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Re: [tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers



Ah, I guessed that we should improve the situation actually...

From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>
Sent: 2008年05月20日 14:00:32

it's the so-called "elites" and the bureaucracies and their rules and
policies.

Ah, they are! And it's because some of those people are following the way of "Confucius". Not so many people clearly indicated this before, but the effect of "Confucius" seems to be deeper and stronger in Japan rather than China or Korea which are the countries "Confucious" originally comes from.


You know that China was fighting with "Confutious" for long time from the age of First Emperor. They also gave the high presssure on Confucius after the World War II. I don't think Chinese government is always good, since they are excluding the religeous groups sometimes, but at least, they are familiar with the negative aspects of Confucius than Japan.

And the number of Christians are growing in Korea so quickly than Japan. It means that Korean people succeeded on controlling the effect of "Confucius", I guess.

"Confucius" requires the people follow and support their bosses by whole spirits or lives. And Confucius was educating the people from Heian era (1500 years ago) until Edo age in Japan officially. Some education was given until the end of WW-II. I believe that Confucious effect does still exist among Japanese elite people. The problem is that now Japanese people doesn't realize what is the Confucius effect and what is naturally required for human beings, since Confucius way of thinking is shared in Japanese cultures and language so deeply.

This is assumed to be a cultural differences of Japan, but those elite people (who loves samurai style, or belongs to bureaucrat hierarchy) are following the Confucius style, because it was the standard for more than 1,000 years. They were educated to follow what they are told by employers or parents (bosses), and first priority belongs to their bosses. Those people don't care about the problems in front of them, but care what their boss feels.

I believe this is the conclusion of why Japan has so unique way of thinking.

My family has been watching an NHK jidai-geki called
"Atsu-hime" about the Satsuma clan at the time of the Black Ships.
One character describes the original two-port treaty with Perry as
"opening the door a crack", to which the lord responds "if we do not
prepare carefully, that will end in the door being blown off".  I get
the feeling that in some (fairly small but important) segments of
Japanese society those attitudes have not changed much for about 1000
years.

Your observation seems to be correct. It was the first experience for Japanese people to be forced to do something by other country. There were some wars between other countries and Japan in the history, but Japanese finally succeeded to protect the country and closed the door in around AD 1600.


Japan also succeeded to change its own attitude in trade relationships proactively by ending Edo government by themselves, but continued to keep holding the "self-control of their bosses" until the end of WW-II. The history was ended in 1945, but I believe that the way of thinking is just shared among Japanese cultures (includin Shinto and Buddhism) in many cases. Please note that Japan has changed many religeous principles of Buddhism too in its history.

Not so many people indicated this, but I believe this is the fact, and it wouldn't be changed easily, since Japan doesn't have any other standard way of thinking. Please also note that those "elite" people doesn't think that they are doing the wrong thing for you, but just doing their best in their position. They sometimes don't understand what they are doing.

Americans and Chinese understand that drive for
security through wealth, but Japanese opinion-makers (at least) seem
to distrust it intensely (in foreigners and in Japanese).

I believe this is the same situation with Chinese government (not the Chinese people), but yes, I have to agree that it's true among Japanese elites in general.


Sometimes we Japanese are not free, too.

The copyright situation in Japan is a good example. In US, "freedom of speech" has preemptiveness to copyright, but it's opposed in Japan. You may remember that Japanese bloggers couldn't release the list of dead people (name only) when Hanshin Earthquake disaster happened, because the copyright law doesn't clearly allow them to gather the information from the other news sources. Most of the search engine servers are still running outside Japan, since the server administrators are wondering if the cached contents are assumed to be violating the copyright of someone else.

Anyway, I hope you could understand that those people are treating the other people (except their bosses), even if they are Japanese. We Japanese also have the same problem sometimes. The solution for this problem is to make some friends in Japan and try to protect us each other. Anyway, I hope the situation will be improved in the future by studying the effect of Confucius or the Japanese history...

---Shin.
--
== Money is one of the minimum conditions to do anything, but... =======
  Shin MICHIMUKO <smitimko@example.com> http://www.peanuts.gr.jp/
============================================ Freedom is everything. ====


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