Still Not Unmasked

Foreword: this was written one and a half years ago as my book report on a thin introduction of Japan, Japan Unmasked.

This book was chosen because it was not too thick nor too thin for a ten-day course, and the coverage and its title were both attractive. However, later I found out it was a book for foreign businessmen who wanted to made deals with Japanese and money from them. And the writer is a French, many ideas of whom I find are not insightful enough. The book is divided into 38 chapters, each with a title quite intriguing but actually reveals nothing in depth. The most severe problem with this book is that it is not supported by convincing statistics. The author just tells what he sees and experiences. It is proper for essay writing. But for a reader like me who try to get a more comprehensive knowledge of Japan, the book is far from satisfying. It only tells what the author sees personally. It never explains enough or tells me why.

Now I am going to introduce this book within my divisions.

Being Japanese and un-Japanese

According the author, Japanese have developed a very strict and impenetrable “Kata” system. Kata means the social system belonging only to Japan, including its unique etiquettes, social classifications, and its culture.

How can Japan do this? First, it is a city-state like country located in an island. Though Japan has developed its business relations with the neighboring Korea and China for more than 1500 years and actually borrowed or “stolen” a lot from them, Japan absorbed all the exotic resources into its own system, labeling them differently and even changing them into a totally new being. All the confusions, frustrations or fascinations about Japan have probably originated from this.

Japanese have a common philosophy of life. The author of this book makes his conclusion mostly from the point view of a businessman. I want to conclude from a more cultural way. Japanese share the characteristics as below:

1. Their choose their exclusion and isolation from the outside world, that is, their unreasonable persistence to be a pure Japanese;

2. They pursue absolute homogenization of almost every aspect of life. Japanese therefore stick to a whole set of rules and regulations existing in this country and punish those who can’t obey them and be “outstanding”’

3. Japanese have a different logic and communicate in a nonverbal way, which prevent them from being understood and conquered by other nationalities;

4. Japanese believe that the more devoted and skilled they are at their work, the closer they are to wisdom and happiness. That’s why Japanese never give up the pursuit for perfection and make best-quality products in the world.

5. Japan refuses any fundamental change and has the “moral hazard” syndrome. Coached in their identity as Japanese, they tend to have the victim mentality and avoid responsibility.

The five points I conclude from the book are those which I find agreeable. The author also points out the new trend among some young Japanese that they want to be de-Japanized. It is quite easy to know why. Japan sells its goods to all over the world and had been the second largest economic body for a long time. Though it has tried many ways and succeeded in isolating itself from the outside, part of the Japanese mind cannot avoid being “polluted” by foreign thinking. Japan’s economic expansion gets itself involved in the inevitable internalization/globalization.

Japanese vs. English: spoken with different halves of the brain

The author of Japan Unmasked even complains that it seems impossible for a foreigner to fully handle good Japanese if he was not born and brought up in Japan. Chasms of logic and cultural contents lie in Japanese and English. Japanese is such a “loaded language” that one has to be a Japanese in order to learn Japanese well. People speak Japanese and English even with the different halves of the brain.

According to Chomsky, a founding father and pioneer of linguistics, language shows a lot about the people and the country which speak it. Social contexts are exposed, and even the invisible social taboos can be detected in its language once the taboos are transferred secretly into linguistic symbols and safely preserved. The author tells how difficult it has been for many foreigners to learn Japanese. Months of intense learning, for example, nine hours per day’s dedication to Japanese, is indispensable.

Since I have not studied Japanese myself, I cannot tell whether the author is exaggerating or not. However, it is true that many Chinese are learning this language and have learned it well. Is it because Asian people are after all closer to Japanese’s logic and thus their language compared to this author from France that it will also be easier for Asians to learn Japanese? This is quite worth doing research on.

How to kata-ize Japan: hell schools and “black-mark” system

The author of this book has expressed his amaze on how Japan can keep its Nihonteki—that is, its Japan essence – undamaged for such a long time. Common sense informs us that if one country wants to fulfill any of its ambition to brainwash and propaganda, it should take action early enough and tough enough. That’s how the hell schools and “black-mark” system come into being in Japan.

Education is crucial to a country’s success. Many westerners have showed their heaping praise for Japan’s education system, since it has created many highly efficient workers and made Japan an economic miracle. People praise Japan’s education for its clear-cut disciplines and with-aim trainings. But the author of this book seems to put up with the opposite question. He tells about the Ijime phenomenon. Ijime means

“ to tease in its better form and to torment in its worse form”.

Who will be the targets of Ijime? I have talked about Japan’s deliberate isolation from non-Japan world. So what will happen to the Un-Japanese if they refuse to be totally Japanese? Many children had moved with their parents abroad and then went back to Japan. When they were back to schools in Japan, they were treated by both the teachers and their classmates as un-Japanese aliens and traitors of Japan. These move-back young students will be threatened and abused by the native Japanese. They become the victims of the prevalent Ijime.

The author also gives another explanation for Ijime. Japan as a country refusing democracy and embracing high unification, has since 17^th century decided for its students what textbooks to read and what exams to take. The set curriculum and exams can be very demanding and cause among students fierce competition and further hell-like atmosphere. Japanese education, according to the author, trains machine-like geniuses on math and science but they cannot think independently and creatively. Students tend to transfer their pressure and depression resulting from overloaded study to their classmates.

In schools there is Ijime to ensure the Japanization to go on. In the adult world, Japan has the “black-mark” system to carry out its mission. In Japan seniority is taken as an important standard for evaluation. Old people, as long as they adhere to the rules set for a Japanese and don’t make any mistake, can get promotion and respect in Japanese society. Under such a system, one takes double risks making any changes or mistakes. Once a Japanese makes a mistake or offense, the “black-mark” system in Japan will never forget his or her fault or wrong-taken step. This black-mark system exists anywhere and anytime. One takes the “black-mark” record in his dossier wherever he goes. That prevents a Japanese to take bold moves and therefore makes a Japanese more willing to be fettered in the Japan identity.

Last but not least

Besides what I conclude as above, the author also makes other points in his 213-page book. He describes the sex trade in Japan as “in a glass”, and accuses Japan most of its legal or extralegal barriers to stop foreign business out of its door.

After reading the whole book, what surprises me most is that Japan in the eyes of this French author can also be China in the eyes of many other westerners. His interpretations about Japan show his confusion as a French to an Asian country. For a long time I have taken as granted that Japan is so different that even the fact that it is located in Asia proves nothing about its relativity to other Asian countries. But this book changed my “bias”. To a westerner, Japan is still very Asian, as Asian as China and India. And many of the author’s confusions are not at all confusing to me.

Cross-cultural study has always been in my keen interest. Though this book cannot be counted as a masterpiece, it still has its value when it reveals to me how strange and abnormal an Asian can be to a westerner, while the Asian in his description is just an Asian like me. I even have to control my impulse to defend for the Japanese in his book.

Sadly, I always find out what interests the author most is what on earth makes Japan the second strongest economic body in the world. It is Japan’s economic success that leads De Mente to dig into Japanese persona as a whole. I have to say he doesn’t do his job good enough. This just reminds me of how an author should keep as both objective and respectful as he can when he writes about another country or people he does not belong to. Cross-cultural study has its significance only when people doing the study aim to understand the different culture, and not to push some universal principles or judgments on cultural pagans.