I’ve written here before about the Yomiuri Newspaper’s long history of trying to popularize a rewriting of the Japanese Constitution to allow Japan to reclaim war powers. So this news story about the Yomiuri news baron Tsuneo Watanabe caught me a bit off guard:

Mr. Watanabe, now nearly 80 years old, has stepped into the light. He has recently granted long, soul-baring interviews in which he has questioned the rising nationalism he has cultivated so assiduously in the pages of his newspaper, the conservative Yomiuri — the world’s largest, with a circulation of 14 million. Now, he talks about the need to acknowledge Japan’s violent wartime history and reflects on his wife’s illness and his own, as well as the joys of playing with his new hamsters.

Now, the idea that this guy would question Japan’s rising nationalism was quite a shocker. But the revelation about hamsters is… well, stunning, I suppose. Almost jarring in juxtaposition to the serious issues at hand. You’ve got to admit, when you reach that last word, you kind of look at it again in a mental double-take, and wonder if you read it right. Could the turn against nationalism and the hamsters be somehow related? Did the hamsters speak to him and convince him to change his mind? Or is he just becoming kind of soft and fuzzy in his old age?

It’s kind of difficult to reconcile this man’s long effort to revise the Constitution to allow for wartime powers with his present turn to blunt Japanese nationalism. Watanabe is now openly criticizing Prime Minister Koizumi for not understanding the controversy over his official visits to the nationalist Yasukuni Shrine:

“This person Koizumi doesn’t know history or philosophy, doesn’t study, doesn’t have any culture. That’s why he says stupid things, like, ‘What’s wrong about worshiping at Yasukuni?’ Or, ‘China and Korea are the only countries that criticize Yasukuni.’ This stems from his ignorance.”

Watanabe also criticized the romanticization of kamikaze pilots and other young Japanese men sent out to war:

“It’s all a lie that they left filled with braveness and joy, crying, ‘Long live the emperor!’ ” he said, angrily. “They were sheep at a slaughterhouse. Everybody was looking down and tottering. Some were unable to stand up and were carried and pushed into the plane by maintenance soldiers.”

So Mr. Watanabe is going to have his newspaper publish a yearlong series of articles on the events of World War II. Which should be quite something, considering the Yomiuri’s history.

Let’s hope that those hamsters keep on encouraging him in this new direction.

There are still so many misconceptions about Japan, many of them dating back to Shogun and before. An article on ABC News’ web site provided a good example of this in its opening paragraph:

If there were an international competition for good manners, Japan would always score highly. In what other country is one expected to bow before strangers unless meeting royalty, and where else does making hot tea constitute a formal ceremony?

I mean, please. Has this person never been to Japan, or are they just trying to suck up to the common American perceptions about Asian culture? “Making hot tea a formal ceremony”? I’ve seen lots of people make hot tea, but I’ve never seen the cha-no-yu ceremony here. Of course it’s performed somewhere, sometimes, but not in the everyday experience of most Japanese. That’s more of something performed by artisans or hobbyists, like glass-blowing or calligraphy.

And the whole thing about bowing–note the use of the word “before” in “bowing before strangers.” It should be “bowing to strangers,” but “before” sounds more obsequious. Bowing is simply like a handshake or a wave, it’s what people do in certain situations. But when it’s mentioned in the U.S., it’s as if it’s some unusual, self-deprecating act, some sign of increased humility or formality. That’s simply how Americans might see it relative to our own customs; it’s not that significant in Japan. We make a deal about how bows can be different in Japan, variations of angles and head-up or head-down, as if that kind of variation in formality is something that we’d never do. But of course we do–look at handshakes. There are the same variations there, we just don’t think about them. From manly hand-crushers to ladylike fingers-only handshakes, from single-shake deal-makers, to the three-shake standard, to the vigorous damned-glad-to-meet-you variety. Just like handshakes with Americans, Japanese do bows naturally, and would have to stop and think about it if you asked about the different forms.

Besides which, don’t get the idea that Japan is all about politeness, as the ABC article would lead you to believe. In fact, if you walk the streets of any Japanese city, you might be surprised by the apparent rudeness you’d see. People bumping into you, sometimes even almost knocking you over, without so much as an “excuse me”; men loudly hawking and spitting on the sidewalk you’re about to tread; people casually throwing trash on the street (especially smokers with the butts and cigarette wrappers, or kids with soft drink cans). In Japan, as I like to say, politeness is something that happens when your shoes come off. That is to say, it’s when you have some kind of direct social interaction. And not always even then.

We say that Japan is a culture of contrasts, but the contrasts are only relative to our own. In some situations, Japanese are more “well-mannered” than Americans. In other ways, they are more reserved, and in some cases, much more impolite. Overall, things are not that different. But emphasis on situational differences or attention to old preconceptions make us believe that things are more different than they really are.

It’s like the translation of the honorific “san” applied to names; when translated into English, “Mr. Hashimoto” is sometimes translated as “Honorable Hashimoto.” It sounds almost servile, with an “Oriental” flavor, denoting thousands of years of samurai culture or something. But a better translation is simply “Mr. Hashimoto.” Same thing. Certainly Japanese people do not feeling the fawning or solemn tone that we get from the word “honorable.” That’s so Charlie Chan.

The thing to understand–actually, we probably understand it, the right word is more like internalize–the thing to internalize is that Japan is not all Mt. Fuji and Shinto shrines. You have to abandon the image and the preconceptions you have about the people and their culture, and start new with the simple understanding that things just work in ways that vary from our own, though many of the basics underneath are exactly the same. Japan is probably not much more “steeped in its rituals and virtues” than America or any other culture is–it just looks that way when measured relative to ours. We each have our different ways of doing the same things, our own idiosyncrasies, but we’re not quite so alien from each other in the end.

And I suppose that’s why I like it here, why some people from abroad fit in and some don’t–because our idiosyncrasies match to the culture, or they don’t.

Just a few minutes ago, we had a fairly strong quake. Not things-falling-off-of-shelves strong, but certainly should-I-rush-for-a-doorway strong. It was a 5.1 to 5.3 on the Richter scale, centered just northeast of Funabashi City.