(book review)
Revised New Edition Shintaro Ryuu’s “On the Way of Seeing Things” (Kadokawa Sophia Bunko) Library, 2018
The three major European countries are Britain, Germany, and France. These peoples have their own thought patterns. The author writes about them from his experience of staying in Europe for many years. And he compares it with the Japanese way of thinking.
The author compares them with the Japanese way of thinking. It is very interesting when you know our way of thinking.
This book was published about 5 years after the World War II and became a bestseller. The content of the book is based on the author’s experience of living in Europe for eight years as a correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, and describes the characteristics of the German, French, and British ways of thinking. Few Japanese have been able to put forth the characteristics of the national character and ways of thinking of these three major European countries with such clarity. (There have been only a few since then, such as Michiko Inukai.)
The first book was written in 1966, but a revised edition was published in 2018.
(Content Summary)
-While some Japanes have emerged as world-class in the natural sciences, it is desolate in the social sciences, history, and philosophy. Almost none of the great systems developed by the Japanese themselves have produced the kind of theoretical labor that influences and even shapes the thinking of the public.
-It is very different from the respect for the theories of Deutsche Totalitarianism. German totalitarianism had the theoretical appearance of a direction of life, order, etc., for the German people as a whole, such as national excellence. Japanese totalitarianism is mythological, religious, emotional, and imperialistic.
-Difference from France: Political division into small parties. France’s ideological difference stems from historical class conflict. In Japan, party members and leaders are replaced, and there are no ideological differences. The focus is on human relations rather than logic or policy.
-Differences from the UK: traditionalism in ideology and institutions. In the UK, what has been experienced and tested in the past is used as a foundation to create the next one. Continuity of life, accumulation of experience. Japan has interrupted tradition. It has not developed in line with life in many cases.
-It is fundamentally different from Western Europe. There are no similarities.
-Excess of thought: Japanese modernity is filled with European culture. We have everything without any inconvenience. The cause is the Japanese people’s school-mindedness, inner depression, and recognition that their own country is behind, which leads to indigestion caused by an overabundance of ideas. Foreign countries are also adopting foreign ideas. In Japan, passionate and energetic study and research has been conducted, but it has only resulted in expertise of the intellectual class and has little effect as wisdom and nourishment for the people.
-Characteristics of the Japanese people’s acceptance of learning and thought
1: They had the ability to understand, but the social soil was different. Western countries had some things in common, but the West and Japan had no common ground, social life, family life, economy, religion, etc., even in terms of feelings
2: Enthusiastically and faithfully interpreted studies and ideas. However, there was no way to go plowing in one’s own field.
3: The Japanese coexisted and intermingled with the various influxes of Western thought. Buddhism, Shintoism, and other indigenous religious beliefs flowed through the lower strata, almost unrelated to the new ideas that came to the upper strata.
4: Freedom, civil rights, socialism, etc. came in where there were no facts to match. Facts had to be created and developed from the finished ideas.
5: They had no or very weak thought forms of their own to select, filter, and digest foreign ideas. This is a prime cause of the significant divisions and differences in the way of thinking of the people in this country where various ideologies coexist.
-There is, however, a way to grasp the situation sensitively like Japan’s unique culture: Zeami, Basho, etc.
-Russia is in a similar situation, so much so that there is a term in that country for intelligentia (detachment from realpolitik)
-The way of teaching has been to gradually descend from the university pulpit. We do not get into the lives of ordinary people. The law, for example.
-The Japanese have an incentive to suppress self-expansion. Europeans are naturally inclined to outward expansion, which leads to conflicts, and the law is based on such a premise. The Civil Code, Commercial Code, etc., regulate this. Law itself is life.
Japanese people live a double life: the law and a life of righteousness and humanity. Laws are not of their own making, but are a kind of descent.
-The same is true of the economy. Germans live on a centennial basis. The short-term behavior of the Japanese is creating a lot of waste, a lack of rationality in the national economy as a whole. The suffering and long hours of labor, the huge number of employees, the fierce competition that makes no sense socially, the many banquets and bribery, the large number of ryotei, waiting rooms, cabarets, etc., and the respectability of government offices. Technology has succeeded, but has the life of the people improved commensurate with this success? Advanced studies and ideas come and go in the mind, but life remains the same.
-Japanese prewar education
The commitment to nationalism: It was an obstacle to the normal development of the intellectual world, but if it had not been so powerful, there would not have been such rapid development. However, this has led to the twist of both Japanese society and academia. The importance of the Imperial Rescript on Education, the deification of the emperor, and an authoritarian nationalism in which both the individual and society were disregarded. A semi-religious coloring of which the people are hardly aware. The deification of the emperor and the rise to power of the military bureaucracy led to a national crisis. Knowledge of Japanese history also takes the form of myth.
Ideas of freedom, equality, the individual, and rationality are pushed away from the people’s lives. Academic research also seems to remain abstract. The old four peoples became officially equal: government, agriculture, industry, and commerce, but the sense of hierarchy remained.
@Numerous shortcomings of education
-Lack of rationality remained: A world of sensitivity, a lack of balance in judgment, an inability to calculate the small and large, and an emphasis on what appears near at hand.
-Lacks independence: If you have your own recipe, you can make yourself abundant. The inclination toward Axis Germany occurred without self-discipline and by accident. Japan is not good at making efforts on his own, always moves according to others, and is eventually swayed by them.
-Dreamers: Unpractical in their thinking, the Japanese are in their conceptualization, vague and mere moods, and uncalculated,
These are the effects of education since the Meiji era.
These are the shortcomings, but it is the same education that in half a century has brought us to the height of the Meiji and Taisho eras: a nation that is worth educating. There is potential for new developments, depending on the goals and methods of education.
The products of ideas coexist, and are multi-layered: the potential to become a museum of Western thought. The people are severely divided and different in their thinking. Disjointed. Complete lack of national consensus.
@What to do, then?
The present age is the age of science (natural and social sciences); the era of 19th century German-style, world-wide, summative thought (Hegel, Marx, etc.) is over. Each science is disjointed. Knowledge from different specialties is not directly related to each other, but can only be synthesized by one’s own mind. This is the British way of thinking.
Each individual is the subject of his or her own thoughts and ideas. Scientific knowledge is a tool and does not depend on ideology or big ideas. Thinking independently requires constant study and effort, with no time for rest, in order to keep abreast of developments and changes in the facts.
-No other country has had such an influx of various cultures, such a huge cultural asset, such an accumulation of the world’s cultural treasures. Reasons: history, geographical location, unusual curiosity.
If digested energetically, it has the potential to create a new culture: rationality and independence. The Japanese students have excellent background, but it is usually ruined as soon as they leave school and work in the society.
-The German, French, etc. are confident in their culture of the past thousand years and are stubborn and unaware of their own shortcomings. The Japanese have regrets about World War II. They should free themselves from conventional thought and have their own ideas for which they are responsible. The time has come to reach a national consensus.
(my overall summary)
His summary of the Japanese people is as follows.
The Japanese people have accepted many Western ideas since the Meiji era, 1968. However, they have only accepted them without having their own ideas. This was because the social foundation was different from that of Europe. Japan is, so to speak, a museum of ideas.
Therefore, there is no common national consciousness or ideology in Japan. In other words, the way of thinking and living of the Japanese people does not have the individualistic way of thinking as in the UK, Germany, and France.
This is a disadvantage, but it is also a strength in the modern age of science (social and natural sciences). In other words, since the various sciences are not interrelated, we are now in an age in which each individual must think in a comprehensive manner. If Japanese people study, digest, and absorb the ideas that have been accumulated in the past, they will be able to form their own unique ideas. The fact that the Japanese do not have the hard shells of established ways of thinking and living as do the British, Germans, and French is also an advantage.
The above is his theory of the Japanese.
(my comment)
Although it was written 60 years ago for Britain, Germany, and France, and about 50 years ago for Japan, it seems to me that it applies almost exactly as it does to the three countries and to Japan today.
In other words, the Japanese still do not seem to have a common ground on what their way of thinking is.
Of course, many theories of the Japanese have since been produced. There are more than 1,000 books and articles, many of them excellent. Benedict’s “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” Takeo Doi’s “The Structure of Amae,” Chie Nakane’s “Human Relations in Tate Society,” Van Wolfren’s Van Wolfgren’s “Japan: The Mystery of the Power Structure,” Yasuo Takeuchi’s “The Grammar of Japanese Behavior,” and so on.
However, it cannot be said that they have yet become our common denominator of thought.
We need to read this book by Shintaro Ryu and try to grasp the characteristics of the Japanese way of thinking again.
