George Mikes - Land of the rising yen: Japan

Youll find me unchanged. And why should I change since I have found the happiness that suits me? I have accepted duplicity instead of being upset about it.

At times one wonders, doubting the facts, even when one has discovered the secrets of the good life. To be sure, my solution is not the ideal. But when you dont like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you dont have any choice Albert Camus, The Fall (translated by Justin OBrien)

(1) HOW DARE THEY...

The world has a picture of Japan: men and women in kimonos bowing to one another ceremoniously in the shade of pagodas; voluptuous geisha-girls playing ancient stringed instruments, interrupting their playing only in order to utter a few devastating repartees; embarrassed small men and women, coming from flower-ceremonies and rushing, or rather ambling, on to tea-ceremonies, giggling apologetically and hissing furiously while disgruntled samurai commit harakiri in the background.

Stereotyped images die hard and there is always good reason for their existence. After all, American businessmen do ride in massive automobiles, smoke gigantic cigars, engage frequently in gun-battles with gangsters and when defeated jump on their fuming stallions to gallop away into the infinite emptiness of the Wild West usually to the infinite emptiness of Los Angeles or San Francisco. The few Britons who are not actually in the Coldstream Guards, sporting red tunics and bearskins and going about their business (usually some royal occasion) on proud and fussy black chargers, are all bowler-hatted stockbrokers, carrying rolled umbrellas, taciturn, reserved and stiff-upper-lipped, getting out of their Rolls-Royces every now and then to play cricket or plot the re-establishment of the Empire, while their womenfolk in cart-wheel hats, decorated with immense flowers in singularly bad taste, hold heated meetings demanding the re-introduction of hanging or protesting against the maltreatment of British dogs in Japan.

These pictures may be caricatures, but the trouble with caricatures is that they resemble the original much more than we (if we are the original) care to admit. Besides, the stereotypes represent permanence, something fixed and unalterable, and we stick to them because we are all even the most progressive, the most revolutionary among us extremely conservative; we all resent change because we know that while change is life, change is also death, bringing our own inevitable extinction in its wake. So we resent departures from the Japanese stereotype, we object to the Japanese becoming a first-class industrial nation; and so do the Japanese themselves, who nostalgically try to cling to their kimonos and keep bowing with exquisite politeness before concluding multi-million-dollar deals in computers or the building of automated electronics factories; and they always go to geisha-houses to sign the contract.

The world, of course, suffered its first shock about Japan as early as the Russo-Japanese War; but that event, at the beginning of the century, had its legendary, romantic, David-and-Goliath aspect. It was the victory of the insignificant pygmy over the tyrannical bully whom it was a pleasure to see humbled, so Japans success fired peoples imagination instead of frightening them (with the exception of the Kaiser who developed his Yellow Peril theory). Besides, Japan atoned for this victory of 1905 with defeat forty years later, so all seemed well for a while.

But Japans victory of the G.N.P. (gross national product a phrase mentioned much more often in Japan nowadays than bushido was in another era) is a more serious matter than the victories at Port Arthur, Mukden and Tsushima were. Japan has become (according to one way of measuring it) the third industrial power in the world; and the race is not yet over.

Different people react differently to this ominous phenomenon. Some speak, contemptuously, of the fruits of defeat. Defeat as we shall see in greater detail certainly had its beneficial aspects; but it also meant starvation, atom-bombs, occupation, humiliation, execution of two former Prime Ministers and some other leaders as war criminals, and long years of horrible struggle and poverty, so it was no unmitigated joy. It is not a fair view of history to state that these cunning Japanese (and Germans), recognizing the dangers of victory, deceitfully engineered their own defeat to achieve their war-aims. Thats only how it looks today; it did not happen that way.

Others resent the basic injustice of the thing. They do not think only in patterns but also in categories. Some people should wear kimonos, others should wear Western garb; some should be a nation of