The Land od the Rising Yen

There are few predictable events in the future but this is
one of them. The Japanese are perfectly right, too. There is no intrinsic value
in any political system: various systems can best serve various ages and there
was a time when even slavery was progressive. (It was surely more humane than
the indiscriminate massacre of the captured enemy.) But slavery as well as
feudalism, free trade, protectionism, and diverse revolutionary, fascist and
monarchical systems became outmoded and thrown on the rubbish-heap of history.
Some Marxists try another old trick nowadays: they try to patch up their own
Bible and while paying lip-service to the old giant, Karl Marx, deviate from
his ways but call their deviation orthodoxy. So we get Leninism, Stalinism,
Trotskyism, Maoism, Fidelism. Titoism, the Brezhnev doctrine etc. etc., all
claiming not only to be better than the others but also to be the one and only
True Creed. Democracy is not the one and only True Creed. Its greatest virtue —
as Churchill once remarked — is not that it is so good but simply that there is
nothing better. As soon as a better system is found, more suitable to the ages
ahead, democracy, too, will be discarded. The Japanese will do it without
blinking an eyelid; we shall do it blinking many hypocritical eyelids and
offering many theoretical justifications.
    We gave the Japanese one piece of
sound paternal advice: to give up militarism and concentrate on economics. They
followed our advice and we find it hard to forgive them for it. The Americans
try to persuade them now to revert to militarism — at least to the extent of
spending more on their own defence. But the Japanese shake their heads politely
and continue to do as they were told. They have given up militarism for good.
It makes them virtuous; and also very, very prosperous.
    But of course there is no need for
anxiety. If success is the hallmark of strength and merit — as indeed it is — then
democracy, at the moment, is safer in Japan than anywhere else.

1. PEOPLE
     

THE
SCRUTABLE ORIENTALS
     
     
    Japan — there should be no mistake about
it — is a lovely and fascinating country and the Japanese are endearing, likeable
people. They are kind and courteous; gentle and intelligent; clean and tidy;
disciplined and respectful; and industrious, with an insatiable curiosity and
appetite for knowledge. They are also proud, ambitious and nationalistic. They
are over-respectful towards authority; their individuality — with rare
exceptions — is submerged in groups. There are many strongly individualistic
groups, like the students, but few individualistic individuals. They can think
for others; they can think for the community; but they are not very good at
thinking for themselves.
    I liked the Japanese more than I
expected, although I had visited their country before my present visit and
liked them then, too. But I was also disappointed in them. The quaint,
outlandish, oriental flavour of the place meant a great deal to me as it does
to most occidental visitors. Starting with those lovely complex ideograms,
ubiquitous on fast-moving, racy neon signs. I also remembered the odd and
charming formalities of bowing; the equally odd but irksome habit of hissing;
the old-world courtesy, the mania for exchanging name-cards. ‘Many of these
ceremonious habits,’ I thought on the plane, flying towards the Land of the
Rising Sun, ‘are the legacy of the Tokugawa period. Not entirely, for the roots
were grown long, long before that. The ceremonies were instituted and
encouraged by the shoguns for good reasons: for their very emptiness and
pointlessness. The shoguns (with quite a few exceptions) were clever
chaps and knew that people busy with meaningless ceremonies had little time for
political intrigue and conspiracy.’
    It is true that the most meaningless
ceremonies occasionally led to quite unforeseen complications. One of Japan’s great literary works is the Forty-Seven Ronin, an eighteenth-century novel
or romantic tale of love and adventure. 2 A
retainer at the Imperial Court, anxious to humiliate a rival, advises him to
wear the wrong pair of trousers for a ceremonial occasion. The warrior’s
humiliation is intolerable; and it demands a horrible vengeance. The story
itself is the history of this vengeance, the story of forty-seven brave,
avenging samurai. All forty-seven are killed before this terrible tale
is concluded; villages are pillaged and burnt; countless people