Japan Watching: Society, Politics, Culture, Economy, Environment, And the World

My name is Mimi.  I work at Doutor, a Japanese version of Starbucks.  I am proud to work at a Japanese company, even if it is a copycat of the original.

I am Miyuki.  My life is so hard.  I sell newspapers from a little stand at a Tokyo metro station.  I spend six hours every day locked up in this little stand.  Now I have some idea about solitary confinement in a prison.

Every country has a sex industry.  Japan’s is unique by its size, cultural acceptance and links with the Japanese mafia.  It is also unique by the scale of human trafficking for sexual exploitation which the government has never been sufficiently serious about tackling.  

This is a terrible question to ask which can lead into issues of racial superiority and the like, issues that the superior/inferior Japanese love to obsess about. 

The Beatles once sang “Money Can’t Buy You Love”.  And as the Legatum Prosperity Index shows, Japan’s wealth does not guarantee it wellbeing.

In Japan, most things are a little bit different from in the rest of the world.  Same goes for civil society.

The German Institute for Japanese Studies is studying “The Quest for Happiness in Japan”.  Germany has always had a major interest in Japanese happiness.  After all, in the late 19th century, German beer brewers played a big role in the expansion of beer production and consumption in Japan. 

A national identity began to emerge in Japan in about the 3^rd century around the time of Himiko, a shaman queen of Yamataikoku in ancient Wa (Japan).  The Japanese developed their first inklings that they lived in a country on the periphery of the Chinese world.  This is the thesis of Japanese writer and professor Tatsuru Uchida in his best selling book, “Nihon Henkyoron” (Japan as a Peripheral Country).

This is the title of one of Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings.  He created this in Tahiti and inscribed the title in the upper left corner – “D'où venons-nous? / Que sommes-nous? / Où allons-nous?”.

If Gaugin were alive today, he might be tempted to create such a painting in Japan.

Where do us Japanese come from?

According to cross cultural analysts, Japanese people often communicate with each other without using words, heart-to-heart, like telepathy.  The Japanese call this “ishin denshin”.  It is more subtle, more indirect.  Saving face and not embarrassing people are important.  This is quite different from Americans.  We love “straight talk”

But do you really believe that Japanese communicate in this way?