Dogs and Demons

Conclusion

E pur si muove (But it does move).

– Galileo Galilei, said under his breath after he was forced to recant his belief that the earth moved around the sun (1632)

 In contrast to most books by Europeans and Americans on Japan, this one has avoided the words «Japan must» and «Japan should,» for I do not believe that foreigners should make demands on Japan. Nothing is more damaging to U.S.-Japan relations than Washington's noisy insistence that Japan rationalize its financial markets, boost domestic demand, and so forth. It enrages – rightly – politicians like Ishihara Shintaro, who resent American insolence, and it frightens the average citizen, who is aware of how misguided such advice often is. For example, American pressure to «pump-prime» the economy does real damage, for pouring money into public works only exacerbates Japan's worst problem, which is its addiction to government-subsidized construction. Writing this book has not been easy, for many of the issues raised here are close to unknown overseas. It has been challenging to describe in a believable way Japan's cultural trauma, so beyond most people's experience in Western countries that it strains credibility. Yet the situation that I have been describing is all too real, and the hope for the future, I believe, lies in seeing the condition of modern Japan for what it is – only from recognition and understanding will come change. I have written to describe and not prescribe. That said, it would be ingenuous to claim that I have no personal hopes for Japan. For one who loves Japan's culture and its rivers and mountains, the disaster overtaking cities and countryside has been heartrending to witness. I've written this book for my Japanese friends and millions of others who have so far had very little voice in the foreign media, who feel as sad and angry as I do. Although I'm skeptical of Japan's ability to change (the very roots of the tragedy lie in systems that repress change), in my heart I dream of change. Modern Japan is an emotional minefield. Old-line Japanologists, in my view, are so convinced that their duty lies in preaching Japan's glory that these subjects deeply frighten them. People are afraid to open the closet, afraid that the sight of the skeletons inside might undermine what they love about Japan, and fearful, too, lest the high-powered international forums they belong to do not invite them back to future meetings. While this situation has changed in recent years with regard to finance, it is still largely true when it comes to culture. The popularizers of Japanese culture, the people who write about Zen, flowers, the tea ceremony, architecture, design, and so forth, are still writing as if they hadn't noticed that there is trouble in Eden. But there is trouble, and it has happened once before in the past century when a similar process led the nation into disaster. One may easily draw parallels between the collapse of the Taisho Renaissance of the 1910s and 1920s and the Heisei Depression of the 1990s. In both cases, systems of inflexible government and education stifled a generation of freedom and creativity. The same mechanisms that caused Japan to veer off course before World War II – a ruling elite guiding a system aimed single-mindedly at expansion – are at work today. Over the years, foreign observers have looked with envy at the «Japanese paradigm,» in which the goal of the economy is to expand at all costs, and not necessarily to benefit the citizenry. The virtue of this paradigm lies in the sacrifices the people make in exchange for national economic power. But it is time to review this paradigm and take a long look at Japan's concrete-shrouded rivers, shabby cities, stagnant financial markets, Hello Kitty-fied cultural life, and mismanaged resorts, parks, and hospitals, and to see them for what they are. Perhaps Japans twentieth-century history is not that of a nation that has successfully adapted to modernity but one that has twice mal-adapted, with calamitous results. In asking ourselves at the deepest level what happened to Japan, it helps, oddly enough, to look again at ikebana flower arrangement. One day in the fall of 1999,1 broached a question to the flower master Kawase Toshiro. It was something that had long been troubling me: What is the real difference between old-style ikebana and the monstrosities that pass under that name these days? One can regret the use of wire and vinyl cutouts, the way flowers and leaves are stapled and folded together, the way manuals diagram arrangements in terms of exact angles at such-and-such degree – but all of these things, however distorted, do have roots in the tradition. What is the crucial difference? Kawase's answer was that modern flowers lack jitsu – that is, «reality.» Traditional flowers had a purpose, whether it was religious or ritual; people in those days had a mystical respect for the wonders of nature and used their arrangements as a way of seeking and responding to the creative breath of the cosmos. Nowadays, all this is lost. There is no purpose except decoration for its own sake, no inquiring after the nature of plants and flowers themselves. Instead, the flowers are just «material,» not much different from any other material such as vinyl and wire, used any which way to serve the whimsical needs of the arrangers. In short, there is no jitsu, no spiritual purpose, nothing that co