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

[Shin MICHIMUKO <smitimko@example.com>]

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. ====