The Land od the Rising Yen

eyes of pure
Alsatians who firmly believe that being pure Alsatians is the supreme virtue
until they are taught the facts of life, usually in the hard way.
    Two superimposed cultures make little
sense if they remain separate and unamalgamated. If they can integrate, they
produce something new. The whole, after all, is more than the sum total of its
ingredients, just as a motor car is more than a heap of spare parts.
    The Japanese have-not achieved this
integration yet and the process seems to be slow, but if they have a genius for
anything, it is for imitating others and improving on their ways. And as
for our own pure bred Alsatian culture... our
Mediterranean-Nordic-Central-European-Slavonic-American culture: there is
nothing pure about that. It is a hotch-potch — and it is all the better for it.
     
    We are inclined to think that our
ways are the best. Often they are. But here is a sobering thought.
    On 12 November 1946, the Stars and
Stripes, the daily paper of the American army of occupation, arranged a
competition in Tokyo between the abacus, still in almost universal use in
Japanese shops and offices, and the most up-to-date electric calculating
machine, as the budding computer was then called.
    ‘The machine age took a step
backwards yesterday,’ reported the paper next day. ‘The abacus, centuries old,
dealt defeat to the most up-to-date electric machine now being used by the
United States Government. The abacus victory was decisive.’
    I, too, had a memorable experience of
a slightly different kind. I went to buy a number of small items in the shop of
my Tokyo hotel. The lady in charge took her abacus and I took my little
pocket-calculator (I am very bad at figures, so I use a little adding machine,
the reverse side of which is a slide rule).
    '235 yen,’ she declared, looking up
from the abacus. ‘Surely not,’ said I politely, studying my machine. ‘You must
not cheat yourself. I make it 645.’
    ‘No,’ she shook her head, smiling.
‘You must not overpay me. It is 235.’
    Then someone who could do figures in
his head came in and told us, quite rightly, that the correct sum was 415 yen.
    A simple little story, but for me it
has a symbolic significance. This was a clash — however minor — between Eastern
and Western methods. We both know that our own method can frequently be right;
the wiser among us also know that our method can sometimes be wrong and the
other can be right. This little story should remind us — a useful reminder
indeed — that we can both be wrong at one and the same time.
     
     
    (2) SUCCESS-STORY
     
    How do the Japanese look at all this?
They are complicated people. Yet they are also very simple — almost primitive —
in one respect: they idolize success. What succeeds is good; what fails is
worthless.
    Perhaps we are all inclined to think
this way, but the Japanese definition of success seems over-simple. Success is
what achieves immediate and tangible results; success shines and dazzles, it is
there for all to see and can be recognized at a glance. Success is the
accomplishment of an aimed-at end — there is no need for philosophical or
psychological examinations of the value and quality of aims. Success is fame,
status, riches.
    This adulation of success has played
a dominant part in Japanese history throughout the ages; it formed the Japanese
character; it made world history.
    In 1637, after a bloody revolt, the
Shimbara Uprising, Japan was hermetically sealed off from the outside world. It
created one of the many Iron Curtains of history, much more savage and
effective than Stalin’s was at the height of his paranoia. No Japanese was
allowed, under pain of death, to leave the country, and any Japanese who was
foolish enough to return from abroad was executed in a rather unpleasant
manner. Foreigners were not permitted to enter the country at all; if they did,
they were beheaded.
    In 1640, a band of brave but
foolhardy Portuguese appeared, bearing presents and hoping that the shogun, Iemitsu,
might relent. He did not. The whole crew of the Portuguese boat — with the
exception of thirteen people — was beheaded; the vessel with its cargo,
including all the gifts brought to the shogun, was burnt. ‘The thirteen
survivors, after witnessing the executions, were sent back to Macao. Before
they departed they were addressed, so it is said, by an official in these terms:
“You are witnesses that I even caused the clothes of those who were executed to
be