Lessons from Japan
Dear readers,
after the interview with historian Miho Matsunuma on the differences between Japanese and Western identity, let's continue our exploration of Japanese civilization with Les Leçons du Japon, un pays très incorrect (2019), a book by Jean-Marie Bouissou, French historian specializing in Japan. Married to a Japanese woman, he lived in the archipelago for 15 years and has published more than a dozen works on the country's history, culture and aesthetics.
In this book peppered with anecdotes, the historian reveals the different facets of the Japanese people, who are at once conservative and welcoming, tough and polite. Throughout the book, he compares Japan to France and the West to bring out the cultural particularities of Japan. The author explains that Japan is not a country that stands still, but changes take place gradually and without jeopardizing national cohesion. Without hiding its inner ills (the status of women and deaths in the workplace in particular), Jean-Marie Bouissou describes a Japanese society that is much calmer than our Western societies.
While it would take too long to summarise the whole of this dense and detailed book, I would nevertheless like to focus on two chapters that particularly caught my attention:
A tailor-made religion
Preserving national cohesion
A tailor-made religion
The book answers a question I've often asked myself: what is Japan's religion? Monotheism has never taken root there: the archipelago has never known Islam, and Christianity was violently extirpated in the 17th century (on this historical episode, I recommend Martin Scorcese's magnificent film Silence). Japan is one of the few countries to have a religion it shares with no other people. It was born nearly 15 centuries ago from a combination of 3 elements:
Shintoism or "the way of the divine": the only indigenous element, it is a set of beliefs dating back to the origins of the country. Shinto is based on a quest for harmony with the ancestors and nature;
Confucianism: more a social morality than a religion, it was imported from China and aims for the stability of a harmonious society;
Buddhism: also originating on the mainland and arriving with Confucianism, it has been Japonised and takes charge of the rites and ceremonies associated with death.
This Shinto-Confucian-Buddhist combination, with its 3 perfectly complementary components, is unique in the world and ensures strong social cohesion in the country. On a day-to-day basis, a Japanese person can go to a Shinto shrine to ask for divine help in solving a personal problem, and then attend a funeral in a Buddhist temple. The author explains that this religious system, rooted in reality, is much more 'down-to-earth' than Christianity, a universalist religion marked by the quest for salvation.
Preserving national cohesion
"For the vast majority of the population, and almost the entire political and media class, it still goes without saying that Japan is a country of a special breed, a nation unto itself, whose culture, language and civilisation are like no other, and which draws its strength from its specificity" Jean-Marie Bouissou in Les Leçons du Japon.
For the author, this is one of the main 'politically incorrect' aspects of Japan. While mention of national identity or civilization may be perceived negatively in the West, it goes without saying in Japan. The country is very keen to preserve its culture, which is made up of hundreds of rituals and social codes that are often imperceptible and incomprehensible to foreigners. Young Japanese are taught to love their country. While "the right to be different" has become a cardinal value in the West, Japan places social cohesion above all else. Let's take two examples to illustrate this.
The first is the Japanese judicial system, a symbol of the primacy of society over the individual and made famous by the arrest and escape of Carlos Ghosn, the former CEO of Renault-Nissan. For example, police custody in Japan can last up to 22 days (2 days maximum in France), takes place in spartan conditions and 99% of those brought before the court are found guilty. From a Western perspective, this harshness may seem shocking, but it can be explained by the Confucian cultural context, in which any deviation from the rules is seen as an attack on society itself. It should also be remembered that Japan still practices the death penalty: 13 members of the Aum sect implicated in a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 were hanged in 2018 (the expression "between tradition and modernity" is not a misnomer: Japan is one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world and yet executes those sentenced to death solely by hanging... The Shinkansen and the Gallows).
The second concerns Japan's migration policy. Despite its rapidly ageing population, Japan refuses to make massive use of foreign labour. And while it has agreed to grant a 5-year visa to 350,000 foreign workers in 2018, they are pre-selected before their arrival via examinations and come from culturally compatible (i.e. Confucian) countries such as China and Vietnam. Japan values its cohesion and does not want to suffer the same fate as the multicultural and multiconflicting societies of the West.
Conclusion: "and yet, Japan works".
"The Japanese seem to like themselves a lot better than we do, or at least put up with themselves".
Despite a declining population and numerous internal challenges, Japan remains the world's third-largest economy and its society is highly cohesive. With no unemployment, no cultural or ethnic divides, very little crime, high-quality public services and a determination to preserve a unique civilizational heritage, this very unpolitically correct country escapes many of the ills of our societies. The historian invites us to take a greater interest in Japan, which has certain lessons to teach us.
P.S. For my Parisian readers, I recommend the photo exhibition Portrait éphémère du Japon at the Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet (Paris XVIe) until 15 January 2024. Photographer Pierre-Elie de Pibrac spent a year immersed in Japan with his family to gain a better understanding of Japanese culture.