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paperback £11.99
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Hill & Wang
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More reviews by Simon Ogus
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan by Alex Kerr
Almost a quarter of a century after Karel Van Wolferen's path breaking "Enigma of Japanese Power", ALEX KERR has produced a worthy complement and successor. Van Wolferen's thesis concentrated primarily on an analysis of Japan's political, economic and institutional structures; Kerr, a writer who has lived in Japan on and off for 35 years, has produced a wider ranging analysis of this increasingly troubled society. He asks why such an ostensibly rich country has failed to provide a better quality of life for its downtrodden citizens and why its leaders have been so reluctant or unable to reverse Japan's decade long economic slump.
After more than a decade of intergenerational theft, Japan's political class shows few signs of providing the leadership that can help arrest the country's malaise. To outside observers it seems incomprehensible that the Japanese -- especially the younger generations who are set to inherit the mess created by their fathers and grandfathers -- are not up in arms against the sleaze, incompetence, ugliness and environmental degradation that increasingly pervade their lives. Yet the Japanese continue to meekly accept their fate since the country is still comparatively wealthy and few are experiencing acute, immediate pain. Rather like a 1970s Britain -- another island nation with a dysfunctional royal family that is stuck on the end of a continent and doesn't like its neighbours much -- it can take many years to realise the extent of one's decline and even then a final cathartic shock is often required to force society to reverse course.
So what, if anything, will arrest Japan's slump? ALEX KERR suggests there are few grounds for optimism. He offers a highly plausible argument that the country suffers from a "failure of modernism" and has been unable to move beyond a Meiji-engendered wartime mentality of strong state, poor people. In Kerr's view, Japan has never recovered fully from the humiliation of the Black Ships and in its rush to modernise, its bureaucratic and political structures have been geared towards ever expanding output and sweeping away everything that is old and therefore associated with a former state of poverty. The Meiji ideal of wakon yosai (Japanese spirit, Western technology) has somehow jettisoned the wakon and one has been left with a state where construction is the new god. The result has been massive environmental degradation characterised by concreted beaches, paved river beds, ugly and shoddily designed cities, and modern, sanitised reinterpretations of traditional culture and arts.
DOGS AND DEMONS: TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE OF JAPAN is an important work since it fills in the parts of the puzzle that the Western press tends to ignore with its concentration on business and finance. The book is a little repetitive at times and when Kerr does stray into the economics realm he seems less sure than when he concentrates on dealing with matters environmental and cultural. However, these are but minor quibbles.
Someone once caustically remarked that that Japan resembled an old-age persons' home run by the mob. Kerr would add that it is becoming a pretty ugly OAP home to boot. He concludes with the assertion that: "millions of Japanese feel as heart-broken at what is going on as I do." But for now, unfortunately, they are keeping their sadness to themselves. Any reader wishing to get a better understanding of what makes Japanese society tick (or not as the case may be) should make time to study both of these worthy tomes.
Simon Ogus
22/02/2002
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Simon Ogus is the founder and CEO of DSGAsia, an independent economic and political consultancy based in Hong Kong. |
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