The Japanese will rebound, no question about it. However, not for most of the
reasons posted here.

In the long history of the Japanese people, one sees that the Japanese, when
pressed against the wall, are capable of incredible change, and this has earned
them the title of ‘the bamboo people.’

This has come with a price, however. The individual has always been relegated to
the back, or worse, along with women in lieu of the ie (family), mura (village),
machi (town), and finally the nation (kokku). Foreigners, despite their
tremendous contributions throughout Japanese history and their tremendous
contributions to Japanese culture, art, administration, and religion, have always
been rewarded with overwhelming and heartless prejudice and sometimes
violence, true even to modern times.

When Taisho Democracy was thwarted, the Japanese populace sat back as the
army and navy took power from their secular rulers, and the ultimate conclusion,
begun with the Meiji Restoration, played out its ugly and bloody course on the
world stage and WWII.

The Western press always seems to find much to praise in and about Japan and
her people, when they take the time to come here, and there is much to praise.
But most of the Western praise comes from a shallow understanding of the
culture, the people, and - in the end - amounts to nothing more then facile
verbiage and is uninformative.

The overwhelming comment I have heard from the Western press during the last
couple weeks of this current crisis is amazement over the Japanese spirit. It is
special, but it is not a mystery if one were to takes the trouble to understand
why the Japanese are the way they are. The spirit, after all, is the human spirit
and can be found in all people everywhere.

This is the real story.

Nonsense!

BOASTFULNESS

Gerard: However—what (to me) makes the “American” superiority complex so obnoxious is that they seem to trumpet it everywhere they go, every chance they get.

In the last century, Uncle Sam won two World Wars and earned thusly a reputation for being invincible. Our multinationals embarked upon a conquest of the global markets and literally showed the way to others, including post war Germany that earns more from its exports absolutely than does the US.

So it is readily understandable that a sense of superiority should have seeped into the American mentality - even though we got our asses kicked out of Vietnam.

Then there is another overweaning social factor, that of sports and the manner in which it can make national heroes of poor people (in general). Sports is the real rags-to-riches story of America. And, in sports, as we all know well, “Winners reign supreme - who ever remembers those who came in second?”

Ours is an extremely competitive society and success, well, we bump it with a trumpet.

It’s all bravado, mindless boastfulness. And after years and years of it, at least in Europe, people just smile that Americans still believe in their invincibility.

So when humbled by the sheer idiocy of the SubPrime Mess, much of the world said quietly to themselves, “they had it coming”.

CAVEAT

Having said that, Uncle Sam is not “down and out”. The success of both Hollywood and Silicon Valley products are banners for American industry. And since entertainment becomes a central theme of the middle-class (all around the world), then sports and Hollywood will continue to spin the billions upon billions of dollars that they do today.

POST SCRIPTUM: Anecdotal history

Gaius Appuleius Dioclès was a Roman chariot driver in the famous Circus Maximus. Poor, illiterate and a slave, he started his career at 18 and won his first prize two years later.

Throughout his fabulous career as a chariot driver that lasted 24 years, he won 1492 races of 4257 and finished second in 861 of them. At that time, chariot races were a “must” as regards Roman arena sports. The Circus Maximus in Rome had a capacity of 250,000 paid customers each week.

Historians estimate that Gaius Diocles won 456.5 million Euros each year (in today’s terms) throughout his career and his career total was thus 10.7 billion Euros. He was therefore richer than the Roman Emperor.

The more things change, the more they seem the same …

A better bet would be on just who is going to make the most money out of Japan’s misfortune?

Hopefully them will embark upon a course of smart and sustainable energy from
now on-hope they dont have Japanese version of republicans obstructing
sustainable energy,  as we do here.

LaFayette:  Your comment brought an interesting thing to my mind when you
pointed out that “all cultures have a bit of this (superior) attitude.”  I’m sure that’s
right.  However—what (to me) makes the “American” superiority complex so
obnoxious is that they seem to trumpet it everywhere they go, every chance they
get.  No other country in the world would have the ghastly effrontery to invent
a phrase like “America First”, have it become almost an instant national motto and
practically build an ideology around it, and strut upon the world stage with it as a
banner.  Other countries and cultures may think it, but the incessant self-
advertising is found nowhere else on earth, I’ll wager.

Gerard: This attitude favoring distinctions and separations tends to prevent empathy, understanding of differences, and connections.

Very true. This attitude had a name, as I recall, in computing. It was called “the NIH factor”. NIH = Not Invented Here. It was difficult to get some countries to adapt to methods and processes that came from abroad (meaning the US).

All cultures have a bit of this attitude. We get accustomed to our own ways. But to think that just because we are accustomed to them they are “the best” or “world class” is foolish.

And I suspect it is our sense of superiority that aghasts many foreigners. We often look like a bull in a China-shop with our foreign-policy. After Korea and Vietnam, Iraq most certainly gave the world that impression.

It’s hard to think of any one country that could have handled this unprecedented
triple crisis any better than Japan has.  They do have an important task to
undertake after things settle down, whenever that may be. And that is to
investigate their nuclear industry for any corruption and cover-ups that may have
existed and still exist.  That is the same industry—actually some of the same
corporations—that Obama is thinking of giving loan guarantees to in order to
build two nuclear reactors in Texas. (See important report on Larry’s List at
Truthdig.)

Perhaps the Japanese are resilient because they tend not to think in terms of
black or white, right or wrong.  In general they are apt to look for the grays,
the unity of opposites, the both-and something else. The maybe. The perhaps.

Western Positivism gets us in trouble over and over.  We are right.  They are
wrong.  We are separate from them, and different.  We don’t want to be the
same.  This attitude favoring distinctions and separations tends to prevent
empathy, understanding of differences, and connections.  Our sympathies and
understandings are more or less bound to similarity.  We tend to fear change
rather than look for opportunities within change.

All this you can take with a grain of salt however, for exceptions are
everywhere. The underlying fact to bear in mind is probably that rigidity is a
huge disadvantage because life at its very root is constant change.  And
generalities are no more than convenient, and sometimes useful, abstractions.

A SPECULATION

AAE: concepts that would accord any meaning to, e.g., “individualism” or “the social contract theory” or “natural (human) rights” or “nature,” i.e., some of the concepts that are the fundamental pillars of our own thinking of ourselves, others, society, and nature (for this reason, it is at best a caricature to characterize Japan as a society that “values ‘the group’ over the individual”

In the 1970s a Dutch sociologist went to IBM and proposed a study on cultural values in the workplace. He went to a number of multinationals, because they had offices throughout the world. IBM was the one who sponsored his work, in return for the report he made.

Geert Hofstede was a professor of sociology at the University of Maastricht in Holland. His web site called Cultural Dimensions is here. Better yet, an explanation of his questionnaire technique is found here .

He did not ask all that many questions. But five of them that he did ask assessed the culture (the respondents) on some key sociological attributes. (That can be found explained in the above second link.)

MY POINT

When comparing Eastern and Western Cultures, the values as regards the questions pose tend to fall into both of those categories geographically. Meaning, it is not just the Japanese but a great many eastern cultures that are more “collective” than “individualist”.

Not only, but of the Western Cultures, by far, the Anglophone ones are the most individualist. Meaning the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc. The eastern cultures are considered more collectivist.

One could say Western Civilization individualism sprouts from the 17th/18th philosophers - or one might say that the more characteristic influence was religion.

I’d go with the latter explanation ... though there is no way (I know) of proving that speculation.

MY POINT

This world is a Kaleidoscope of Cultures and one is not necessarily better than another, even if it is the result of differing factors; some sociological, some religious and some perhaps genetic.

But none of them should think they are preordained by God. Were that the case, there are probably about a dozen gods to chose from.

Besides, the cultural differences are slowly disappearing as younger generations seem to ascribe all to a select set of values and nearly all at more or less the same time. For instance, Japanese Manga characters seem to be the rage in Europe.

This is one benefit (?) of our Information Age? I often wonder ... I liked rather more the cultural diversities.

I don’t know where “AnAlienEarthling” sprang from, but I will give a hearty “hear
hear” to this person’s analysis. I’m living it here in Tokyo.

EXPLOITATION

MA: where there is never concern about their disposable employees

Yes, this is what has occurred in our society and in our economy - a complete disregard for human dignity. Social apathy has become so generalized that those who have managed to remain employed seem to consider the unemployed as road-kill on the Highway of Life. Sh*t happens.

We are all like chess peons that can be displaced or sacrificed at the will of our masters in the unique objective of profit. Companies should indeed make profits, which is their reason for existing.

Nonetheless are we, the sheeple, supposed to share in that profit solely by buying equities? Which off course will nose-dive at a moments notice when our masters make a wrong move on the Business Chessboard. The inevitable outcome is that un- and semi-skilled workers become expendable, whilst to maintain profits jobs are inexorably moved to lower production-cost climates.

This is unfair.

There can be no fairness in business until the peons are represented on the Board - along with other rights such as work contracts protected by laws which framework collective bargaining, strikes and the proper indemnification for the work performed (meaning profit-sharing).

This latter should be from Top to Bottom and if that means bonus and stock-option for mid-level staff and blue collar workers, then so be it.

What law indicates that only Top Management must share in the pot of Gold at the end of the Profit Rainbow? None, it’s just custom and such habits can be changed.

But they will only be altered when we, the sheeple, awaken to their exploitation and press for changes in Employment Laws that make work in America decent.

MY POINT

Go for their jugular ... all the rest is just playing footsie.

The lessons from Japan and WW2 have also another dimension. It is one in which militarism conveys a country into self-destruction - a lesson which at least Japan has not forgot.

That lesson should not be lost on Americans, because our country seems to have forgot quickly another warrior’s admonition of the Military-Industrial-Complex (M-I-C).

It was Dwight Eisenhower as PotUS who employed the term in his farewell address to the American people in 1961. Quoting from that speech, from WikiP here:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

Yes, Japan will survive this tragedy! Those who have doubts simply don’t know the Japanese.
Are the Japanese people different from most peoples of the world? Yes! Among the Japanese themselves, are their ‘textures’ of human relationships and ‘feelings for country and fellow ‘members’ of society that, e.g., most western countries lack, especially, the United States? Yes!
  The explanations are not hard to understand if one looks at Japan’s history.
  The best way to understand this history is “parallel” to Western history, in relation to the emergence of how we modern Westerns think and feel
about ourselves, others, society, and the natural
world.
  In our case, this mesh of thoughts and feelings
began around the 1600s, with such philosophers as Hobbes and Descartes, and later, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, ..., in short, basically, the philosophers whose views we have appropriated as the vehicles for our everyday ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves, others, society, and the natural environment.
  In the Japanese case, from around 1600, there was a movement away from any Western influence (there was cruel persecution against Christians - thus, Japan’s 17th-century “Hidden Christians” - e.g., against any such paragons of Western thought. During the 17th century, the country instituted a policy of ‘isolation,’ lasting roughly 250 years, ending around 1865 when the US Civil War ended.
  So, the Japanese people’s way of thinking and
feeling about themselves, others, society, and the
natural environment never incorporated concepts that would accord any meaning to, e.g., “individualism” or “the social contract theory” or “natural (human) rights” or “nature,” i.e., some of the concepts that are the fundamental pillars of our own thinking of ourselves, others, society, and nature (for this reason, it is at best a caricature to characterize Japan as a society that “values ‘the group’ over the individual” for the simple reason that the concept of “individual” is, even to this date, largely an alien concept to Japanese thought and feeling (which explains why the Japanese translations of these words
are inaccurate, connoting selfishness / egoism)).
  Although to most Japanese it would seem perfectly sensible to say that the Japanese, more than the Americans, are capable of ‘directly, immediately suffering’ the torment of their fellows - as if it were their very own. It might seem virtually nonsensical to us to say such a thing: simply for the reason that human relations in Japan that ground “fellow feeling” have no such “interface” as those that ours have, an interface that we inherited from Descartes and others - during the centuries that our culture was maturing.
  The grounding of ‘fellow feeling’ in Japan allows for so much more “empathizing with others” than that in the West - even empathizing with “bird, beast, and flower” - which, perhaps, explains why in Japan there is so much of what we characterize as “civility” to others. There is, if you will, a ‘super-organism’ in Japan that embraces the Japanese. It would not be a
radical mis-characterization to say that those in
Kansai ‘felt’ the earthquake and tsunami that struck Kanto.
  Ironically, perhaps, we Americans can learn more about ourselves from this tragedy that struck the Japanese than we can learn about the Japanese
themselves. Perhaps, we can learn to emulate or
appropriate from Japan the feeling they have to
embrace each other and society and nature. Perhaps, with such fellow feeling we can arrest the accelerating decay of our society….
  Although such lessons would give birth to a
happier and healthier and more peaceful society, it would require a more egalitarian distribution of wealth.
  Alas, it’s all comes down to money. We value money over life! Our monetary addiction -like Cortes’s thirst for gold -
will be our demise.

I wouldn’t bet against Japan, either.  On Channel 2 News there was
a Japanese man looking and looking for his employees and finally
finding one, then hugging that one as if that employee was lost
family found, which is so different than the United States, where
there is never concern about their disposable employees, and it is
this attitude that will restore Japan.  Earthquakes in the very same
way can, and more than likely will, happen in the United States as
well, and the United States has 104 similar nuclear facilities and I
expect it will be even a worse scenario than has happened to Japan.

I’m with you, Mr. Dionne. Tokyo and the rest of Japan are pulling together.