If «pure poverty» and «knowing what is enough» were the supreme points of Japanese culture, where in the world did Japan's modern gigantism, the insistence on the biggest and the longest, the taste for the bombastic, come from? Within traditional culture itself, coexisting with pure poverty has been an other tendency, a competitive streak. When the imperial court built cities like Kyoto and Nara, it did so with an eye over its shoulder at China and Korea. In Nara, the very first order of business was to devote all the energies of the state to building the Hall of the Great Buddha, intended to compete with the largest temples of the Tang-dynasty capital in Chang-An. Today's Todaiji, though a much smaller reconstruction, is still the largest wooden structure in the world.
Later rulers celebrated their reigns with undertakings such as the Great Buddha in Kamakura, Hideyoshi's Himeji Castle, and the Shogun's Palace in Edo, which are among the larger structures of the premodern world. In short, Japan also has a strong tradition of celebrating its rulers' power through impressive monuments. What is going on today may be a similar affirmation of wealth and power.
Thoreau wrote: «Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East, to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them – who were above such trifling.» The answer is, of course, that none were above it. Every state, as it acquires wealth, goes through a phase in which it enjoys building bigger and taller structures. Versailles, the Houses of Parliament, the Empire State Building, the Sears Tower – these are all Western monuments. Newly industrializing Asian countries are headed one after another in the same direction, with mega-projects scheduled for China, Malaysia, and Singapore. From the Pyramids of Egypt to Malaysia's new Linear City (a twelve-kilometer mall and office building planned to straddle the Klang River in Kuala Lumpur), monument building would seem to be a universal need, perhaps even a basic human desire.
There is, however, one critical difference between ancient societies and those of today, and it is that raising huge monuments in pre-industrial times was difficult, involving massive mobilization of people and resources. Notre-Dame, the Forbidden City, the Potala Palace, Angkor Wat, the Vatican took centuries to complete. In contrast, the gigantic office towers and fanciful museums of today are apparently projects that even small and poorly developed nations can easily do. As the twenty-first century dawns, the construction of huge monuments is no longer a proof of advanced civilization. In other advanced industrial nations, the advent of a new skyscraper these days rarely brings more than a yawn-if not outright opposition. But Japan seems stuck in a pre-industrial mode in which such monuments still invariably astound and amaze. It's Japan's old competitive streak in action, but not updated to a newer model of development. Therefore Japan must keep building more and bigger and higher and grander in order to impress its citizens that it has «arrived,» or, in the words of Nakaoki Yutaka, the governor of Toyama Prefecture, «so that people can feel they have become rich.» Monuments prove to people that they live in a successful modern state. But of course the real test of a successful modern state is the degree to which it rises above such trifling.
Why is it that monument building has triumphed to such an extreme in modern times, while Japan's strong tradition of «pure poverty» has been swept away like a straw in a gale? It's a case of breakdown and imbalance-and this inability to keep a balance lies at the core of Japan's modern cultural trauma.
A clue to the problem may be found in what I call the theory of Opposite Virtues. Nations, like people in this respect, may pride themselves most highly on the quality they most lack. Hence «fair play» is a golden virtue in Great Britain, the country that attacked and subjugated half the globe. «Equality» was the banner of Soviet Russia, where commissars owned lavish dachas on the Black Sea and the proletariat lived no better than serfs. The United States prides itself on its high «moral standard,» while perpetuating racial and moral double standards. And then there is l'amour in France, a nation of cold-blooded rationalists. Or Canadians priding themselves most on being so distinctively «Canadian.»
In Japan we must look at the time-honored ideal of Wa, «peace.» Wa means security, stability, everything in its proper place, «knowing what is enough.» Yet a persistent irony of Japanese history since 1868 is that for all the emphasis on peace and harmony, they are exactly the virtues that Japan did not pursue. At the end of the nineteenth century, rather than settling back to enjoy its new prosperity, Japan embarked on a campaign to conquer and colonize its neighbors. By the 1930s, it had already acquired a tremendous empire in East Asia; this inability to stop led to its suicidal attack on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, as a result of which it lost everything. Something similar is happening again. Perhaps Japan values Wa so highly for the very reason that it has such a strong tendency toward imbalance and uncontrollable extremes.
Prewar history and Japan's present rush toward environmental and fiscal disaster indicate a fatal flaw in Japan's social structure. The emphasis on shared responsibility and obedience leads to a situation in which nobody is in charge, with the result that once it is set on a certain course, Japan will not stop. There is no pilot, nobody who can throw the engines into reverse once the ship of state is under way; and so it moves faster and faster until it crashes onto the rocks.
The rhythm is predictable. In studying traditional arts in Japan, one encounters the classic pattern of jo, ha, kyu, zanshin, which appears everywhere, from the wiping of the scoop in the tea ceremony to the dramatic finale of a Kabuki dance. Jo means "introduction," the initial start of a movement. Ha means «break» – when the movement breaks into medium speed. Kyu means «rush,» the sprint at the end. These all lead to a full stop, known as zanshin,« leaving behind the heart,» after which another cycle begins. A simple English translation of this sequence would be «slow, faster, fastest, stop.» In the context of twentieth-century history, one might translate it as «slow, faster, fastest, crash.» Japan never rests at ha but always continues to kyu, and nothing can stop it thereafter but catastrophe. Zanshin.
After recovering from its defeat in World War II, Japan set out to lead the world as a great industrial power. Pure poverty did not fit into this scenario; gigantic construction did. With industry and construction as the sole national goals, Japan turned on her own land, attacking the mountains and valleys with bulldozers, sweeping away old cities, filling in the harbors-essentially turning the nation into one large industrial battleship. Nobody can slow her as she steams full speed ahead toward a colossal shipwreck.
Another factor that prevents Japan from coming to its senses is the effect of the damage already done. Gavan McCormack has written, «The real and growing need is for imaginative projects designed to undo some of the damage to the environment: begin de-concreting the rivers and coast, demolishing some of the dams, restoring some of the rivers to their natural course.» Such a process has in fact begun in the United States, but in Japan it is nearly inconceivable. Consciousness of environmental issues is so low and heedless development has already so damaged Japan's urban and rural settings that what it would take to repair them beggars the imagination. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: as the texture of city life and the natural environment deteriorates, there are fewer and fewer places in which people can enjoy the quiet, meditative lifestyle of «pure poverty,» and fewer and fewer people who can appreciate what it ever meant.
A child brought up in Japan today may have a chance to travel to Shikoku'sTokushima Prefecture, but the closest he will come to enjoying its native culture is to see robots dancing in ASTY Tokushima's Yu-ing Hall. When he goes on family or school outings, bus tours will carry him not to famous waterfalls or lovely beaches but to see cement being poured at Atsui Dam. As Japan flattens its rivers and shoreline, and sheathes every surface with polished stone and steel, it is turning the nation into one huge artificial environment – a Starship Enterprise, though not nearly so benign. A Death Star. Aboard the Death Star, every megalomaniac sci-fi fantasy is a possibility.
At the deepest level we find ourselves face-to-face with what McCormack calls the «Promethean energy» of the Japanese people. With a thousand years of military culture behind them, a mighty energy propels the Japanese forward – to go forth, to do battle, to vanquish all obstacles. This is Japan's vaunted Bushido, the way of the warrior. During the centuries of seclusion before Japan opened up in 1868, this energy lay coiled within like a powerful spring. Once opened, Japan leaped forth upon the world with a voracious hunger to conquer and subdue – as Korea, China, and Southeast Asia learned in the 1930s and 1940s. And, despite the defeat of World War II, Japan has still not come to terms with its demon.
Economic analysts have seen the Bushido mentality in positive terms, as the motive force behind the long hours workers spend in overtime at their offices, taking few vacations, and devoting their lives to their companies. But Japan's unlimited energy to go forth and conquer is like a giant blowtorch-one has to be careful which direction the flame is pointing. In the past half century, Japan has turned the force of the flame upon its own mountains, valleys, and cities. McCormack writes:
One of the more philosophically minded of Japan's postwar corporate leaders, Matsushita Konosuke of National/ Panasonic, once advocated a 200-year national project for the construction of a new island that would involve leveling 20 percent, or 75,000 square kilometers, of Japan's mountains and dumping them in the sea to create a fifth island about the size of Shikoku. He argued that only the containment and focusing of Japan's energies in some such gigantic project at home could create the sort of national unity and sense of purpose that formerly had come from war.
This is why Yokota had to build the Orochi Loop, Kyoto had to build the New Station, and Tokyo and Osaka have to fill in their bays. A demon escaped from the bottle in 1868, and it has yet to be tamed.
