That country's recovery from being the only nation ever to be nuclear-bombed, to becoming the world's second best economy, while peacefully maintaining some of the world's safest, cleanest and most orderly cities, is one of mankind's most admirable success stories.
To be honest, while Japan's achievement is impressive, Western Europe enjoys the same level of revitalization thanks to pretty much the same reasons, which I see as an indicator that Japan's success is not that special during the post-war era. The communist takeover of mainland China and the Korean War all drives US's decision to make Japan its influence hub in Asia and pouring tons of money/tech/resources into it. In that sense Japan's success also attributes to a lot of external factors that need to be inspected under historical context.
If you're interested in this sort of subject, Thomas McCraw's book Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions gives excellent overviews of how the economies of Japan and Germany operated before, during, and after the war.
One interesting and counter-intuitive fact I learned is that both countries came out of the war with a significantly greater industrial capacity than they had beforehand. Despite the enormous devastation, the wartime build-up was even more immense, and left both countries poised for recovery.
This article fails to mention the vast amount of money the US poured into Japan to make Japan a base of US influence in Southeast Asia. Domestic peace, maybe, but the other side of the whole international story is a less happy picture
Why is it so difficult to simply give credit where it's due? There are plenty of countries that take huge amounts of assistance that fail all day long. Would you also attribute American success to the spoils of war, colonialism, Manifest Destiny and African slavery, etc.?
It's not incorrect but it's dismissive of the thoughtful, hard work that's necessary to pull off a success. Every big opportunity doesn't equal a big win. Also, it's easy to take a hard-won effort for granted as an inevitability.
It's only dismissive if you think of events as having a single cause.
America's success relied, absolutely, on African slavery and on the removing the indigenous populations that were in its way. There are many other countries that engaged in slavery and population removal that didn't succeed to the extent America did, yes; you are correct. But there are also many other countries that simply had Enlightenment ideals and a democracy and didn't succeed to the extent America did, and many more that simply had thoughtful, hard work and didn't succeed at all.
> After the war, they were taught to redirect their devotion to the nation from its military expansion to economic expansion. They were constantly exhorted that they were a homogeneous people and superior to all other Asians, and superior even to the whites. To establish their national position in the postwar world, they should not be very concerned about individual well being, thus should not mind the high cost they have to pay for consumer goods that cost less abroad.
It would be nice to have a shred of evidence for claims like this. "Constantly exhorted ... that they were superior to all other Asians" is almost certainly pure fiction.
> "Constantly exhorted ... that they were superior to all other Asians" is almost certainly pure fiction.
It's not.
The Japanese race is a unique isolate, having no known affinities with any
other race. In some extreme versions, the race is claimed to be directly
descended from a distinct branch of primates.
"First, they implicitly assume that the Japanese constitute a culturally and
socially homogeneous racial entity, whose essence is virtually unchanged from
prehistoric times down to the present day. Secondly, they presuppose that the
Japanese differ radically from all other known peoples. Thirdly, they are
conspicuously nationalistic, displaying a conceptual and procedural hostility
to any mode of analysis which might be seen to derive from external,
non-Japanese sources."[1]
Actually your link seems to support the post you're replying to.
The frequency of these chronic transitional upheavals engendered a remarkable intensity of debate about national directions and identity, whose complexity over time renders a synthetic judgment or bird's-eye view of the literature in question rather difficult
During the early post-war period, most of nihonjinron discourses discussed the uniqueness of the Japanese in a rather negative, critical light
The same section you quoted from discusses the cyclical nature of popular acceptance of continual claims of Japanese superiority, ebbing with the immediate post-war hardship and flowing with the actual economic takeoff of the following decades. The sentence immediately following your first quote is: "A major controversy surrounds the question regarding the affiliation of the post-war nihonjinron theories with the prewar conceptualization of Japanese cultural uniqueness," which speaks to the ongoing and historical nature of these "exhortations" and supports my rebuttal.
I guess it depends on your definition of "constantly". To me, if it's cyclical and followed by a national debate, it's different.
I'm certainly not debating that nationalism didn't (or doesn't) exist in Japan. I just wonder to what level it was "indoctrinated". I would have expected there to be far broader and stronger nationalism left today if it was that bad post-war. I'm trying to compare to stuff like how the effects of the Red Scare in the US are still very strong
You stated that the claim of a Japanese narrative of their own superiority was fiction. I linked to an article that directly demonstrated the existence of, and examined the effects of, that exact narrative.
Given that you consider that "irrelevant," I agree that I will not convince you of your incorrectness, since there is clearly no good faith or intelligent discussion to be had with you.
> You stated that the claim of a Japanese narrative of their own superiority was fiction.
I did not.
> I linked to an article that directly demonstrated the existence of, and examined the effects of, that exact narrative.
You may have linked to an article that directly demonstrated that, but since I did not state that the claim of a Japanese narrative of their own superiority was fiction, whether or not your article demonstrates that is irrelevant.
> Given that you consider that "irrelevant,"
It is irrelevant since I did not say that "the claim of a Japanese narrative of their own superiority was fiction". I did not even say anything remotely similar to that.
> I agree that I will not convince you of your incorrectness
You will not be able to convince me of my incorrectness in saying something which I did not say. Since I did not even say the thing that you claimed me to have done, it is very hard for me to become convinced that I was or am incorrect about what you claim I said. The only logical way out of this conundrum is for you to go back to what I wrote, and notice that I didn't say what you seem to think I did.
> since there is clearly no good faith or intelligent discussion to be had with you.
Now, if you have a new-found desire for an intelligent discussion, the jumping off point for you, to try to make your future discussions more intelligent, is to actually read the words the other person has written, then respond to them. If you respond to something the other person has not written, that will not result in an intelligent discussion. The failure of intelligence here is not the failure of the other person to say something intelligent, but a failure of yours to read the other person's words.
> It would be nice to have a shred of evidence for claims like this. "Constantly exhorted ... that they were superior to all other Asians" is almost certainly pure fiction.
I'm not an expert, but it is consistent with cultural and historical details I've heard.
It's ironic that you say "It would be nice to have a shred of evidence for claims like this" yet don't attempt to provide any evidence for your claim that it "is almost certainly pure fiction".
> I'm not an expert, but it is consistent with cultural and historical details I've heard.
I've heard several times that people born under the astrological sign Pisces tend to be confused because their symbol is two fishes going in opposite directions.
> It's ironic that you say "It would be nice to have a shred of evidence for claims like this" yet don't attempt to provide any evidence for your claim that it "is almost certainly pure fiction".
Even Alanis Morissette could not claim that it is in the slightest bit ironic. The person making the claim is the person required to come up with evidence for it, not the person disputing the claim. What evidence do you have that Pisces people are NOT confused and lacking direction?
"I'm not an expert" means "I am not an expert", not that I know nothing on these matters. I've read about Japanese culture quite a few times in the past. There's a lot of information out there about historical and present Japanese attitudes towards other races and cultures.
Regarding your second point, you made the positive claim that it's "almost certainly pure fiction". If you're going to make a positive claim and not provide any evidence, while criticising other people for doing the same thing, then that's ironic.
> "I'm not an expert" means "I am not an expert", not that I know nothing on these matters. I've read about Japanese culture quite a few times in the past. There's a lot of information out there about historical and present Japanese attitudes towards other races and cultures.
Then perhaps you can provide a shred of evidence that the Japanese people in postwar Japan were "constantly exhorted" that they were superior to other asians.
> Regarding your second point, you made the positive claim that it's "almost certainly pure fiction". If you're going to make a positive claim and not provide any evidence, while criticising other people for doing the same thing, then that's ironic.
The claim that people born under the star sign Pisces are easily confused is almost certainly pure fiction. Confabulating the words "almost certainly pure fiction" into a positive claim on my part is pointless semantic game-playing.
I am more than happy for you to think that I am ignorant and that there is no evidence out there.
I'm not here to go dig up details for you.
This all started with you saying that it was "almost certainly pure fiction" without providing any evidence for that claim, while at the same time criticising someone for providing no evidence for the opposite view. You still haven't given your evidence for saying it's almost certainly pure fiction.
If someone said that the idea that people have walked on the moon was "almost certainly pure fiction", and that person also complained that people saying that people have walked on the moon haven't given a shred of evidence, then it'd be reasonable to ask them what their evidence was for it being almost certainly pure fiction.
No, I think you do know exactly nothing. What you believe you do know may be completely wrong since you have no first hand experience and read things filtered through the cultural biases that exist in each of us, and when applied to another culture, finds ways to on the one hand exoticize it, on the other to denigrate it and it's people.
> I think you do know exactly nothing. What you believe you do know may be completely wrong since you have no first hand experience and read things filtered through the cultural biases that exist in each of us
So that applies to you and your view too, right? Or is it only other people's views?
> and when applied to another culture, finds ways to on the one hand exoticize it, on the other to denigrate it and it's people.
That's an extremely presumptuous and arrogant statement to make.
As if that was the only possible kind of response.
And speaking of my case, I have known many Japanese people and have like them a lot, and I like a lot about Japanese culture. I am half Asian and hardly exoticize the place or culture
I'm glad that, despite earlier saying otherwise, you're acknowledging that it's possible your view may be wrong and that what I'm saying may be correct.
What was the impact of management and efficiency of operation, production process, and improvement process within these companies? Surely not none. In the decades post WWII they were simply able to produce better product faster and with more predictability and consistency—that was not an accident, nor was it simply capacity, world economy, or internal policy.
They took their existing mindset/hard work, stopped spending it on military (in part due to a paradigm shift and also restrictions imposed by foreign powers) and started spending it purely on industrialization, technology, infrastructure, trade, education, science... a self-reinforcing effect that made them incrementally more productive.
I remmain to be convinced that Japanese demography will prove of any negative consequence whatsoever in the long run. globally, population neds to shrink. The Japanese are showing us how to. The West how to not.
Some of Richard Werner's and Karel van Wolferen's lectures might be interesting too.
Our society is inclined to attribute success to some intrinsic nature (race, culture, language..).
Japan's successful ? It must be Zen. China not ? Must be Confucianism, shame-based culture. Now China is ? Ah it must be Confucianism, collectivism. India is not successful ? It must be Hindooism. They have Sanskrit ? Ah it must be the Aryans. The Native Americans died out ? Ah it must be their immune system. The play is clear.
Japan's success is likely due to the way MacArthur normalized its war-economy, and because of how it was guided in the post-war years. Ditto with Korea/China/Thailand/ and now Vietnam/India (and other SE countries). I haven't seen a tick of anything "native" at the heart of it, even though nationalism dictates that the citizens be deluded into believing these things.
That country's recovery from being the only nation ever to be nuclear-bombed, to becoming the world's second best economy, while peacefully maintaining some of the world's safest, cleanest and most orderly cities, is one of mankind's most admirable success stories.
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