标题: 'Conformity Becomes a Problem When a Country Needs [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 1-14-2015 16:50 标题: 'Conformity Becomes a Problem When a Country Needs to Alter an Obviously Wrong Course'
Japan | In the Air; Despite the shifts of the past century and a half, Japan is still trapped by its past. Economist, Jan 10, 2015 www.economist.com/news/books-and ... ll-trapped-its-past
(book review on R Taggart Murphy, Japan and the Shackles of the Past. Oxford University Press, 2014)
Note:
(a) the book
global.oup.com/academic/product/japan-and-the-shackles-of-the-past-9780199845989
(b) “MOST historical analysis of Japan tends to emphasise the country’s ruptures with the past. In the mid-19th century the inward-looking Tokugawa shogunate 徳川幕府 fell and was replaced with rule by oligarchs under the guise of a ‘restored’ imperial system 王政復古.”
Some are immensely appealing. Few foreign visitors fail to be beguiled by the almost seductive concern and care shown by every Japanese they have dealings with, from barman to business partner. It is striking, too, how Japanese carry out even the lousiest job as if it were the best.
(c) “As for the roots of a social predictability bordering on ritual, Mr Murphy finds them in the Tokugawa shogunate, when sword-carrying samurai were entitled to cut anyone down on the slightest pretext. Today you don’t need to be told how to conform in any situation, because you intuitively know: you just read it in the kūki 空気, the air.”
(i) So the title “in the air” is not an English phrase (which has several meanings: spring/love is in the air, castles in the air; up in the air, suspended in mid-air), but a Japanese one, which in fact is as follows.
(ii) kūki 空気を読む 【くうきをよむ】 (exp[ression]): "to read the situation; to sense the mood"
(In Japanese, an object 目的語 (受詞 in Taiwan) always comes before a verb, separated by “を o.”)
(d) “A consequence is that no society can internalise contradictions like Japan can. Karel van Wolferen, an observer of the country, called it the ‘management of reality.’ Someone who was incompetent in an organisation would not be fired, but everyone knew to check his work. Business mavericks were not publicly pilloried. They just struggled to get their new technologies financed or adopted—until they sought the arms of an established business group.”
(i) Karel van Wolferen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_van_Wolferen
(1941- ; Dutch; from 1962 until the 1990s he was based in Japan)
(ii) “until they sought the arms of an established business group”
Judging from the context alone, Japanese mavericks get money infusion from the establishment, likely absorbed. Economist appears to try to explain why there are few lasting start-ups. However, I do not even know whether the premise 前提 is correct.
(e) “Conformity becomes a problem when a country needs to alter an obviously wrong course. Everyone knows that the post-war economic model is bust. There are no longer the corporate profits to guarantee lifetime employment.”
“Everyone knows that the post-war economic model is bust.” But nobody knows what ails Japan? At least not me. Without a diagnosis, there can be no treatment.
(f) “Mr Murphy also blames the continuity of Japan’s governing institutions. The ‘Reform Bureaucrats’ who marshalled the resources for total war from the early 1930s provided the model for bureaucrat-led growth after 1945 the miracle was in effect run on a war footing. Nobody exemplified the continuity better than the deeply dodgy Nobusuke KISHI 岸 信介.”
translation: Reform Bureaucrats are those had Progressivism as a goal, or executed such policies. Especially the 1937 merger of 企画庁 (whose forerunner had been 内閣調査局) with 資源局 to form 企画院 (about the time Sino-Japanese War turned an all-out war) as an reorganization effort, the bureaucracy who were based in 企画院 and wanted to bring about wartime controlled economy. Later they achieved general mobilization via National Mobilization Law.