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Seven Falls, Eight Rises: A Thematic History of an Enigmatic People
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10687 |
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CULTURE
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1 / 1986 |
4,359 Words |
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H. Neill McFarland
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Among the nations of East Asia, Japan most consistently holds the attention of the West, but remains a perennial enigma. The character of the Western view of Japan clearly reflects puzzlement. It is a mixture of widely varied moods and attitudes: respect, consternation, admiration, envy, amazement, fear, resentment.
On two points, however, there is considerable unanimity: first, the West is impressed by the rapidity and magnitude of Japan's economic recovery and expansion; second, persons who once condescendingly regarded the Japanese as only skillful copiers now study Japanese management and production techniques as potential models for reviving their own stagnant, non competitive industries.
Numerous books, articles, lectures, and seminars are being devoted to understanding the forms and formulas of Japan's success. Persons from the West seeking to visit industrial establishments in Japan have become so numerous that they cannot all be accommodated.
As a result of such intensive inquiry nearly every interested person in the West now knows that Japanese society and its institutions are paternalistic, that decisions are made more often by consensus than by individual fiat, and that a concern for long-range viability generally outweighs an interest in short-range profitability. However, there still remains the problem of finding in these circumstances models that are transculturally transmissible.
Behind the forms and formulas of Japanese enterprise lie subtle and spiritual factors that are difficult to identify and understand and may be impossible to adopt. Expanding and diversifying the fringe benefits of the workers in an American industry could be a laudable move, which might very well also result in improved quality and productivity, but it would represent only superficially the transmittal of a Japanese model.
Recently an American automobile executive was engaged by a Japanese company to manage certain of its operations in the United States. In addition to receiving instructions in Japanese management technique, he has begun to study the Japanese language and to build a Japanese -style landscape garden. His instincts are right and his efforts will pay off, but to what extent can he hope ever really to discover and appropriate the motivations, the soul, the spirit of the Japanese?
That such intangible factors exist seems self evident. How else is one to account for the massive enigma that makes Japan perennially so fascinating to the West? Among both Japanese and non-Japanese there has arisen a notion that ultimately, Japanese culture is inscrutable. Many Japanese cherish this notion as a fact; many non-Japanese respect it as a distinct possibility.
An examination of some of the more visible signs of the spirit of Japan might yield insights into how that spirit underlies the phenomenal achievements of Japan in the contemporary world. We shall begin with a toy.
An ubiquitous item in Japan is a caricature of the Zen Buddhist patriarch Bodhidharma (known in Japan as Daruma) in the form of a roly-poly doll which, when knocked over, always returns to an upright position. Called okiagari koboshi, "little self-righting monk,"
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