Japan

In today's DDW’s Complete Generalisations About Other Cultures, we tackle a people who always say please and thank you, but cannot say no. Japanese are as complicated as they are endearing, traditional with a strong sense of self, yet endlessly inventive and high-tech. Only in The Land of the Rising Sun can you embark on a sandal-clad shuffle to the bathroom along creaky, wooden floorboards, admiring cherry-blossom painted silk walls – to then encounter a toilet with more buttons, modes and options than a Jaguar X-Type.

One need only turn on the news in recent weeks to admire both the staunch pride and endless humility of the Japanese – a social attitude difficult to understand for the average westerner. Take the words of Yuji Arai, the Tokyo Fire Department Chief, while addressing firemen entrusted with hosing down the damaged Fukushima reactor: “The reputation of Japan and the lives of many people rest on your actions.” The priorities of the nation can hardly be listed more accurately.*

Japan has always been torn between its own unique culture and foreign influence. From roughly 500-700, the ruling Japanese clans adopted Chinese practices as a means of increasing their status, including writing, architecture, a Confucian constitution and, most importantly, Buddhism – a religion that was used to unify the populace. While Japanese artistic culture evolved to its peak, lavish courtiers lost track of the growing power of their professional warriors – the Samurai.

As time passed, the Japanese obsession with food

became one with the warrior code.

From then on, Japan was a feudal state under the control of the Shogun, who spent the next few centuries fighting off Mongols and knocking off family members. When the Europeans landed in the 16th Century, Christian missionaries brought trade and the word of god. The Tokugawa Shogunate decided to keep the guns and the tempura**, and kill the Christians instead. Japan was then effectively isolated from the rest of the world until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

A rapid cycle of modernisation followed, again Japan demonstrated the ways of the enemy by invading Korea in 1903 and sinking the Russian fleet in 1905 – until then no European power had imagined an Asian nation capable of such a thing, as propaganda of the time suggests. The expansionist, Emperor-worshipping state that we know and love from Hollywood soon evolved – admitting defeat only after the nuclear destruction of two densely populated cities.

Such is the price of Japanese honour; a price they are willing to pay. This quiet dignity is the nation’s most notable characteristic and often clashes with the values of the new generation. A contemporary Japanese account of Portuguese traders in the 1540s rings true today: “They show their feelings without any self-control.” Watching the reaction of recent earthquake victims highlights this mantra and reminds the rest of us how the unassuming nature and generous hospitality of Japanese keeps their society together in the face of crisis.

* To be fair, the west likes to list things in order of importance too. Take George W. Bush in his State of the Union address in 2002: “In every region, free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power to lift lives.”


** From the Latin, tempora, meaning ‘times’. Used by Portuguese missionaries to refer to Lent. In effect, fried fish time!

Elections

The morning light penetrates the curtains and a deep sigh heaves past your lips as you clamour out of bed. Vegemite on toast is no consolation, nor is the warm breeze and singing birdlife that greets you at your doorstep. Reluctance renders your thighs incapable of movement, before a forced step sets you on your way towards the local primary school. You regret that last hesitation at the front gate, as energetic pamphleteers drown you with the same stupid grin as the glossy posters of their respective masters. Not far to go now; Election Day is almost over.

With such joy do we celebrate our occasional democratic duty; savouring those few weeks in which everyone voices their two bob’s worth. While the blood of the passionate boils and the tongues of the ignorant wag, it is tough for the average voter not slump into lukewarm indifference as the standard of our discourse plummets. Amplified by the noise of anonymous user comments on news items and social media stand-offs, one cannot be blamed for being sick of it all.

When Simon de Montfort defeated King Henry III’s army and instituted the first elected English parliament in 1265, he became a poster boy for democracy and remains so today. Sadly, for de Montfort, progress was going a little too fast for the aristocracy and the church. Within a year his allies changed teams, the King was restored and his dismembered corpse was displayed on various pikestaffs around England. Although quartering has gone out of fashion – our current political crop bears the same ill-mannered fruit.

Some men were born to lead.

By the early 1700s, the two-party, legislative system evolved in Great Britain. Over the next hundred years, a brood of distantly related, fat, German kings sat upon the throne; power gradually shifting from the monarch to the parliament. The Australian colonies soon adopted this system, before creating the Commonwealth Parliament in 1901. Since the emergence of the Liberals in 1946, two familiar shades of grey preside to this day. The other being Labor which was founded in 1891. 

The contrasting agendas of the conservative, royalist Tories and the progressive, reforming Whigs of 18^th Century British parliament have, in Australia, evolved into little more than a managerial bickering between two indistinguishable groups of technocrats. By technocrats, I mean the caste of managerial politicians who revel in the endless one-upmanship, knowing that saying nothing is much more effective than saying something imaginative or controversial. Both sides feed off each other’s mistakes – turning a statement made in jest or an admission of fault by either side into childlike gossiping while we – the hungry pigs – snuffle at the media trough, greedily devouring mud disguised as apples.

When you stand there at the entrance of the primary school, take the time to observe the compartmentalising of our common sense and intelligence into bland slogans and bleached smiles. Compare it to the nothingness that wafts from the talking heads that are experts in not answering questions and playing it safe. Know that a politician, by any other name, will still smell as repugnant. Ponder the days where they once contemplated the people who gave them their position and take comfort that plenty more are in line to take their place.

Election Day is our day to speak. Don’t worry too much – you are already spoken for.