- (october 2010)
How to build a peaceful society
(Report from a trip to the Pacific region)
Japanese society is amazingly crime-free. Japan is also one of the most
pacific countries in the world. If one exclused domestic abuse (which is still
widespread) society is free of the kind of verbal and physical violence that
is common in the West. In particular, there is none of the extreme violence
that is pervasive in the USA (make one mistake while driving and someone will
show you his middle finger, hit someone in the supermarket and he might
threaten to beat you up).
Japan used to be a land of continuous warfare: many states fighting each other.
After unification, it became a militaristic power. After beating Russia in
a war, it became an imperialistic power that tried to conquer all of Asia.
Even after the USA defeated it, Japanese soldiers continued to fight
heroically, refusing to surrender. Therefore its history is far from peaceful.
For a long time the prevailing myth was the myth of the samurai, not the
myth of the Buddhist monk.
If one could pinpoint what caused Japanese society to change from being
so violent to being so peaceful, one could try and apply the same medicine
to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the answer might be horrible;
two atomic bombs.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (october 2010)
The ultimate service society
(Report from a trip to the Pacific region)
Customer care reaches quasi-religious levels in Japan. From the restaurant
waitress to the train conductor everybody is trained to help the customer
in every possible way.
This is the ultimate service society. You can see it from many little details.
For example, the train ticket bears both the departure time AND the arrival
time. In the West the ticket seller is only interested in telling you at what
time you have to show up. The ticket seller is only interested in selling you
the product. Once you are on the train/plane/bus it is your business to find
out how long the trip is. In Japan the ticket tells you what time you have to
show up AND the one thing you really want to know: at what time do we arrive?
The difference between the Japanese service society and other western societies
is that te Japanese seem to truly care for your well-being. Ultimately,
they are all customers: when they get off work, the waitress and the conductor
become ordinary commuters and consumers, and they benefit from the same service
society for which they work. This infinite loop seems to be more than just
a capitalistic device to win repeated customers: it seems more like a
religion.
Ordinary people rarely talk to the foreigner, but they
are very helpful whenever the foreigner asks for help.
They worship the customer the same way they worship their ancestors.
In the USA your job is to pretend to care for the customer (a marketing
device).
In Japan your job is to care (a cultural device).
- (october 2010)
An industrial revolution without a scientific revolution
(Report from a trip to the Pacific region)
Thanks to the scientific revolution (and the innovations in transportation
and warfare that followed), Europe conquered the world.
The first European colony to win independence, the United States of America,
became the largest economic power and the most powerful military power in the
world. Since the USA was a former colony, it initially despised the old
European order based on colonialism. It is thanks to the emergence of the USA
as a world power after World War II that Britain and France had to let their
colonies go.
A few decades later the USA empire had another traumatic effect on the world
order: progressively, all of the newly independent countries adopted the
free-market capitalistic model of the USA. When the last enemy of this model
(the Soviet Union) collapsed, this process of conversion to the free-market
ideology accelerated leading to a global economy. The global economy, in turn,
led to a world-wide economic boom that mostly benefited emerging countries
(many of which used to be former European colonies, and China was de facto too
a European protectorate).
Therefore the USA empire has caused a three-staged revolution in world order:
1. decolonization, 2. globalization, 3. world-wide economic boom.
After the financial crisis of 2008 (that has mainly hurt the Western countries)
it appears that the fourth stage will be a pre-colonization order, with the
Chinese and Indian economies dwarfing the European economies, and threatening
USA dominance.
However, something is missing. These former colonies are undergoing the process
of massive industrialization that Western Europe underwent after the scientific
revolution, but these former colonies never had a scientific revolution, nor
did they contribute to it in any form or fashion. Europe had Galileo, Newton,
Maxwell and Einstein, just to mention Physics. It boasted countless discoveries,
inventions and theories. The industrial boom was a consequence of that
intellectual boom, that eventually migrated to the USA. The USA became the
world's main producer of scientific theories, technological inventions and
Nobel prizes.
Today the USA is still the main (almost the sole) producer of ideas.
Because the former colonies have rapidly industrialized, it has also become
the main consumer of foreign products built around those ideas.
The industrialization of Europe's former colonies consists in building products
out of Western scientific inventions and technological innovations.
It was Japan that invented this economic model: build
better products based on USA inventions.
Japan contributed no major scientific discovery, and no real invention.
Its success has been due mainly to manic refinement of other nation's ideas.
Initially it also relied on cheap labor. Now that its currency has become one
of the strongest in the world, it simply relies on making better products.
But it still does not rely on native inventions: the radio, the television
set, the computer, the videogame and the cell phone were all invented abroad
(all in the USA, by the way).
The developing world is simply imitating the Japanese model: build products
around USA inventions.
The Japanese relies on a closed system: a number of large companies manufacture
all sorts of products. Their research laboratories continuously improve
consumer products. There are virtually no startups, only large multi-purpose
corporations. By definition, large corporations tend to refine ideas, not
create truly innovative ideas.
The very motivation to go to work is different in Japan from the USA.
Employees are faithful to their company and expect their company to take care
of them. There is virtually no job mobility: employees are not looking for
jobs elsewhere, and companies don't lay off employees. One is faithful to
the other. The chief goal is not to create innovative products but to
provide stability to both the individual and the company.
It is not that the Japanese system stifles innovation: the system is a
consequence of a society based on no real innovation, a society that never
underwent a scientific revolution.
The developing is following the same path: an industrial revolution without
a scientific revolution, that will rely on building products based on USA
scientific discoveries.
Japan is now stuck in a chronic stagnation. One wonders if the lack of a
scientific revolution, rather than an aging population or a rising currency,
might have something to do with it. If so, one wonders if that is the common
destiny of all emerging economies, the fifth stage: not the golden age of Asia
but an age of chronic stagnation.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (october 2010)
Japanese traditionalism versus Chinese westernization
(Report from a trip to the Pacific region)
The world always thought of Japan as a westernized country (it is in fact often
included in the list of western countries) but now that the whole of Asia is
becoming westernized Japan is beginning to look like the exception to the rule,
not the model of the rule.
It's amazing how Japan is still Japan, while China (at least the big cities) is becoming westernized so rapidly. In so many ways the Japanese have remained faithful to their traditions, whereas China is rapidly becoming a copy of the USA.
For example, Chinese-style hotels (not to mention restrooms and toilets)
are disappearing, replaced by USA-style hotels (and restrooms and toilets),
whereas Japanese-style hotels are still commonplace, and they mostly have
the old-fashioned Japanese restrooms.
Japan never adopted Western food. There are few foreign restaurants.
Bread is now common all over the world, except in Japan.
Very soon all Chinese will speak English
as the second language, something that Japan never managed to achieve in 60
years of tight USA alliance. And so forth.
I guess the difference is that China is a dictatorship and people must do what their government tells them to do, whereas the Japanese government never ordered a total compulsory westernization of the country.
The condition of women too is part of this picture. While more and more
women work, almost none has an executive position in a large corporation,
and none has any major political position in parliament.
The vast majority are housewives. The 30% who work are mostly employed in
part-time positions, and often in "kagyo" or household chores.
The contrast with China (where many police
officers, bus drivers and government officials are women) is stark.
Japan is a nation that still has women-only cars in trains, and in which most
business hotels do not accept women. Most women do not walk properly, as if
their feet had been injured.
Japan is quite amazing as the only developed society that wasted
50% of its potential.
For decades the world thought that there was something fundamentally more
"modern" about the Japanese people that allowed them to join the ranks of
western countries, compete with them and even beat them.
Recent history has shown that there was nothing special about Japan:
once they became democratic and capitalistic, all the Asian countries followed
suit: Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, India, China...
If there is something different, it is exactly the opposite: Japan seems to be
more jealous of its traditions. It just so happens that it lost the war and
it was "colonized" by the USA, hence it was the first Asian country to become
heavily westernized. But with every decade, as the other Asian countries become
more and more westerized Japan reveals to be less westernized
than it looked like.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (october 2010)
Give me ambiguity or give me something else
(Report from a trip to the Pacific region)
One of the biggest contradictions of Japanese society, and perhaps the
fundamental one, is the unlikely coexistence of precision and ambiguity.
The tourist is exposed to Japanese precision mainly thanks to public
transporation, which is notoriously super-humanly punctual.
Tidiness at all costs (street cleaners even pick up cigarette butts, and
everybody routinely uses different shoes for outside, inside and restrooms)
is a direct consequence of the idea of precision.
Honesty is an indirect consequence of the ideal of precision: a honest society
has precise rules that nobody ever breaks.
At the same time, though, Japanese businessmen are maddeningly vague when they
negotiate a contract.
The conclusions are invariably vague, as if they didn't understand or were not
interested, whereas they perfectly understood and were interested.
They rarely say yes or no, preferring to let some consensus arise spontaneously.
Eventually, the negotiation will end with all details hammered out.
Japan is a nation that does not believe in street signs (nobody uses addresses here, and it's rare to see the name of the street at an intersection) but then
it posts detailed instructions everywhere, and restaurants even display pictures of the dishes.
There is uncertainty in where you are but not in what you do.
There are recycling bins everywhere but rarely a garbage cans (it is clear
what to do with materials that can be recycled but not clear at all what to do
with the rest).
The Japanese are supposed to worship their ancestors but kids don't surrender
their train or bus seats to elderly people (like they do, for example, in
Taiwan).
One can see another form of ambiguity in the way
high-tech is pervasive but then Japan is still a cash-only country
(credit cards are rarely accepted) and
ATM machines don't accept foreign cards.
Japan has the fastest trains in the world, but
traffic lights have no sensors.
More ambituity: Japan might be the cleanest country in the world, but it is
also the biggest waster of plastic in the world. It is
staggering how many layers of plastic are used to wrap any object,
especially food.
Ditto for paper: employees of both private and government offices love
to hand out maps of their neighborhood when giving even the simplest of
directions.
Japan is very much this balance of ambiguity and precision.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (october 2010)
How to build a society of engineers
(Report from a trip to the Pacific region)
Reading the history of Japan, that for centuries was a land of warriors
(samurais), farmers and fishermen that couldn't even build ships,
it is a mystery how it transformed
(almost overnight) into a nation of engineers.
Until the Meiji revolution of the 19th century Japan had virtually no
experience in engineering. Once they decided to westernize the country they
rapidly learned how to build things (and very often the founder of a
manufacturing company would be the descendant of a samurai).
After World War II that process accelerated.
Unlike China, though, that has thousands of years of tradition in manufacturing, Japan had to start from scratch.
Nonetheless Japan came to be the world's role model for engineering.
To achieve such a feat a nation needs the skills and the motivation.
The skills to build an engine, a watch or a radio were just not there.
The state of mind was not the one in Britain, where the industrial revolution
had produced over the centuries a mindset biased towards engineering advances.
In Japan that motivation could not naturally evolve.
But it did.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (october 2010)
The source of Japanese wealth
(Report from a trip to the Pacific region)
When it comes to security, the contrast between Japan and the USA couldn't be stronger: the USA feels like a police
state compared with Japan. In Japan you can leave luggage unattended and go buy something
(it also helps that thieves don't exist). There is no metal detector when
you enter a skyscraper and nobody asks you why you are there.
There are still lockers in all train and bus stations where you can store
your luggage, and nobody checks their content.
Police officers are never suspicious of you: they mostly
want to help you find your way around. You can take pictures of any government
building. All of this is rapidly disappearing in the USA, that will soon be
just a memory of the free country that it used to be.
The reason why the Japanese feel so secure is that there is no terrorist group
targeting Japan. The reason why no terrorist hates Japan is that Japan is not
involved in any conflict in the world.
The reason why Japan is at peace with everybody is that someone else is doing
the dirty job for it: the USA. Japan does not need to protect itself against
North Korea and China: the USA does it.
Japan does not need to protect the mercantile routes to the Middle East, Latin
America and Europe: the USA does it.
Note that those routes are more vital to Japan than the USA: the USA produces
about half of the oil it consumes, and imports most of the rest from the Americas (Canada, Mexico, Venezuela), whereas Japan has no oil at all of its own;
and the USA economy does not rely on exports to
the rest of the world as much as the Japanese economy does.
There are no domestic or foreign threats to Japan because the USA absorbs
all the risks and all the blame.
The spectacular cities of the future that Japan has built since the 1980s
would immediately become targets for terrorists if they were located in the
USA. Ditto for the monumental railways and government buildings.
From the viewpoint of foreign affairs, Japan is largely a worry-free society:
someone else is doing all the worrying.
To make things even better, the USA is the very country that buys most of what
Japan produces. Simplifying a bit, the USA has been patrolling the world so that
Japan can build competitive products that it then sells to the USA.
The USA pays the bill twice: first with its defense budget (which is essential
to protecting Japan's mercantile routes and to maintain peace in the region)
and then with all the money that USA consumers spend to buy Japanese goods.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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