japan book review 6 – TEARS OF LONGING by Christine Yano
Enka has been called “Japanese blues”, “Japanese country and western,” and “dasai grandma music.” Enka are sad, melodramatic ballads that you karaoke the fuck out of in run-down snack-bars at 3am. If you ever bike home drunk at 3am and pass bars with terrible out of key singing gurgling out of them, you’re hearing enka.
I like some enka passionately, and hate most of it. So when I found out there was an English book about it, I jumped at the chance to read it. Maybe it could tell me how to avoid the crappy stuff. That didn’t happen, but nonetheless, this book is pretty good!
Like this: the BOMBASTIC style:
And this – the exact same melodies and verse-chorus structure but done super-minimal. . . .what i call the SUICIDAL STYLE.
Compare to this next one: the PLASTIC BULLSHIT NO-SOUL CORPORATE SELL OUT style.
Note how it's still basically the same melodies and arrangements but all the soul has been sucked out by The Man.
I'll yell at The Man more later, but let's get back to the book review:
The good parts of TEARS OF LONGING are the history of enka, the breakdown of enka clichés, and the explanation of the Japanese word ‘kata.” (型）
The bad parts are the tedious chapters behind-the-scenes-at-the-record-company-meetings, which I get the feeling that Yano had to include just to prove she was a real anthropologist. Anthropologists have to go to places that no one has gone before.
Her constant harping on “the social construction of gender” and “the social construction of patriotism and the Japanese spirit,” I can take or leave.
Enka is complicated to define. The actual term “enka” was not widely used until the ‘60s. And then it was immediately applied retro-actively to the previous 70 years of pop-tunes-that-sounded-Japanese (as opposed to pop-tunes-that-sounded-western). Although, at the times those tunes were written, they were not thought of as enka.
Got all that?
Enka is a sort of release valve for Japanese emotions. People who would never share their true feelings with you can go to the karaoke with you and belt out songs with ridiculous, over-the-top emo lyrics like “I would drown myself in an ocean of sake for youuuuuuuuuu, I exist only to tell lies, I’ll never forgive you for what you did to me, I’d rather die than love another, waaahhhh.” It’s no coincidence that most enka songs have “sake” in the title – Japan’s other release valve.
Enka is made up of other, earlier styles of Japanese music, such as:
minyou (folk song),
Roukyoku (in Osaka, called naniwa-bushi) Roukyoku are narrative jams, story-telling ballads. This genre flourished among street performers, and recounted traditional tales, as well as newsworthy stories of the present, often with a preachy moral. Samurai, thieves, dutiful sons, and devoted wives. Duty and honor! Just vocal and shamisen.
kouta (‘little songs’), which were more humorous or ironic, and had more of a retro-Edo feel. Also shamisen-based.
These styles were synthesized in the 1930s by famous song-writer Koga Masao, who established the kata (form or pattern) of enka.
ENKA’S KATA.
A standout point of Yano’s book is her definition of kata. Here it is:
“There are good reasons for my using “kata” instead of translating it as the English words "pattern", "style", or "formula".
First, kata emphasizes an embeddedness in daily life.
Second, kata emphasizes surface form and beauty: the emphasis on form and effects gives a highly theatrical sense to performance, and a performative sense to daily life.
Third, kata emphasizes detail.
Fourth, as a system of theatrical display , kata places emphasis on technique, on the process of doing: a performance becomes a presentation of presentation.
Fifth, kata separates the whole into discrete, patterned units, which create a recognizable code of the performance, a code whose goal is beauty.
Sixth, kata is important as a way for art forms to be taught and handed down from one generation. Kata becomes a means by which one may enter an art form, it is a manner of doing, a way of being. Kata at once establishes, constructs, and verifies a relationship with the past.
Seventh: At the same time as it formalizes, aestheticizes, and historicizes, kata also spiritualizes, which might be the most important characteristic of all. Working on the external through kata transforms and defines the internal. Unlike western thought that gives primacy to what is below the surface and behind the mask, kata gives the surface its due. Self presentations are not merely outward expressions of some inner substance, but a constant process of creating that identity, while simultaneously signifying and demonstrating it.
The western dichotomy of form (false) vs. content (true) becomes reconfigured as continuous and interpenetrating parts. Displays of emotion are at once raw and cultivated, and the ability to balance both is what makes fans appreciate you more than the other singers. When one becomes a jedi-master of a certain art form, you perfect the kata until the line between you and kata vanishes. The creative goal of kata-training is to fuse the individual to the form so that the individual becomes the form and the form becomes the individual.”
That said, the main kata of enka is excess. Melodrama heaped on top of melodrama! Whether manly bombast, sentimental schmaltz, or broken-hearted emo whinging, do it in excess! There is no such thing as “too obvious” or “too much”.
This being Japan, the idea of “that’s too fake” doesn’t apply – the idea is to be authentic by sticking to the formula and perfecting it. However, this being Japan, nobody bothers to explicitly state what the kata of enka exactly ARE – you’re just supposed to automatically know them from sheer repetition and knowing the context. To find out what the kata are, Yano took 115 popular enka songs (mostly from the shitty era of the 70s and 80s 90s, which is a bummer) and got statistical on the ass of the enka canon.
The most common words (based on how many songs they show up in) are:
Dream, heart,you, sake, tears, crying, woman, person, love, flower, persona lone, chest, I, rain, couple, life, bloom,wind, man, snow, drink, boat, sorrowful, and right at the bottom: happy.
The single most commonly used word : sake.
Like easily 3 times as much as any other word. You don’t even need a list.
Yano then takes the most common lyrical themes and examines how they’re used :
DREAMS
Yano says, In enka, dreams dwell on past loves, on mother, and on old hometown. They do not goad the dreamer into action but encapsulate the dreamer in a sate of inaction and resignation.
Waiting is a related theme. Again the passivity which contrasts with the burning flames of emotion.
CRYING
Crying is not weak or shameful, the way we think of emo music. In Japan, crying – through the magic of music, is turned into a thing of beauty, a performance of tears, a mark of exquisite tragedy. You don’t wipe away your tears, you show them off. Tears are like a safety valve for honne (private self). Enka songs often speak of secret tears.
Oh! In my barren heart
My tears freeze and my passion burns
Oh! Please embrace me
Please embrace my barren heart
***
Tears, tears, tears!
Even if my ears run dry, it won’t mean that my love has withered
***
I burn with desire and fall – the compassion of a woman
I am drenched with sadness- the tears of a woman
I cannot be with the one I love – the heart of a woman.
Also, it’s almost an iron law that drops of tears and drops of sake are made into metaphors of each other in every song.
And given Japan’s cultural propensity towards anthromorphization (see my yokai interview!), Yano says, “Enka’s emphasis on tears endows even nonhuman inanimate objects with the ability to cry: crying shamisen, crying nights, howling north winds, crying train whistlse. This projection of emotion onto objects and elements of nature makes for a kind of environmental empahy: the jilted lover does not cry alone but in concert with everything around her."
ROMANCE AND GENDER
sample lyrics:
I want this love to burn until death,
this one night love to which I surrender
***
A man’s love is the tenderness of a single night
But a woman’s love lasts until the day of death
***
I don’t care if I throw my life away,
just please let me be here by your side
There’s this definite wabi-sabi vibe to the enka view of romance – like the cherry blossoms that fall too soon, this morbid sentimental reverence for anything that is brief , and all the more precious or touching because of the transience.
Gender:
Men are bummed because they have to do a duty that they really don’t want to do, or because they miss their home town, women are bummed because they fall in love with terrible men. Women have sex once and then spend the rest of their lives condemned to love and hate that man.
Women characters drink alone as they sing, which is shocking!
Men are also alone, but it is not a sign of weakness for them, it is a sign of standing on your own two feet, sticking to your guns – a good thing. Instead of having a one-night-stand and then pining for it the rest of your life, men commit to a certain course of action or a certain dream (otoko no michi – the men’s road) and then spend the rest of their lives following it to the bitter end, never wavering or giving up.
ENKA AND FAKE NOSTALGIA:
Enka is retro: like country music in the USA, which is sold to people as representing the “real America the way it used to be”, but in fact it’s kind of phoney.
Modern enka started in the ‘60s, duh, and represents a Disney version of ‘30s Japan that never was. Enka cultivates this reputation as “nihon no uta” (song of Japan), an expression of nihonjin no kokoro (the hearts/soul of Japanese).
Notwithstanding, some of the most famous enka singers since the ‘80s are Korean and Taiwanese imports. Also, most enka singers are women but the lyric-writers and managers are all men.
Although thought of as music from grandpa/grandma’s generation, most enka fans were into pop or rock music and then switched to enka when they got older.
Whereas Japan sells tea ceremony, flower arranging, koto music and sumo (not to mention that wacky anime!) to foreigners as “exotic tourist stuff from a foreign country”, enka is only sold to Japanese.
But it’s still seen as exotic – wahat Yano calls “internal exotic.”
In regular words: it’s more Japanese than Japanese. It functions to bind people together and cement what it means to be Japanese, and creates a single idealized past without all that fascism and war. For example, they use a lot of “Japanese” instruments , flutes, shamisen, koto, taiko, but only in the intro, as decoration. To be “exotic.”
More on that nostalgia:
Ryuukouka (Japanese-style pop) became the dominant style of the Taisho era (1912-1926). And today’s enka draws mostly from ryuukouka. In other words, the nostalgia of contemporary enka is nostalgia for the Taisho era: not only was Taisho the era of ryuukoka, but Japanese society was advancing, modernizing quickly, and people were full of hope. Then came the fascism and the nuclear bombs.
As part of the nostalgia, new songs are made to sound exactly like songs from 40 years ago. This is kata (型) at work. Now, don’t get me wrong: Yano’s rant about kata is the best explanation of what it is and why it is important to understanding Japanese culture that I’ve read so far.
But enka from the 80s and 90s is just crap.
Kata was invented for artisans, Buddhist monks, and martial artists. In other words, before mass production, mass media, and modern times.
And it makde sense BACK THEN to do every single damn thing with kata: if someone is a master artisan, they’re a tool-maker, and you ask him for a tool (say, a katana), you need it for a job. To stab suckas with. You don’t want him to get arty or original with it. Same thing with martial arts. And as for Buddhist monks, god isn’t going anywhere – god is unchanging and eternal, so kata is not supposed to change.
But when modern times come along, applying kata to mass-production can result in huge cockups.
I mean sure, with identical, assembly line transformer toys or hello kitty t-shirts, go ahead, use kata. They’re supposed to be the same! But with art or music? Fuck no, don’t use kata.
Kata worked fine when there was only like 40 songs written per year, because jedi-masters of enka took a whole year to make one song the old-fashioned way.
But by combining old-school kata with new-school mass-production and mass-marketing, you get the worst of both worlds: the un-creativity of kata, combined with modern techniques that allow companies to spew out hundreds of sound-alike songs every month. If you want the same songs, just use your modern factories to burn millions of cds of classic songs from the ‘60s. But of course the fans already have those songs, so you have to make them buy new ones by cranking out songs THAT SOUND JUST LIKE THEM. Worst of both worlds!
Anyway.
TIMELINE OF JAPANESE OLD-TIMEY POP MUSIC
8,000,000 bc – minyou (folk songs) come into being
1860s – roukyoku becomes a big working-man’s type of music in the early Meiji period, as do kouta ('little songs')
1880s – enka starts as “enzetsu no uta” a form of acapella protest song.
In its original form, enka was half-sung and half-spoken by an enkashi (enka singer/caller) otherwise known as a soushi (singer/caller), acapella. In its rhythmic exaggeration of certain syllables, it was musically similar to the cries of street vendors, but its goal was political. Enkashi were described as “singing street guerrillas.” Because it was acapella (and preachy!), enka was less about melody and more about really exaggerated vocals – sad words sound REALLY sad, happy ones sound really happy, long notes are really long ,etc. And this can be heard in today's enka as well.
1890 – enka turns into more of a entertainment genre, because a
1890s – Soeda Azembo becomes the first “king of enka!", and incorporates a lot of the new western styles into his music, defining the enka sound of the Meiji Era. He sings “kae-uta” (parodies of popular songs), changing the lyrics to be about current events in newspapers, functioning as sort of a cross between a pop star and a town crier. I guess this is a way Enka was different from roukyoku.
1907 – intellectuals introduce the first instrument to the a-capella genre of enka: the violin. This “high class, Western” instrument was not a hit with the masses, but the concept of “having a band” really took off, and thereafter, enka used instruments!
1920s –There’s enough foreign music coming in that it gets its own genre: kayoukyoku. It seems that kayoukyoku originally referred to western music but then came to refer to Japanese pop which had an exotic, western ‘flavor’ to it as well. Maybe? It's not clear.
All the Japanese-sounding pop styles are now put under the umbrella of “ryuukouka” (pop tunes), to distinguish them from kayoukyoku. As a result of this "together-grouping" , a lot of ryuukouka hits would later be thought of as enka (remember, enka was defined retroactively). Jesus! Is that pedantic enough for you?
Meanwhile, enka is now popular enough that singers can make a living doing requests in bars. Pop tunes are a sort of exciting new thing, like radio and movies, that never existed before.
20s and 30s : advances in recording technology allow pop tunes to be sold in the exciting new 78RPM format! Record companies, sensing immense profits, demand that full bands (not just a shamisen) be used to back the singers.
1930s – ryoukouka eclipses shinminyou to become the dominant trend for Japanese style pop (although lots of people were by then really into swing jazz, so decadent and exotic!)
Koga Masao – the “father of modern enka” finds the perfect formula for enka: a foundation of kouta and add a bit of naniwa-bushi, keep the tempo slow, lay off the harmony singers,and rock the minor scale, and change the shamisen into a guitar (mandolin in a pinch). This helped solidify enka into a kata, or cliche.
1938 – government bans all foreign "enemy" music, as well as Japanese songs with sentimental or romantic themes. The government also banned all overt expressions of sadness such as the word for tears!
1944 – government, realizing it's losing the war on all fronts, resorts to more drastic measures: it also bans western instruments : guitars, banjos, ukuleles, as well as western melodies. Jesus fucking christ, you people.
1950 – misora hibari, former child star, becomes “queen of enka”. She can make anyone cry.
Japan’s shitty post-war times practically called out for a rebirth of enka with specially gloomy tunes like “bath town elegy” – also by Mr. Koga. This postwar-gloom enka focused less on people pining for their lost hometown, to alienated city-dwellers with no home to go home to.
Preachy songs about how "the real Japan" gave way to more sophisticated, if immoral songs about “Here I am at a bar , just got dumped by a no-good man AGAIN, let’s get shitfaced.”
50s – record companies get more sophisticated, hiring professionals to write and arrange songs behind the scenes, reducing artists to just hired voices.
60s – mood kayou (mood songs) are blues-influenced enka ballads about failed romance, that featured saxophones. They are the worst kind of enka ever. Anything with a saxophone, switch that shit off.
Late 60s/early 70s: the word Enka makes a comeback, meaning not “anti-meiji-government protest songs” but “all pop music of the last 70 years which ‘sounds Japanese’”. A firm kata soon emerges to regulate new songs produced in this style
CONTEMPORARY ENKA SUBGENRES:
Do-enka (real enka): more influenced by naniwa –bushi: west-coast flavor, honor, machismo, all that shit. Plus serifu (narrative in a spoken-word voice) between voices. Contemporary do-enka singers: kitajima saburou, toba ichirou, miyako harumi, nakamura mitsuko, sakamoto fuyumi.
Mood enka : descended from the mood kayou of the ‘60s, without so many saxophones. more weepy and ballady, less honor-y and macho-y. where do-enka singers might ornament their singing with grunt or growl, mood enka people are more inclined to use yuri and kobushi, the vibrato that sounds like weeping.
Pops enka: crossover. Major key. Lyrics less suicidal.
YANO’S PICKS FOR THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ENKA JAMS OF ALL TIME:
rappa bushi (bugle call song) – by Soeda azembo –first King of Enka celebrates kicking Russia’s ass in '05. Just a singer and a shamisen.
Sasurai no uta (song of wandering) (1917), lonliness of leaving hometown to find work in the city. a very topical theme in the rapidly industrializing country.
Sendou kouta (boatman’s song) by noguchi ujou and Nakayama SHinpei (1921) – first enka hit influenced by western music.
tottori shunyou releases "kago no tori" (bird in a cage) (1924). It was a huge hit, became a film! Japanese corporations even then were really savvy about cross-merchandising. This 60 years before manga-became-videogames-became-anime-became movies and all that!
Sake wa namida ka tameiki ka (is sake a teardrop or a sigh?) - first big hit of Mr. Koga, inventor of the "classic" enka style.
Kage o shitaite (following after your image) - another Koga hit.
yu no machi erejii (bath town elegy) (1948), by koga maso – classic postwar gloom.
namida no renrakusen (ferryboat of tears) –(1965) reviving the traditional style in hippy times.
Ringo oiwake (1952 )– super sad even by enka standards: the girl's mom died. big hit by Misora hibari – the postwar "queen of enka"
Kanashi sake, (1966) – another hit by MIsora Hibari.
sasori-za no onna (scorpion woman) – the "theme song" of Mikawa Kenichi. King of the cross-dressing enka singers. Apparently that was a thing back in the '70s?
VOCABULARY
Nakibushi – crying song (whose merit is measured by its ability to elicit tears)
Naniwa – bushi : Osaka song
Roukyoku (narrative song)
kae-uta (substitution song): a parody, where lyrics are substituted.
Shouka- school songs composed to introduce japanese children to western music
Rokyoku is a narrative art accompanied by the shamisen, and was perfected at the beginning of the Meiji period (1868–1912).
Onkai – scale
yonanuki onkai ( asian sounding pentatonic scale)
ryuukouka! This just means “ japanese-sounding pop music on 78 rpm records.”
Serifu – lines (in a play) narrative spoken word interludes (in songs)
enkashi (enka singer/caller)
soushi (singer/caller),
yuri – a vocal ornamentation influenced by American blues – a vibrato-like swinging of the voice.
Kobushi – a crying-waah-sounding vibrato more traditional ornamentation.
Jigoe – chest voice, natural voice
Uragoe : head voice, falsetto
Hanagoe – nasal voice
Damigoe – gravelly, blues- or metal-ly voice
Kosei – originality, individuality of a performance.
Miren – lingering affection, and its evil twin
Urami - lifelong, smouldering resentment
Furusato – my old home town (sometimes it means “Japan the way it used to be in the good old days”)
Taishuu bunka – working class culture
Ki wo terawazu ni – without showing off anything new.
Tejaku-sake : pouring yourself a drink of booze (kind of brutal because traditionally people are supposed to pour drinks for their friends)
joruri, sekkyo-bushi (chants of Buddhist tales)
saimon-gatari (chants of traditional literature and worldly episodes).
fushi (chants)
tanka (narration). Fushi is the chanting part where the performer sings about the situation or feelings of characters, while tanka is the dialogue part where the performer plays the role of each character.
http://www.japanlink.co.jp/ka/home.html
5 comments Tags: enka, kata —
Japanese book 5: THE JAPANESE MIND, Edited by Davies and Ikeno
Like the last book report – "INSIDE THE KAISHA", THE JAPANESE MIND attempts to explain Japanese behavior so as to avoid "culture shock" and misunderstandings. Unlike INSIDE THE KAISHA, THE JAPANESE MIND is a huge mess.
But!
THE JAPANESE MIND is a book that succeeds by failing! If you read it, at first you’re struck by how confusing and poorly written it is, how it tries to do 6 things and does none of them well. Half the information is redundant, and the other half so esoteric it’s not useful.
But if you read the introduction, the introduction explains HOW the book was made – the context and the decisions that shaped the form of the book.
And once you understand that, you realize that the book has a LOT to teach you: all the failures of the book are the results of classic Japanese decision making. By looking at the failures you can learn a lot about Japanese way-of-thought.
"Inside the Kaisha" TELLs you, but "The Japanese Mind" straight-up SHOWS you.
See,THE JAPANESE MIND had a lot of goals:
Originally, each chapter was a senior thesis about "Japanese Culture" by a Japanese student of International Studies. So one goal was to be a thesis for the students..
Then the teachers decided to make the theses into a textbook to teach foreign students about Japanese culture .Despite the somewhat confusing and improper English - and despite the fact that students shouldn’t be teaching classes.
The "book about Japanese culture” idea then expanded to be a sort of “how-to” manual which would try to teach foreigners common cultural misunderstandings and how to avoid them . . . based on learning about flower arranging and "the Japanese spiritual connection to seasons"??? Well, yes! Because the first two ideas were still in effect, they didn't get tossed when the book changed direction. Why would they? Silly gaijin!
Finally, the thesis/ textbook / how-to manual was expanded in scope once again: it’s not only for foreigners who wanted to larn bout Japan, but for OTHER JAPANESE STUDENTS OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES who wanted to learn “what foreigners think of Japan” while practicing their English reading skills. Thus you wind up with “study questions” that make no sense to foreign students, since they are directed at Japanese students of international studies who happen to be reading in English.
Amazed yet?
So now let's see how the failure of this book can teach us about Japan. Note how I'm applying the concepts from INSIDE THE KAISHA to explain the failures of INSIDE THE JAPANESE MIND.
ONE: the importance of kata and process over logic!
Almost every chapter begins by saying “Japan used to be a society based on rice farming which required all the villagers to work together, thus prioritizing the society over the individual.” No evidence is used for this, let alone comparing Japan to other countries where they cultivate rice. So as an explanation for the various unique Japanese customs in the book, it’s a failure! But as an illustration of KATA (every chapter has to have the same format even if it’s redundant) and the Japanese idea of EXPLANATIONS DON’T NEED TO BE GROUNDED IN LOGIC AS LONG AS THEY FOLLOW THE CORRECT FORMAT, it’s great!
TWO: the MONTAGE:
Instead of deciding to discard certain goals or kata, they just pile more and more goals on top of each other, producing a MONTAGE. And I know I discussed montage in the previous article, but there's so much to say, and this book provides such a rad example of montage-gone wrong.
Here’s some examples of montage (or layering, for those of you who are not pretentious) from Japanese history:
1 – language (hiragana, kanji, katakana, and now engrish . . . .ok sure American english is a mutt language, but we just take individual words, nighongo layers entire SYSTEMS which have to be individually learned)
2 – religions (buddhist funerals, Christian weddings, Shinto seasonal rituals)
3- fashions (not just the many-layered kimono, but the the famous ‘I’M wearing stuff from 4 countries I don’t even know the names of at once” montage of harajuku girls etc.)
4- Japanese science being historically shitty at inventing new technology but a world leader at synthesizing existing technologies into rad new combo-products: watches with calculators! Microwaves with electric stoves built in!
5- keitais with too many features, all poorly planned, because if one company introduces a new feature, all the other companies have to save face by "keeping up" (even if their version of the feature is just a sad little eraserhead baby of a feature)
7 –world war two : the army wanted to invade Russia, the navy wanted a sea war in southeast asia. The emperor (most powerful man EVER) couldn’t decide between them, and let them go their separate ways, even though this lack of a coordinated strategy cost japan the war.
8 – meiji constitution : layering an absolute monarchy/theocracy over a constitutional democracy, which was a totally futile idea, since they mix like oil and coups d'etat.
9 – wrapping candy in four layers of packaging?!?
So as a textbook THE JAPANESE MIND sucks, but as an example of MONTAGE, it’s ideal!
It’s a senior thesis essay , oh plus a textbook for foreigners studying Japanese, oh and plus a guidebook for how to avoid cultural shock, oh plus a textbook for Japanese students studying foreigners studying Japanese! Plus it has a built-in microwave and over 14 different screen-savers.
And where does the uniquely Japanese montage come from?
I'll tell you where it DOESN'T come from : " shinto syncretism” – everyone started out animist, after all!
SO where, then?
Three :LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY AT THE TOP.
This is a concept that I don't have a clear handle on. I keep finding examples of it, but have yet to come across a book or a theory that explains why it is such a feature of Japanese decision making. I'm just going to try my best to explain it, but if anyone else has any thoughts or recommended books, please let me know.
The best example of "lack of responsibility at the top" is that world-war-II anecdote above! Even the most powerful man in the world couldn’t decide between his army and navy! This isn’t just because of the usual “Japanese are too polite to say ‘No’” thing.And it's different from the way powerful people all over the world are unaccountable.
Powerful people can rule with an iron fist, but Hitler and Mussolini (not to mention Goldman and the Pope) tend to be responsible, in the sense that the top guy says, "DO AS I SAY, DO IT THIS WAY, I MADE THIS DECISION, ME ALONE, AND THAT'S WHY YOU HAVE TO OBEY." so, being un-accountable is different from being un-responsible.
Japanese groups have a hard time abandoning outdated protocols. The juniors can’t ask the leaders "Do we still need this procedure anymore?" or "Isn't that a terrible idea?" because it’s insubordinate, and the leaders can’t trim unwanted procedures, because what if it turns out later that they cut the wrong one? It would be embarrassing! So the goals / features / procedures keep growing and accreting. Even leaders are powerless against processes once set in motion. The leaders ARE held responsible, but their responsibility only extends to making sure the process is done correctly. It doesn’t extend to the final result of the project – whether it’s an epic war in Asia or a simple textbook.
Actually, I don't have a good reason why the leaders can't single-handedly change or cut layers.
But anyway in the case of this book, nobody ever said, “Let’s just pick one or two goals and do them well.”
FOUR : COLORING INSIDE THE LINES.
This is kind of a cliché about Japanese so I won’t bother to explain it.
How the cliché manifests itself in the book, though, is pretty amusing. A lot of student/authors didn’t want to tackle anything controversial, anything that would make Japan look bad. So there’s a lot of chapters on “the Japanese sense of the seasons” or “haragei : the implicit communication” , “arranged marriages”, and “buddhist funerals”, not to mention “wabi sabi”, which it turns out is some esoteric aesthetic concept of ancient clay-pot makers. Useful?
As a book of traditional culture, that would have been fine. But as a book about common misunderstandings between foreigners and Japanese, forget it! Even the students that DID try to tackle important topics, like ambiguity or honne vs. tatemae, do so in a very shy way.
However, on the good side: they do systematically present both the good points and bad points of each Japanese concept, and they do systematically compare their own country to other countries as a way of illustrating uniqueness.
If there’s a profusion of “safe, but irrelevant” topics, there’s a lack of “outside the box” topics. Lots of interesting, unique, relevant topics are ignored simply because Japanese education stifles creativity.
For example: how Japanese education stifles creativity! That would have made a great chapter! The inability to handle lateral thinking or open-ended questions, the difficulty of thinking without a model to guide you. That’s really characteristic of Japan but since it doesn’t have a name or a famous book about it, it’s not included.
Or, “being rude by being excessively polite” : that’s another CLASSIC Japanese tactic. Or “Being in your own little world doing your makeup on the subway.” There should have been three chapters on that.
Once again, the COLORING INSIDE THE LINES approach makes for a sub-standard textbook, but as an EXAMPLE of how Japanese people think, it’s pretty great!
FINALLY : FIVE : THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT
This should self-explanatory. Only by understanding the context in which the book is written can you learn anything from it.
Schultz out!
6 comments Tags: kata, layering, montage —
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If you're interested in the behind-the-scenes dirt on TEPCO and Fukushima power plant, go to japan subculture right now. Author Jake Adelstein is killing it with article after article.
Also: I'm working on a couple of things.
Does anyone know any really depressing "the nail that sticks up will get hammered down" type Japanese kotowaza (proverbs)?
And, for those of you who read Japanese, does anybody have a recommendation for books about ijime or the treatment of ethnic miniorities (burakumin / zainichi nihonjin / etc) ?
Those are the two big tabboo topics that I haven't tackled yet in 9 years of doing this site.
I really need to translate books on both those subjects, but of course since I suck at reading Japanese, i can't read 10 books and pick the best one to translate. I have to somehow find the best book FIRST.
Any help from you or your Japanese pals would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
6 commentsYamamoto and artisan vs. hustle
MP3 post : going Psycho Killer on a Talking Head
new rap tune. listen or download.
Japan book review 4 :INSIDE THE KAISHA by Noboru and Anderson
Picture me reading one of those “How to Do Business The Japanese Way” books! Not only did I read it, I fuckin’ enjoyed the hell out of it. What the hell, man?
Their method is straight-up balls to the wall : You know the old saying, “You don’t really know your own country and culture until you go somewhere else”? Well, Yoshimura and Anderson interviewed TONS of Japanese businessmen who had come to the USA to get business degrees. These guys all have a) experience in Japanese companies, and b) live in America and so they understand how Japan looks to foreigners, and can therefore articulate point "a".
Yoshimura is a former businessman turned corporate anthropologist, so (unlike the usual authors of these kinds of books) he knows what kinds of questions to ask the businessmen. Most white writers would start with “Why are you people so hard to deal with?”, but Yoshimura starts with “OK, so what are the top misunderstandings you have when dealing with gaijin, and what would you prefer them to do in those situations?”
And Yoshimura acknowledges that their answers vary widely, it’s not like all Japanese think the same way. But he tries to take their answers of “At MY company we do it like this,” “Well at MY company we rock it like THAT” and look for common ground, or what he insists on calling “deeper behaviorial mechanisms.”
Also – as you can guess from how positive my review is – a surprising amount of their findings apply in everyday situations outside of the office.
They don’t care if their conclusions make other American “Doing Business The Japanese Way” books look like incorrect jerkwads. They don’t care if their conclusions make Japanese companies look like psycho brainwashing camps. They don’t care if their book is taken seriously by academic anthropology people. They don’t care about the “tea ceremonies/ flower arranging/ rice-growing agricultural” cultural roots of Japanese culture . . .
All they want to do is make it easier to communicate and lessen the misunderstandings. They often warn the reader, “Look, I know it is tempting to just dismiss this custom as racist or hypocritical, but if you dismiss it without understanding it, you won’t learn how to predict how a Japanese person will act in that situation. Which is why you bought the book, buddy.”
In other words, it's like they have the same attitude I had when I made KANJIDAMAGE. They’re like, “Later for all the bullshit, we just want to solve the readers’ everyday problems.”
I'll try to summarize their conclusions (at least the conclusions that probably apply in general Japanese society)
SITUATIONAL MORALITY
When it comes to behavior, Japanese learn inductively, not deductively.
Which is to say, instead of starting with a set of core principles that apply in all cases (think Ten Commandments!), they start by bonding deeply with a boss or upper-classperson and imitating that person’s behavior.
For example, instead of “OK given that I have a core belief of ‘don’t ever steal’, should I download an MP3? Using logic, I will deduce how the core belief applies in this situation.” Japanese is like, “What would my mentor do in this context?”
This east/west, induction/deduction distinction has all sorts of other effects: a public education where you aren’t taught how to think critically or answer open-ended questions, a culture where superiors aren’t supposed to explain the reasons for their decisions, and so forth.
This concept comes up so often in every book on Japan, there’s a name for it: SITUATIONAL MORALITY. What might be polite in one situation is rude in another, and this drives westerners crazy.
But even though the “situational morality” is kind of a cliché, this book is the first book that actually explains it from the Japanese point of view: the first book where I said to myself, “Oh, maybe if I was raised in that environment I’d do that, too!” instead of “Man, you guys are nuts.”
To start with, situations have at least three components: reference group, rank, and context.
#1: REFERENCE GROUP
Reference group is basically what Noboru and Anderson call the “insider/outsider” thing. But again, this book takes a cliché and makes it interesting by dealing with nuances: REFERENCE GROUP CHANGES DEPENDING ON CONTEXT.
For example, inside the company (let's call it Hirohito Footgear), the accounting team views each other as insiders, and fuck the other departments. But if you’re talking about the industry in general, the accountant will switch his reference group to: I’m on the side of my Hirohito vs. those other rival companies. And of course if you’re talking about international matters, they’ll widen their reference group appropriately: all us Japanese shoe-makers vs. the foreign shoe-makers.
The most common example in the book of how context changes reference groups: GETTING CAUGHT! Company A and government ministry B are insiders together UNTIL THEY GET CAUGHT DOING SOMETHING ILLEGAL, at which point ministry B says, “Huh? Company A? Never heard of ‘em. Fuck those jerkwads! !” What most of the world would call “being a backstabbing cowardly fuck”, in the Japanese corporate mindset, is simply called “getting caught changes the context. Situational morality, in your face!”
So in any given situation, you could pick one of several reference groups to belong to- your department, your company, your gender, your country, etc. And “thinking like a Japanese” means knowing which one to pick.
As a bonus, Noboru and Anderson throw in THE TRUE MEANING OF INSIDER/OUTSIDER: Once a salaryman knows who is is reference group in a given situation, he knows whose expectations he must meet to avoid social embarrassment.
“So deeply ingrained is this need to meet social expectations that the salaryman habitually asks himself what a person in his position is supposed to do, not what he thinks or how he feels.”
Deeyamn!
In other words, you don't have one single "real" identity, your shit is in a constant state of flux, depending on the context. You get your identity based on your role relative to the people around you.
#2: RANK
Rank is just like America, but formalized in the language: Nihongo forces you to choose whether you are talking up or down to someone – do you speak informally, slightly formal or super formal. and if super formal, do you use the humble or arrogant form of formal? You can't not choose! One particular story illustrates this point in the most aggravating manner possible:
“I was assigned to be the deputy branch manager in London. Where the branch manager was one year younger than I, but he’d just been promoted ahead of me. Our families had known each other for a long time, but when my wife happened to meet his wife on the street in London, my wife started to talk to her as she always had. The wife of the branch manager replied, “In our company,does seniority prevail over positions?””
In other words, "Why are you not using the humble, formal grammar, you peasant?"
Japanese are obsessed with rank! They rank companies, universities, ministries, baseball teams, hosts, prostitutes, everything. But at the same time, they really frown upon people who flaunt their wealth or superior rank, since that is regarded as making the lower-ranking people feel inferior ON PURPOSE. Class distinctions – ornate offices, special parking spots, executive cafetearias – are rare. The gap between highest and lowest paid employees is far narrower.
Why? because of the odd Japanese belief that the lower people have the same vested interests as the bosses (not something we believe in America!). The bosses use their superior power to make sure things go well for the little people, Daddy taking care of the kids-style. This is supposed to make the lower people feel good about being low, and make’em not rebel, make ‘em try their best.
But flaunting one’s prestige fucks up this whole deal by saying "My vested interests are NOT yours – you're working for the good of the firm, I'm working for my yacht and mercedes." This is a great example of how this book takes two seemingly contradictory things and shows clearly how they are actually part of a single deeper cultural, uh, cultural. . . thingy.
Hierarchy breeds conflict in America, but in Japan hierarchy EASES conflict: if everyone knows their place, there’s no need to fight. But if two people come at each other like “I’m the boss!” “No, me!” Then there’s trouble.
Also: your rank, your prestige, depends on what group you are in, much more so than what you personally have accomplished. Like if you were last in your class at a prestigious university, you’ll get your ass kissed, but if you invented cold fusion at community college, it’s like *pfft* whatever man.
Japanese salarymen tend to trust their boss the most – since he’s the model for appropriate behavior, like a mentor. They tend to be most competitive with their co-workers, since they are all competing for promotions, and trying to out-work each other. Trust is vertical, not horizontal.
#3: CONTEXT.
Context is like, are you talking in the office, or at the bar afterwards? At the bar it’s appropriate to be vulgar, sexist, to wear one’s tie as a headband, to complain at length about your hooker or mistress, to sing along with the guitar solo from Stairway to Heaven . . .as well as to talk about the important corporate secrets that it would be un-professional to divulge in the office. Whereas Americans are more like, “You’re schizophrenic, and plus WTF you’re not supposed to cheat on your wife.”
quoting from the book: “Many Japanese profess an honest belief in free trade while backing import restrictions on rice. What could seem more duplicitous to the outsider? To the Japanese it is perfectly understandable that rice should constitute a special case, because self-sufficiceny in the staple of the Japanese diet is a matter of national policy.”
A popular phrase describes this behavior: soron-sansei, kakuron-hantai. “ in general , yes, in this case, no.”
OK, so much for situational morality and context.
ANOTHER THREE central themes of the book:
1 - Don’t generalize about the “Japanese mentality” or think the way Japanese people act is because of their personality: Japanese guys don’t want to work until midnight any more than you do. They don’t want to obey their superiors blindly because they are soul-less robots. It’s just the culture: there’s a lot more penalties for breaking taboos in Japan. But if you start a new company that lets guys come to work naked and leave at 2 PM, without penalties, then guys will take advantage of it. Samurai spirit has nothing to do with it.
2 - the most important thing is : meeting expectations of reference group. And – put another way – avoiding surprises, which are almost as embarrassing as outright failure! That's why Japanese take a comparatively long time to make friends or corporate partners: they want the "trial period" to be suuuuper long to test if you FOR SURE are not going to surprise them (and then ensure that after you ARE friends/partners, you've put in so much effort / time already that you can't possibly back out, thus ensuring your mutual dependence, and preventing those pesky surprises!) Put another way, To Japanese, the American attitude towards friendship is crazy: Americans share too much with strangers and are only a bit more forthcoming with their closest friends.
3 - Appropriate spirit and correct process is more important than results and profits.And a related point: Winning is less important than not losing! Embarrassment and all that.
Once again, Noboru and Anderson take semi-racist clichés like “Japanese favor the group-over-individual” and lend substance to them by explaining the context AND listing plenty of specific examples.
“A slaryman won’t have his bonus doubled for successfully increasing his kaisha’s market share. On the other hand, if the firm loses market share, it can adversely affect his career.”
“Those who carry out a process are not blamed for unexpectedly poor results. Conversely those who get results do not automatically receive accolades.”
KATA AND PROCESS
In contrast to morality (situational), the way of doing things is fucking set in stone.
“There seems to be a kata (correct form) for everything – even for actions like eating, reading, and writing. You learn by emulating your sensei in all things. The archetypal example is martial arts training. In the west, martial arts books and videos often break karate or judo moves into a series of steps, describing in great detail how to combine them properly. In contrast, the Japanese approach is holistic. A novice is expected to imitate the movement of the sensei exactly, though the sensei seldom explains in detail what he is doing. The student does not study diagrams or follow a checklist- he or she simply tries to behave exactly like the model.”
That paragraph just explained why my Japanese school sucked so bad!
Here's another great quote, about a hypothetical bank (a composite of many interviewees' banks)
“ Ringo bank’s training program is designed to mold subordinates who follow a process that their superiors can trust – that is, to be predictable. If outcomes were all that mattered, Japanese firms would simply hire the most capbable people. Instead, they use social networks based on school ties to identify people with appropriate attitudes, paying more attention to extracurricular activities than academic performance. Then they pass down a company way to do things- ecahange business s cards, talk over the elephone, conduct business with customers, and so forth. This emphasis on doing eveyrhitng the company way often seems Orwellian to westerners.”
“This mode of learning frequently produces dysfunctional results. For example, third-rate American baseball player often star in the Japanese professional leagues. One reason is that they find Japanese hitting and pitching completely predicable and easy to defeat, if one is willing to be a little unorthodox. Japanese players learn how to throw catch and bat through tens of thousands of repetitions, striving faithfully to imitate the style of their coaches. More than one American player has bemusedly reported that coaches will tell a batter who is leading the team in hitting that his form is all wrong and must be changed.”
Another example of "process and predictability over profits" (again, set at the hypothetical Ringo bank):
One February morning, the departmental controller called Hiro , whose job was trading American stocks, into his office. “What the hell did you do yesterday?” he screamed at Hiro. “I made some trades and lost some money,” Hiro replied. The controller was far more irritated than the actual loss seemed to justify.
It turned out that, two days previously, the controller had negotiated with the department manager a revised budget that could be achieved if the department sat tightly on its present positions. Hiro’s loss had damaged the plan. The controller said to Hiro, “Meeting the budget is our top priority. The budget of each department aggregates to the budget of the bank. You’d better understand that you’re ruining this process.”
Hiro replied, “As a trader, my job is to go into the market and try to make money. We still have almost two months before our fiscal year ends. Are you saying that I shouldn’t even make money because it will affect the budget?”
Yes,” answered the controller, “that’s exactly what I’m saying!”
(actually this is the example that made me buy the book in the first place!)
Here’s one reason proper procedure is more important than success:
Liefetime employment.
The kaisha cannot punish an employee for one bad year, or five bad years, if it expects the person to be part of the organization fo three decades. On the other hand, the kaisha doesn’t want to reward someone for great success in wone eyar because it doesn't know if he will be successful over 25 years.
Incidentally, lifetime employment is a practice initiated after the second world war by Japan’s American occupiers!!! Not some samurai, traditional thing. Who knew? I’m telling you, this book is genius!
LOGIC IS A WESTERN CONSPIRACY!
“In business, though, Americans . . . want clear and simple reasons why a particular decision was reached. Unfortunately, Japanese managers have difficulty explaining why, because they are following a model (kata), not reasoning through a justification. Junior Japanese salarymen encounter the same problem: they never learn why a particular authorization is needed, or why a document has to be prepared a particular way. In fact, Yoshio Suzuki, president of the prestigious Nomura Research Institute, concluded that the concept of accountability in Japan is a serious defect in the system, because it means only willingness to accept blame, not providing an explanation for one’s behavior.”
(See above, Japanese reason inductively, not deductively)
“We receive numerous proposals and suggestions from headquarters, and many of them don’t make sense because headquarters doesn't understand Japanese markets. The problem Japanese managers have in responding to those suggestions is they are not good at logically arguing, or coming up with alternatives to dodge nonsensical ideas. Consequently, two types of Japanese managers emerge. One rejects almost everything coming from the USA. This type of manager becomes isolated. The other type blindly accepts whatever comes from America. Managers of this type are well accepted by headquarters, but Tokyo people have to waste a lot of time on ideas that make nonsense in the Japanese market. I have seldom sen a Japanese manager who can handle this efficiently and properly.”
another salariman:
“One of the junior executives we interviewed recalled an occasion on which his office’s paper shredder overheated. Concerned about the possibility of fire in a building full of paper, senior managers put out the word that all electrical plugs should be disconnected before the employees went home. When the salaryman’s boss told him to pull the plug of his PC, he asked why, because PCs never overheat. Only an inexperienced salaryman would have bothered to question in the first place whether the directive applied to PCs. The junior reasoned that there had to be logical purpose behind unplugging everything, that purpose being to avoid fires, and this clearly did not apply to PCs. His boss, whoever was conditioned to follow the model, regardless of whether the original reason for an action still applied. Once a model is established, the basis for evaluating correct behavior is simply whether or not an employee is following the model (kata).”
When you put the KATA thing together with the DON'T ASK WHY thing plus the LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY AT THE TOP thing together with the PROCESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN RESULTS thing, you get a very Japanese phenomenon:
LAYERS AND LAYERS OF TRADITIONS/ OFFICE PROCEDURES / ACTUAL LAYERS (kimono, wrapping of food) that NOBODY KNOWS THE REASONS FOR ANYMORE, but, better safe than sorry, right?
This phenomenon is, as most things in this book a headache, but can sometimes be good: the famous Japanese youth fashions and pop culture, which "layer" tons of things, both foreign and domestic, in a bewildering array of montages.
This way of arguing is an example of Kankyo-seibi: Literally “shaping the environment.” Or as we say, framing the debate.
Because Japanese reasoning is so context-driven, she who controls the context, controls the debate. That’s one way to influence your Japanese pals or bosses. Explain the situation in terms of “You’ll stand out from the crowd if. . . ! You’ll let your team down if. . . ! you’ll risk falling behind your competitors if. . . .”
CALLING BULLSHIT ON WA
Everyone knows that Japanese are into “harmony” and all decisions are made by “consensus” which sounds really sweet. But in fact:
Consensus doesn’t really mean people agree under the surface. The salaryman will – before the big meeting- go to all the other guys and sort of ask which way they want to vote. Then he’ll vote accordingly. So ‘consensus’ might well mean that maybe 40% of the people think the decision is bullshit! But those 40% also know they’re in the minority and therefore to fight would be to lose. Losing is more embarrassing than turning your back on your principles. And universal principles are a western concept anyway.
Harmony doesn’t mean trust. It just means the absence of fighting. Actually people at a company might only trust one or two other employees. Foreigners who trust Japanese are going to get burned. Or, as the authors put it: “Those who behave as if trust in is an emotional value instead of a by-product of social controls usually end up feeling violated by by the Japanese.” Doing the right thing is just a by-product of social controls and context, and contexts change. Like if someone gets caught (see above!).
Therefore, harmony is just a side-effect of a system that punishes minority opinion and arguing. It’s not like Japanese LIKE harmony, it’s not like they lack their own opinions, compared to Westerners.
Here's another example of harmony-gone-wrong:
Flat Rock (a Mazda plant run by Japanese in America) was run as a lean, just-in-time operation. There was no one to pick up slack. If a team member were sick or had a family emergency, no temporary help would be sent to replace him or her, the team would have to find a way to pick up the extra load. And if YOUR team slowed down due to Jimmy’s kid having cancer, the whole assembly line slowed down, affecting everyone else at the whole plant. That’s how Americans found out why Japanese work such long hours. Everyone gets punished if one person doesn’t show up for work. Hey Jimmy! Your cancer kid is fucking up everyone else on your team!
And on the other hand: a team who finds a way to work more efficiently ALSO fucks up everyone else, by sending TOO MANY cars down the production line. The other teams either have to streamline their OWN processes, or else work longer hours to match the production of the first team.
AMBIGUOUS GOALS ARE CONTROL MECHANISMS
Meaning, Japanese aren’t just ambiguous out of politeness. They do it on purpose. And not just to mess with gaijin’s heads. They do it to mess with each others’ heads!
In the case of the company, the boss will just hint vaguely about wanting to invest in plastic, knowing that the underlings have a responsibility to research and prepare 100 reports about every possible plastic and every possible market for selling it in. And THAT’S why Japanese businessmen work so late!
Turns out it’s not just, “I have to work until the boss leaves the office to keep up appearances.” They’re there working on these bullshit reports.
In other words, the ambiguity has 2 benefits for the bosses: it maximizes the work that they get out of their employees, and it doesn’t commit them to a specific action until the final meeting, which reduces the risk of them making a blunder. If the boss were to tell the salryman, “Specifically make a plan for selling Tupperware in Belize, and nothing else!”, and then it turns out that Belizians (Belizoids?) hate Tupperware,the boss is gonna look like a tool in front of everyone.
And not looking like a tool is more important than efficiency.
There is , of course, a saying for this: IF THE BOSS SAYS ONE, THE SALARYMAN HEARS TEN. As in, 2,3,4,5. and so on.
"Salarimen survive by anticipating contingencies. Overpreparation is one of the major reasons why Jaapanes work such long hours".
GOVERNMENT AND BUISNESS
Now I’m going to switch focus. The stuff above was “stuff that can help you understand your Japanese friends better.”
The quotes below are just random examples of the whole “Japan’s wild capitalist-communist, iron-triangle" thing, to help you understand politics better.
“Focusing on attitude or process has occasionally proven disasterous for the nation.” In order to illustrate this, Noboru and Anderson describe a Japanese book about WWII:
“The authors uncover some obvious tactical mistakes, and ask why they were repeated again and again. Their conclusion is that the leadership of the military evaluated the spirit of officers when deciding whom to promote, ignoring whether they possessed the skills or an objective understanding of the situation. Although Japan had been at war with china for 10 years before pearl harbor, there was no objective evaluation of combat performance, no mechanism to evaluate what worked and what did not. Consequently the military failed to learn from its mistakes. If a general met defeat, what mattered is that he died well. The leadership simply sent out more generals and more soldiers with the right attitude, relying on their samurai spirit to prevail despite the fact that the tactics had proved disasterous time and again.”
***
Moving to post-war times, industries are ranked like this: the TOP 5 companies, and then THE REST OF THE LITTLE COMPANIES.
Regular Japanese know who the top 5 companies (or 4 or 6 or whatever) in any given field the way Americans know sports teams.
The top companies are based on market share, which is why Japanese companies obsess over market share more than profits.
The TOP 5 are insiders not just with each other (they don’t try to force each other out of business, they don’t have price wars etc) but more importantly, they are insiders WITH THE GOVERNMENT MINISTRY IN CHARGE OF THAT INDUSTRY. They get to advise the ministry of what rules to make, the ministry gives the TOP 5 (but not little companies or consumers) insider information: what plans it has for next year. And the ministry will basically form a little cartel along with the top 5 to regulate competition and prices. Plus: hookers for everyone at the "business meetings"!
***
“The key to understanding when one may trust a Japanese company and when one may not, lies in knowing what would cause the firm social embarrassment. When the context shifts, a company is perfectly capable of behaving in ways that westerners would consider perfidous.
"To take one illustration, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry guided oil industry pricing. The ministry provided an estimate of production which became a target. Individual oil companies were supposed to pro-rate their output according to MITI’s forecaset. MITI encouraged the coil companies to form a cartel without asking directly, forging a formal agreement, or documenting its action. The entire system eventually became a public scandal. The fair trade commission indicted oil companies for price fixing. Members of the oil industry were deeply upset because they felt they had only been carrying out MITI’s wishes. MITI refused to accept responsibility.”
***
Japaense cartels are not designed to maximize profits, but to prevent competition which would lead to everyone going bankrupt:
“In the 1970s, competition among paint manufacturers became so intense that the entire industry was worn out by price wars. Competitors began meeting and forming a reference group, and the ten largest started meeting to fix the price of paint.”
***
The government’s role as a mediator of competition is illustrated in this incident with the chemical industry.
“At the time of the second “oil shock” in 1979, the chemical industry over-invested, leaving it with huge excess capacity. By ordinary market logic, someone should have gone bankrupt. However, MITI stepped in an allocated capacity among the firms. The chemical manufacturers simply depreciated the excess capacity. Every company had to write down investments, taking huge losses. Because all other competitors were doing the same thing and the losses were not fatal for any company, this was acceptable.”
***
“One salaryman talked to us about the structure of his industry, in which trading companies buy a product from manufacturers and resell it to their customers.
They have established an unwritten custom that a single representative company from the group buys the product from the manufacturers and distributes it to the other insiders at a negotiated price that is the same for all.
Once, a firm in this reference group violated the model and underbid the agreed-upon industry representative.
The insiders punished the firm the next year by excluding it from the redistribution agreement, costing the renegade its entire business for a year.
One obvious question is why manufacturers support the buyers’ practice. If the manufacturers rewarded defectors, this arrangement would collapse quickly.
The answer: the buyers give the manufacturers predictability, placing bids even if they cannot find enough customers for the prrduct.
The price is set only after resale: if the trading companies can find buyers, prices will be set to divide the profits: if not, prices will be set to split the losses.
In this case, the manufacturers valued predicatabilty enough to help the buyers punish the defector, even though the defector’s crime was to offer the manufacturers a higher price.”
***
“Japanese firms view their direct rivals as insiders only when operating overseas or when coordinated by a government ministry. A good example of the latter case is a scandal that recently broke concerning government construction contracts.
Such jobs are awarded through competitive bidding. Although there are many construction companies in Japan, the ministry of Construction decides who can participate in the bid. Naturally once a reference group is created, social expectations take hold and firms are anxious to model their behavior on what they think others expect. Within the chosen circle of bidders, they talk among themselves ang agree who will bid what amount. The winning bid is pegged to the sponsoring ministry’s budget for the project.
“In the west, if bids always exactly equaled government expectations, watchdog groups would suspect corruption. In Japan, minimizing the possibility of embarrassment is paramount. Recall that such embarrassment stems from failing to meet the expectations of a reference group.
A bid below the budgeted amount would embarrass the bureaucrat who estimated the project cost, by signalling that he had made a mistake. Consequently government officials communicated what they have budgeted for the project and discouraged from bidding below this figure. The winner subcontracts out parts of the job to its rivals, sharing part of the profit.”
***
“For many years, Nomura, the world’s largest brokerage firm, was a favorite of the Ministry of Finance. When the economy was bad, Nomura leaned on its clients saying, “If you don’t buy these government bonds that you don’t want, we will (fuck you up)!” By doing favors, Nomura was able to influence administrative policy and use the ministry’s information-gathering resources to gain a vital edge on its rivals.”
But!
“When the Tokyo stock exchange dropped after the bubble burst, Nomura found itself losing money for its key clients, other Japanese companies. Among other things, these important customers had accepted those (bullshit government bonds).
In consultation with the Ministry, Nomura and other major Japanese securities dealers , Nomura and other major Japanese securities dealers decided to make up their largest customers’ losses. (see here how the crisis caused the reference group to widen from (nomura+ministry) to (top 5 companies + ministry))
The ministry worried that if these losses were not made good, Japan’s largest firms might liquidate their holdings and drive the market down further. When the policy became public knowledge, a scandal ensued because the losses of smaller customers were not covered. The scandal was compounded because one of the large customers helped out in this was was clearly controlled by the yakuza.”
Doh!
***
Prestige over profit:
“if Hino, Japan’s largest truck maker, were to lose 5 percent of the Japanese market to a Euro rival, it would be stinging defeat, even if Hino simultaneously gained 5 percent of the much larger Euro market.”
***
“Often, corporate rivalry becomes myopic, as firms strive so hard to achieve slight superiority that they disregard consumers! For instance, during the bubble economy, many manufacturers producing goods such as cars or appliances kept adding new functions to their products to differentiate themselves from rivals. Prices increased accordingly, and as the economy entered a recession, these products didn’t sell well. It turned out that customers didnt really value all of these features. The recession laid bare the extent to which these firms simply tried to match or surpass their rivals’ new features without listening closely to customer needs.”
An interesting aside: SCIENCE IN JAPAN, and its relationship to the famous Japanese montage I talked about a minute ago!
(the concept of montage, or layering entire systems over one another, is something I’m really hip on these days: like how they have English words in katakana, and Japanese words in hiragana, AND Chinese words. Or how they have Buddhist funerals, Christians weddings, and Shinto seasonal rituals at the same time).
"Japan produces thousands of PhDs who are unable to find work that builds on their scientific training. This phenomenon is referred to in Japan as “overdoctoring”. Newly minted PhDs often work without pay in their thesis adviser’s lab, while their mentors try to help them find places in a comeptititive academic labor market. Japanese firms hire comparatively few of Japan’s PhDs, partly because they look with suspicion on the professional socialization of scientists, and partly because they do not have a model for taking in new employees approaching the age of thirty."
MITI’s (ministry of technology's ) greatest successes have been short-term, focused programs aimed at catching up with the world leader in a parituclar tencnology. But their track record for inventing new stuff is terrible.
Here's why Japanese science industry is all fucked up.
All the different ministries have their own R&D groups working on the same shit, and because of insider/outsider rivalries, they don’t share information. They are primarily concerned with not falling behind the other groups (not losing is more important than winning!) rather than striking out on their own in new territories.
As a result, Japan’s government agencies have a track record of backing the wrong horse, spending millions to push Japanese science into isolated backwaters. Once they get an idea, they have to keep funding it, even if it’s outdated. Kata are great at producing swords and clay pots, but not so useful in the goal-changes-every-week cutting edge of science.
"The strength of Japan lies in synthesizing things that already exist. For example, a typically Japanese innovation is a coffeemaker with a grinder and timer built in. At a preset time it can grind the beans and brew the roast. Cordless telephones with answering machines. Combination micraowave and electric overns, watches with a video game built in, and a watches with an English dictionary built in."
AKA. . . . the montage!
MITI issues a white paper in 1986 making this synthesis/montage official state policy:
"In this paper, MITI pblished what it called a “interindustry technology fusion index”, af our-by-four matrix showinghow four industry clusters – electrical, machinery, metal, chemical – were investing in research that might overlap. Miti announced that it would fund fusion projects."
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