JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 255 из 270» Naturally, they would like to stand at the top of the pyramid, and this leads to obsessive comparisons between Japan and other countries. This is where the frustration comes in.
When millions of Japanese travel abroad and return from Singapore's beautiful and efficient Changi Airport to the grim environment of Narita, the disparity is too strong to ignore. The decline of the Tokyo stock market, against a backdrop of explosive growth in New York and London, has been an agonizing spectacle for Japan's financial community. By the end of the century, Chinese-directed films featuring major Hollywood stars regularly took top spots in American box offices, and Chinese stars had become household names; in contrast, Japan's greatest success was Pokemon, a movie for ten-year-olds. The Japanese sense the contrast between the bright lights and excitement outside, and the mediocrity inside. They are embarrassed.
Yet while the groundwork exists, there is no assurance that the revolution will come. Against the dissatisfaction felt by the public is arrayed a complex system of bureaucratic control, infinitely more subtle than anything ever achieved in Russia or China in their Communist heydays. In order to visualize what is involved, let's do a «thought experiment» and ask ourselves what it would take to dismantle just a few bricks of the bureaucratic edifice – the system of licenses for aerobics instructors, for instance. The mind's screen goes blank, because the scenario whereby the Japan Gymnastics Association, the Central Association for Prevention of Labor Disabilities, and the Japan Health and Sports Federation will voluntarily disband and give up their lucrative permit businesses is simply unimaginable. What, then, can be done about the tens of thousands of other agencies and special government corporations – all working in secrecy and against whose fiat there is no recourse?
The public may be able to combat the bureaucracy over certain high-profile projects such as the Pont des Arts, or well-publicized scandals such as dioxin contamination. But power lies in the details, in the thousands of tiny Pont des Arts-type monuments rising quietly in every city and hamlet, in the myriad unreported dump sites not covered by the media, and deep in the impenetrable thicket of regulations in the form of unwritten «guidance» hemming in the life of the nation.
For those who hope that Japan is headed in the direction of greater freedom, it is sobering to see how brand-new industries create cartels in the old pattern. The Internet? Providers established the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) as the entity that approves new domain addresses.
When millions of Japanese travel abroad and return from Singapore's beautiful and efficient Changi Airport to the grim environment of Narita, the disparity is too strong to ignore. The decline of the Tokyo stock market, against a backdrop of explosive growth in New York and London, has been an agonizing spectacle for Japan's financial community. By the end of the century, Chinese-directed films featuring major Hollywood stars regularly took top spots in American box offices, and Chinese stars had become household names; in contrast, Japan's greatest success was Pokemon, a movie for ten-year-olds. The Japanese sense the contrast between the bright lights and excitement outside, and the mediocrity inside. They are embarrassed.
Yet while the groundwork exists, there is no assurance that the revolution will come. Against the dissatisfaction felt by the public is arrayed a complex system of bureaucratic control, infinitely more subtle than anything ever achieved in Russia or China in their Communist heydays. In order to visualize what is involved, let's do a «thought experiment» and ask ourselves what it would take to dismantle just a few bricks of the bureaucratic edifice – the system of licenses for aerobics instructors, for instance. The mind's screen goes blank, because the scenario whereby the Japan Gymnastics Association, the Central Association for Prevention of Labor Disabilities, and the Japan Health and Sports Federation will voluntarily disband and give up their lucrative permit businesses is simply unimaginable. What, then, can be done about the tens of thousands of other agencies and special government corporations – all working in secrecy and against whose fiat there is no recourse?
The public may be able to combat the bureaucracy over certain high-profile projects such as the Pont des Arts, or well-publicized scandals such as dioxin contamination. But power lies in the details, in the thousands of tiny Pont des Arts-type monuments rising quietly in every city and hamlet, in the myriad unreported dump sites not covered by the media, and deep in the impenetrable thicket of regulations in the form of unwritten «guidance» hemming in the life of the nation.
For those who hope that Japan is headed in the direction of greater freedom, it is sobering to see how brand-new industries create cartels in the old pattern. The Internet? Providers established the Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) as the entity that approves new domain addresses.