The cultural crisis might be easier to resolve if it were simply a matter of Japanese tradition versus Western technology. But the situation is made more complex-and also chronic and severe-by the fact that the roots of the problem lie in tradition itself. People who admire the Japanese traditional arts make much of the «love of nature» that inspired sand gardens, bonsai, ikebana flower arranging, and so forth, but they often fail to realize that the traditional Japanese approach is the opposite of a laissez-faire attitude toward nature. These arts were strongly influenced by the military caste that ruled Japan for many centuries, and they demand total control over every branch and twig.
Indeed, total control is one of Japan's exemplary traits, father of some of its greatest cultural marvels and of its high quality on the assembly line. The kind of sloppiness that is taken for granted in the West has no place in Japan. But a trait like total control is a double-edged sword, for it has cruel and deadly resuits when married to the powers of modern technology and then applied to the natural environment.
Writers on Japan commonly lament the contrast between the nation's contemporary ugliness and its traditional beauty. Discussion focuses on the conflict between modernity and traditional values, but this is to neglect one of the most thought-provoking elements of Japan's twentieth-century disasters: the problem is not that traditional values have died but that they have mutated. Maladapted to modernity, traditional values become Frankenstein's monsters, taking on terrifying new lives. As Donald Richie, the dean of Japanologists in Tokyo, points out, «What's the difference between torturing a bonsai and torturing the landscape?»
In 1995, the citizens of Kamakura woke one day to find that the municipality was felling more than a hundred of the city's famed cherry trees – Kamakura's official symbol – in order to build a concrete support barrier on a hillside. The reason? Some residents had complained of rocks rolling down the slopes, and officials had condemned the hill, which was within temple grounds, as an «earthquake hazard.» In modern Japan, it requires a surprisingly small threat from nature to elicit this «sledgehammer to a mosquito» reaction. Every bucket of sand that might wash away in a typhoon, every rock that might fall from a hilltop is a threat the government must deal with – using lots of concrete.
Quietly, almost invisibly, a strong ideology grew up during the past fifty years to support the idea that total control over every inch of hillside and seashore is necessary. This ideology holds that nature is Japan's special enemy, that nature is exceptionally harsh here, and that the Japanese suffer more from natural calamities than do other people. One can taste the flavor of this attitude in the following excerpt from a publication of the Construction Ministry's River Bureau:
Earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and droughts have periodically wreaked havoc on Japan. For as long as Japanese history has been recorded, it has been a history of the fight against natural factors... Although Japan is famous for its earthquakes, it is perhaps water-related problems which have been the true bane of Japanese life. In the Japanese islands, where the seasons are punctuated by extremes, extremes which have required people to take vigilant precautions in order to assure survival, water is a constant issue.
The idea that the nation's history is one of a «fight against natural factors» goes back a thousand years, and the tradition is that the main work of government was Chisan Chisui, «control of rivers and mountains.» An extensive literature bemoans the damage done by natural and man-made disasters, typified by the Record of the Ten-Foot-Square Hut by Kamo no Chomei (1153-1216), a classic of Japanese philosophical literature. In his Record, Kamo no Chomei dolefully relates a series of disasters ranging from fires, wars, and whirlwinds to famines and earthquakes. His point is that life is impermanent, that «the world as a whole is a hard place to live in, and both we and our dwellings are precarious and uncertain things.»
As a matter of historical fact, Japan has suffered far less from wars, famines, and floods than China, for example, where these disasters have resulted in the loss of millions of lives and the destruction of much of China's perishable physical heritage. Many more ancient wooden buildings and artworks on paper and silk remain in Japan than in China, despite China's far greater size. Italy, likewise, has endured volcanoes and earthquakes far more severe than Japan has ever experienced, yet «impermanence» is not the abiding theme of Italian or Chinese literature. That it so dominates Japanese thought may have something to do with the ancient desire for Wa, «peace» or «stasis.» Any sudden change, whether in politics or the weather, is an insult to Wa. Hence the fear of and fascination with «impermanence.»
One of the persistent myths about Japan held by many Japanese and accepted unthinkingly by Western observers is that in the golden age before Commodore Perry arrived, the Japanese dwelled innocently in harmony with nature and that only with the arrival of Westerners did they learn to attack and subdue the environment. The romantic in all of us would like to believe this. «It was only when Japan modernized (and therefore Westernized) that it learned the ambition of conquering nature,» writes Patrick Smith in Japan: A Reinterpretation. According to Smith, Japan regrets what it «has taken from the West: its excessive corporatism and materialism, the animosity toward nature that displaced the ancient intimacy.»
That is the myth. Now the reality. Where is the «animosity to nature» that is supposedly such an inbred feature of the West? Obviously, modern technology has led to environmental destruction all over the earth. Yet in the West this destruction has been tempered in local communities, where people have fought to preserve their villages, houses, and fields. Nothing remotely like what is happening in Japan has occurred in Europe or the United States. In England, France, Italy, and even industrial Germany, thousands of square miles of lovingly tended fields, picturesque thatched villages, un-dammed rivers and un-concreted seashore are preserved. Europe and the United States, not Japan, are in the forefront of environmental movements; in case after case – from the logging of rain forest in Malaysia and Indonesia to drift-net fishing – Japan fights these movements with every political and economic tool at its disposal. Where are the Westerners who are teaching Japan to destroy its landscape? From Lafcadio Hearn in the early 1900s to Donald Richie's The Inland Sea in the 1970s and Alan Booth's Looking for the Lost in the 1980s, Western observers have been lamenting what they saw as Japan's destruction of its natural heritage. They have certainly not been urging Japan toward further destruction.
The key to the misunderstanding lies in the telltale words «modernized (and therefore Westernized).» If there is one important contribution that the so-called revisionist writers on Japan of the past fifteen years have made, it is in their recognition that Japan is modern but definitely not Western. Its financial world, its society, and its industry function on surprisingly resilient principles, with roots set deep in Japanese history.
When Japan opened up to the world in 1868, the slogan of Meiji-period modernizers was Wakon Yosai, «Japanese spirit, Western technology,» and Japan has never diverged from this basic approach. That it managed to become modern without losing its cultural identity is an achievement of which it can be very proud, and writers on Japan have universally seen this as a great success. On the other hand, Wakon (Japanese spirit) did not always adapt well to Yosai (Western technology), and sometimes the mix has been extremely destructive. The Wakon of militarism led to the disaster of World War II, and the Wakon of total control is leading Japan to ravage its environment today. Yosai was only the means; Wakon was the motive.