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Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 7 из 270As we shall see, much that parades as hallowed tradition is actually new contrivances that would be completely unrecognizable in Edo days or even as recently as the 1960s. People in Japan grieve because they know in their hearts, even if they cannot always express it in words, that their country is no longer true to its own ideals.
A strong streak of dissatisfaction runs through every part of Japanese society, with even a few highly placed bureaucrats questioning the status quo. Commentators in daily newspapers, magazines, and television talk shows here are obsessed with the idea that something is wrong. The title of an article in the influential opinion journal Shincho 45 sums up the mood: «In the 1990s, Japan Has Lost the War Again!» Another opinion journal, Gendai, devoted an entire issue to a series of essays by prominent economists and journalists headlined «As Japan Sinks – How to Protect Your Life and Possessions.» The subtitle was «This Country Is Rotting on Its Feet.» Unhappy and distressed people number in the millions – and they are Japan's hope for change.
For fifty years after World War II, a favorite theme of writing on Japan was «modernization» – how quickly Japan was changing, catching up with, or even advancing beyond other nations. Over time, Japan became Exhibit A in various theories of modernization, with writers fascinated by how traditional education and culture had contributed to making Japan a successful – some thought the world's most successful – modern state. However, it is a central thesis of this book that Japan's crisis of the 1990s springs from exactly the opposite problem: a failure to modernize.
Japan's ways of doing things-running a stock market, designing highways, making movies-essentially froze in about 1965. For thirty years, these systems worked very smoothly, at least on the surface. Throughout that time Japanese officialdom slept like Brünnhilde on a rock, protected by a magic ring of fire that excluded foreign influence and denied citizens a voice in government. But after decades of the long sleep, the advent of new communications and the Internet in the 1990s were a rude awakening. Reality came riding on his horse through the ring of fire, and he was not a welcome suitor. In the world of business, the stock market and banks crumbled; on the cultural front, citizens began to travel abroad by the tens of millions to escape drab cities and ravaged countryside.
The response by the bureaucrats who run Japan was to build monuments, and this they are doing on a scale that is bankrupting the nation. It was the only thing they knew to do. Hence the new title of this book: Dogs and Demons.
A strong streak of dissatisfaction runs through every part of Japanese society, with even a few highly placed bureaucrats questioning the status quo. Commentators in daily newspapers, magazines, and television talk shows here are obsessed with the idea that something is wrong. The title of an article in the influential opinion journal Shincho 45 sums up the mood: «In the 1990s, Japan Has Lost the War Again!» Another opinion journal, Gendai, devoted an entire issue to a series of essays by prominent economists and journalists headlined «As Japan Sinks – How to Protect Your Life and Possessions.» The subtitle was «This Country Is Rotting on Its Feet.» Unhappy and distressed people number in the millions – and they are Japan's hope for change.
For fifty years after World War II, a favorite theme of writing on Japan was «modernization» – how quickly Japan was changing, catching up with, or even advancing beyond other nations. Over time, Japan became Exhibit A in various theories of modernization, with writers fascinated by how traditional education and culture had contributed to making Japan a successful – some thought the world's most successful – modern state. However, it is a central thesis of this book that Japan's crisis of the 1990s springs from exactly the opposite problem: a failure to modernize.
Japan's ways of doing things-running a stock market, designing highways, making movies-essentially froze in about 1965. For thirty years, these systems worked very smoothly, at least on the surface. Throughout that time Japanese officialdom slept like Brünnhilde on a rock, protected by a magic ring of fire that excluded foreign influence and denied citizens a voice in government. But after decades of the long sleep, the advent of new communications and the Internet in the 1990s were a rude awakening. Reality came riding on his horse through the ring of fire, and he was not a welcome suitor. In the world of business, the stock market and banks crumbled; on the cultural front, citizens began to travel abroad by the tens of millions to escape drab cities and ravaged countryside.
The response by the bureaucrats who run Japan was to build monuments, and this they are doing on a scale that is bankrupting the nation. It was the only thing they knew to do. Hence the new title of this book: Dogs and Demons.