The dark side of Japanese life

At the end of a week in which George W. Bush visited Tokyo, and Japan was the country of honor at the Taipei International Book Exhibition, consideration of a book with the sub-title The Fall of Modern Japan seems apt, though not likely to make comfortable reading in all quarters.

The title itself refers to a statement by a painter in the ancient Chinese court. When the emperor asked him what was difficult to paint and what was easy, he replied "Dogs are difficult, demons are easy." What Alex Kerr means by adopting this distinction is that modern Japan has fallen victim of the desire to come up with lavish, impressive, but essentially easy to construct projects ("demons") but has ignored the more difficult, everyday things ("dogs") which make people happy, and a country prosperous in the long term.

Among these desirables he includes public accountability, the protection of historic neighborhoods, decent sized homes, buried cables and phone lines, education that is something more than cramming, and a culture that tolerates protest and encourages individual thought.

While foreigners enthuse about Zen, flower arrangement, Noh drama, haiku, tea ceremonies, and the Japanese eye for industrial design, the country hurtles down the road of thoughtless "modernization," then stops in puzzled wonder when pollutants accumulate and the economy plunges into recession. They are modern, they are hi-tech, they are progressive. Where have they gone wrong?

Kerr's is an outspoken, agonized, but ultimately deeply concerned analysis. His perspective is first and foremost ecological, and his biggest bugbear concrete, with its main victim the natural environment. This is not to say this is a simpleminded, one-issue book. The author views the ramifications of this misplaced focus as extensive, involving economic decisions and financial deals that go to the top of society. Some of the examples he quotes are frightening indeed.

The country's worst problem, Kerr believes, is government-subsidized construction. That there is a reason for this -- private gain for well-placed individuals -- doesn't need saying. This is why concrete has become a national obsession. While the Japanese continue to believe they revere nature and hold the land itself to be sacred, rivers throughout the country have been forced into ugly concrete beds, and there are even plans to lay concrete on the moon. "It won't be easy, but it is possible," said the general manager of one of Japan's largest companies' space systems division in 1996. "It won't be cheap to produce small amounts of concrete on the moon, but if we make large amounts of concrete, it will be very cheap."

Construction frenzy isn't the only accusation the author makes. In fact he has many more -- shabby cities, a film industry aimed at the mentality of children (though with some honorable exceptions), universities that don't educate, a culture of "cosmetic accounting" (ie institutionalized lying), mismanaged hospitals, a profound intellectual insularity, a Hello Kitty-fied cultural life, and so on.

Meanwhile the country displays a strong attraction to emigration, to moving into large, foreign homes set in an unspoiled environment, as far away from Japan as possible. The hostility to foreigners within Japan itself, however, remains palpable.