural rights of Hobbes. Locke's idea of "freedom as long as you do not infringe on other people's freedom or rights" would excuse enjo kosai (schoolgirl prostitution). (He ends that section with this thought and no further explanation.)

2. On Calvin's Predestination, "We (Japanese) could never understand the idea that people who are already saved - even the most heinous and inhuman people - will be saved. Because the Buddhist idea that those who do good and pray to the Buddha will be saved is a much easier-to-understand cause-and-effect rule." Then Fujiwara goes into a discussion of Weber's idea of Calvinism impacting capitalism.

3. Upon hearing the "Declaration of Independence," Fujiwara can only think, "Thomas Jefferson - the 32 year-old Virginia State representative - probably would think that, right?" Also get this: Jefferson, for all his talk about freedom and equality, had slaves. Recently they did a DNA test and found that he fathered a child with one of his slaves - proven by leading science journals.

4. "Locke's freedom and equality are nothing more than Puritan ideas that deny Divine Right, and to me, it is mostly arbitrary. There is nothing that can be called a logical base. That's why Jefferson has to invoke God. Freedom and equality are concepts that cannot be explained properly without God." Also, "'Human dignity,' 'humanism,' and 'human rights' are words that sound sweet to the ear, but if you go back to the source, they are nothing more than Calvinist beliefs."

5. "Is democracy that great?" The big premise to "the sovereignty of the people" is that "the populace can make mature decisions." If this was true, democracy would be the best. But in WWI, all the nations got hot and bothered and went to war. Same with WWII - democracy gave birth to Hitler. Rather than going off and doing things by himself, Hitler was able to successfully agitate the public, and used his support to pursue his plans.

Japan was also a democracy - only seven years after the UK. WWII was "actually a war of democratic countries vs. democratic countries."

6. The press have the most power in a democracy, because they determine public opinion.

7. Right now, there is a worldwide epidimic of political correctness. "That's why we had judicial decisions where OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson are innocent and everybody cocks their head." PC's punishment of the strong is also the reason why the Tokyo courts ruled in favor of the engineer who invented the blue LED when he sued Nichia for inadequate compensation.

8. But the people will never be mature... "The people - all around the world - will always be immature." and therefore the central supposition of democracy will never be fulfilled.

9. "We need a true elite." Democracy will just lead to war, so in order to stop that we need an elite. "These people will control/restrain the democracy that is fundamentally filled with danger of wrecklessness." There are two conditions for this elite: they must be trained in literature, philosophy, history, arts, and science. Second is they will happily throw away their lives to serve the state and the people. This kind of elite does not currently exist in Japan, but they used to.

The bureaucrats are not the true elite. The current Todai-trained bureaucrats are "(standard) deviation elites" (a reference to entrance testing), and their skills do not benefit the nation.

France and England are developing a true elite. Many of whom serve in the UK government, which is why you never see corruption or bribes. "They do not do anything to deceive the country." A third of Americans in WWII wanted to enslave the Japanese, but the government elites rightfully ignored this.

10. Equality is fiction. But the media will never tell you this. "I was never popular with girls in elementary school." I was good at study, but bad at art and soccer and would lose to my wife in a fight. Therefore, "There is no equality in people's talents."

A terrible murderer's life is not worth the same as a baby. Is a consumption tax on everyone or a progressive tax more "equal"?

11. "Equality" (平等) used to mean "flat, even, level" (平坦). Buddha's compassion was equal to all living things - there was nothing conflict-related about the word. In Japan, difference does not correspond to an axis for conflict, but compassion (惻隠) - consideration for the weaker, the defeated, and the picked on. That's the bushido way. If you have enough compassion, difference between people will go away and you will not need the fiction of equality.

In the "equal" America, CEO's make 300 times the salary of the average worker. Black baseballer Barry Bonds got four dead balls twelve times when he tried to beat white man Mark McGwire's record.

12. Freedom and equality cannot coexist. "God does not commit the crime of contradiction. Saying that God gave us freedom and equality is a big red lie." Equality and freedom clash, different people's freedoms clash. If you set equal conditions for competition, the strong devour the meek, income disparity occurs, and you have inequality. People argue about the equality of result and the equality of opportunity, but it's a big joke. Proof being that Tokyo University students have the most wealthy parents.

The world is drunk on democracy, freedom, and equality. And I believe this is a cause of the troubles facing the current world.

"In the future, Fifteen will be famous."

I am suddenly and urgently being sent out to FUJIROCK (ROCK!) on strange assignment and will continue blogging Fujiwara's Dignity next week.

Stay dry. For some reason these rock festivals call upon the Rain Gods.

We totally trashed our hotel room.

These shoes were once blue. And I had rolled up the cuffs to make sure the bottom of my jeans "didn't get muddy."

The OECD just came out with their 2006 Economic Survey of Japan, which generally says, Japan's economy is doing pretty good at the moment, but the nation has to undertake serious steps in managing innovation and reducing inequality to keep up adequate growth for the next decade. The report closely examines the relatively new problem of income equality in Japan. Measures like relative poverty have basically reached American levels after fifty years of enviably low disparity.

The OECD's conclusions about the nature of income inequality seem to contradict Fujiwara Masahiko's arguments in Dignity of a Nation: namely, the age old idea that lifetime employment helps reduce income disparity.

A lot of Nihonjinron writers like to associate Japan's historically low Gini coefficient with Japan's unique "lifetime employment (終身雇用)" system, where employees stay with the same company for their entire career. Fujiwara sees this as a key to social stability, claiming that merit-based promotion would cause destructive internal competition within companies. The OECD does back the claim that seniority-based pay - which goes hand in hand with lifetime employment - has helped limit the difference between employees of the same age in different companies. So on that point, the old belief may be true.

The problem is that the old lifetime employment system depends on a very rigid recruitment process (the so-called "shuushoku katsudou"), and even though young workers are no longer likely to stay around at one firm for their whole lives, they will still start their careers by passing through the very narrow gate of this process. Once within the company, the "regular employees" (正社員) acquired through the formal process will work side-by-side with "non-regular employees" (temps, those on yearly contracts) - but rewarded in completely different pay schemes. Non-regular workers make on average only 40% of the regular worker salaries, which the OECD says cannot be explained just through differences in productivity. And no matter how well the non-regulars perform, they will almost never be able to jump over to the "regular" career track. Participation in that initial recruitment drive now means everything for your future earnings and class status.

For the most part, the regular workers all come from top-notch four-year universities. Those without such credentials can't get in the front door at recruitment, and even those with degrees who fail to "pledge" a first-tier company in their early 20s may never be able to get back on the mainline track. This creates what the OECD calls a "market dualism" - an elite track and a "non-regular" track coexisting without much chance of non-elite workers movin' on up.

Why did this system not cause as much income inequality in the past? My guess is that companies hired more of their staff through the formal channels and outsourced work to other smaller firms with rigid employment ladders. Once the Bubble burst, these companies took less and less "formal" workers and used temps and non-regular hires to fill in the gaps at a low cost.

The OECD calls for less legal barriers to firing regular employees. These "Golden Boys/Girls" on the elite track can essentially never be fired, which is not true for their non-regular counterparts. If you get rid of the remnants of the old system and hire based on skill/merit alone, non-regular workers would be able to get hired at a decent pay scale and perhaps move up the career ladder at their companies. As it stands now, those who can ace placement tests at age 17 and look good in a cheap suit at 21 are the only ones who can stay middle-class. The old traditional Japanese employment system now exacerbates the income inequality problem instead of solving it.