Dogs and Demons   ::   Керр Алекс

A few writers have raised these issues in recent years, but they were mainly journalists. American academics and cultural experts have uttered not a peep.

This brings me to a personal confession. This is a passionate book, and the reason is that I find what is taking place in Japan nothing less than tragic. Of course, there is much that is wonderful in Japan-I would never say that foreigners conversant with Japan must attack and criticize it. Nevertheless, we must certainly take off the emerald glasses and see modern Japan for what it is. To do otherwise is to condone and even become complicit in the disaster.

People writing about Japan make a big mistake if they believe that to gloss over its troubles is to «support Japan» and to point out difficulties is to «attack» or «bash» Japan. Japan is not a monolithic entity. Tens of millions of Japanese are as disturbed and frightened by what they see as I am. American friends have asked me, «What drove you to write a book that portrays Japan in such a disturbing light?» The answer is an almost embarrassingly old-fashioned Japanese answer: duty.

I came to Japan as a young boy, and spent most of the next thirty-five years in Tokyo, Shikoku, and Kyoto. As someone who loves this country, it is impossible for me to remain unmoved by Japan's modern troubles, especially the doom that has befallen the natural environment. During the past decade, I have spent untold hours with unhappy Japanese colleagues, who deeply deplore what they see happening to their nation's culture and environment but feel powerless to stop it. Halfway through the writing of this book, I took a trip to Ise Shrine, Japan's most sacred site, with two old friends, both of whom are prominent cultural figures. As we walked through Ise's primeval groves, I asked them, «Please tell me honestly whether I should press forward with this book. It's hard work. I could easily let this subject go.» They answered, «No, you have to write it. In our position, with our every move scrutinized by the media, we aren't free to speak out publicly. Please write it, for us.»

So this book is for my two friends, and millions of others like them. There is a great irony here, for while many foreign experts remain emotionally attached to present-day Japan's way of doing things, a growing and increasingly vocal number of Japanese emphatically are not. They, too, feel nostalgia, but it's for an older, nobler Japan, one that today's Japan denies at every step. As we shall see, much that parades as hallowed tradition is actually new contrivances that would be completely unrecognizable in Edo days or even as recently as the 1960s. People in Japan grieve because they know in their hearts, even if they cannot always express it in words, that their country is no longer true to its own ideals.

A strong streak of dissatisfaction runs through every part of Japanese society, with even a few highly placed bureaucrats questioning the status quo. Commentators in daily newspapers, magazines, and television talk shows here are obsessed with the idea that something is wrong. The title of an article in the influential opinion journal Shincho 45 sums up the mood: «In the 1990s, Japan Has Lost the War Again!» Another opinion journal, Gendai, devoted an entire issue to a series of essays by prominent economists and journalists headlined «As Japan Sinks – How to Protect Your Life and Possessions.» The subtitle was «This Country Is Rotting on Its Feet.» Unhappy and distressed people number in the millions – and they are Japan's hope for change.

For fifty years after World War II, a favorite theme of writing on Japan was «modernization» – how quickly Japan was changing, catching up with, or even advancing beyond other nations. Over time, Japan became Exhibit A in various theories of modernization, with writers fascinated by how traditional education and culture had contributed to making Japan a successful – some thought the world's most successful – modern state. However, it is a central thesis of this book that Japan's crisis of the 1990s springs from exactly the opposite problem: a failure to modernize.

Japan's ways of doing things-running a stock market, designing highways, making movies-essentially froze in about 1965. For thirty years, these systems worked very smoothly, at least on the surface. Throughout that time Japanese officialdom slept like Brünnhilde on a rock, protected by a magic ring of fire that excluded foreign influence and denied citizens a voice in government. But after decades of the long sleep, the advent of new communications and the Internet in the 1990s were a rude awakening. Reality came riding on his horse through the ring of fire, and he was not a welcome suitor. In the world of business, the stock market and banks crumbled; on the cultural front, citizens began to travel abroad by the tens of millions to escape drab cities and ravaged countryside.

The response by the bureaucrats who run Japan was to build monuments, and this they are doing on a scale that is bankrupting the nation. It was the only thing they knew to do. Hence the new title of this book: Dogs and Demons. The emperor of China asked his court painter, «What's easy to paint and what's hard to paint?» and the answer was «Dogs are difficult, demons are easy.» Quiet, low-key things like dogs in our immediate surroundings are hard to get right, but anybody can draw a demon. Basic solutions to modern problems are difficult, but pouring money into expensive showpieces is easy. Rather than bury electric wires, officials pay to have telephone poles clad in bronze; the city of Kyoto spent millions on building a Cultural Zone in its new railway station, the design of which denies Kyoto's culture in every way; rather than lower Internet connection fees, the government subsidizes «experimental Internet cities,» and so forth.

One of the recurring ideas in this book is the concept of «Japan at the extremes.» As Karel van Wolferen documented in The Enigma of Japanese Power, in Japan's political system the actual exercise of power is mostly hidden and widely denied, people dare not speak out, and the buck is passed indefinitely. The «Enigma» lies in how smoothly Japan Inc. seems to work despite a lack of strong leaders at the helm, and many an admiring book tells of how subtle bureaucrats gently guide the nation, magically avoiding all the discord and market chaos that afflict the West. But while the experts marveled at how efficiently the well-oiled engines were turning, the ship was headed toward the rocks. Japan's cleverly crafted machine of governance lacks one critically important part: brakes.