Dogs and Demons_ Tales From the Dark Side of Japan - Kerr [126]
This brings us to one of the most profound implications of the Bubble and Japan's financial troubles as the nation enters the twenty-first century: the source of these troubles does not lie in the economy or even in financial weakness per se. I'm definitely not predicting the collapse of Japan industrially – or even financially (although the strain is terrific). Neoclassical Western economists are very wrong if they believe that Japan is about to crumble. The entire system can continue for two reasons: strong resources, and what one could call «the sacrifice.»
As for resources, Japan has piled up tremendous industrial capacity as well as savings in the bank-and these can support the status quo for years or possibly decades to come. «The sacrifice» refers to the fact that a nonclassical economic system can indeed be sustained, but, when the system strays very far from reality, at an ever-increasing sacrifice. The question is: What is a nation willing to sacrifice? In Japan's case, the answer is: everything.
The process of propping up the system that created Japan's Bubble wreaks untold havoc on society. These days the trend among the more penetrating writers, both Japanese and foreign, is to analyze Japan's financial problems in political terms. I, on the other hand, see them as part of a «cultural trauma.» We are probably all talking about the same thing. Japan's financial system has fallen far, but it has a long way to go before real value asserts itself. In the meantime, the distortions of the financial markets will continue to manifest themselves as distortions in society and as depredations on the environment.
«There is a solid bottom everywhere,» Thoreau writes. «We read that the traveler asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveler's horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, 'I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.' 'So it has,' answered the latter, 'but you have not got half way to it yet.»
12. Education
Following the Rules
In governing the people the sage empties their minds but fills their bellies, weakens their wills but strengthens their bones. He always keeps them innocent of knowledge and free from desire, and ensures that the clever never dare to act.
– Lao-tzu, Tao-te Ching
The inability to slow down or turn back from disastrous policies has been Japan s core problem in the twentieth century, so it is natural to wonder why This brings us to education, which shapes the way people ask questions of themselves and their environment. Neither Japan's system nor the lengths to which it goes once it is set on autopilot are conceivable in a society in which people ask many questions. Plutarch tells us, «King Theopompus, when one said that Sparta held up so long because their kings could command so well, replied, 'Nay, rather because the people know so well how to obey' »
The fear of speaking one's mind in Japan dates to feudal days. Closed to the outside world and ruled by a military class for 350 years, Japan developed far-reaching techniques of social control. Sumptuary laws prescribed which woods the four classes of society could use in their houses, the shapes of their gates and doorways, and the materials of the clothes they wore. Temples and shrines had to join sects registered with the shogunate, and nonorthodox faiths were outlawed. The feudal virtues of loyalty and self-sacrifice became popular and abiding themes in Kabuki and puppet