Sean Kinsell: 亥年

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Posted by Sean Kinsell:
亥年
http://whiteperil.com/posts/1167448063.shtml


   I've just finished former Knight Ridder Tokyo bureau chief Michaei
   Zielenziger's book [1]Shutting out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own
   Lost Generation. So many books have now been written about what's
   wrong with post-Bubble Japan that I wish I could say that
   Zielenziger's is redundant, that the big problems have already been
   sufficiently teased out and there isn't much more to add to the
   discussion. Unfortunately, that's not the case, and one of the virtues
   of Zielenziger's book is that he focuses on the patterns that emerge
   from talking with individual Japanese people about their lives.
   His focus, as his subtitle implies, is on Japanese adults born in the
   '60s and '70s. He's spoken mostly to men who've dropped out of society
   and rarely leave home, women who are approaching middle age but
   unmarried. At this stage in their lives, they would be expected to
   have their families and careers and, for lack of a better term, life
   goals established pretty well. Why is it that so many do not, despite
   living in an affluent, well-educated, democratic society?
   One obvious but clever way he considers the question is by way of
   comparison: Why is it that Korea, so similar to those of Japan in so
   many ways, was specifically able to rebound from the Asian financial
   crisis a decade ago and is generally more receptive to social and
   economic reforms? One of Zielenziger's key answers is something that,
   while extensively discussed in academic circles, doesn't get much play
   in the mass-audience books about East Asia I know of:

     In my somewhat conventional coverage of the political and economic
     character of these two competing societies while working as a
     journalist, it had never dawned on me that the role religion played
     could prove so decisive in altering a people's attitudes toward
     self-esteem, individuation, or communal responsibility. Nothing in
     my background or disposition as an American Jew prepared me to
     accept that the rise of Western religion--and especially the
     Protestant Church--had served as a vital force crucial in
     transforming South Korean society. It may be too simple to argue
     that exposure to Christianity alone has changed Korean
     consciousness. Yet the churches have coached the Korean people in
     forming social networks, building trust among strangers, and
     accepting universal ethics and individualism in ways that served as
     powerful antidotes to the autocratic worldview their
     grandparents--and, indeed, the Japanese--had been taught.

   I happen to think that the Japanese view of nature--as crowded with
   turbulent, competing and complementary forces that are, on balance,
   indifferent to human joy and pain--is a much more accurate reflection
   of reality than Christian theology. But the same imagination that
   allowed our Western ancestors to conceive of God as an immanent,
   transcendent, more super-cool version of us (complete with a
   highly-evolved personality) is what allowed them to conceive of
   principles above and beyond group-rule and of the possibility of
   asserting will over nature.
   There's a danger in extending that explanation too far, of course.
   Korea, despite having been the Hermit Kingdom, is a peninsula attached
   to Asia; the neighbors with which it shares borders are huge and
   frequently pushy. Korea has a long history of dealing with and
   adapting to external forces, and since the 1950s, the South has had
   the proximity of the DPRK to maintain a sense of urgent mindfulness of
   hard reality. So Christian missionaries have not been the only source
   of difference in outlook between Korea and Japan; nevertheless,
   Zielenziger is right to pay attention to them.
   On a more amusing note of possible ill portent, the Yomiuri [2]reports
   the following:

     Four people suffered an ominous start to the Year of the Boar when
     they were attacked in the street--by wild boars.
     ...
     Local police suspect that several different wild boars attacked the
     four, noting that their descriptions of the animals were different.

   It may be that nature is rebelling; it's more likely that boars are
   just more newsworthy right about now than they have been since twelve
   years ago. The New Year danger of [3]choking on sticky rice cakes, by
   contrast, is an annual thing; in the Tokyo area, eleven elderly people
   were taken to the hospital, with five still in critical condition. In
   Japan, even the rice cakes have hidden dangers.
   Happy New Year, everyone.

References

   1. http://www.shuttingoutthesun.com/
   2. http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070102p2a00m0na001000c.html
   3. http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070102p2a00m0na016000c.html