The morning after my flight into Tokyo I awoke at 3:00, killed time until dawn, and arrived at the National Diet Library (ndl) forty-five minutes before opening time. I had turned on the tv that morning and marveled, as I often did, at how little its programming had changed since my first visit to Japan thirty-one years earlier. The same faces had agedâthough less than mine hadâbut the programs seemed to defy age altogether. The commute to the ndl that morning was familiar too. Rush hour minions were as expressionless and their apparel as colorless as ever. Trains, stations, and public announcements had scarcely changed in decades, though passengers now swiped at phones instead of paperbacks. As Japanâs technologies and pop cultures change perpetually, its public institutions seem locked in stasis.
A middle-aged woman facing a wall was the only other soul occupying the stone terrace in front of the library entrance. She, too, had knowingly arrived early, though for different reasons. A grey uniform and id tag identified her as an office worker, so she must have deviated from her morning commute in order to occupy that solitary corner. A black, wide-rimmed sun hat, black gloves, and white mouth covering protected her from the summer elements. But the sun posed no threat at this hour and she had selected a shady spot in any case. Those accessories, along with the white towel spread out under her stocking feet, served an altogether different purpose. They claimed the spot as her own and shielded her from outside distractions. The towel marked the boundaries of her sanctuary, her private space that ensured her invisibility.
The woman sang operatic ballads, and sang them with unselfconscious volume and intensity. Clearly the stone terrace, surrounded by the libraryâs massive cement pillars and walls, had appealed to her for its solitude and acoustic advantages. Her precise gesticulations and practiced vibrato revealed considerable formal training, and her earnestness suggested she was rehearing for an important recital. After every few bars the woman stopped to issue loud guttural roars no less startling to my untrained ears than the howls of a NÅ performer. I guessed they must be throat exercises. As more patrons lined up before the library doors, to be unlocked precisely at 9:00am, the woman remained figuratively invisible, her sphere of privacy intact.
The following morning my jetlag had not improved. Walking through Yoyogi Park at 5:00am, I encountered more spheres of privacy: the inevitable clusters of exquisitely maintained homeless shelters, an aspiring ballet dancer warming up, an earnest man walking backwards. Each had its protective force field, discerned but unseen by all present. What I witnessed these two mornings was
What I found striking was not the existence or diversity of private self-expression, but how that expression aligned with specific contexts. In Japan the parameters of private (watakushi; shi) and public (Åyake; kÅ) tend to be clearly prescribed and observed, the two defining and completing each other. Observance of those boundaries can impede change at the public level. Japanâs public default settings, its institutions and systemic public routinesâformulaic tv variety shows, train station announcements, business wear, and rush hour etiquetteâseem to defy change. The rockabilly dancers that congregate in Yoyogi Park on Sundays have displayed the same fashions and dance moves for generations. Their performance, after all, is more a public institution than private recreation.
Failure to recognize and account for the great disparity between public and private in Japan has yielded persistent misunderstandings and stereotypes. The publicâs systemic rigidity, for example, is assumed to typify the private as well. It informs the presumption that Japanese culture and society suppress privacy, individuality, and change. The idea that Japan lacked any native concept of individuality prior to the Meiji-era (1868â1912) seems too familiar and too intuitive to bother disputing, even when it is so clearly mistaken. The irony, of course, is that many Japanese today believe their society suffers from a critical excess of individuality, a moral crisis, they contend, that threatens the very future of their race.2
This is not the first time egotism had generated perceptions of a moral crisis. Japanâs 20th century started and ended with explosions of ârampant individualismâ among youth seeking to break free from what they saw as a systemic
One can point to myriad explanations for these trends. Individualism commonly accompanies, or follows, rapid economic development, which aptly describes Meiji-Taisho (1868â1926) and bubble-era Japan.6 The 1910s
The symptoms and sources of moral crisis endemic to both periods are widely considered anomalous within the context of modern Japanese history. Taishoâs ânew Japanâ followed two decades of fervent nationalism and centuries of tradition that subordinated individual interests to group interests. Heiseiâs ânew Japanâ followed a âdark valleyâ of militarism (1931â1945), occupation (1945â1952), and Cold War (1947â1991), all characterized by an expansion of the public and a retrenchment of the private. But were these outbreaks of individualism really historically anomalous? The presumption evokes the formidable stereotype of Japan as a collectivistic society dismissive of individual interests, at least compared to Euro-American societies. This enduring paradigm of Japanese collectivismâWestern individualism has led many to conclude that Taisho and Heisei individualism was somehow un-Japanese and the byproduct of excessive Westernization. But if periods of private self-making did not magically appear from and then dissolve back into a sociocultural vacuumâand clearly they did notâthen they must have emerged from certain underlying sociocultural preconditions or predispositions.
Donald Richie, A Lateral View: Essays on Contemporary Japan (Tokyo: The Japan Times, 1987), 13.
For the argument that Japan lacks any native concept of individuality, see Karaki JunzÅ, MuyÅsha no keifu (Chikua shobÅ, 1960), 260. For discussion of modern Japanâs excess of individuality, see Kuniko Miyanaga, The Creative Edge: Emerging Individualism in Japan (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1991), 94.
Ogihara YÅ«ji, âTemporal Changes in Individualism and Their Ramification in Japan: Rising Individualism and Conflicts with Persisting Collectivism,â Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017), 1â12; JÅ Shigeyuki, Wakamono wa naze sannen de yameru no ka? (Kobunsha, 2006); also, see David Matsumoto, The New Japan: Debunking Seven Cultural Stereotypes (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 2002).
Peter Nosco, Individuality in Early Modern Japan: Thinking for Oneself (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 162.
Susumu Yamaguchi, âCollectivism among the Japanese: A Perspective from the Self,â in Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method, and Applications, eds. Uichol Kim, et al. (Thousand Oaks; London; New Delhi: Sage, 1994), 177; Miyanaga, The Creative Edge, 95â96.
For this argument, see Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel. Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
The government followed advice issued in a 1985 report by the Ad Hoc Council on Education (Rinji kyÅiku shingikai) that foregrounded âstress on individuality (kosei jÅ«shi)â as its primary locus of reform. On the basis of this report, the government issued a revised national curriculum in 1989 (effective from 1992) that âmakes the most of individuality and ⦠fosters ⦠the capacity to cope as an independent subject with changes in society.â The decade that followed, Cave relates, witnessed a âmovementâ to prioritize individuality in Japanese primary school education (Peter Cave, Primary School in Japan: Self, Individuality, and Learning in Elementary Education (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 16â17). Tobin finds that Japanese preschools continued to value child individuality and selfhood. Rather than to quash individuality, as is generally perceived, preschools helped children retain their sense of individuality and develop public aspects of selfhood that they were unable to learn at home (Joseph Tobin, âJapanese Preschools and the Pedagogy of Selfhood,â in Japanese Sense of Self, ed. Nancy R. Rosenberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 21â39).