Viewed Sideways. Donald Richie
approaches.”
But foreigners were not alone in these attempts. They received support from the Japanese themselves who by this time had a Nihonjin-ron industry of their own up and running. Here there are myriad examples to choose among. As indication, I will merely mention the most translated, Dr. Takeo Doi, who explained much through such single-engine models as his study of amaeru (confident expectation of favor) as the skeleton key to Japanese culture.
There is in all of these attempts a tendency to see similar group behavior as expression of common personality structure. But such similar behavior patterns are often the result of mere conformity to social norms. If one tries to attribute group behavior to any supposed “national character,” one falls into psychological reductionism. Which is indeed just what the various Nihojin-ron do.
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Perhaps consequently, there is the need to continually update the necessary model, the permanent desire for a new and improved product. Out of the welter of the Nihonjin-ron there emerged, sure enough, a fresh model.
This was purely structural in nature, the country seen as controlled through its own agreed-upon polarities. There was uchi and omote (back and front, inside vs. outside); there was ninjo and giri (one’s own feelings vs. obligations owed to society); there was honne and tatemae (the real motive hiding between the stated reason). And there were many other, all of them moving parts in this latest definition. One of the features of this model was that it used Japanese terms to define the Japanese and was hence perceived as being somehow more “fair.”
Being structural, it fit in with its times academically (we are now in the 1970s–early 1980s) and with its quasi-scientific phraseology it was seen as intellectually respectable. That it offered the mere skeleton of a society rather than a reflection of that society itself—all bones, no muscles or skin—bothered, for a time, no one.
Eventually, however, as the Nihonjin-ron were beginning to lose their adherents, particularly those who were more able to compare real Japanese to the increasingly diagrammatic models held up to them, there rose the need for a newer, more complete model. Back to the drawing board.
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Interpretations of Japan will yet continue as the country evolves, but with the erosion of the traditional accelerating at such a rate there will eventually be little to mark the “difference” that Japan is traditionally thought to have exhibited, since the country itself will be little different.
It is problematic that any country can ever be truly “defined” by any other, since it remains true that any difference is assumed as a difference from whoever is doing the defining. I have myself in my fifty years learned that if Japan were to rid itself of all those things that are to me puzzling, illogical, distasteful, it would no longer be Japan at all. Perhaps in the future a perusal of these different models and paradigms will create emotions not only of indignation but also of nostalgia.
—2001
Crossing the Border: The Japanese Example
Crossing the border: Japan may serve as example because it knows a lot about borders and because it has so many uses for them. And because, unlike those of many other countries, Japan’s borders are natural, not agreed-upon terrains but leagues of formerly uncharted sea. An archipelago, like the United Kingdom, it has long distanced itself from its neighbors, something its watery borders have encouraged.
In consequence these borders have seldom been breached. Japan is among the very few Asian nations that did not suffer through the intrusions of Western imperialism—Europe and the United States crossing borders irrespectively.
Japan’s borders were breached only twice. In the thirteenth century the Mongols set out to invade Japan but their fleet was stopped by a typhoon and an occupation was averted. This phenomenon was seen as evidence of divine favor and the typhoon was thereafter referred to as kamikaze, the “divine wind,” a term that was to prove useful on numerous occasions—most recently, describing the activities of suicide bombers during the latter days of World War II.
It was during this war that Japan’s borders were again breached.
The Allied Powers set out to invade Japan, devastated it, and an occupation resulted. This was the first and so far only time that Japan’s boundaries were ignored and its borders broken.
The effect of such an invasion is often decisive. Not only are people killed and dwellings destroyed, but whole cities are ruined, communications systems are broken, and famine and pestilence stalk. The destruction of recognized borders in all fields leads to social and personal chaos. After all, the borders were there to preserve the very identity that is now threatened.
For Japan, this was the first time it had been invaded. Though the country had had internal border problems, a massive breach of this nature had never before occurred. And in addition to the physical damage there was the mental harm that occurs when an idea of self predicated upon the notion of a state is destroyed. Borders are there not only to protect but also to define.
Due both to these experiences and the fact that they have remained very much an island people, the Japanese have traditionally viewed border crossings as something of which to be wary. They have long regarded their own borders as boundaries—not merely lying adjacent but forming a limiting line.
Indeed, during much of its history Japan remained nominally closed to outsiders. The government deemed leaving the country an unlawful act and returning after having somehow successfully left a criminal one—a national seclusion that is known as sakoku. Inside the country various borders were observed and travelers from one province to another had to pass through guarded barriers, forts that contained much the equivalent of immigration and customs services today.
Borders were also put to work and afflicted not only on peasants and craftsmen. There was a boundary-based system known as sankin kotai where the daimyo, the lords of the capital, were forced to make expensive trips back to their own provinces. Since their processions were seen as ceremonial, they contained large numbers of people (though members of the immediate family were to be left behind as government hostages in all but name) and were very expensive. This had the double advantage of providing work, making money, filling state coffers, and curbing any thought of political uprising since such attempts are always expensive. The grand daimyo processions, spilling money, were stopped at each of the many district border forts. Borders were barriers.
And indeed they still are. The 1945 Allied Occupation of Japan had substituted one military government for another and crossing borders, in and out of Japan, became again difficult for the Japanese. This is no longer true but it should be noted that even now the doors into Japan swing only one way. It is easy for the visitor to get out but not to get in. This is something that countries learn. This is why at most immigration barriers everywhere there are separate entry lines for the confident native and for the merely hopeful foreigner.
This is also why there is also so much fuss made about nationality within the country. In Japan there remains a rigid definition. The Japanese are inside the boundary, everyone else is out. Though there are accommodations for Japanese citizenship, these are—like those of all other countries—rigid. There is no accommodation for those who would live and work there without undergoing proper procedures. Even third-generation people whose ancestors came from, say, Korea are routinely denied some of the advantages of citizenship—running for public office, for example.
I myself have spent my entire adult life in Japan, living as a foreign body in the native mixture. Officially I enjoy eijuken, permanent residence, a fairly exotic and somewhat in-between category. Before I applied for this I was told that I ought to opt for citizenship because it was so much easier for the bureaucrats to arrange. I could be nominally Japanese in that fashion. With permanent residence I was neither one thing nor another—so I pay taxes but I cannot vote; my borders remain vague.
It is not that Japan is with its history of closed borders more xenophobic than other nations, merely that it is more open about being xenophobic. There is little concern about being observed and found xenophobic—or indeed misogynist, or racist.
Take, for example,