Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival - David Pilling/ Memories

This post is only my opinion and point of view, and I create this because my memory sucks and I wanted to remember what the book talks about, and because I wanted to reflex about what Japan means to me.

So, Japan was always a very exotic place to me. During my childhood I had many Japanese-Brazilian friends. We joked that if we dig enough the sand of Santos' beach we would end up in Japan, and Japanese people would be coming out of our sand whole. However, growing up in Brazil I never really thought I was ever going to go to Japan, simply because it was on the other side of the world - even though in my teens I always wanted to go to Australia- I guess we just took the "Japanese" people in Brazil for granted and got used to them, but the country being so far was never thought as a country to tourist around, at least not for me or my group of friends and family.

After coming to the UK in 2006 I started travelling, and Japan became highly strong in my "wish list". However, travelling in Europe was easy and cheap, I knew Japan would be a lot more expensive, so me and Rasto (my fiancee) postponed it until 2010, when we were seriously thinking about going the following year. In March 2011 the tsunami happened and our plans were once again postponed, but that was ok, we could get more ready for the next coming years. 

So finally at the beginning of the year 2013 I remember deciding between Japan and Central America when Rasto was spending Xmas and the New Year in Slovakia. When he arrived home at the beginning of January I had made the Japanese flag and said I have decided where we were going next September, I think he guessed correctly without seeing the flag. We were both very excited about Japan. Rasto has always been in love with the movie Lost in Translation, which takes place in Japan. He still has a funny relationship with that movie, he knows almost all the movie' script by heart. The time I spent alone when he was in Slovakia I was day-dreaming about Japan, I made lots of online search around the topic, and I ended up following many YouTube channels about Brazilians and Canadians living in Japan, which I still follow nowadays.

Ok, so I like Japan, not a big deal, well it is for me, I've never made a blog about any of the many countries I've been, not that I want to show off, but what I mean is that Japan was the only country that drove me to write a notebook about our straying straightaway when we came back to the UK. Now, after reading the book Bending adversity : Japan and the art of survival by David Pilling I got hooked up in writing about Japan again. The reason this time being the fact that now I kind of understand better why Japan is so special to me. Because my memory is really rubbish I thought I better write some of the things I've read before I forget, as I did with so many great books.

So from now on I'm going to talk about the things from the book, not really following the book order, I'm just writing what I've taken from the book that made a lot of sense in my case. The book is great by the way! When I was in the middle I kind of got disappointed because the author was telling me why I liked Japan so much. I thought it was just "a thing" I had, but he actually showed me that my feelings had some reasoning behind it. At that stage I wasn't too sure if I wanted to know that or just keeping thinking there was no specific reason, just a good feeling about it. Further down the book I decided to write this so I can put in writing my reasoning, and think about it.

The book actually start up mentioning that is useless and in a way wrong to try to understand or explain Japan and the Japanese people. No wonder I identified with the book straightaway!

There were a lots of thing about Japan that I had no idea. I knew Japanese people worked a lot, and are famous for that, but I didn't know that in the 80's and beginning of the 90's graduate students would apply for jobs and join a company for a job-for-life. They would spend all their lives working for the same company. They introduce themselves as for example Thais from (company name). The company almost becomes a surname. You wouldn't want not to find a job after graduating, the chances to get a part-time job meant low pay jobs almost forever. That's the kind of job these people would get, as well as women, the latter have a very slim chance to get to a management position, in which case that meant they would have to give up having a family or raising a child. The book mentions how women are almost seen as a tool for men, they are given the task to manage their husband's salary, to use it wisely to buy all the household need. In general they stay home fully to satisfy their husbands needs when they come home after a long day at work. Some men, not satisfied fulfilling their basic needs look for the famous maids and geisha services.

Still on the work topic, the book mentions how Japan is extremely efficient and highly skilled when it comes to creating new ways to save money, developing an almost artistic movements necessary for efficient production, in a limited physical space. However, companies such as Sony, and Panasonic have been in decline for many years, for focusing only in partial optimization, and not being able to navigate the transformation from analogue to digital. The discussion is that this is only due to lack of imagination, rather than of technical know-how. Japanese companies knew how to make ore than two-thirds of the parts that went into both iPod and iPhone, but they missed creating and marketing a digital ecosystem. Some say Japan has downgraded from "Made in Japan" to "Japan Inside". To some such as to my lovely writer Haruki Murakami Japan would be a lot better off if English were more spoken among companies. Some also say there is a huge need of young entrepreneur like the creator of the online shop Rakuten.

Though the book mentions a lot about the Japan's inevitable economic decline, it also states not to forget that Japan is quite comfortably the third-largest economy in the world, the size of the combined economies of Britain and France, and three times the size of India's. It is the richest economy in Asia, its citizens, on average, eight times wealthier than the Chinese.

I found interesting how the author mentioned that all the suffering of the Japanese people is encapsulated in that almost sacred word: Hiroshima, that's almost the way they protect themselves against criticism about their involvement in warfare. If the German symbol of the war is the Holocaust, in Japan is Hiroshima, the difference being the disaster one make to the other and the latter being the disaster one suffered at the hands of others. The book develops this idea a lot better than me! It makes you think about all the war Japan has been involved, to name the most important, in 1905 the Russo-Japanese war, in 1910 the Japan -Korea Annexation, the World War I, in 1931 the Manchuria invasion, the World War II, including the Pearl Harbor attack and the Asia-Pacific War. Not to mention these events death toll. Neither the Asian countries who have strong opinion about Japan, nor any country involved in those wars should have anything to say about been or not been a pacific country. Interestingly, instead of keeping things cool about the past, many Japan's prime ministers such as Junichiro Koizumi (in office during 2001-2006) insisted in doing official visits to the Yasukini shrine to pay their respect (?) to the Class A war criminals. Every visit China drive up the wall with anger! But the China-Japan  relationship is another one that doesn't come easy.

Another Japanese uniqueness is the fact that in many ways it resembles a western country, all but for it's geographic position. I always thought Japan was so special also for being in Asia, but different from those other Asians countries, but I never fully thought about it. I can see the effort Japan has made during history to make sure they've reached this status. Some prime ministers tried to approach Japan with other strong countries in Asian taking the European Union, and the Euro currency as an example, but despite the efforts it seems far to get anywhere near the European Union. Still, Japan has reached a great position among the western countries, competing in the technology industry, vehicle manufacture, living standards, and others.

Some may criticize Japan for being considered at the same level of western nation but not fully complying with the same standards in some aspects. For example the Fukushima power plant's lack of health and safety. The book says this lack was due to the interest of politicians. On the same note, Japan has the approach of developing countries when school books are manipulated to tell only the good side of the story, or omitting important fact about the Japanese involvements in warfare.

Something the book doesn't talk about but I love about Japan is the kawaii (cute) culture! But what to talk about this topic? The cuteness of the the miniature, the teddy-bears, the San-X and Sanrio characters, among other adorable stuff comes without saying. What makes it so special is the fact that the cuteness influences the whole country, where you can see planes with Hello Kitty image, or shinkansen trains with Pokemon decoration. I just love it! I really had to control myself not to buy some silly toy whist I was in Japan! I almost bought the cutest Mont Fuji teddy-bear.

            

 Book from Farnham's library