When China Rules the World полностью

In order for ‘our realm’ to be marked, significant differences have been selected and organised not merely to differentiate between ‘us’ (the Japanese) and ‘them’ (the other countries from which cultural elements are borrowed), but, more importantly, to emphasise the existence of ‘our own realm’ and therefore to demonstrate the uninterrupted continuation of ‘our’ nation as a cultural entity. In this way, the sense of historical continuity can also be maintained. It is this cultural realm of ‘ours’ to which the Japanese claim exclusive ownership. [147]

The distinctiveness of Japan is thus defined and maintained in two ways: firstly in the notion of the Japanese realm as described, consisting of those elements regarded as exclusively and authentically Japanese; and secondly in the unique amalgam of the various foreign influences combined with those elements regarded as distinctively Japanese. As one would expect, the notion of a Japanese realm takes precedence over hybridity in the Japanese sense of self; although it embraces material objects as diverse as tatami mats, sake and sumo wrestling, Japanese uniqueness centres around how the Japanese behave differently from non-Japanese, or where the symbolic boundary between the Japanese and foreigners should be drawn. [148] The duality embraced in the juxtaposition of the indigenous and the foreign can be found in many aspects of Japanese life. Somehow the two coexist, often with little leakage between them, with the foreign influences absorbed and reformatted, blended and incorporated. [149] Japanese modernity, as a consequence, is a highly complex, incongruous and at times bizarre phenomenon. This hybridity dates back to the era of Chinese influence but has been most marked, and traumatic, during the era of Westernization. It is so deeply entrenched that it is now taken for granted as something thoroughly natural and intrinsic to Japan. Western-style clothes may be the norm, but kimonos are a common sight on Sundays, and Japanese clothes are frequently worn at home. Japanese food contains Japanese, Chinese and Western elements, with both chopsticks and cutlery commonly used. Reaching further back into history, as noted earlier, the Japanese language consists of a combination of both Chinese-derived and Japanese characters.

After periods of intense Westernization, the relationship between Japanese and Western elements in the country has been the subject of intense reflection and debate. Japan’s post-1868 history, indeed, has seen alternating phases of Westernization and Japanization. The first twenty years after the Meiji Restoration saw a furious process of Westernization on many fronts, but by 1900 this had given way to a period of introspection and an attempt to specify the nature of the Japanese essence. In this debate three characteristics were used to define Japaneseness: the emperor system, the samurai spirit, and the idea of a family society (with the emperor as father). After the defeat in the Second World War and the American occupation, there was again a frantic period of economic catch-up and Westernization followed, in the 1970s and early 1980s, by a further phase of seeking to define the nature of the Japanese realm, [150] though the conception of ‘Japaneseness’ deployed at this juncture was distinctively different from that of the early 1900s. The nihonjinron (meaning ‘discussions on the nature of the Japanese’) in the 1970s focused on Japan as a homogeneous and group-orientated society, and the Japanese as a non-verbal, non-logical people. [151] Not surprisingly, given the context of the times, these latter characteristics were essentially designed to define Japaneseness in contradistinction to the American influence that had loomed so large in Japanese life during the post-war decades.

In reality, of course, the nature of Japaneseness cannot be expressed in such reductionist terms. The nihonjinron were politically inspired cultural responses to Western influence. They tell us much about the Japanese psyche, about the desire to be different and distinct, but they only partially reveal what is continuingly and persistently different about Japan. In The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Ruth Benedict argues:

In studies of Western nations one who is untrained in studies of comparative cultures overlooks whole areas of behaviour. He takes so much for granted that he does not explore the range of trivial habits in daily living and all those accepted verdicts on homely matters, which, thrown large on the national screen, have more to do with that nation’s future than treaties signed by diplomats. [152]

The distinctiveness of Japan – as with other countries, indeed – lies precisely in the stuff of the everyday and the easily overlooked, from the nature of relationships to the values that inform people’s behaviour.