Ritual as Saving Grace

By Jerrold Schecter

JAPAN: THE FRAGILE SUPERPOWER by FRANK GIBNEY 347 pages. Norton. $10.

Thirty years after World War II, "the greater co-prosperity sphere" in Asia--once the aim of an aggressive Japanese empire--has been achieved by Japan Inc., a vast army of devoted, disciplined businessmen. To Americans the Japanese too often appear as some sort of grotesque national parody--crowds of transistor salesmen with kamikaze pilots' scarves, legions of passionate new consumers teeming on a string of islands which are about to sink beneath their growing population and industrial swill.

The stereotype, insists Frank Gibney in this provocative interpretation of the Japanese soul, is unfortunate. For, says Gibney, the Japanese are really the people who so far seem best able to cope with contemporary industrial life.

At the same tune, Gibney points out, modern Japan was largely created in the American image during the postwar occupation. Japan's deep-rooted psychological dependence on the U.S., in fact, is an extension into the realm of international relations of a chain of dependence and corresponding obligation between the younger, poorer and weaker and the old, rich and more powerful that runs from top to bottom in Japanese life. As Gibney compares and contrasts the two countries, he reflects on how our own industrial superpower--individualistic, given to philosophical absolutes and brusque manners--might profit from the example of a reluctant world power that is group-oriented, philosophically relativist and almost piously polite.

Gibney openly laments the loss of ceremony and amenity in American life. He regards the Japanese genius for preserving small rituals in the midst of an efficient, mechanized, industrial state as a hopeful example for the rest of the world. Such things as bowing, exchanging name cards and sipping tea in elaborate corporate reception rooms have "the importance of ceremony as art in keeping a civilization together." Adds Gibney: "Consensus and collectiveness are more than a virtue. They have al most the quality of religion."

Form and Love. Gibney explains how the Japanese manage to "alchemize ceremony into substance" because they are capable of dignifying the simplest acts of daily living with form and love.

Besides helping with homework and doing the family finances, mothers manage to spend a great deal of time with their children-- among other things teaching them the various ritual forms of greetings and farewells. Appearances count in Japan and influence reality. The measure of "sincerity" in the complex act of apologizing for a traffic accident, for in stance, helps determine the eventual fine imposed by the judge. Such simple but pervasive social medicine helps fight off alienation and spiritual exhaustion.

Building on the scholarly analysis of others and his own earlier work, Five Gentlemen of Japan (1953), Gibney explores Japan's "great steel web of contract and commitments." He is most impressed by the influence of the Japanese system called amaeru--literally to presume upon the affections of someone close to you, in Japan most frequently an elder. Of course, to be dependent on the indulgence of seniors on the job or in politics can lead to inefficiency and toadying. But at its best the sense of amaeru can create unrivaled group unity through which high efficiency and an extraordinary sense of teamwork are achieved. Some of this seems to be exportable. Japanese businesses in the U.S. have in fact demonstrated that American workers are made happier and more productive through the use of such Japanese methods as token work by executives on the assembly line and off-hours socializing with the workers.

No Jaywalking. The more or less serene survival of the Japanese in chaotic and overcrowded Tokyo, a city of 11 million with crime rates drastically lower than New York City (an average of two robberies per day, v. 200 for New York), is an example, says Gibney, of how mind and manners can triumph over matter. While the U.S. has systematically eliminated neighborhoods, the Tokyo secret, Gibney points out, is to maintain village living even in the city's harsh, heart-wearying roar. Tokyo is actually a series of group-dependent neighborhoods that function on traditional patterns with everyone knowing everyone else. Credit is still freely given at local stores. And even today, if you ask a Tokyo man where he is from he is likely to give you the name of his grandfather's village hundreds of miles away.

Gibney has lived and worked in Japan off and on since 1945 for a number of years as a journalist and more recently as president of a company that is preparing a Japanese version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The work brings him into contact with a great many elements of Japanese life.

But he is also a New Yorker, which leads to some brisk comparisons. Noting that it is not fear of authority but a sense of orderliness and social obligation that keeps Japanese from crossing against the lights, he says that such behavior is catching--but admits that it took him three years in Tokyo to abandon his old jaywalking Yankee ways.

Gibney is optimistic about Japan.

He does not think the Japanese are likely to rearm soon or become a nuclear power and he regards groups of extremists there simply as a kind of remote warning system for the future. The Japanese still feel themselves deeply linked to the U.S. "When the United States does something unfriendly or falls into difficulties, the Japanese tend to take the affront or the disaster almost personally." There are difficult nuances in the relationship, of course. The Japanese were shocked when the U.S. demanded that "if a Japanese firm could do unrestricted business in the United States, an American firm should get the same clearance to do business in Japan."

Why? Because in the amaeru relationship it is "the elder, the parent, the teacher, the rich uncle who must give. It is the child, the pupil who must be indulged.

--Jerrold Schecter

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