World: Toward the Japanese Century

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dissent two years ago in Sasebo Harbor, where he circled the U.S. carrier Enterprise in a small launch, calling out "Don't fight for Uncle Sham!" on a megaphone. If Oda's style has a familiar American quality, it may be due to the fact that he once studied at Harvard, on a Fulbright scholarship.

The rise of dissent — or rather, the decline of Confucian decorum — has stunned Japan's elders. A measure of their confusion is the advice on handling students contained in a manual circulated among the faculty of Tokyo's Chuo University. They should be treated "as foreigners," the handbook ad vises, "with all their different sets of modes, customs and thoughts." Still, older Japanese take comfort from the fact that so far most of the young ka-minari (thunderbolts) have dutifully taken "their proper place" in the ser vice of company and country after graduation. A few businessmen are in fact trying to recruit campus activists, valuing their "volatile and creative minds."

Control and Release

Life-styles change more rapidly than character — and the Japanese character bewilders many Westerners. It is shot through with contradictions, as Cultural Anthropologist Ruth Benedict noted in a pioneering study of the Japanese mind that was written in 1946 but is still pertinent. "Both the sword and the chry santhemum are a part of the picture.

The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways. They are terribly concerned about what other people will think of their behavior, and they are also overcome by guilt when other peon $49 pie know nothing of their missteps. Their soldiers are disciplined to the hilt but $4.0 are also insubordinate."

Except for small children and old people, the Japanese lives constantly in a state of near-total control or near-total release. A man may be a perfectly decorous office worker at 4:55 p.m., but by 5:05, after one drink at the bar around the corner, he may be a giggling buffoon. Extremely rigid codes define proper behavior in virtually every social situation, but there are no codes at all to cover many modern contingencies. That is why so much body-checking and elbowing go on in a Tokyo subway or department store. As Author-Translator Edward Seidensticker puts it in his recent Japan: "They are extremely ceremonious toward those whom they know, and highly unceremonious toward others. Few urban Japanese bother to say 'Excuse me' after stepping on a person's toes or knocking a book out of his hand—provided the person is a stranger. If he is known, it is very common to apologize for offenses that have not been committed."

The guideline for the Japanese abroad is "No shame away from home." Japan's neighbors learned the meaning of that aphorism from the appalling atrocities committed during the war; in a very different way, they are learning it again today (see box, page 26).

At home, however, extreme overcrowding has led to an overpowering sense of "proper place." Individuality is not a quality sought by most Japanese; even artists usually belong to a group, submerging or sharing their identity. The Japanese are fond of saying that there is a