What's not really weird about Japan after all

As the go-to man for all things Japanese, I occasionally receive emails or messages asking me about some aspect of Japan's national weirdness. These will often take the form of attaching a link to some list or video that contains "25 things you didn't know about Japan" or "12 Things that only happen in Japan" or "101 reasons why Japan doesn't actually belong on planet earth". They are also often accompanied by pictures like this;

I find a few things curious about this. The first is that it's not just Japan. Google "things that only happen in Australia" and you receive a similar list of responses that includes "22 crazy things that only happen in Australia", "101 things you can only do in Australia" and so on.

For my Australian readers, I can tell you that the Australian lists almost always include something about being attacked by koalas. This tells us two things. First that the dropbear stories are working (keep it up guys) and second, that these lists are, shall we say, unreliable.

In fact it seems to work for pretty much an country. The exception is Belgium of course where the weird thing about Belgium is that the list can only go up to five, The number one weird thing about Belgium seems to be that somebody fixed a paving stone with gaffer tape. I shit you not.

So, all of this notwithstanding, I recently got sent a link to this video;

The video lists 14 apparently weird things that only happen in Japan. The list consists of things that, for me, are either not weird at all or are wildly exaggerated. More than that, they miss some of the really interesting things.

SO I thought I might run through the list for you;

1. Slurping is polite
This one appears on quite a few lists. I'm not sure why it's weird to slurp noodles, but maybe that's just me. As far as I'm concerned, it's simply practical.

Ramen noodles in Japan are served piping hot. More than that, they are best eaten while still piping hot. The answer to this is to slurp in some air as you eat the noodles.

2. Schools don't hire janitors.
This one is simply false. Schools DO hire janitors. There's a lovely article about this very topic that you can read here.

On the other hand it's also true that school children are expected to clean the school. I don't think this is weird, I think it's a wonderful way to teach the kids to take responsibility for their environment.

3. Japan has a high literacy rate.
This is weird? Well our narrator goes on to tell us that it's not weird, it's shocking. In reponse to this I have two questions, first, isn't this supposed to be a list of weird things? and second, why is that shocking?

The funny thing here is that there is something weird about the literacy rate in Japan. That is that there has not been a national literacy survey since 1948.

Japan's real literacy rate is probably around 95% or so, which places it pretty much right in amongst the world's developed nations (and Belgium),

4. Naked day is real
Yes, it's true. There is a Naked Day. On Naked Day, everybody attends work or school wearing nothing but a charming smile. Bowing becomes even more important than ever and the morning calisthenics class becomes a spectator sport.

Except none of that is true. This is another old standby of Japan lists. There are Hadaka Matsuri (naked festivals) and they are essentially as described in the video. I'm not sure about people wandering around the streets in a loincloth, but certainly they attend the matsuri festival wearing a loincloth and happi coat (not a happy coat as the video seems to suggest). A happi coat is a loose, linen jacket that comes to about mid-thigh.


5. Crooked teeth are attractive
If this is weird, nobody better tell Keira Knightly.


6. Sleeping on the job will get you promoted
This one, and the concepts that surround it, are, I grant, a bit weird. In Japan, there is a strong tendency to attribute credit for effort, rather than results. There is also a lot of formality and a lot of things done for show, rather than for substance.

It's changing, slowly, but it still exists in more traditional Japanese organisations. A person should not leave before their boss, for example. It's considered proper to work late, whether or not your work is done.

Japanese people also sleep less than any other people in the OECD, averaging about 7.5 hours per night in total and less than 7 hours per night on weekdays. So, it's not uncommon to find people sleeping at their desk.

The word used in the video is "inemuri" (居眠り). It's a bit hard to translate, but means something like "sleeping while present". Apart from workers sleeping on the job, it's also common for managers, often quite senior managers, to sleep during meetings. Often managers are expected to attend a meeting simply because of who they are. They will have nothing to contribute and no real interest in what's going on. This is the perfect opportunity for a doze!

Yes, I have been to many, many meetings where a senior guy was present but sleeping. No, I did not make it a practice to sleep in meetings. OK, maybe once or twice.

You can see an article about this particular quirk of the Japanese here.

7. Sticking fingers up a butt is fine (Kancho)
Yes, and stripping someone of their trousers unexpectedly is fine in Australia. Or grabbing the back of their strides and pulling them up far enough that it hurts, that's fine too.

In other words kancho, like wedgies and dacking, exists, but is far from common among those over 12 years old.

8. Japan has 11 cat islands
If there's 11, then 10 are not widely known. There is a Rabbit Island. On the other hand, the country of Japan includes a total 6852 islands, so it's possible I suppose.

9. KFC is Christmas food
Yep, this is a second one I have to agree is real and common.

KFC, with their red and white colouring, somehow managed to get themselves associated with Christmas very early in their life in Japan. Understand that Japan had no Christmas traditions, so KFC, seeing a gap, took their chance and it paid of big time.

Curiously enough, Christmas has become a bit of a tradition in Japan now, but not for children. It's mainly a thing for young couples. Go figure.

10. Black teeth are beautiful

Well yes, and wooden teeth are popular in the west if we use the same timescale.

Black teeth (ohaguro - this guy's pronunciation is driving me nuts) were once popular in Japan, but ended over a hundred years ago. It was popular in other parts of asia too, notably Vietnam. One weird thing that you might like to note is that three of the five women shown in the video with blackened teeth are Vietnamese, not Japanese.

11. Adults can be adopted
At last, here's another weird one. Well interesting at least.

One issue that you need to consider is that the word "adoption" and the whole concept of adoption as we think of it, is a particularly western view. In Japan, the word has quite different connotations.

The video is vaguely accurate on this point and there has already been a lot written about this, so I won't comment much further. It's one of the reasons why the longest continuous family business exists in Japan.

12. There is a suicide forest
Yep it's true, but more sad than weird. Aokigahara (青木ヶ原 - literally Blue Tree Wilderness) is a forest near Mt Fuji that has become known for attracting suicides. Sadly, all over the world there are such locations.

13. The weirdest thing - public crying
If it's a thing, it's not a thing that I've encountered. I'm sure it exists, wellness gurus promoting all manner of weird things are common in Japan as they are in other parts of the world.

And the word he is trying to say for "good looking men" is ikemen.

14. It seems they couldn't think of a fourteenth, so they made one up.

Bonus - What's not weird
Apparently rubbing nightingale shit on your face is not weird. Maybe that's because Victoria Beckham does it?

Of Culture and Business

There is an oft told story of a Japanese department store enthralled by the western notion of Christmas without completely understanding it. Visitors to the store one Christmas were somewhat bemused to encounter, above the main entrance to the store, a large, smiling Santa Claus nailed to a cross.

The story is entirely fabricated of course, but like so many urban legends, it provides wonderful insights, however unintentionally, on both the subject of the legend and the teller of the tale. The story plays on the perceived Japanese enthusiasm for foreign cultures. In contrast to many western nations, who seem concerned at the degradation of their culture, the Japanese appear to happily take artefacts from foreign cultures, but adapt them so thoroughly that the originating culture would barely recognise that artefact.

Perhaps this is most evident in the Japanese language. Up to forty percent of the nouns and verbs appearing in a Japanese newspaper are Chinese in origin and a vast number of words are essentially English, but most of these have been completely adapted to Japanese. The words aisu kuriimu, uisukii and ea kon for example would be barely recognisable to an English speaker.

From factory floor employees to the archetypical sarariman, senior management and directors, Japanese corporate structures can be viewed and explained in terms of both legal and cultural influences. The impact on Corporate Governance within Japan of these constructs can be used as a means of illustrating some of the specific challenges that are presented by the Japanese approach to adapting western principles.

Perhaps the best known feature of Japanese employment is the concept of “lifetime employment”; a practice by which employees are hired into an organisation with the expectation, from both parties, that they will remain employed by the same firm until retirement. This approach to hiring needs to be understood within both a cultural context and a legal context.

There are, in fact, few legislative impediments to dismissing an employee. It is case law that plays the central role, accepting that legislation had been translated from German and French in the late 19th Century and adapting it to reflect the national culture. Precedent has developed establishing that a dismissal that is not “objectively reasonable and socially appropriate” (Neihon Shokuen Seizo Co. Ltd. Case, 1975) is an abuse of power and thereby void. For example, to retrench employees for economic reasons, a company must pass a series of tests to demonstrate that dismissal was a matter of last resort in the face of permanent, not temporary, financial impediments. To dismiss an employee for poor performance is perhaps even more difficult. In one case, a news presenter who had overslept and missed a live broadcast twice in a single fortnight was reinstated as the court found the actions of the employer “harsh and unreasonable”.

As a cultural device, legal precedents reflect the Japanese concept of “group”. They are a manifestation of both the perceived responsibility of the company to care for the employee and for the employee to remain loyal to the company.

The notion of the “in-group” has strong influence in other areas of corporate behaviour too. For example, there is an aversion to implementing measures of control that may give the appearance of mistrust to ones colleagues. In an interview with a Japanese executive based in Australia, I was once told; “these are your colleagues, of course you trust them”.

Equally, the structure of Japanese boards is affected by cultural expectations. Appointment to a directorship is often seen as a reward for service and, as a result, large boards consisting entirely of long-term employees have been the norm. Recent reforms, notably the introduction of the concept of the “Committee System” in 2002 has attempted to combat this, but the overwhelming majority of Japanese companies still favour the older structure.

Japan's view of western structures and corporate norms has changed dramatically in the last 10 years or so. While there is still a broad acceptance of the traditional norms, this has become an almost fatalistic acceptance that acknowledges the weaknesses of the traditional approach and sees western business-people as potential saviours of failing companies. There is an implicit recognition that Japanese executives are hamstrung by the social and cultural expectations that are placed on them. Westerners are looked on as being able to ignore those expectations and, as a result, operate more efficiently.

This sort of generalisation has exceptions of course, but it has led to some curious outcomes. Carlos Ghosn, the Brazilian-Lebanese CEO of Nissan since 2001, has been subject to a sort of hero-worship following his turnaround of Nissan. A year after he took over the ailing car-maker, the company was back in profit. By 2005, net debt had been reduced to zero. He did this by cutting staff, closing unprofitable plants and selling off non-core businesses. The result has been extraordinary. Ghosn was vilified during those first twelve months, but since then has been lauded as a business hero. He was the subject of a best-selling manga titled "The True Story of Carlos Ghosn", he has been the subject of books and documentaries and perhaps most impressively of all, he has had a bento (lunchbox) named after him - the "Carlos Ghosn Bento"!

In their usual fashion, the Japanese have accepted western approaches and then adapted them until they are uniquely Japanese. Yes, Japanese companies will restructure as western companies would, yes, they will retrench staff as western companies would. But they will often bring a westerner in to do it!

Why am I interested?

I travelled to Japan for the first time in 1998. I was sent there by my company on an "Executive Exchange Programme", which sounds a lot more glamorous than it really was. At the time I was told I was going, I had never travelled overseas. Anywhere. Not even New Zealand. Actually not even Tasmania. I had never eaten Japanese food, I knew no one that had any sort of relationship with Japan. For four weeks before I left, I had Japanese language and culture lessons twice a week.  I'm happy to report that I only missed three of those lessons.

I stayed in Japan for six weeks. I lived in the company dormitory, ate with the local Japanese staff and generally lived as a Japanese person for those six weeks.

I loved it.

Sadly, I didn't get back to Japan for another ten years.

Since that time, I've visited Japan nine times. I've written academic papers on Japan and I've read mountains of books and papers and news articles and wotnot. I'm currently enrolled in a Masters degree where I am specialising in the interaction between Japanese law and Japanese culture. I'm far from an expert, but I have a much better handle on the culture than I did in 1995.

None of that explains why I am interested, but I'm not sure that there's a good explanation for that anyway. You just have to accept that I am.

Elderly crime in Japan

On Wednesday, 9th February, I attended the Osaka District court to witness the process of Japanese justice first hand. The cases I saw there were three petty theft cases. In the first, money had been stolen from an ATM machine. The total was around JPY200,000 or about AUD2500. In the second case the amount was more difficult to estimate as the crime involved stealing externally located water faucets from office buildings. The accused claimed to have received around JPY500 for each faucet and I can only assume that he was selling them for scrap.

The third case involved a theft of around JPY15,000 (AUD180). The accused had exhausted his funds at a pachinko gambling house and had decided that he would be able to easily steal money from people that had become drunk and passed out. He had been in the process of taking money from a drunken and apparently unconscious woman when she awoke and began to scream. He was apprehended at the scene.

These sorts of crimes are grist to the mill of any system of justice around the world. They were committed by the unemployed poor of the city and they were committed by men. They were petty crimes for relatively small amounts. The distinguishing feature though was that in all three cases, the crimes had been committed by older men. The first defendant was 60 years old, the second 62 years old and the third 59 years old.

In most of the world, the lower courts are filled with crimes of drugs and violence committed by young men with too much testosterone and too little education. Why then is the situation so different in Japan?

The circumstances of the three men were similar. They were all divorced or widowed and they had no contact with their children or family. They had no employment and little prospect of gaining employment. Their circumstances were at once poignant and baffling. Furthermore it appeared that they were not in the slightest bit unusual. I was told shortly after the hearing that Japan is undergoing a grey crime wave of sorts.

And it turned out that my information is correct. A Washington Times report dated 5 weeks prior to my visit to Osaka District Court describes the difficulties face by prisons in handling the influx of elderly prisoners, six months earlier Bloomberg had reported that “the number of arrests among people aged 65 or older tripled to 48,786 in 2008 from 1999” and in 2008 Reuters had reported that “crime by elderly Japanese has doubled over the past five years” and that while Japan’s population is certainly aging, “the number of such crimes is growing faster than the elderly population itself.”

There are more reports of the phenomenon, all with the same theme; the rate of crime among the elderly is increasing, the crimes are overwhelming petty theft and shoplifting, the causes are poverty and loneliness.

To me these reports seemed a little glib. Circular statements that opine that loneliness and poverty cause crime, the elderly in Japan are more lonely due to the breakdown of the traditional family and they are poorer due to the heavy burden of supporting an aging society. All this means that the elderly are committing more crime.

The academic literature did not offer much at all. There are few very articles examining the phenomenon. Most mentions of the elderly and crime in Japan either focus on the elderly as victims of crime rather than perpetrators, or focus on older men as perpetrators of sexual crimes against younger women.

An interesting paper written in 2004 attempts to explain the low crime rate in Japan. There's not much doubt that crime rates are low in Japan, their murder rate and violent assault rates are the lowest in the OECD. The 2004 paper suggests four causes of low rates of crime; 

1. Strong, informal social control mechanisms, 
2. Economic prosperity, 
3. Certainty of punishment and 
4. The aging population. 

Of these four, it is certainly the case that Japan’s economic success has diminished in recent times, but are there factors here that would affect only the elderly? Can the breakdown of social control mechanisms be partly responsible for the increase of crime among the elderly?

The strong, informal social controls tend to come from the sense of community that still exists quite strongly in Japan. The associated notions of “group” and belonging” also remain quite strong. For these elderly men however, it appears that the group has left them behind. They are at an age where they should expect to be the senior speakers for the group. Heads of their family, respected in their workplace, securely looking forward to (or even already enjoying) their retirement. These are the things that the group expects and by falling outside these expectations, these men have fallen outside the group. Their reaction appears to be a turning to crime, partly for the benefits of the crime itself, but also it would appear that they seek the security that their inevitable incarceration brings. Their incarceration places them back within a group and gives them security and certainty.

In 2006, the Japanese Justice Ministry was reported as being “so alarmed by the rise in geriatric crime that it has started a research project into its causes ... ‘We have no idea what is causing the rise in the elderly crime rate,’ said Yoshihiro Ono, a ministry of justice researcher”. I suspect that while we may have some idea what is causing it, there is still a great deal more work to be done.

This is adapted from a short essay written as part of my master's programme. If you're interested, I can provide references. The "2004 paper" is Roberts, A. and LaFree, G., (2004), “Explaining Japan's Postwar Violent Crime Trends”, Criminology, Vol 42, No 1; pg. 179

And that's Japan

Some time ago, I started writing a blog. There was no special reason for this, just I feel the urge to write things down from time to time, and sometimes people enjoy reading what I write.

I posted spasmodically over a period and garnered a few followers. Based on the stats that google provides, it seems about 50 or 60 people regularly read my posts and occasionally (very occasionally) something is deemed worthy of a comment or two.

Anyway, I haven't posted for some time, mainly because everything that I start to write seems to be related to Japan somehow. The blog was not meant to be about Japan, but it was starting to turn out that way. So I'm starting a new blog. One that's unashamedly Japan focussed. And that's where you are now.

A couple of these first posts you may have seen before, but there's a lot more to tell. Read on. And please, comment. I'm always curious to hear your views.