Life Story
Gregory Clark
BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS: DIPLOMAT, ECONOMIST, JOURNALIST AND JAPANOLOGIST;
BETWEEN FOUR LANGUAGES: ENGLISH, CHINESE, RUSSIAN AND JAPANESE
Chapter 15
EXPLAINING JAPAN’S PROGRESS
1. The Straight Line of Progress
2. The Limits of Rationalism: China, the Latins etc
3. Japan Reconsidered
4. The China Connection
5. The Curve of Progress
6. The Radius of Trust
7. The North Europe connection
8. The Feudal Connection
9. The Rest of the World
10. Conclusions
(Note: The previous chapter saw me groping for the terminology to describe Japanese/non-Japanese differences.
(Gradually I was moving to the term ‘rationalistic’ to describe us non-Japanese. With the Japanese I had used the specialist term ‘particularistic.’ I had also favored the term ‘communalistic, though I have since moved to a slight preference for the term ‘collectivist.’
(For me, at least, ’collectivist’ highlights the similarities with the communist societies that Japan’s conservatives like to castigate.)
Playing around with terminology was one thing.
But it still left me with the problem of explaining why the collectivist/communalistic, particularistic Japanese had been able to create an economy powerful enough to frighten us advanced, modern, individualistic, rationalistic Westerners.
1. THE STRAIGHT LINE OF PROGRESS
I had been educated in the conventional wisdom which says progress is a straight line.
We are supposed begin with the simple particularistic values of the tribe, clan or village. We advance to the feudal society. From there we make the jump to the advanced modern, individualistic, industrial society.
In other words, the more societies move away from the particularistic and towards the universalistic the more they progress. The feudalistic is simply a transitional stage to the universalistic.
Figure
One
Or as Charles Kindleberger puts it in his much-quoted
textbook 'Economic Development':
'Development brings with it a change from particularism to
universalism… For economic development to occur,
some considerable rationality in cognition, universalism in
membership and specificity in relations are needed.'
Others seeking to relate values to economic and social
development say much the same (Parsons, Levy*), namely that
without universalistic values, societies cannot develop the
systems of science, technology, economics, bureaucracy,
ideology/philosophy, law and contract needed for social and
economic progress.
They also assumed that since we Westerners were more
advanced than others, then ipso facto that proved our
values were more rational (their word - I prefer
rationalistic) and more universalistic than those of
others.
We lay at the top right-hand end of the straight line of
progress. The rest of the world lay below, somewhere.
2. THE
LIMITS OF RATIONALISM: THE OLDER CIVILIZATIONS?
But even before the rise of Japan I had seen problems with
the straight-line approach.
For example, where are we supposed to place the older
civilizations of China, India and the Middle East? Their
economic and social progress had been agonizingly slow. But
did that mean we had to place them in the feudal area,
below and to the left of Japan?
Their genuinely feudal eras had been millenniums earlier.
They may have sunk into semi-feudalism later, but that was
simply due to the breakdown of the advanced, centralized
civilizations they had created earlier.
Those civilizations with their superior scientific,
technological, bureaucratic and other achievement had been
created when we northern Europeans and the Japanese were
still in mud villages.
What's more, even today they had retained the rationalistic
values that had allowed them to create those earlier
civilizations.
Even in pre-computer days it was clear to me that they
could match Japan, and even the West, in the skill of their
diplomacy - a fine test of rationalistic ability*.
Today their IT and computer skills prove the abilities of
their peoples when it comes to rationalistic thinking.
Indeed, Japan increasingly is being forced to realize its
own weaknesses in these areas, and to seek Chinese and
Indian skills.
If only for those reasons, I felt they should at least be
placed to the right of Japan on any axis trying to relate
values to progress.
* (At a time when we had to put up with the noisy
irrationality of US and Australian Cold War policies, over
Vietnam especially, the cool sanity with which the Chinese
presented their positions was impressive.
(Equally, the cool logic of their polemical debates with
flustered Russian ideologues during the early sixties.
(As for the Indians, like many others I was awed by their
argument skills. In the fifties, the presidency of the
Oxford Union, the famous Oxford University debating
society, had been dominated by Indian students for three
years in succession.
(I had always savored Nehru's alleged remark when asked by
a UK journalist what he thought of British civilization.
("It would be a very good idea" Nehru is reported to have
said.
North
Europe/America versus South
Europe/America
The gap in progress between north Europe/America and south
Europe/America was equally puzzling.
In the past the Southerners also had scientific and other
rationalistic achievement far superior to that of us
Northerners.
Even today, and like the Chinese, Indians etc., they can
produce top business strategists, politicians,
intellectuals, scientists and diplomats equal to if not
superior to those in north Europe/America - provided they
have the opportunities to develop those abilities.
So why had they been overtaken by us Northerners?
That old chestnut - the Protestant ethic - was never very
convincing.
Value systems create religions, not vice-versa. Religions
simply reinforce the biases of the value system that
created them.
So if Protestantism was a more progressive and more
practical religion than Catholicism, that was because the
Northerners had a value system that made them want to have
a more progressive and practical religion.
We still had to explain why the Northerners had that value
system.
3.
JAPAN RECONSIDERED
But it was Japan more than anything else that threw doubts
on the straight line approach.
In the past, when Japan lacked progress, it could be seen
as still somewhat shackled by the semi-particularism of a
post-feudal society.
It could be placed somewhere in the middle of the straight
line, with us Westerners at the top end, and the rest of
the world below. (See Figure One above)
Even the considerable progress of Meiji and Taisho Japan
could be seen in the context of Japan moving away from, but
not being fully liberated from, the village/feudalistic
values of Tokugawa.
It was not until the amazing progress of postwar Japan
through to the 1980's that people were forced to re-think.
Had Japan really moved away sufficiently from the
'traditional', feudalistic values of the past and towards
the 'modern' universalistic values that were supposed to be
crucial to such progress?
Three very different schools tried to give us the answer.
None of them impressed me very much at the time.
Japan As
Number One?
One school - what I call the Japan As Number One school -
said yes. It said that Japan had not only made that move to
universalistic values, but in many areas had done so even
better than us Westerners .
Japan's education and bureaucracy systems were supposed to
be excellent. Its managers were said to be superb. Japan
was indeed Number One.
Some even saw it as a model for us Westerners.
But could Japan, almost overnight, have jumped from the
semi-feudal, particularistic values of Meiji/Taisho years
to modern universalistic values superior even to those of
the West?
That seemed unlikely, as I wrote at the time in a book
review requested by the Japan Foundation (it was the last
request I was to receive from that rather Japan Is Number
One organization).
As far as I was concerned, the enterprise was still the
familial village, and its managers were still its
semi-feudalistic owners.
In many other respects - the bureaucracy, the politics, the
universities - Japan was still caught up in a
feudalistic/small group approach
The Japan As Number One school never even seemed to realize
these important points, let alone try to explain them
In any case, the Japan As Number One people have since
become quite silent - now that the economy is in trouble,
bureaucratic scandals are being exposed almost daily, the
poor secondary and university education is being criticized
relentlessly , etc etc.
Even the once-called 'excellent' management system is now
under attack, with some Japanese managers now trying to
import Western management systems.
(Some years after I had developed my tribe theory and
was trying to refine the terminology, I came across the
text of Yukawa Hideki's address to a 1964 University of
Hawaii symposium on the Japanese mentality.
(Yukawa discovered the meson and is one of Japan's more
deserving Nobel Prize winners. If only for that reason it
is likely he understands the mentality of his compatriots
better than most.
(His words closely matched my own views of the Japanese
mind. They confirm the depth and strength of Japan’s
‘cultural’ biases – the non-rationalistic
bias in particular.
(Some quotes: 'The Japanese mentality is, in most cases,
unfit for abstract thinking and takes interest merely in
tangible things… '
('Originally speaking, rationality takes an interest in the
permanent and universal order transcending the narrow scope
of space and time. But Japanese thought is concerned mainly
about the local and the temporary order ….'
('The peculiarity of the Japanese mode of thinking lies in
its complete neglect of complementary alternatives. This we
may term Japanese irrationalism. Of course, this is
completely foreign to any form of scientific spirit.
…It has the tendency to sidestep as far as possible
any kind of confrontation'
(Yukawa also confirms closely my own thoughts about the
Chinese influence on Meiji Japan:
(' As was seen in the instances of the introduction of
Buddhism and Confucianism, the Japanese were very
progressive in the assimilation of their high-level
cultural assets.'
('But among these, only the ones were appreciated that were
effective in regulating the existing social and political
order. Hence, a thoroughgoing rationalism, such as the
philosophy of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, escaped general
comprehension and found sympathy in the intellectual
minority alone.'
(Yukawa was one of that rationalistic minority, hence his
scientific success. His father was an expert in the Chinese
clasics
Japan as
a Fragile Flower?
Another school - what I call the "Japan As A Fragile
Flower" school* - agreed that Japan was indeed still caught
up in the feudalistic values of its past.
It said Japan's postwar progress was ephemeral - the result
largely of generous US aid and the chance to rebuild modern
factories to replace those bombed out during the war.
But that boom would be short-lived. Japan had moved too far
away from its still semi-feudal social base, and would soon
be in trouble.
In other words, while Japan may temporarily have jumped up
above the straight line of progress, it would fall back to
where it should have been all along - somewhere in the
middle of the particularism/universalism straight-line.
But this school too had its problems.
Japan's recent economic problems might seem to suggest
fragile flower elements. But despite appalling economic
mismanagement**, Japan is still far from reverting to being
a semi-developed economy.
Some other explanation is needed for Japan's progress.
*(That Japan was a 'fragile flower' was the conclusion of a
US academic, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who spent all of six
months in Japan in the early-seventies researching for a
book with just that title.
(During that time I saw something of Brzezinski, and think
I discovered the answer to another riddle - how a hawk such
as he ended up as National Security adviser to a dove such
as Jimmy Carter.
(It appears that in his run for high political office
Carter realised he lacked expertise in foreign affairs.
(Brzezinski at the time was setting up the Trilateral
Commission - a Cold War operation with strong Japanese
participation intended to counter Kissinger's G7 grouping.
Kissinger's efforts for detente with the Brezhnev regime
had made him anathema to rigid anti-Soviet hawks such as
Brzezinski.
(Brzezinski invited Carter to join the Commission. The
former peanut farmer was so dazzled by the wealth of power
and fame around him and by Brzezinski's ability to drag in
top US, European and Japanese personalities, that he
appointed Brzezinski as soon as he won the presidency.
(It is in such haphazard ways that the ways of history, and
politics, are made.
(But for that appointment, the several Cold War blemishes
of the Carter era could have been avoided.
**(The bad economic planning since 1996 - i.e. the resort
to Hooverite policies in the midst of severe deflation and
chronic lack of domestic demand - reflects an innate
weakness of intellect .
(Supply side economics in an economy which suffers
chronically from excess supply and inadequate demand is
economic madness.
(It also reveals a severe intellectual weakness in the
Western observers who, largely for ideological, rightwing
reasons, encouraged Japan in those mistaken policies,
little realising that Japan's economic problem was not lack
of restructuring but chronic lack of domestic demand.
(They too urged supply side economic policies when Japan
clearly needed demand side, Keynesian policies.
(China's measured, Keynesian-style economic policies
have been far more sensible, and effective.
Japan
Converging?
Finally we had the convergence school which said that while
Japan's progress may have been due to good luck or other
factors, nevertheless as a result of that progress its
particularistic, feudalistic value system would begin to
converge that of the modern, universalistic West.
The Japanese would become more like us - more
individualistic and rationalistic. The younger Japanese
would be the agents for this change.
But as someone who has spent some time trying to educate
young Japanese, I would beg to differ.
They are not moving to embrace Western-style individualism,
intellectualism, or any other significant Western values.
They are still very Japanese. The propensity to irrational
booms and moods remains as before.
Interest in intellectual activity remains weak - if
anything weaker than before when Japan saw itself more in
competition with the outside world and took more interest
in ideas.
They are still group oriented.
What differs is the range of group attachments.
In the past, thanks possibly to feudal and prewar
nationalist influences, group consciousness could be
expanded to embrace the enterprise or the even the society.
Today it has shrunk to the close circle of friends and
colleagues.
The bushido style of morality that controlled behavior in
the society generally and not just in the small group has
also broken down, to the distress of the conservatives.
But it has not been replaced by a Western-style morality.
In effect the younger Japanese have reverted to a more
'village' or tribal approach - concern only for their
small, tight circle of close friends around them. with
little regard for the society outside.
One result of this shrinkage in group interests are the
‘freeters’ (free agents not interested in
joining enterprises), or the ‘neeters’ and
hikikomoris (withdrawn completely from society) - that
worry the older generation so much.
Japan was still the tribe that became a nation.
We still needed to know why, and how, it had succeeded -
and whether it would continue to succeed, and to remain a
‘tribe’ at the same time.
4
THE CHINA CONNECTION
It was China that eventually was to give me the answer.
At the time I had to assume that the Chinese were less
individualistic and universalistic than us Westerners. They
had, after all, failed to match our Western economic
progress.
I was still caught up in the common belief that our
superior Western progress in so many fields had to be the
result of our superior rationalism/universalism.
Asian civilization was supposed to be more passive and
accepting, and therefore less scientifically oriented than
our own.
But in no way could I accept that the Chinese were less
rationalistic/universalistic than the Japanese.
Or as Yukawa Hideki had put it: 'Though Eastern culture is
characterized as being passive and static in its essence,
in contrast with Western culture, we may say, disregarding
differences in many respects and the exceptional case of
Japan, that rationalism is a common factor.'
Certainly that matched my own experience.
Even in the depths of their Cultural Revolution ideological
madness, the Chinese I met seemed much more individualistic
and rationalistically minded than the Japanese.
Yet China was clearly behind Japan in terms of economic and
social progress.
(Arriving in Beijing in 1971 with a bunch of Australian
pingpong players was like returning to the Third World - a
tiny shriveled airport run by ideological robots stuck out
in the middle of poorly-cultivated wheat fields.
(But the taxi ride into the city was like returning to the
West - drivers who would like to argue and debate
intelligently the news of the day, or any other topic one
cared to raise.
(Returning to Japan's Haneda airport surrounded by tall
buildings and neon signs was a return to civilisation. But
the taxi ride into the city was a return to the world of
evasive ambiguity and non- debate.
(One impression from that trip was a visit to the
slogan-festooned steel works in Beijing and Anshan, both
struggling to produce a million or two tons a year in the
midst of squalor and disorganization.
(Just a week earlier I had visited the brandnew
super-effficent NKK complex at Fukushima producing 12
million tons a year with one tenth the manpower.)
(But at the final dinner party for us in Beijing the
officials had been briefed to say just the right things so
that our reports back to Australia would convey just the
right mixture of trade threat and promise needed to woo
Canberra from its anti-Beijing policies.
(As I said to myself at the time, the Chinese might not be
able to make steel. But they could certainly make
diplomacy.)
The
Camel’s Back
But if the Chinese were to be put between the Japanese and
the West in terms of rationalism, but below both of them in
terms of progress, what happens to the straight line?
It would have to rise sharply from village-feudalism to
where Japan stood. From there it would have to make a firm
bend downwards to where the Chinese stood, and then upwards
against to where the West stood.
It would end up looking more like a camel's back
The lack of symmetry would be appalling.
For a while I toyed with the idea that there might be two
paths to progress - one via strong particularism as in
Japan and another via strong rationalism as in the West,
with the Chinese falling down somewhere in between.
But that did not seem to make great sense.
A
Breakthrough
I remember well the day it happened.
I had been drooling on my blackboard in front of some
Sophia students using the Kindleberger text, trying to
point out how the straight line approach could not explain
the progress of 'particularistic' Japan.
Nor could it explain China, or the other older
civilizations.
Then suddenly it occurred to me. Instead of trying to put
China somewhere between Japan and the West, why not move
China and the other older civilizations to the far
right-hand side of the board, beyond the West?
In other words, why not accept the possibility that these
peoples might be even more rationalistic than us
Westerners?
Indeed, that should have been the conclusion from my own
original theory as to the origins of rationalism.
These older civilizations had had a much longer history of
continental conflict and competition than us Westerners, us
northern Westerners especially. They had been forced to
develop strong ideologies and central governments long
before we Northerners even had a word for government.
By definition, and under my theory, they were
bound to be more rationalistic than us, and that had been
proven by their impressive record of scientific and
philosophical achievement in the past.
Today, if these peoples can receive the education and other
opportunities available to us Westerners, they can easily
match or even outdo us in terms of rationalistic
achievement.
Their computer and business skills are well-known. One
third the population of Silicon Valley was once said to be
made up of Chinese, Indians and Koreans (very few Japanese,
incidentally).
They are now creating computer and other high-tech
industries equal to or even better than those of the West
and Japan.
(The idea of China and the rest of Asia being behind us
Westerners in terms of rationalism owed much to the
romantic idea of Asia as some kind of geographically
favored paradise where harsh thinking and debate were not
needed.)
(Even the usually astute Yukawa had been caught up in the
idea that harsh geographic conditions encourage
rationalism, and that the conditions in the West were
harsher than in the East.)
(But if we move from the highly nebulous concept of
geography to the much more definitive concept of
history – namely frequent conflict with foreign
peoples as the key to rationalistic thinking - then
the rationalistic strength of the older Asian civilizations
becomes more understandable.)
5.
THE CURVE OF PROGRESS.
The moment I made that change - putting China, India etc.
to the right of Japan and the West on the horizontal axis -
I realized I had the answer to my problems.
I was looking at a beautifully symmetrical curve, with the
apex at the point where particularism and universalism - or
as I preferred to put it, collectivist values and
rationalistic values - were in equal 50/50 balance.
Figure
Two
Japan and the West straddled the apex.
The rest of the world lay somewhere down the slope, either
to the left or the right.
In short, a conclusion I had long been working towards was
neatly confirmed - namely, that the ideal for modern,
industrial progress was not 100 percent
universalism/rationalism.
It was a mix of the practical, groupist cooperation merits
of Japan's collectivist approach, and the reasoned,
scientific merits of the West's more rationalistic
approach.
The ideal was at the point where the virtues of both value
systems could be combined.
Chinese,
Indians Explained
The Chinese, Indians etc had in the past clearly gone too
far in the rationalistic direction. They had become too
enamored with excessive bureaucracy, ideological dogmatism
and scholasticism.
Their entrepreneurs were (and to some extent, in the case
of India, remain) too intelligent, preferring to make
their money through cerebral activities such as trading,
finance and speculation rather than the difficult, risky,
hands-on business of manufacturing.
They were into selling things rather than making things.
Which is fine - except that in a situation where no one is
interested in making things, people end up scrabbling at
the margins for profits from the sale and distribution of
simple handicraft and farm goods, and the few imports that
can be afforded.
Some hundreds or even thousands of years earlier these
people had been at or near the apex - largely, one
suspects, because of their efficiency in organising their
mainly handicraft and agriculture based societies, and in
devising weapons to defeat enemies.
But they had since become over-organised and bureaucratic.
They had lost their grassroots practicality and collective
cooperation. They had slipped far down the right-hand side
of curve.
THE LATIN
CONNECTION
The
Southern Europeans/Americans Explained
In much the same way I was able to find an explanation for
gap between the southern Europeans/Americans and us
Northerners.
On the straight line graph I had had to put us Northerners
above and to the right of the Southerners. Together we
formed the bloc that I had called the West.
But as already mentioned, I was not very happy with that.
But if progress was a curve rather than a straight line,
then everything fell into place.
The Southerners could neatly be moved to a position to the
right of us Northerners, and below.
In other words, they shared somewhat the same background
and problems as the Chinese, Indians etc.
They too had moved early to strong ideologies, centralized
societies and rationalistic values.
They too had created advanced civilizations while we
northern Europeans were still in primitive tribes and
clans.
Even today, the quality of their elites - their top
businessmen, politicians and scholars especially - probably
put them ahead of us Northerners.
Certainly it put them ahead of the Japanese.
But they too had become too rationalistic.
Like the Chinese, Indians etc. before them, they too had
also begun to embrace excessive bureaucracy and
scholasticism. Their entrepreneurs too began to prefer
making money from cerebral activities rather than making
and maintaining things.
The simple, gut-instinctive cooperation and inventiveness
that had created our northern European manufacturing
excellence had escaped them.
A society may have the best bureaucrats, scholars and
speculators in the world. But without manufacturing it
cannot progress, unless it is Monaco or Luxembourg, or more
recently the UK, relying on the strategic factors that
allow them to become financial/business centers.
The
Religious Factor
Much of the debate over the North-South gap has focused on
the alleged backward elements in the Catholic ethic of the
South.
But as a religion, Catholicism, almost by definition, is
far more universalistic than Protestantism.
Protestantism, with its flexible Bible interpretations and
its various sub-groups based mainly accidents of
personality or geography, is 'Japanese' in its lack of
universalism.
The concept of a Church of England is a good example. How
can a religion claim to be the religion for one country and
not for another?
By definition almost, a religion claiming to represent a
God has to claim universalism. It has to claim that all
mankind should embrace its doctrines.
That is what we find with Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism and
all the other main religions.
But with Protestantism, few seem to worry much about the
contradictions involved.
(Japanese Buddhism is even more doctrinally flexible and
factionalist that Protestantism. There we see even more
clearly a mentality that accepts contradictions without any
crisis of faith.
(It has moved greatly from the original Indian Buddhism.
(As for Shinto with its beliefs in vague, nature-based
gods, this literally is an animistic, tribal religion.
(Other than in times of imperial expansion, it is taken for
granted that Japan's national 'religion' - Shinto - is
purely for Japanese and not for other peoples.
In short, it is precisely because Catholicism can claim to
be universalistic that it has appealed to the minds of the
more rationalistic Southerners.
And, as mentioned earlier, it appealed also to the highly
rationalistic mind of my father.
6. RADIUS
OF TRUST
Another interesting explanation for the lack of progress in
the South compared with the North belongs to a former US
AID expert, Lawrence Harrison.
He called it the 'radius of trust.'
During his long exposure to Latin America and southern
Europe he noticed that for the Southerner this radius was
very narrow - often confined to relatives and the local
clergy.
(In my own visits to Latin America I have found it even
narrower. Even the priests are not trusted greatly by some.
In the North, the radius included a much wider range of
people - colleagues in various work, professional,
voluntary, regional and other groups around the individual.
According to Harrison, the greater degree of cooperation
derived from this wider radius of trust explained the
superior progress in the North.*
It is an interesting theory. But first there has to be some
explanation for why this difference in trust attitudes
exists .
Harrison saw it as yet another byproduct of the
Protestant-Catholic division.
But that left him with the problem of explaining
non-Protestant Japan.
I met Harrison in the late eighties when he came to Japan
to try to substantiate his claim that Confucianism was
Japan's equivalent of Protestantism.
I tried hard to persuade him that (a) Japan was not very
Confucian, and (b) that its progress had been very
different from that of the genuinely Confucian societies in
Sinitic East Asia.( For details of our debate see my Japan
Times article of ….)
What's more, people in the Sinitic societies also seemed to
suffer from a limited radius of trust, and this had harmed
their progress at a time when Japan was moving ahead.
Even more than the Southern Europeans/Americans perhaps,
they seemed to put excessive emphasis on kinship relations.
(To most, an emphasis on extended familial relations seems
a proof of particularistic backwardness.)
(But if we accept the Nakane Chie view of the kinship
relationship as attribute based, and my view that attribute
based is a more rationalistic, principled approach to group
relations, then the seeming contradiction is resolved. See
below)
True, the Chinese had been able to expand the kinship
concept to include very distant relatives. The Indians did
likewise, and supplemented it with another attribute group
- caste.
But precisely for that reason they suffered from radius of
trust problems, especially when it came to creating the
large enterprise.
In the traditional Chinese enterprise, positions often had
to go to blood relatives since others could be trusted.
Western and Japanese enterprises did not have this problem.
*(Harrison's important insight was later picked up by
Francis Fukuyama, he of the 'democracy as the final goal of
civilized history 'thesis which has done so much to justify
recent US jingoistic efforts.
(Fukuyama's book entitled 'Trust' makes almost no mention
of Harrison - another ugly by-product of US academic
hegemonistic urges.
(However I understand that Harrison has since teamed up
with Fukuyama to push the idea of trust as the final goal
of civilized society.
(It seems he was not greatly influenced by our
discussions.)
Attribute
versus Location.
Observant readers will by now have realized that this
radius of trust question relates directly back to the
Nakane Chie concept of attribute (shikaku) versus ba
(location) as a basis for relationships. (See Chapter )
Kinship is a very clearly defined attribute. So too is
caste or class.
And to the extent that attribute can seen as more
principled basis for relations, then those who rely on it
for relationships of trust can be seen as more
rationalistic than those who rely on location - even if the
final result is less rational.
Location as a basis for trust - ie people trusting each
other around them due to the simple fact of being thrown
into a close group relationship - is a much more
'unprincipled,' eclectic, communal approach to
relationships - even if it is more rational in terms of end
results.
In the typical Japanese enterprise the top managers could
be Suzuki, Watanabe, and Tanaka or any other haphazard
collection of names. Kinship is irrelevant in most cases.
Long years of working together in the same enterprise
cement bonds of trust just as strong, and much more
productive, as kinship.
That top people can be chosen for ability and
cooperativeness rather than the accident of a blood
relationship clearly had much to do with the past superior
progress in Japan, and north Europe/America.
(True, there is an element of cause and effect in all this.
(Progress may be the cause, rather than the result, of
wider trust relationships.
(When a society is backward, people may have no choice but
to fall back on firm attribute relationships.
(Anyone who has seen the way poverty in backward societies
cramps the willingness to trust widely will realize what I
mean.
(Even so, it is significant that even when the Northern and
Japanese economies were much weaker than they are today we
could see elements of non-attribute pragmatism in
relationships.
( Even in feudal Japan - when Confucianism and other
factors meant that kinship was much more important than
today - enterprise owners would allow efficient employees
rather than inefficient sons inherit their enterprises,
often through the device of having the efficient employee
marry the owner's daughter.
(The Japanese custom of adopting outsiders into the kinship
group, often simply for the sake of some temporary
convenience, has long astounded the Confucianist Chinese
and Koreans, for whom the ancestral kinship line should be
inviolate.
(The pragmatic Japanese-north European willingness to have
land inherited by the only son, as opposed to the more
principled Latin approach of equal division is often seen
as a major reason for the superior agricultural progress of
the North over the South.
7.
THE NORTHERN EUROPEAN CONNECTION
But for me, by far the most startling and unexpected
conclusion from the curve was realizing that the people
remaining closest to the Japanese, at a point near the
curve's apex, were none other than us northern
Europeans/Americans.
Despite our vast differences in culture - religion, eating
habits, language etc - could it be that in terms of basic
values we were really quite similar?
At the time, the idea sounded too revolutionary to be true.
But the more I thought about it, the more I began to
realize that yes, we were indeed similar.
Our historical development, as isolated nations at either
end of the Eurasian continent, had been similar.
We had both spent long periods in village and then feudal
isolation.
We had both imported civilization from outside, and
combined its rationalism with our native collectivist
values.
We were hybrids, with strong elements of our original
communal values retained.
The result was strong similarities with Japan.
(That this applies also to north Americans, Australians and
New Zealanders, who imported Anglosaxon-Germanic
communalistic values and then added to them through their
history of frontier development and isolation is another
branch of the same thinking.).
(This is especially true for Australia where the convict
and bush ethics worked to create strong human bonds and a
strong disinterest in principles and ideology.
(More on that later.)
Similarities
For example, both Japanese and us peoples of north European
culture shared a strong sense of order and discipline- the
Germans especially. Our trains used to run very much on
time.
(All this only began to fall apart when rationalistic
principles - the demand that the railways be run for
profit, for example - began to replace communalistic
commonsense.)
We liked detail and precision, as anyone who has seen our
various statistical and other White Papers (the Japanese
variety especially) will realize.
We also shared an emotional/pragmatic willingness to put
work and the workplace ahead of religious, bureaucratic,
scholarship or other abstract goals - the so-called
'Protestant' ethic that Harrison had mistakenly seen as
religion-based.
We were attracted to manufacturing, and saw it as superior
to other economic activities. The prevalence of names
identical with one's employment is one proof - Baker,
Smith, Shoemaker, Thatcher etc
In Japan's case, monozukuri, or 'making things', remains
enshrined as an important value.
Travel in the countryside with its wealth of still
surviving small-scale industries and you will realize how
firmly monozukuri is a byproduct of the Tokugawa feudal era
where regional autonomy encouraged local manufacture and a
craft-based emphasis on making things of quality.
There was the same communal ethic of honesty. Until
recently we Anglo-saxons shared the Japanese instinctive
reluctance to short-change or shoplift.
Today we are amazed by the way the Japanese go out of their
way to return lost property. But those of us brought up in
the Anglo-saxon societies of the fourties and fifties
remember similar days.
(While at university in Oxford in the fifties I and a few
friends - mainly the Dan Cooperites mentioned in an earlier
chapter - used to drive taxis for a side income.
(Few of our passengers ever bothered to check their change.
As in Japan, they took it for granted we were as honest as
they were, which we were not.
(Initially we were supposed to rely mainly on tips for our
income. We soon realized that we could make much more by
short-changing and other 'fiddles' imposed on those
trusting, unsuspecting customers.
(And since the rationalistic aim of our taking this
employment was to make money, our values told us we would
have been fools to pass up the chances.
(Today, taxi cheating is small beer compared with the many
others that have since arisen - house breaking, muggings,
blatant shop-lifting etc.
(All were unknown back in the good old days. A New York
Times book reviewer once admitted amazement over how New
York housewives back in the forties would leave doors open
so the milk money could be taken from the tops of their
refrigerators
(We were the advance guard of a new rationalistic
generation which said the only reason we were doing this
kind of work was to make money, by hook or crook. It is
nothing to be proud of.
But our communalism had also had its bad sides.
Propensity to emotional booms was one (Japan's irrational
land booms of the seventies and eighties had their parallel
in the land, tulip and other booms of 18th and 19th century
Anglo-saxon societies.)
(The Japanese take it to extremes with their propensity to
buy in at the top and sell out at the bottom.
Reason and logic impinge weakly on the communalistic desire
to imitate and follow what others are doing.
A propensity to savage militarism, helped by a
manufacturing superiority allowed us to develop superior
weapons, was another similarity.
Matching it was a propensity for unprincipled diplomacy.
Perfidious Albion has had its clone in recent Japanese
diplomacy.
Enterprise
Management
Familial management systems were another point of
similarity. As some have noted, the so-called 'excellent'
management of Japan in the 1980's resembled greatly the
more familial management style used in companies like
General Motors, IBM, Texas Instruments etc during the 60's
and 70's.
At the time, Japanese management was seen as the 'unique'
product of Confucianism, Buddhism, homogenity and rice
growing - aspects not widely seen in the US of the 60's and
70's.
In fact both were the legacy of a strong communal ethic -
one that in the US also owed much to the war years and an
earlier tradition of frontier development.
The ease with which Japanese management techniques
transplanted to the southern states of the US and to Wales
and Scotland in the UK was of especial significance to me
at the time.
(One UK researcher puzzled by the popularity of Japanese
management in Wales and Scotland concluded that Celtic and
Welsh culture must have originated in northern Asia! )
Differences
True, Japan lying to the left of the apex still had some
way to go to reach the 50-50 ideal. Its structures and
attitudes still suffered from some excess of
'particularism'.
Until very recently at least it was too strong in
manufacturing and too weak in services - one reason for the
manufacturing export surpluses and trade frictions of the
past. (No, it was not a plot to take over the world, as
many of the critics used to suggest).
Indeed, the 50-50 apex ideal of my curve represented the
ideal for a manufacturing based society.
But increasingly, ideal economic progress would begin to
demand more skills in the information, finance, and some
other service industries.
All these skills were favored under the rationalistic
ethic.
Indeed, to the extent these skills are increasingly
important in an industrial society, and manufacturing is
less important, one could even imagine the apex of the
curve moving to the right.
(In the past when agriculture was more important, it would
have been more to the left.)
Even so, and despite its very severe weaknesses in the
finance, information and service industries, Japan still
seemed to be on a rising curve - a very reasonable
assumption at the time and which would have continued but
for its recent embrace of mistaken economic policies.
We in the Western North lying to the right of the apex had
gone beyond the 50/50 ideal. Our elite were overly biased
in the rationalistic direction.
Excessive legalism, dislike of manufacturing, preference
for financial manipulation and speculation were some of the
less fortunate results.
But the distance between us and the Japanese was still
quite close. We still retained some communalistic values.
What's more, until quite recently we had been close to
where Japan stood.
It was only recently that we had shifted to the
rationalistic side of the graph.
To many all that may seem an unlikely scenario. But then
again the theory of plate tectonics also used to seem very
unlikely.
8. THE
FEUDAL CONNECTION
I suggest they can be traced back to our shared feudal
heritage.
Like the Japanese, we northern Europeans had long histories
of slow village and then feudal development during which to
mature our collectivist, communalistic values.
And by feudal I mean full feudalism, and not the
semi-feudalism, warlordism and tribalised clannisness found
in collapsed and formerly over-centralised rationalistic
societies.
Full feudalism is the intermediate stage in the organic
growth of a society moving from its original clan/village
basis to creating stronger regional units before then
moving on to create strong central governments.
At this intermediate stage, the government lacks the
bureaucracies and the attachments to powerful ideologies
needed to impose its stamp of authority nation-wide (though
as with Tokugawa Japan, attempts may be made to do
this with borrowed ideologies.)
People in the regions and villages retain strong autonomy.
From this emerge the values that emphasise practical
commonsense, natural cooperation and craft manufacturing
skills that in turn provide the basis for the subsequent
move to modern industrialization.
The distractions and distortions imposed by strong
ideologies and bureaucracies are avoided.
But at the same time, in order to progress these
feudalistic societies also needed to be able to begin to
absorb the ideas and ideologies of more rationalistic
societies .
Tokugawa Japan was a good example of this process in
action. Many now accept that its sophisticated and
well-organised society provided much of the basis for
Japan's subsequent modernization, even though its final
shift to where it is today depended very much on being able
to import the systems and ideas of us more rationalistic
Westerners
North Europe went through a similar process, importing
systems and ideas from the more rationalistic and advanced
South Europeans while retaining much of use from its
original feudalistic society.
The many similarities between Japan's bushido ethic and the
chivalry ethic of Western Europe are relevant. Both
developed autonomously in response to the need for a code
of ethics to organize a feudal society.
The fact that both developed in such a similar way, even
though at opposite sides of the globe, helps prove the
similarities of their feudal development.
(Later I was to discover that one of the very few to
realize this feudalistic connection between Japan and
northern Europe was none other than Edwin Reischauer
(Feudalism In History, Coulborn Rushton ed. Princeton
University, 1956).
(In his final memoirs, his introduction has a brief note in
which he regrets having failed to follow up on this
insight.)
(But while belated, his insight helped to confirm me
in my own thinking.)
(Reischauer's delay in making this connection could owe
much to his long association with the mistaken convergence
theory mentioned above.)
Feudal is
Beautiful?
Both in Japan and the West we have been educated to see
feudalism and modernism as mutually contradictory.
But that is like arguing that adolesence and adulthood are
mutually contradictory. The former is an essential
pre-condition for the latter.
Our shared history of village-based feudalism could also,
as some others have hinted, be the reason why the social
contract and the democratic ethic have taken root in Japan
and north Europe more firmly than elsewhere.
With typical self-admiration, many of our intellectuals
have pronounced democracy to be the final stage in man's
political development.
In fact, far from being 'the end of history' as some have
proclaimed, it is very much the middle of history - a
golden moment when collectivist and rationalistic values
can combine.
But that golden moment does not last long.
Collectivist/communalistic and rationalistic values are
often mutually contradictory.
Merit promotion does not mesh easily with seniority
promotion. Adversarial legalism soon kills conciliation as
a basis for settling disputes. And so on.
Similarly with democracy. As we see only too clearly in our
allegedly advanced Western democracies, it is not long
before rationalistic values kill the advanced communalistic
basis of democracy.
After all, if winner can take all, then elections have to
be won by fair means or foul. To hell with the social
contract.
Societies are deliberately divided, with the majority
dragged to one's own side by any means available.
Other instinctive moralities also begin to fall apart. Or
else they are exploited by those who realize the ease with
which they can be turned to their own personal advantage,
such as me and my taxi driving friends.
Societies begin to turn to religious, legalistic and other
ideologies to hold themselves together. Governments become
more dictatorial. Bureaucrats become more arrogant.
We begin the long slide down the right hand side of the
progress curve.
Other
Theories to Explain Progress
On the face of things the curve seemed to provide me with
an answer to the major puzzle in the first half of the last
century - why one society progressed while others
remained in stagnation, the rise and fall of
civilizations.
Toynbee had given us his explanation. Others had their
theories.
For a while the climate theory was popular. So if Japan and
north Europe had done well, that was supposed to be because
their climate was cold enough to encourage hard work but
warm enough to allow agriculture and other outside
activity.
But that failed to explain the former civilizations of
tropical Asia and Central America.
Besides, commonsense would say that if climate was a
factor, then the more temperate climates of the
Mediterranean and south Eurasia would be more favorable to
progress.
Education was, and remains a favorite, theory. But as Sri
Lanka and to some extent the Latin societies show, a thirst
for education is meaningless and even harmful if the
economic basis to absorb educated people does not exist.
Frustrations can easily erupt into anti-social activity.
And what encourages education in the first place? In the
case of Japan with its tera goya (temple schools teaching
basic math and writing often said to be the reason for
Japan’s rapid post-feudal progress) the desire to
have such schools was the grassroots practicality of a
society seeking practical progress.
For a while the theories emphasised strong centralized
government. But the problems of excessive bureaucracy and
central control should have killed that idea.
And more recently we have seen flawed attempts to use
religion to explain economic performance differences.
The
Advantage of Being Backward
But if we accept the feudalism argument, there is a simple
answer to all the theories, namely that the key to being
ahead today lies in being backward in the past.
When China, India, the Middle East and South Europe were at
their civilization peaks, we north Europeans and the
Japanese were still struggling with backward village
existences.
We suffered lousy climates (as anyone who has lived in
England should know), which hampered our agriculture. We
had to spend too much time and resources protecting
ourselves from the cold. Our education systems were
primitive. Organised religion was non-existent.
The proud Roman general sneering at the Germanic tribes
living in mud huts had a point.
But while even as those proud civilizations were boasting
their superiority, they were beginning to lose the communal
and practical bases on which they had been built
originally.
They would move too far away from their village-feudal
grassroots. They would begin to suffer from excessive
emphasis on bureaucracy, scholarship, ideology and central
government
Meanwhile those backward north European peoples in their
mud hut villages were developing cooperative, practical
value systems.
That combination would eventually allow them to defeat or
outstrip those proud civilizations.
So if they are dominant today, that precisely is because
they were so backward and feudalistic for so long.
Their turn to move up the curve of progress was
fortuitously delayed, giving time for the more
rationalistic civilizations at the top to go into decline..
But the moments of glory for the people near the apex may
not last forever. As their communalistic values weaken,
they too could move into decline, like the proud
civilizations before them.
They have another problem.
Today, changes in global economics and information make it
much easier than before for rationalistic societies such as
China, India, Taiwan and Korea to develop the skills and
markets needed for rapid economic progress.
As we see today, they are moving rapidly up the curve of
progress. They are already strong competitors.
But they are moving up from the right. And they have to do
this deliberately, often by borrowing skills and systems
from others.
Where the north European societies and Japan deserve praise
was in their ability autonomously to develop the skills and
markets needed for manufacturing growth. And ironically
they were able to do this thanks to their delayed progress
in the past.
Being in
the Right Place at the Right Time
Geography was the crucial factor.
Look at a map of the world and you will see clearly what
Japan and northern Europe have in common.
Both were fairly isolated areas (Japan and Britain
especially, with their island isolation) at the eastern and
western extremities of the Eurasian continents.
That isolation left them fairly free from excessive
domination by more powerful rationalistic civilizations.
They were allowed a long period of village and feudal
gestation. They were under no pressure to move quickly to
rationalistic values.
But they were close enough to the main centers of
civilization to be able to bring in rationalistic values,
skills and systems needed for progress - from China in the
case of Japan, and from South Europe and the Middle East in
the case of north Europe.
They were able to combine the best of both worlds - the
communal, practical values of the village and then feudal
society with the more rationalistic. scientific values of
the advanced civilizations.
On this basis they were able to progress, but at their own
time and pace.
Progress
Differences
Even so, there were important differences in the rate of
progress. Once again geography was a key factor.
Japan went further than the others in developing feudal
values because of its greater isolation and because it was
fortunate enough to have a fairly non-aggressive
rationalistic neighbor - China – nearby from which it
could borrow easily the rationalistic systems needed for
feudal progress.
(Korea was a slightly different case. Contiguity
meant it could easily be dominated by Chinese civilization,
which explains the many similarities today between the
Koreans and the Chinese. )
Western Europe came much more heavily under the influence
of southern European civilization, which explains why it
was able earlier than Japan to move away from feudalism and
towards democracy and modernisation.
However, Germany's feudal period lasted much longer, which
explains the many similarities with Japan - strong
manufacturing ethic, communal bank-enterprise relations,
emotionalism, propensity to mad militarism, obsession with
orderliness and punctuality etc..
Scandinavia and Holland come somewhere in between.
France, located between north and south Europe,is an
interesting amalgam of village values and highly
rationalistic values, with the elite biased strongly to the
rationalistic.
Spain and Italy owed their Renaissance peaks to an even
stronger mix of the communal ethic developed in the Dark
Ages and the lingering influences of Roman and Greek
civilization. Later they were to be somewhat influenced by
the feudal ethic developed in North Europe.
9. THE
REST OF THE WORLD
In short, the ability to proceed from collectivist village
values to feudal values and then to strong centralized
states with strong binding ideologies is something common
to all of us.
We saw it in South America with the Mayan, Aztec and Inca
societies. We saw it in Africa, with some input from Islam.
Freed from outside invasion but open to outside contacts it
is quite likely these proto-civilizations could have
matured into advanced civilizations.
But none were strong enough at the time to resist Western
Europe's conquistadors.
Southeast Asia was similar to Japan in that, initially at
least, it could develop largely in isolation and with some
input from the advanced civilizations of China, India and
the Middle East.
The many similarities between Japanese values and those of
Indonesia, Thai and the Philippines is one result.
Quite sophisticated feudalistic societies emerged, in
Indonesia especially and to some extent Thailand. In the
Philippines we saw an advanced village (barrio) culture
emerge.
Sadly they were to be largely destroyed by Western invasion
and penetration, though in Bali, the last region to be
invaded by the Dutch, isolation had helped create an
advanced feudal ethic very similar to that of Tokugawa
Japan.
(It is tempting to speculate that but for that Western
intervention, Indonesia if left to itself could have
developed into an industrial giant similar to Japan today.)
The harm done by colonization and other Western
interventions into these culturally developing societies is
little realised.
Societies must be allowed do develop organically, at their
own time and pace. Chop into that organic development and
it is almost impossible to recover.
The squalor and poverty of the Inca campesinos in Peru,
eking out a miserable living next to the extraordinary
monuments left by an earlier Inca empire, is mute
testimony.
The idea that a superior civilization can somehow be
imposed from outside is wrong, often criminally wrong.
Japan, with its successful efforts to prevent such
imposition during the aggressive phase of Western
colonization, is standing proof.
And once again, it was saved by geography.
Of all the offshore Asian nations it was the one closest to
a relatively peaceful China. This meant it was able to gain
the full benefits of Chinese civilization absorbed at its
own time and pace over the centuries.
But of all the non-Western nations it was furthest removed
from the aggressive West, and therefore best able to avoid
the harm of colonization.
True, Japan gained enormously from being able to absorb key
elements in Western civilization. Others given the same
opportunity did not do so well.
One reason why Japan could be so receptive was that its
feudal development had so closely matched that of Western
Europe. Others were not so fortunate.
(Back in the 1990's the progressive-minded British
Japanologist, Ronald Dore, had an interesting explanation
for Japan's seemingly superior progress at the time.
(As he saw it, societies moved through three stages -
feudalism, competitive capitalism, cooperative capitalism.
(We in the West - Anglo societies especially - were still
stuck at the competitive capitalism stage.
(Japan had graduated to cooperative capitalism.
(If Dore had said that Japan had gone from feudalism to
cooperative capitalism - as had happened in the West to
some extent - and had yet to embrace the faults of
competitive capitalism, he would have been closer to the
mark.
10
CONCLUSIONS
We used to assume that north European/American
industrialisation represented the peak of rationalistic
human development.
In fact, the north European values of hard work, diligence,
honesty, trust, practicality and groupist cooperation all
emerged from Japanese-style, village/feudal societies.
While the south European and other continental peoples were
creating great civilisations, we north Europeans - Britain,
Germany, the Netherlands and Scandanavia - were passing
through a long history of village isolation maturing
gradually into feudalism.
But we had also been able to bring in civilization from
outside - in our case from southern Europe and the Middle
east - and combine it with our village-feudal values.
As with Japan, we were able to combine the communalistic
with the rationalistic. On this basis we had developed the
modern industrial societies of today.
The only real difference was that our move to rationalistic
values had preceded that of Japan. That was because we were
closer to more rationalistic civilizations nearby, and more
easily dominated by them.
So rationalistic values had become more deeply embedded,
especially among our elite.
But as in Japan, they had never been able to eradicate the
lingering strength of village/feudal values. They were
simply stronger, which had meant that our social and
economic progress had come earlier, with the Japanese
borrowing heavily from our experience.
Rationalistic
Recovery?
Meanwhile what happens with the Chinese, Indians etc.? They
had slipped into rationalistic-based decline over the
centuries. But this did not rule out recovery.
As I said and wrote at the time, their ideologies could be
toned down. Their bureaucrats could be forced to reform and
their scholars to be more realistic - particularly as they
had to stomach their rationalistic pride and explain why
Japan and the West had made such progress and they had not.
Nor did it rule out their ability to gain industrial
progress by other means. China's emergence as a
manufacturing powerhouse, and India's sudden emergence as
an IT giant was no accident.
Their entrepreneurs are smart people - a lot smarter than
many Japanese and Western entrepreneurs. They also had the
advantage of cheap labor.
Besides, there had always been a way for the Chinese, the
Indians etc to break out of their hitherto crippling bias
to non-economic activities.
Today, it is even simpler than before.
Ironically, it relates to the topic of my university
research back in the 1960's - the role of foreign direct
investment.
I will explain later.
Finally
So having explained the world, all I had to do was get my
theories out into the public arena.
But that was to prove a lot harder than I had
imagined.
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