the tragic workings of Japan’s culture of deceit

Another must-read on today’s edition of The Japan Times, asking difficult, necessary questions that Japan must perforce face if it wants to ensure its credibility and survival as a nation in the coming years.

“What becomes of a society that sees lying as a justifiably institutionalized practice? . . . If everyone is expected to lie, who or what can you trust?”—

—Debito Arudou starts by asking. Based on my first-hand experience of Japan, what puzzles me is how this culture of deceit seems to pervade not only the public sphere — with the tragic consequences unfolding before us — but also the private one. Indeed, after all these years I still don’t cease to be amazed by the unassailable barbed-wire fences of lies, half-truths, masks, evasions, and delusions in which too many individuals in this culture surround themselves and into which they thrust others. And what’s even more mind-boggling is how totally unaware of the phenomenon they are: pretence and dissimulation just seem to be second-nature to them.

Taking into account the notorious and frequent Japanese inability to draw a line between society and self, between group and individual, what happens in the private domain tends to be faithfully mirrored in institutional practice (e.g. in-group indulgence/amae, intolerance of criticism, etc.) — and, in my view, it is precisely this enduring link that has allowed the rot to set in.

This post is also an opportunity to express my appreciation to those few, (un?)happy few who, like Debito, still have the guts to speak out and provoke debate in these trying times. Even though I no longer live in Japan (I reached my wits’ end and left), I certainly share their desire to make this country we still love into a more habitable, tolerant, less exclusionary, saner place for all concerned. It’s not an easy task, though.

Judging from my own experience and that of other long-residing non-Japanese (NJ) I have met over the years in Japan, outspokenness does entail a high personal cost in a culture that systematically shields itself from criticism and polemics and still seems to live in a sakoku (鎖国) of the mind. And I’m pretty sure the following is an almost universal experience among NJ residents who have tried to go beyond the exotic platitudes surrounding Japanese culture: how seemingly polite, gentle individuals can turn into murderously inimical bigots — especially when backed by the group — capable of the most insidious and cowardly forms of character assassination, intrigue, backstabbing, ostracism, mura-hachibu, nakama-hazure and whatnot as soon as an outsider dares to ruffle their hypersensitive feathers by pointing the finger at their murky feudalistic mindset.

I’ve come to the sad conclusion that the only way to get along with most Japanese folks I have met is to flatter, to feed them lies — incessantly. It’s the only language they seem to understand, or at least tolerate. It’s a sort of world upside down, or “down the rabbit’s hole”: in Japan, it’s OK to manipulate and lie, while it’s an offence, a crime, to speak your mind and tell the truth. In view of this, what else can be said, except perhaps: “be afraid, be very afraid”…? This kind of people seem capable of anything to maintain facades and not to lose face.

Another familiar, all too familiar phenomenon: when you point the finger at a problem with Japan, you become the problem, because you are unable to understand the intricate, refined depths of the Japanese mind, 日本人の心… The old excuse — and another outright lie — that has served to cover up and perpetuate all sorts of xenophobic and exclusionist practices, or even sheer criminality.

There is no such thing as “the Japanese mind” (or the Chinese or the American or the Portuguese one, for that matter). There are culturally acquired or inculcated problematic attitudes and behaviours of which discerning, well-informed individuals should become aware and avoid altogether.

Well, these are just some of the baffling workings of the proverbial admixture of infantile insecurity and small-minded chauvinism which many Japanese individuals almost invariably display when confronted with justified criticism and the truth about certain recurrent attitudes and behaviours.

The result is an increasingly embattled country where fewer and fewer NJ — and perhaps Japanese too — want to live.

The costly fallout of tatemae and Japan’s culture of deceit
By DEBITO ARUDOU
The Japan Times, Nov. 1, 2011

There is an axiom in Japanese: uso mo hōben — “lying is also a means to an end.” It sums up the general attitude in Japan of tolerance of — even justification for — not telling the truth.

First — defining “telling the truth” as divulging the truth (not a lie), the whole truth (full disclosure) and nothing but the truth (uncompounded with lies) — consider how lies are deployed in everyday personal interactions.

Let’s start with good old tatemae (charitably translated as “pretense”). By basically saying something you think the listener wants to hear, tatemae is, essentially, lying. That becomes clearer when the term is contrasted with its antonym, honne, one’s “true feelings and intentions.”

Tatemae, however, goes beyond the “little white lie,” as it is often justified less by the fact you have avoided hurting your listener’s feelings, more by what you have gained from the nondisclosure.

But what if you disclose your true feelings? That’s often seen negatively, as baka shōjiki (“stupidly honest”): imprudent, naive, even immature. Skillful lying is thus commendable — it’s what adults in society learn to do.

Now extrapolate. What becomes of a society that sees lying as a justifiably institutionalized practice? Things break down. If everyone is expected to lie, who or what can you trust?

Consider law enforcement. Japan’s lack of even the expectation of full disclosure means, for example, there is little right to know your accuser (e.g., in bullying cases). In criminal procedure, the prosecution controls the flow of information to the judge (right down to what evidence is admissible). And that’s before we get into how secretive and deceptive police interrogations are infamous for being.

Consider jurisprudence. Witnesses are expected to lie to such an extent that Japan’s perjury laws are weak and unenforceable. Civil court disputes (try going through, for example, a divorce) often devolve into one-upmanship lying matches, flippantly dismissed as “he-said, she-said” (mizukake-ron). And judges, as seen in the Valentine case (Zeit Gist, Aug. 14, 2007), will assume an eyewitness is being untruthful simply based on his/her attributes — in this case because the witness was foreign like the plaintiff.

Consider administrative procedure. Official documents and public responses attach organizational affiliations but few actual names for accountability. Those official pronouncements, as I’m sure many readers know due to arbitrary Immigration decisions, often fall under bureaucratic “discretion” (sairyō), with little if any right of appeal. And if you need further convincing, just look at the loopholes built into Japan’s Freedom of Information Act.

All this undermines trust of public authority. Again, if bureaucrats (like everyone else) are not expected to fully disclose, society gets a procuracy brazenly ducking responsibility wherever possible through vague directives, masked intentions and obfuscation.

This is true to some degree of all bureaucracies, but the problem in Japan is that this nondisclosure goes relatively unpunished. Our media watchdogs, entrusted with upholding public accountability, often get distracted or corrupted by editorial or press club conceits. Or, giving reporters the benefit of the doubt, it’s hard to know which lyin’ rat to pounce on first when there are so many. Or journalists themselves engage in barely researched, unscientific or sensationalistic reporting, undermining their trustworthiness as information sources.

Public trust, once lost, is hard to regain. In such a climate, even if the government does tell the truth, people may still disbelieve it. Take, for example, the Environment Ministry’s recent strong-arming of regional waste management centers to process Tohoku disaster ruins: Many doubt government claims that radioactive rubble will not proliferate nationwide, fanning fears that the nuclear power industry is trying to make itself less culpable for concentrated radiation poisoning by irradiating everyone (see http://www.debito.org/?p=954!)!

Apologists would say (and they do) that lying is what everyone in positions of power does worldwide, since power itself corrupts. But there is the matter of degree, and in Japan there is scant reward for telling the truth — and ineffective laws to protect whistle-blowers. It took a brave foreign CEO at Olympus Corp. to come out recently about corporate malfeasance; he was promptly sacked, reportedly due to his incompatibility with “traditional Japanese practices.” Yes, quite so.

This tradition of lying has a long history. The Japanese Empire’s deception about its treatment of prisoners of war and noncombatants under the Geneva Conventions (e.g., the Bataan Death March, medical experiments under Unit 731), not to mention lying to its own civilians about how they would be treated if captured by the Allies, led to some of the most horrifying mass murder-suicides of Japanese, dehumanizing reprisals by their enemies, and war without mercy in World War II’s Pacific Theater.

Suppressing those historical records, thanks to cowardice among Japan’s publishers, reinforced by a general lack of “obligation to the truth,” has enabled a clique of revisionists to deny responsibility for Japan’s past atrocities, alienating it from its neighbors in a globalizing world.

Even today, in light of Fukushima, Japan’s development into a modern and democratic society seems to have barely scratched the surface of this culture of deceit. Government omerta and omission kept the nation ignorant about the most basic facts — including reactor meltdowns — for months!

Let me illustrate the effects of socially accepted lying another way: What is considered the most untrustworthy of professions? Politics, of course. Because politicians are seen as personalities who, for their own survival, appeal to people by saying what they want to hear, regardless of their own true feelings.

That is precisely what tatemae does to Japanese society. It makes everyone into a politician, changing the truth to suit their audience, garner support or deflect criticism and responsibility.

Again, uso mo hoben: As long as you accomplish your goals, lying is a means to an end. The incentives in Japan are clear. Few will tell the truth if they will be punished for doing so, moreover rarely punished for not doing so.

No doubt a culturally relativistic observer would attempt to justify this destructive dynamic by citing red herrings and excuses (themselves tatemae) such as “conflict avoidance,” “maintaining group harmony,” “saving face,” or whatever. Regardless, the awful truth is: “We Japanese don’t lie. We just don’t tell the truth.”

This is not sustainable. Post-Fukushima Japan must realize that public acceptance of lying got us into this radioactive mess in the first place.

For radiation has no media cycle. It lingers and poisons the land and food chain. Statistics may be obfuscated or suppressed as usual. But radiation’s half-life is longer than the typical attention span or sustainable degree of public outrage.

As the public — possibly worldwide — sickens over time, the truth will leak out.

Again, it’s well worth following the debate on Debito’s blog. Extraordinary, how after a couple of years in Japan the perceptions and experiences of NJ residents become so scarily similar.

~ by Enigma on November 2, 2011.