JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 249 из 270It's an anti-intuitive twist, one of the great ironies of modern East Asian history: allowing the foreigners in revives local culture; keeping them out helps to destroy it.
When the Japanese describe their country, they will often use the word semai, « narrow,» «cramped,» «crowded.» The idea is that Japan's landmass is too small to support its population properly. Of course, there are many nations with less habitable land and higher population densities, including some of the most prosperous countries of Europe and East Asia. Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Belgium have higher population densities than does Japan; Britain and Germany have slightly lower but roughly comparable densities. Semai is not a physical property; semai is in the mind. It's the emotional consequence of Japan's rigid systems, which bind individuals and keep out the fresh air of new ideas from abroad.
The result is explosive. Japan is a nation of people bursting to get out. This has happened before. In the 1930s Fascists in both Germany and Japan defended their expansionist plans by claiming that they needed Lebensraum. After Japan's defeat in World War II, its hunger for its neighbors' land subsided but did not disappear entirely. In the 1980s, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry had a pet project that consisted of sending tens of thousands of Japan's old people to Australia, where they could live in vast retirement cities, the presumption being that Japan does not have the land or the resources to provide a good life for its aging population. But today the emphasis is not on land but on opportunity.
From one point of view, the pressure on talented people and top-notch companies to move out is a strength. It fuels Japan's international expansion. Japanese presence in Southeast Asia is massive, with Japanese factories accounting for as much as 10 percent of Malaysia's GNP. Picking up the Guide to Japanese Businesses in Thailand is a sobering experience: the volume is as thick as the Yellow Pages of a small American city, listing thousands of companies. Shifting their focus overseas may be beneficial to Japanese businesses over the long term. But in the short term it bodes even greater stagnation, because it further reduces business and employment opportunities at home.
One can glean a sense of the hunger to get out of Japan from Newsweek 's Japanese edition, August 14, 1996, which offered its readers a special ten-page feature on the top-ten locations for living abroad. The headline read «Escaping Japan. Living Abroad Is Just a Matter of Making Up Your Mind!» «Living abroad is a dream? No, certainly not,» the article begins.
When the Japanese describe their country, they will often use the word semai, « narrow,» «cramped,» «crowded.» The idea is that Japan's landmass is too small to support its population properly. Of course, there are many nations with less habitable land and higher population densities, including some of the most prosperous countries of Europe and East Asia. Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Belgium have higher population densities than does Japan; Britain and Germany have slightly lower but roughly comparable densities. Semai is not a physical property; semai is in the mind. It's the emotional consequence of Japan's rigid systems, which bind individuals and keep out the fresh air of new ideas from abroad.
The result is explosive. Japan is a nation of people bursting to get out. This has happened before. In the 1930s Fascists in both Germany and Japan defended their expansionist plans by claiming that they needed Lebensraum. After Japan's defeat in World War II, its hunger for its neighbors' land subsided but did not disappear entirely. In the 1980s, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry had a pet project that consisted of sending tens of thousands of Japan's old people to Australia, where they could live in vast retirement cities, the presumption being that Japan does not have the land or the resources to provide a good life for its aging population. But today the emphasis is not on land but on opportunity.
From one point of view, the pressure on talented people and top-notch companies to move out is a strength. It fuels Japan's international expansion. Japanese presence in Southeast Asia is massive, with Japanese factories accounting for as much as 10 percent of Malaysia's GNP. Picking up the Guide to Japanese Businesses in Thailand is a sobering experience: the volume is as thick as the Yellow Pages of a small American city, listing thousands of companies. Shifting their focus overseas may be beneficial to Japanese businesses over the long term. But in the short term it bodes even greater stagnation, because it further reduces business and employment opportunities at home.
One can glean a sense of the hunger to get out of Japan from Newsweek 's Japanese edition, August 14, 1996, which offered its readers a special ten-page feature on the top-ten locations for living abroad. The headline read «Escaping Japan. Living Abroad Is Just a Matter of Making Up Your Mind!» «Living abroad is a dream? No, certainly not,» the article begins.